Joe Neumaier

While it stops before sliding too far into the darkness,Observe and Report hits a lot of bull's-eyes by aiming for the gut, not easy belly laugh.

As an acting symposium, this is 83 minutes of Tucci exercises; never a bad thing. The wooden Eve does her best, but director/writer Neil LaBute unfortunately underwrote her character — by design, it would seem, given all that transpires.

Without giving anything away, much of the excruciatingly teased-out tension here echoes the first movie without upping the ante.

Has raw action and urgent performances, but loses power due to an amateur approach.

This one could have flown over the cuckoo's nest, or smacked into a glass pane, but instead lands in the middle of the road where quirky and popular meet.

Dennis Quaid lends some needed saltiness as Hamilton's supportive dad.

Irrational Man plays, like so much of Woody Allen’s work over the past 20 years, like a bad Woody Allen parody.

Best of all, we take a trip back to Depression-era New York and grasp its resonance more than 80 years later. Delicious.

Weitz – who did a great job adapting Nick Hornby's "About a Boy" into an affecting 2002 movie – can't bring the pieces together here.

The problem with Russell Crowe's new take on the legend is that it has one muddy boot in history and the other in fantasy. The middling result is far from a bull's-eye.

Imagine a quietly creepy "X-Men" prequel -- in French -- and you have this odd little parable.

If you succumb to The Better Angels, the effect is like falling into a gorgeous photograph, but that also means the narrative in this arthouse film is oblique and sketchy.

There are two types of superhero movies: the ones that brood and the ones that swing. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is proudly the latter, filled with high-energy action.

Unfortunately, "modern" additions (like the soldiers' YouTube videos and some social media moments) feel clunky, and a necessarily shortened approach trips the movie up, though leads Matt Doyle and Seth Numrich - accomplished Broadway actors - are intense, engaged and appropriately tragic.

Weixler is a delight, and director Tom Gammill captures the right level of deadpan to pull this off.

Affleck is playing someone split down the middle, but we're stuck seeing only one side of him.

This is perhaps for Shakespeare completists only.

A children's comedy about talking animals that feels as if it were written by children or, perhaps, by talking animals.

This eerily unsettling indie takes a few pleasantly unexpected turns before winding up in a traditional place. But if you think it isn’t worth the time, you have another think coming.

Westby's nervy story is like "Desperately Seeking Susan" played straight. Let's hope O'Grady's next film meets this one's potential.

Yet it all comes down to one simplistic idea, and the result feels like a one-film evangelical movement.

Director Sue Bourne belabors the judges' final decision to such an excruciating length, it makes the whole movie feel a bit more cloddish than it should.

There are parts of “Escape From New York,” “Air Force One,” “Cliffhanger” and countless Luc Besson movies strewn about. Big Game doesn’t stomp on their memory, but like an overenthusiastic fan, it does smother them with amateurish zeal.

This stately chiller owes a lot to 1960s British flicks like "The Innocents" and "The Haunting," but unfortunately heads towards cliches with every step.

If characters talking to dogs and dog reaction shots are some of your favorite things, add some stars to this review.

Where Sissy Spacek seemed otherworldly and haunted in De Palma’s film, Moretz (“Hugo,” “Kick-Ass”) is sadder. She’s a terrific young actress.

Much like “La Belle Noiseuse,” the 1991 Jacques Rivette film it resembles, this contemplative drama washes over you.

Sadly, for 99% of its running time, this muddled sci-fi drama is filled with enough overplotting, bad acting and riddle-speak dialogue to stop a clock.

Perhaps afraid that watching a symbol of liberty repeatedly go boom isn’t enough, Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt add family drama, an attack on Congress, a plane crash and the possible nuking of the Middle East. What isn’t tonally jarring ends up shatteringly inept.

The fights are strong (though the 49-year-old director’s are slo-mo), and the surface is calm. Say “Whoa!” if you like, but it’s cool.

Only viewers wondering if James Van Der Beek has finally outgrown "Dawson's Creek" will be at all satisfied by this dreadful police procedural that contains good history lessons and bad TV-cop-show drama.

Bloom's watchfulness and brittle seriousness anchors The Good Doctor, even as it wanders away from reality and into its own bizarre world.

After a summer of robots, mutants and explosions, the beautifully honest, grownup Love is Strange is a treat.

Unfortunately, Mann’s newest film, Blackhat, fails to connect.

His (Bateman) performance is fun. Too bad The Switch is not.

It may not be one of his finest roles or one of his more memorable films. But in its own way, Boulevard may be one that says the most about him.

If Deadfall had more life, it might have been about more than just its wannabe edge. Ruzowitzky, whose 2007 film "The Counterfeiters" won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, understands the movie's simple plan. But it nonetheless puts us into a big sleep.

It's laughably, eye-rollingly absurd.

Its creepy atmosphere aside, Maggie is a slog of the living dead.

Had the film stood still more often, its stylish gambit would have worked better.

This dour, hyperactive family film is joyless, overly busy and starchy.

This great-looking, often spellbinding film also shows Lee’s sometimes pervasive theatricality threatening to chomp into the story. But the swirling strangeness of “Sweet Blood” makes it his most mesmerizing work since the underrated “Bamboozled” (2000) and “25th Hour” (2002).

Laughable/Bad

It's nice to see righteous anger in a movie. If only the education drama Detachment knew what to do with it.

Insidious doesn't feature the lazy, home-video-style terror of "Paranormal Activity," thankfully. But it's also pretty normal activity for a ghost story.

It also has another watchable turn from Ice Cube, and, as with his previous films, the rap artist-actor leads by example.

This eye-rollingly bad movie is silly, sluggish and miscast.

Dominic Cooper gives a riveting dual performance in The Devil's Double, but the movie is a relentless one-note drama that loses its momentum halfway through.

This sweet, offhanded but lovingly observed remembrance is a real kick. It takes us back to the way things used to be, especially for 13-year-old guys, and specifically in the arcade rooms of 1985, filled with upright video games with glowing screens and big-haired girls in neon.

It's an unfunny Spanish movie that worked best as a two-minute trailer.

At 67, maestro Argento's taste still runs toward bloody entrails and eye-gougings, but Asia's sexy sour-lemon smile is underused in his movies.

Sadly, the film gets mired in traditionalism, something the man himself always railed against. But worth a look for seeing intellectual bravery (still) at work.

There’s great repartee between its cast of this “based on a true [but forgotten] story” of World War II. Yet the film overall isn’t colorful enough.

The International almost seems like a Monty Python spoof on spy-game thrillers in which the phrase "secret agent" is constantly replaced by "banker," resulting in lines like, "...If I die, 100 other bankers take my place."

William H. Macy has pitch-perfect instincts as an actor. As a movie director, he’s bound to do better than his first feature, this big-hearted, nicely paced but ho-hum character study.

Strong acting all ’round helps, but unfortunately this is just a slow ride to nowhere.

Even young would-be botanists will find this charmless animated adventure as exciting as watching grass grow.

Safe House devolves into unexciting action scenes that feel left over from the "Bourne" flicks and are peopled with cloak-and-dagger stereotypes.

Writer-director David M. Rosenthal fills this dewy road-trip movie with too many cliches. From the glimpses we get of Shue's character, that may have been a more rockin' story.

Real-life geopolitical blunders aside, The Interview generally hits its marks. And every time it does skid into juvenile idiocy — with too much scatological humor, for instance, and an overuse of “you-go-bro!” attitude — it follows it with a stride or two toward uproarious meta-satire.

The remake of the 1987 cult actioner Robocop is a misguided failure — not only because its retooled half-man/half-machine hero now has emotions, but also because its “fear the machines” message winds up feeling creaky.

This nothing-new-here documentary presents basketball’s onetime celebrity point guard in unguarded moments. But the result is banal and fawning, with Lin coming off as a pious, charmless subject.

The oldsters are feisty — a gun-totin’ granny is played by Pussy Galore herself, “Goldfinger’s” Honor Blackman — but the shtick’s as flat as old ale. It is bookended, though, by two seriously great songs.

This well-intentioned but clumsy attempt to get into the head of one of the 20th century's most famous women remains full of hot air.

“Natural” perfectly describes Nolte’s performance, too. With his growly voice and bear-like aura, he might be dismissed as a walking sight gag, but don’t let that fool you. Nolte’s way with a joke is nimble, and his delivery is spot-on.

The overlapping stories, the emotional disconnect, the heavy-handed symbolism -- no, it's not a movie from the makers of "Babel," its a mumbling, stammering copycat drama from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson.

Some parents are mellow, and others have instilled emotional problems in their children. This less-than-illuminating work resembles the spelling-bee doc “Spellbound,” only with a promise of high-end endorsements and far more pampering.

Only Wahlberg rises above the muck; everything else here feels buried in concrete.

Yes, there are good moments from a team of veteran British actors, but overall, this return visit to the 2012 gray-set rom-com is deadly dull.

Though the film’s untested cast struggles with the drama, and the sketched-out story is often banal (there are several amateurish calls-to-mom scenes), the presentation of a specific city subculture is etched from the heart.

There are great clips and good insight, and it’s all as loose and cool as an Austin night out.

So much of this irritating film from first-time writer-director Daniel Barnz feels like a writing exercise it's amazing Elle Fanning, in the title role, comes off as well as she does.

Snitch is like watching an elephant on ice: inelegant, but you admire the effort.

Gritty, funny, rich adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel.

It's a naive example of the transformative powers of a 23-year-old let loose amongst the dullards. Whoa.

A mopey indie family drama like In Our Nature can't quash "Mad Men" star John Slattery's charm no matter how badly it tries.

This lumbering, ha-ha-look-what-we-remade action-comedy is a high-concept disaster.

It's about watching two always-fine actors do a lot with very little.

Fans of PBS, history and a certain kind of old-fashioned moviemaking may fall in.

Predators tries to spice up the hunt-or-be-hunted thesis, but from the get-go, director Nimrod Antal's movie has nowhere to run.

Even the youngest viewers, not to mention their parents, will appreciate the buffoonish villainy of the dogcatchers (still useful villains more than half a century after "Lady and the Tramp"), and the movie's nice anti-kill shelter message is as it should be.

Ender’s Game, the book, may have a special place in pop-lit. The movie, however, is as special as a migraine.

Those who only know Chiwetel Ejiofor from his quietly powerful work in the Best Picture-winning “12 Years a Slave” should see him here — to experience his range.

Eisenberg - seemingly in every other movie nowadays - gives his best performance since 2005's "The Squid and the Whale" in a film that dramatizes a fascinating New York story.

With witty throwaway bits and Cavanagh's fast delivery, "Scot" gets away with a third-act dip into hearts and platitudes. Otherwise, it's refreshingly snarky and quick.

"2" works harder to land punches, but when it does, it provides the kind of fun it's fan base hopes for. But expectations, and targets, are lower all around.

The deepest chord is hit by Cattrall, who almost manages to wipe away the memory of "Sex and the City 2."

This empty, immature romantic comedy ultimately feels as if it's filled with all the hot air that separates New York and San Francisco, yet still manages to be a suffocating bore.

Most impressive of all, The Avengers makes superhero movies new again - a colossal task indeed.

While “Lovelace” falters a bit, it remains a memorable, unflinching indictment.

What director Andrew Stanton has brought forth from Burroughs' limited, hoary source material is actually kind of fun.

Explaining humor is usually like boiling water — it evaporates. But the funny folks in actor Kevin Pollak’s well-structured doc can actually break down what they do.

Neeson's better than this. You can't watch him here without thinking, Geez, every fight-choreography session could have funded "Love, Actually." This bash-the-door-down action scene likely took as long to film as "Kinsey." That gunfight required more stunts than all of "Schindler's List."

Patric and Baldwin react to all the morbidity with restraint, and Vassilieva keeps her bald head high. But they won't be able to help this barefaced vulgarity earn any terms of endearment.

So that's three snickers, not counting the Bush quote, 'cause including that one ain't fair, man.

Scenes of the director as a school-age boy in a Varda film are haunting, but end up simply sparking a desire to see Varda's work.

True Story is a prisoner of its own dull storytelling.

Despite the incongruous romance and abrupt action beats, Crowe gives a likable, sympathetic performance. But it all starts to dry up before our eyes. Emotions feel false or melodramatic, flashbacks are drawn out and coincidences and connections are forced.

The big twist to Closed Circuit is stated in the film’s TV ads, so even the element of surprise is lost. There may have been the making of a juicy, episodes-long BBC series here, but as it is, there’s barely any juice at all.

Director Nimrod Antal’s grungy gang-of-thieves pic is tough and, for this genre, surprisingly ethical.

Sadly, Hit & Run, for as much sporadic fun and genuine heart it has, runs out of gas. But it's not for lack of trying, and that counts for something.

Gugino is having a ball, but every scene feels like an oh-so-arch one-act.

The boat rides and picnics we're privy to are an enjoyable way to get to a bittersweet conclusion. Yet it's hard not to feel like we've taken this trip before.

A movie that's so anachronistically mushy and awkward, it earns extra credit simply for being so innocent.

This all feels like an homage to Gilliam’s “Brazil,” though Zero Theorem also has shadows of “12 Monkeys” and other films in the onetime Monty Python animator’s cinematic carnival.

This stoners-meet-government-assassins mashup is as meandering and paranoid as a guy toking up in front of City Hall. Sometimes that’s amusing, but most of the time it’s tiring.

Like the politicians it skewers, it knows the real winner is the stupidity, stupid.

If Welcome to the Rileys were a thicker-skinned movie -- if it were the movie it thinks it is -- so much of the outcome wouldn't be telegraphed the minute you read the premise.

Another nicely understated performance from Jesse Eisenberg anchors this shambling drama.

An epic example of muddled storytelling, chintzy excitement and scatter-brained execution.

While Messina and Ireland are fine company, writer-director Matt Ross' conceit tires you out.

The sole treasure of Cowboys & Aliens is that director Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") has fashioned an actual rawhide ride from a graphic novel (that took six writers to wrangle to the screen).

Carla Gugino has yet to find the right movie that clicks with her spunky outsider appeal, but The Mighty Macs, a gauzy, inspiring true-life drama about a girls' basketball team, at least gets her close and provides a lot of assists.

As clichés trot through their sessions - it's like "In Treatment" as bedroom farce - we check out. Huppert, though, is as fearless as ever.

A high-concept goof that’s hard-pressed to surmount its twee preposterousness.

Director Malcolm Venville, who made the British gangster flick "44 Inch Chest," has a strong handle on the tone, so even the familiar twists feel fresh.

Every generation gets a "Big Chill," and this tired but well-meaning indie contains many clichés of the "pals-pondering-life" movies that came before.

Though Lorenz Knauer's film is as thoughtful as his subject - with a break for interviews with Pierce Brosnan and Goodall's fellow UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie - the study of chimps is given short shrift.

This sometimes-taut little thriller is sullied by its unnecessary masquerade as a documentary presented by HBO’s gonzo news show “Vice.”

With a snappy score made up of American standards and tons of Gallic spice, “Love” wins us over.

High art swings sort of low in this watchable but thematically repetitive drama.

Bridges is enjoyable as he gives the older Flynn a Zen hero quality, and even breaks through the effects to make his younger-Clu-self oddly engaging.

In terms of scares, this old-fashioned Thing is better than most new things.

Add two more stars here if zoning out to weirdo-dreamy, '80s public-access TV with a synthesizer soundtrack is your idea of midnight fun. Because this ambitious, but not uninteresting, failure has that in its DNA.

What keeps the movie afloat, though, is Seann William Scott as Steve Stifler.

Its hard sell wears you down and draws you in, even as you know you're being manipulated.

Rote, dull and point-blank obvious.

These actors know how to liven up a room, yet here they're forced to perform in Miller's Theater for the Overwritten.

A fast-moving, rock 'em-sock 'em movie that continues the man-vs.-machines series begun 25 years ago.

Wiseman films it all without comment, letting the rhythm of the place tell the story.

Von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville") has no barriers, which absolutely can be a good thing. Here, though, his uninhibited nature is an omen of the pretentious butchery to come.

While not every family film can plant a flag here, the happily offbeat Mars Needs Moms turns out to be a charming, subversive, minor addition to the club.

Words and Pictures doesn’t get the dunce-cap award, but it does lose points for feeling phony and contrived — especially during the moments when it appears overly proud of what it is.

This sequel to last year’s surprise buzz-maker takes the same appreciative approach to scare-flick tradition: Take hipsters, mix into classic genre riff, goose until ludicrous; repeat. Not every try is successful, but as with any anthology, if you don’t like one, sit back and wait for the next.

Throughout, Davidson's intentions are honest but become lost in a haze of overly familiar story beats.

All those cliched literary trappings come together in Stuck in Love, but the final product feels more like a footnote than a finished work.

Think you know all about comedy? This thorough, funny and thoroughly funny chronicle of the Catskills Mountains resorts — that is, the Borscht belt — will still teach you a thing or two.

To eavesdrop on Bernardo Bertolucci, Stephen Frears, Ken Loach and John Sayles, as they talk politics; David Lynch and Todd Haynes, discussing inspiration; and Catherine Breillat, Agnès Varda, Richard Linklater and Liliana Cavani as they riff on controversy and aspiration, even for a little while, is a real treat.

The story feels like quicksand. Riddick, which couldn’t even qualify for proper summer movie placement, moves like Martian molasses and can’t present an action scene to save its life. You’ll wish you had Uncle Martin’s ability to speed people — not to mention awful movies — up.

Unfortunately, the rest of writer-director Eran Creevy’s film just shows that the Brits, too, make good-looking but empty thrillers, just like in Hollywood.

Never achieves the David Lean style of epic it aims for - exterior vistas and interior dramas - but it has two charismatic performances, beautiful Chinese locations and an admirable lack of sentimentality.

The connection they share is clear; the reason we're invited to sit in is foggy at best.

For all its strengths, the film is cursed by an ADD-style structure and a flashy but inevitably ineffective casting stunt.

The tricky camera moves that fill up Silent House make for one-half of a nerveracking horror film – before the movie's obviousness just gets on your nerves.

Director Chen Shi-Zheng's film has a graceful energy, and three strong performances help make this serene drama - and its shocking conclusion - quietly moving.

The only bit of machinery that makes the film move is Jason Statham, who's provided the steely saving grace in so many modern action movies.

Leave it to Spike Lee to deliver one of the strangest, most off-putting movies for the Thanksgiving holiday.

A kids' adventure movie can be a lot of things -- wild and woolly, loosey-goosey, full of foolishness -- but they should never be shabby. And that's the best word for Inkheart.

Aniston is fine, and sometimes good even, in director Daniel Barnz’s maudlin and overly obvious drama. She has layered moments of sympathy as a woman afflicted with chronic pain. And unlike in the bad rom-coms she does too often, Aniston absolutely shows some serious chops.

Speaking of committed: Duvall, at age 83, nearly steals the show. Always the most inscrutable of the great ’70s actors, Duvall uses his great, unassuming American face to convey pride, confusion, pain and compassion — sometimes all at once.

Don't expect to taste anything surprising.

Like its subject, the movie is not as calculating as it seems.

The result ends up like an "SNL" skit: knowingly over-the-top but still fun.

A lot of gleeful audience members are interviewed in Glee: The 3-D Concert Experience, though the source of their happiness could be a lot of things.

Though the film plays like late-era Woody Allen — not necessarily a good thing — and Goldberg’s rambunctiousness is more annoying than liberating, there’s a serious depth of feeling here. Bosworth, thankfully, is attuned to that, and makes the most of it.

Though coming off at times like Adam Sandler’s “Grown-ups,” only with Oscar winners, Last Vegas is a genial little comedy for the crowd it’s intended for.

Lutz, who was a boy when his family fled the Long Island home, is full of belligerence in this chronicle of his family’s alleged run-in with a ghoulish home where a murder had occurred.

Ultimately, this dull tour of a thieving, primal underworld is just a lot of high-talking hogwash.

Director Peter Webber (“Girl With a Pearl Earring”) fills the film with conciliatory emotion and jarring vistas of post-atomic landscapes. Unfortunately, Emperor needs more good ol’-fashioned swagger.

The only saving grace is Green, the reigning witch-queen of cinema. The smoky-eyed French actress, best known for “Casino Royale,” “The Golden Compass” and “Dark Shadows,” throws her all into the performance, going bare-chested at times, bared-teeth at others. She’s like Elizabeth Taylor’s "Cleopatra" possessed by a succubus — which is a good thing. Without her, 300: Rise of an Empire would be bloodless and brainless.

Directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger stage a few good action set pieces, but unlike the 1981 midnight movie classic it imitates, the blandly titled Lockout never busts out of its cheesy concept.

Like Stallone, director Walter Hill is also far from his heyday ("The Warriors," "48 HRS.," "Streets of Fire"), but the old-guy camaraderie behind the scenes is evident. Despite the movie being based on a graphic novel, no one adds extra flash here just to appease the kids.

The whole thing is such a tedious, foul-mouthed mess that it isn't even worth discussing as a riff on the Bob Dylan doc "Don't Look Back" or a meditation on slovenly semi-madness.

The movie doesn't try for "Airplane!" or even "Scary Movie"-type ribbing, but its adherence to the genre isn't quite pure, either. Despite McCormack's good-natured efforts, this is "MADtv"-quality satire.

Now CDL aficionados have One Day, though it is a tedious addition to this subspecies of rom-com, despite Anne Hathaway's efforts to make us fall for her regardless of the setting.

As a misanthropic guy in a dead-end job, Matthew Broderick is more engaging than when he has to be perky.

The bad news about Admission is that this thin envelope of a comedy checks all the boxes for being a phoned-in, phony, padded rom-com.

The great David Strathairn can make any film watchable, but even he can’t save this dry dramatic thriller.

Yelling is a prosaic look at a hard life. Like Sweetness, the movie finds its way by instinct.

The movie gets too claustrophobic, while its noble attempt to take on suffering remains laudable.

An earnest but undeniably eye-rolling documentary about the denizens of this odd pocket of show business.

The earnest attempt at family drama doesn't benefit from the abundance of movie-of-the-week cliches.

Informative and flavorful, though lacking in surprise.

It’s never laugh-out-loud funny or inside-track smart, but in a summer full of bombastic failures, a lack of pretense is enough.

There are big special effects, of course, but refreshingly, this third (and final?) movie in the franchise is like a pleasant stroll through familiar halls.

Words and story are still the lifeblood of a movie, and Jennifer's Body is filled like a Twinkie with half-fleshed-out ideas.

There are some nice moments of camaraderie, as Feldman and Imperioli do their laid-back thing and Fisher is feisty and warmhearted. Still, the let’s-all-talk-at-once actorliness wears thin. It’s just not worth the mood swings.

It’s all too much. Frankie & Alice has multiple problems it can’t get past.

This overly twee, morbidly cute romance initially digs up the ageless "Harold and Maude" as a touchstone before it slips the coils of watchability.

Director Jake Paltrow’s stark sense of place fades as familiar genre elements are introduced. It winds up like “There Will Be Blood,” but with H2O, not oil. It’s food for thought, nothing more.

A good-ol'-boy civics lesson that's too scattered to achieve its predictable goals.

More mournful than alarmist, Arthus-Bertrand's film goes beyond global warming to look at life out of balance, through a lens darkly.

All In lays down some interesting hands but sometimes can't raise the stakes, though "Rounders" star Matt Damon lends a bit of celeb flash.

Dullness, as well as hoary preachiness, neuters the family-and-their-war-dog drama Max.

The cozy sentimentality in The Time Traveler's Wife is the only thing that grounds it. Mostly it's just featherheaded.

Every generation gets the time travel it deserves. Project Almanac isn’t “Time After Time” (1979) or “Back to the Future” (1985) or “12 Monkeys” (1996), but the new release does turn out to be a surprisingly jaunty trip for jaded Gen-Y kids.

This poor man’s Norman Bates, though, doesn’t make us wonder what makes him tick; he makes us want to shut our eyes.

This heavy-handed movie is simply a sermon its makers think we all should hear.

The Giver was ahead of its time as a book. But as a movie, it’s too late.

Despite the ominous feel, this is a mystery about losing or gaining lives and unknown detours.

As a vampire might say, "Be- vaaare , all who enter here above the age of 7! What lies on the screen ... is not for you !"

Writer-director Hannah Fidell’s somber drama of an illicit romance earns credit for being a serious discussion of a tabloid-rich topic, but the movie runs out of places to go.

The same boring routine gets played out again.

Here, the actor (Di Niro) dials it down and wins us over.

Engrossing, sad and heartbreaking.

Black Rock is as dingy and dirty as the genre thrillers it appears to want to one-up. All it does, though, is bring everyone down.

This tonal mishmash cripples The Dilemma almost immediately, though there are many other speed bumps, including Vaughn's irritating, fast-talking prattle.

While Montias' actors do their best, even good intentions have limits. Still, it never feels false. And remember, even Martin Scorsese (born in Queens) had to start somewhere.

George Lucas produced this candy-coated, fictionalized drama, and while its cast is first-rate and its flying sequences sharp, the movie is as glazed and wide-eyed as a 70-year-old comic book.

In a certain kind of indie movie, the only thing sweeter than a bad boy transformed is slow, sad tragedy. Mercy has both, which isn't good.

The result is that, as with Hanks' performance, what's missing - subtlety, truth, an earned sense of rebirth – is stronger than what's here. Despite all the connections in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it never connects to us the way we need it to.

"Dopey" is too good a word for it.

A frenetic, overstuffed but imaginative fantasy.

Would like to think of itself as an extension of its lead character -- gangly, a bit uncouth, but ultimately sweet. Unfortunately, it's more like the best friend in a movie like this -- irritating, unfunny and something that hangs around longer than it should.

The sequel to one of the most visually striking movies of the last 10 years continues the graphic novel-inspired landscape of its predecessor. But the characters don’t click, and the action feels dull.

There is also inspiration in watching her find herself by helping others.

Director Benni Diez tries for schlock shocks in this giant-bug flick. Sadly, what’s left out here is the fun.

Is it all valid? Perhaps. Should the film's questions be addressed? Absolutely.

Director Nick Hamm's movie is sparky and fun, and full of affectionate pokes at the '80s music scene. It's also, in terms of music biopics, probably better than the real thing.

About the kinds of showbiz hangers-on seen in the background of a Scorsese movie, and it feels like those guys decided they were the real stars.

Kline sinks his old smoothie teeth into the part of Flynn, but is careful not to draw blood too easily. The man’s pathetic nature, after all, doesn’t spring from his movies. (Flynn worked right up to his death, in 1959.) It’s deeper than that, but also more shallow. Walking that knife’s edge is a trick. Kline finds exactly the right path.

It's the same-old flesh-chewing. Like vampires, this genre is getting deadly.

Wahlberg and Johnson are the saving graces of an in-your-face movie.

A racial melodrama that, until it stumbles into obvious and maudlin territory, is a thoughtful work thanks to Octavia Spencer, Anthony Mackie and especially Kevin Costner.

While the film is slightly better than similar efforts Allen made between the ’90s and his recent time in Europe, it’s both too broad and too shallow.

Most of the movie unfolds in such a dull manner.

A well-done, conscientious and funny little film that recalls "Clueless," only with more heart.

Something of a traffic jam--even with his usual restraint, Lee couldn't recount a key moment of the '60s without a blurry parade of personalities--and also lullingly dull.

Peace, Love and Misunderstanding has a place for everybody in its heart-of-gold band.

Dignity dies a million deaths despite the best intentions.

Any film as politically specific as Miral needs to be addressed on two levels, as a movie and as, from a certain viewpoint, a polemic. If a viewer can separate one from the other - and some may not - there's an intense, novelistic drama here.

It is likely to become an unintended camp classic, something we haven't had since "Showgirls."

Though too much of this of-the-people, for-the-people chronicle is by necessity gummed up by clunky captions and explanations, it is an effective, and heartfelt, clarion call.

Overshoots the mark by spinning its implausible, hyperviolent tale around too tight a family circle.

Fine actors are let down by a comatose script and wayward direction in this retro crime drama.

John Cleese, Michael Palin and Chapman himself (courtesy of interviews, skits and various recordings he made before his death from cancer in 1989) chime in. It's an odd little trip, but if it weren't, one would have to ask, "Well what's all this, then?"

Taken 2 has a plot that could have been written by a GPS program, and contains all the technical charm that conjures up.

Hollowface, like Intruders (which ought to be just the singular "Intruder," as Hollowface works solo), is all about empty scares. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo does include perhaps the most half-hearted exorcism ever filmed, which only seems fitting.

Unabashedly one-sided, this biography of Chávez - and several other Latin American politicians - does raise some valid concerns about what Stone calls the "manipulative power of the media." So it's too bad he's as guilty of partisanship as the right-wing outlets he reviles.

All the actresses, especially Theron, are appropriately haunted, but let's hope Arriaga's love of echoes, fate and coincidence has run its mopey course.

All the low-hum, behavioral buffoonery gets a bit tedious. Still, cheers to Cross for the satirical road he covers, even with all the potholes.

Any way you slice it, writer-director Spencer Susser's movie is bad company, full of wanna-be-outrageous anecdotes from the fringe.

The central metaphor of dance, though, is forced, a standard-issue cliché about dancing away problems.

Colorful folks and cool stunts abound, but casual viewers may still utter a big "Why?"

The three icons ham it up, do some verbal towel-snapping and have fun, which also describes most of this self-conscious adventure movie.

This kind of thing requires a velvet touch, though director Stanley M. Brooks hits only hammer-heavy notes.

Monument Valley makes an appearance, and there are soulful moments of slow motion. There’s enough heart here to make up for whatever first-timer miscalculations ride along too.

Though Bloom feels like he dropped in from another movie, it all spins on screenwriter Thornton's charismatic performance, which also accounts for the survival instinct inside the film.

The jokes are hit-and-miss, but the cast is uniformly game, with Labine stealing the show.

After much fumbling, the snicks and giggles of adolescence grow wearying yet again.

This mashup of a teenage assassin lark and high school misfit comedy misses the chance to add a supercool heroine to pop culture.

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is overhyped as Billy Bob Thornton is slow and steady.

This wannabe Sherlockian thriller is like a night spent at Madame Tussauds, watching mannequins strangle other mannequins.

The “Millers” script — it took four writers to cobble together something that seems so slight — hits too many obvious notes between the moments when Aniston can strut her stuff.

Shares a spiritual link to the Japanese works of Hayao Miyazaki but lacks his films' narrative drive and magical overlay.

With musical numbers and fight scenes as big as its heart, director Nikhil Advani's action-comedy really does sample it all.

This two-bit echo of "The Accidental Tourist" is a preachy pill that wastes the genial, funny Jeff Daniels and the criminally underused Lauren Graham.

A fascinating, alternate-universe look at the dawn of the music-sharing phenom — once a cause of concern in the industry, yet now a footnote to our all-digital music marketplace.

Entertaining and smart, with a great, career 2.0 performance from Ashton Kutcher.

The Losers is simply a lot of low blows, telegraphed each and every time.

Grace, especially, gives a turn that could be a twerpy cousin to Tom Cruise's character in "Magnolia"; Fischer's dead-eyed responses to this Mensa-member/player who think he's book jacket-hot are priceless.

See, everyone complains about humans in movies but no one does anything about it, so it fell to Eagle Eye to make everything laughably, ridiculously fake.

The long shadow of David Fincher's "Seven" falls on Anamorph, a moody, ultimately unexciting thriller.

San Andreas is a disaster — literally. That’s not to take a piece out of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. His charm and family-man-style fearlessness as the movie’s star is the only saving grace in this thuddingly repetitive, badly written crash-a-thon.

Less the opulent retelling she (Taymor) intended and more like a high-minded midnight movie, filled with Ricky's-style costumes, black swans, sprites that flit across the screen and a cave filled with boiling beakers.

To call MacGruber"a total bomb is a bit much, but this comedy-action flick sure feels like it was put together with gum, shoelaces and a couple of sticky Twizzlers.

One problem with “Wish” is that Braff tries to cram so much into it, no scene ever exists for its own sake, to establish rhythm or help us know these characters outside of the ongoing family crises.

There's something sadly poetic about a movie dealing with disappearing memories that vanishes from your mind while you watch it.

If you're going to pick the werewolf as your favorite monster, there's a lot to appreciate in the shaggy, imperfect but still fun new version of The Wolf Man.

Writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez seems to think his characters are oh-so-edgy, and maybe they would be -- if it were 1982.

The reason director Fernando Meirelles' intimate drama 360 succeeds where other adaptations of Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 sexual circle-back play "La Ronde" haven't is, ironically, because it puts less emphasis on body heat and more on intellectual coolness.

The "Star Trek" gibes feel especially lazy, since the movie ought to be "Men in Black" kicky, not sketch-comedy dusty.

Gandolfini scoops up another chance to show off the gentleness he left at home during six seasons of “The Sopranos.”

Frozen is good for five minutes of "What would you do if?" games. Then it's just stiff as a board.

This one has a screenplay by Stephen King, adapting his own short story. Unfortunately, that can’t save this low-budget thriller.

The result is far too high-and-mighty to truly be moving.

Faith-based audiences may find comfort here, but the film's heavy-handedness is a burden it can't overcome.

Hawke - continuing an evolution toward stronger, more intense acting than anyone might've predicted from him 20 years ago - drives the movie. He makes Sal a jangled, edgy presence, his conscience torn several ways.

The final fate of Adolf ­Eichmann is certainly a compelling subject. But its dramatic impact is severely diminished here by stilted filmmaking and wooden performances.

Director Travis Fine gives his period details flourish and lets Cumming and Dillahunt create well-rounded characters, but Any Day Now winds up treacly.

Unfortunately, its present-day tale, involving a career woman seeking to mend her 20-year bond with a girlfriend injured in an accident, is lax and clunky, and its story-within-a-story - a tale of two laotong, or soul sisters, in oppressive mid-1800s China - is gorgeous but simplistic.

Peter Jackson siphoned out all the soulfulness that made the author's combination thriller/afterlife fantasy a best-seller. In its place is a gumball-colored potboiler that's more squalid than truly mournful.

Every scene is entwined in clunkiness.

If you're able to think of characters as just air bubbles to get past, then dive in, the excitement's fine.

A movie that’s of two minds. It’s well-grounded, but also over the top. It’s a man-vs.-machine epic and also an intimate drama. It’s quirky-smart yet sci-fi silly. And it winds up being half as good as it could be.

Who let an unfunny, irritatingly acted two-hour commercial for Google onto multiplex screens?

Boasting perhaps the most bored-sounding voice-over ever, this unexceptional drama imagines itself - much as its young heroine does - to be far more noteworthy than it actually is.

The missed opportunities in Austenland are more numerous than dowry-less sourpusses at a ball in a Jane Austen novel.

The concept is the same, and just as tired as it was when the second, third and fourth sequels to “Paranormal Activity’s” 2009 first installment.

It’s too bad we can’t take a hit out on The Family. This unexciting, unfunny would-be action satire is filled with Italian-American stereotypes, decades-old TV-style Mafia cliches, bits of business that never amount to anything and actors so much better than the hoary, one-joke material.

As the team gets in shape, a hot new ringer is brought in and the fallen son redeems himself - and director Steve Rash's movie wins us over.

This sock-it-to-'em souffle falls very quickly, unless watching Travolta trying on another faux-hip look is considered fun.

Writer-director Will Slocombe presents a familiar buffet, but there’s good stuff to pick over.

The brooding and emotional prickliness gets overwhelming. Kidman tries her best to flesh out her character, but writer-director Kim Farrant gives this still-undervalued actress little to do.

A lot of heart, a jaunty mariachi score and a lush Eisenhower-era look help as the family-friendly story follows the usual sports-drama plays.

The cutesy energy is just too much in this Aussie comedy that’s overly bemused by its quirkiness.

This insipid mashup of history lesson and monster flick takes itself semi-seriously, which is truly deadly.

Orphan doesn't add much to the genre except, disturbingly, a fetishistic bent that's creepy in the wrong way.

One sickening piece of garbage.

Wang tracks his guys like the documentarian he is, and if the movie feels a bit canned thanks to Adam Forgash's unoriginal script, classic NYC spots and a big heart make it feel like home.

This somber but unexceptional drama is luxurious to look at but never gripping.

Isn't prophetic ... just pathetic

If there's a book-loving adventuress or adventurer in your house younger than 10, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island provides a lighthearted break from the death-obsessed "Harry Potter" franchise and other literary but limp adventures like the "Narnia" films and "The Lightning Thief."

It put-puts along like a moped in busy traffic, content to amble around but not go anywhere.

What you don't expect is how bad almost all of it is.

The G.I. Joe team is back, and most of their sophomore movie adventure, G.I. Joe Retaliation, is as bland as their name and as subtle as an exploding tank.

Machete Kills? “Machete Bores” is more like it.

The worst humans-fighting-aliens movie I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of humans-fighting-aliens movies.