Keith Phipps

Henson's characters maintained an essential innocence while sending up the very idea of entertainment. They put on a show with quotation marks around it, but the irony never felt cynical. When it isn't getting bogged down in unearned sentiment, The Muppets gets that right.

Considine directs with the confidence of a veteran, giving his actors room to work while letting an ominous, overcast mood hang over almost every scene.

Whatever its basis in fact, there's nothing to Young Goethe In Love's story that dozens of other films haven't done before, and better. But Fehling keeps his Goethe just on the right side of obnoxious, and Stein invests a lot of character and gawky charm into what easily could have been just "the girl."

It's as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who've spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him.

Beyond being unable to decide what kind of Musketeers movie it wants to be, Anderson's adaptation seems determined to underachieve as both heavy spectacle and light adventure. It's two mediocrities for the price of one.

There must have been a reason why the real-life Rush could do so much with seemingly so little, but The Mighty Macs never captures it. It lets canned inspiration provide the uplift, instead of something more tangible.

Without "The Wire" and its like as a point of comparison, Texas Killing Fields might seem the natural heir to a gritty '70s cop drama. But with great contemporary TV around, it seems strangely incomplete.

In The Big Year co-stars Owen Wilson and Jack Black appear on the verge of succumbing to the same terminal blandness that's gripped Martin for so long.

Made with affection and access but not enough structure.

The first Human Centipede had audacity on its side. Human Centipede II has only excess.

The original was repulsive but impossible to shake. This remake is pure applause bait, which makes it barbaric in ways Peckinpah would never have dreamed.

Somehow, Van Sant has made a film about life and death in which the stakes never seem higher than whether one insolent kid will stop being such a horrible mope.

Soderbergh creates an unnerving mosaic from the smaller pieces, a vision of a world that's simultaneously tightly knit, delicately balanced, and prone to breakdown, whether due to disease, bad ideas, or unenlightened self-interest.

Unpleasant when it isn't dull, Apollo 18 never sells the lost-footage illusion, and never compensates for it with scares. Jolts, sure. Like so many lazy horror directors, López-Gallego knows how to startle, but not how to frighten.

Rowan Joffe (son of Roland Joffe) provides busy, if never particularly distinctive direction, but it's the leads that continually threaten to sink the film.

It shouldn't, in other words, be that hard to make a good Conan movie. John Milius did a half-decent job with "Conan The Barbarian" in 1982, but this new film of the same name feels like a half-hearted revamp of virtually any of the Conan rip-offs that clogged up video-store shelves in the '80s.

The film's greatest pleasures come from Noxon's script - which puts the sexual chaos created by Farrell's attractive bloodsucker front and center - and from the performances.

It is, without a doubt, a striking debut. But it's also punishingly distasteful and disjointed almost beyond coherence, a repetitive heap of a film that feels disgorged rather than crafted.

Wyatt brings a light touch to the potentially grim material - too light when it drops in some groan-inducing references to the original film - but he keeps the action compelling whether focusing on apes as they run amok or as they quietly contemplate their next move.

Focusing the film on Gleeson was certainly the right choice. His performance is equal parts funny and unnerving, and he keeps viewers guessing about what drives the man and what he'll do next.

You want cowboys and aliens in the same movie? This one's for you. If you want anything beyond what the title promises, look elsewhere. And that means even anything resembling a clever mash-up of established genres.

As a study in insanity, Zookeeper is mildly interesting. But as a kiddie comedy, it's something to watch only once the little ones have worn out their "Dr. Doolittle" DVD.

The story feels half-considered, the relationships thin, and the direction visually indifferent.

The American romantic comedy has grown distressingly moribund lately, but anyone looking to freshen up the genre a bit need look no further than Michel Leclerc's The Names Of Love.

The tone and subject at times recall David Lynch's "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Dr.," but the approach is Hellman's own.

Its pleasures are borrowed, but durable.

An unassuming wisp of a movie, Midnight In Paris finds Woody Allen penning a love letter to the City Of Lights, albeit one whose sentiments could easily fit on a postcard.

It's a film about teen angst that's too caught up in its characters' state of mind to see its way through to the other side.

Passion Play doesn't overreach so much as it overindulges in aimless pacing, inert acting, and a romance maudlin enough to make "Twilight" look restrained.

It's a film with its own identity, the simple, thrilling story of a handsome god who falls to Earth and reminds everyone what heroes do.

Peter Stormare has fun engaging in some Walken-level scenery-chewing-almost literally-as the patriarch of a werewolf clan. Good for him. That means at least one person has found something to like about this tedious collection of wisecracks and hand-me-down monsters.

It raises the question of who the movie is for in the first place: Kids have seen much better animation in other films, and it's hard to imagine too many grown-ups ready to smile and nod at yet more smirking takes on famous moments from "Scarface" and "The Silence Of The Lambs."

Trouble is, it feels like a film going through the motions, never finding mooring in believable human feelings.

Russell Brand steps into the role of Arthur Bach for the 2011 remake, and while it's one of the more reined-in performances of his short, busy big-screen career, Brand's unvarying onscreen persona just doesn't do soulful.

Candy-coated or otherwise, crap's still crap.

For a while it's the rare film that-in the mold of the first "Matrix" movie and "Inception," although on a more modest scale than either-mixes heady puzzles with gripping suspense.

It's a remote location, but Frammartino's canny eye, wry humor, and careful sense of rhythm make it feel like the best possible spot to observe the workings of the world, from ashes to ashes.

Though it's dominated by two people walking and talking, after a point it's as difficult to parse what's real and what's constructed in Certified Copy as it is in the home stretch of "Inception" (although "Before Sunset" and Roberto Rossellini's "Journey To Italy" provide closer models).

Any satirical points about contemporary gender roles get lost in a mad rush through the matriarchy's beautifully realized, Death Star-like gray fortress. It's a fun rush, though, and an intense one, too.

It's too little premise stretched over too much movie, and while the cast gives it their all, Nolfi's characterless direction only makes the movie feel that much slighter.

Though the film never balances the grown-up stuff with the gross-out gags, it suggests the Farrellys might be able to do mature after all.

Star Martin Lawrence, now the sole remaining element from the original "Big Momma's House" 11 years ago, looks pretty tired both in and out of makeup here.

Mixing social commentary and black humor with copious amounts of blood and cracking bones, We Are What We Are offers a cannibal's-eye view of Mexico City's seamier side.

Aniston and Sandler, however, play characters too awful to deserve anyone better than each other. But what did we do to deserve them?

Kudos to The Rite for thinking outside the usual goat/pentagram/black-candles box for its satanic imagery, but is a mule really the best it could manage?

Though Levy's film feels shapeless at times, what it loses in structure, it gains in handheld intimacy, letting viewers get to know the mercurial but fundamentally sweet Pleskun.

No Strings Attached isn't a BAD piece of formulaic product.

It's a strange, shapeless, rarely satisfying, but generally amiable movie in which everyone appears to be faking it as they go along, and almost-almost-getting away with it.

When she's (Paltrow) singing, she can pass for someone who's been listening to Tammy Wynette since the cradle; when the music stops, she looks like a tourist.

It's all so uneasily compelling and quietly moving, it might be too much to ask her to sustain it through the conclusion.

The Coens direct True Grit with a light touch, but like Portis' stark, funny novel, their adventure tale shaves off none of the rough edges.

Rabbit Hole is a tremendously sad movie, but it's also the furthest thing from a miserablist wallow.

The situations sometimes feel contrived, but the characters never do, particularly because Galifianakis remains simultaneously charming and unrelentingly irritating.

Faster starts to lay on a heavy-handed message about the importance of forgiveness. That isn't what anyone showed up to see.

The best thing about Taymor's Tempest is also the worst: It's not stunning but it is sturdy, a handsome-enough showcase of a film that never really comes to life. It plays like a challenge politely declined.

A florid, often lurid, completely enthralling film held in place by a disarming Portman, who rarely leaves the frame.

Make no mistake. In spite of its worthy subject matter and good intentions, Made In Dagenham remains mediocre to the core.

Offers a concise summary of Burroughs' life and works. Maybe too concise. At a mere 88 minutes, it feels a bit glancing. But as an introduction or refresher course, it gets the job done.

There's no right way to do an adaptation, particularly a difficult-to-adapt work like this, but there are plenty of wrong ways, and Perry's film offers a casebook of things-not-to-do.

When it does work, it's very funny, and worth a look both as an example of Allen's still-developing talent and—thanks to The Lovin' Spoonful—as the source of one of the greatest rock 'n' roll title songs ever to come out of a decade filled with excellent rock 'n' roll title songs.

Williams delivers a solid, twinkle-free (though closed-off) performance, but the film as a whole can't decide what it wants to be.

There's not a weak performance in Secrets And Lies, a fact made more notable by the seeming ease with which the cast performs as an ensemble.

In form, Phase IV isn’t that different from monster movies of old, though the ants never grow to monstrous size. In execution, it’s much more striking, offering a study in contrasts between ants and humans, and one that doesn’t always reflect favorably on the humans.

Too much of Leatherheads feels like studied motions, and its charms never plaster over a story that takes forever to get going, and doesn't go too far once it does.

The film ultimately feels like a well-trod journey to a familiar destination with not enough wonder along the way.

Sadly, that thin premise snaps after a while, and when Wife takes a serious turn, it becomes apparent how little the director has to say.

Mol nails it, in a performance that should earn her a comeback on a Heath Ledger-like scale.

Pity any poor kid stuck in a house like that. Pity, too, anyone who has to stop by for a visit.

Martin attempts to present the whole oversized Chess story, but instead winds up reducing the lives and art that give it shape.

The trick to staging Wilde is to hint at the gravity beneath the witticisms. A Good Woman barely even gets the witticisms out, though it does contain Wilde's line about people being either tedious or charming.

The honesty behind Garcia's queasiest moments gives the film its pull.

It's... directed by Andy Tennant ("It Takes Two") with all the flair of an episode of "7th Heaven", making it that much more worth avoiding.

Eason's twist of fate and too-sudden ending seems as rooted in Washington Heights as the music that pours from the neighborhood's car windows, the smoke that billows from its late-night eateries, and the stoic resignation inscribed on its inhabitants' faces.

An actress of magnetizing screen presence whose inability to land choice roles can only be attributed to her post-TRL age, Gershon easily identifies with her character, giving her performance an edge that this lazy, punked-up melodrama otherwise lacks.

In this long, slow fall from grace, unceremonious nudity and half-hearted sex begin to look like a mockery of a paradise lost.

Written and directed by Daniel Taplitz, Breakin' has a hard time building up steam and an even harder time distinguishing itself from any number of UPN sitcoms.

The amiable but thin comedy Robots does have a little more going on, but not quite enough to make a difference, although it looks good enough to distract viewers from that fact for a while.

Mackenzie's film could almost use one or two lurid touches in place of its stately distance. Then again, a more stylized approach might have allowed less room for Richardson, whose unsparing performance makes other elements almost irrelevant.

There's real triumph to Obree's story, and real adversity, too, but the film contents itself with the pretend versions of both.

Hot Rod keeps a sweet tone that's filled with affection for its characters, and enough laughs to become this summer's most mildly recommendable comedy.

It fails on every conceivable level.

It's a tender, but sometimes untended, portrait of the artist as a young man-and occasionally as a young asshole-that's handsome, dutiful, and finally, a little dull.

Director Graham Baker has little gift for atmosphere, and apart from one inspired sequence, I suspect I'll forget every aspect of this movie in a couple of days.

Yet another comedy that suggests someone should take Martin aside and remind him that he can do better.

Mostly, it's just a pleasure to watch Keaton and Nicholson learning new steps in an old dance, stumbling to grab at happiness before it's too late.

The film combines dour heroes with a drab look, and the string of "Don't try this at home"-style stunts should underwhelm even viewers too young for James Bond or XXX.

Like Ang Lee's "Hulk," it's a fusion of arthouse and multiplex instincts, and though it seems unlikely to satisfy anyone, it's just as unlikely that anyone who sees it will forget it soon.

Never becomes more than a just-acceptable kiddie time-filler.

Fire is designed to provoke questions and spark debate. Mission accomplished, but, despite a heartfelt tone that pervades its every moment, it doesn't do much else.

Roberts' script and direction show sparks of wit, but the plot comes lifted from countless heist films.

If only any of it were funny.

The liberal Ford and the conservative Wayne had nothing in common politically, but artistically, they're perfectly in sync.

Viewers not attuned to his (Aronofsky's) heartfelt, bombastic Richard Wagner-by-way-of-"2001: A Space Odyssey" lyricism might be better off looking elsewhere. But they'll never see anything else quite like it.

The lovable characters remain, but they never do much of interest in a sequel that's safely above average but superfluous.

It's a unique, unforgettable, enlightening experience.

As an action movie, Red Dawn is a repetitive headache, and anyone with Blue State sympathies will be appalled at its manipulations and exaggerations. But there's smart subtext beneath the big dumb explosions.

Machine makes its look-to-the-future-not-the-past message as clear as a Grammy acceptance speech, but as an exploration of regret and the elusive quality of time, it falls well short of "Memento," another film starring a sad-eyed Pearce.

The film's capes and cowls suggest one genre, but it's a metropolis-sized tragedy at heart.