Keith Phipps

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.

While Seven Psychopaths sometimes hits the philosophical shallows, its pleasures still run deep.

Unfortunately, Russell paces the film as if trying to demonstrate what eternity feels like. When the plot begs to move forward, the film keeps lingering over friendly fawns and long walks through the forest.

Dinosaur 13 is haunted by the nagging sense that only one side of the story is getting told.

About Piven: When did it go wrong? When did the caustic character actor guaranteed to liven up even the dullest movie turn into a walking black hole of smarm from which no joy can escape?

This sort of film lives or dies by its promise of bullet-dodging, stylishly clad women throwing themselves into impossible feats of daring, and when the time comes for action, Yuen displays a rare gift.

For a while, it's a dark, insubstantial treat.

As a morality play, it's a one-sided contest, because the question of whether power corrupts is never a question at all. As a queasily thrilling tour of a dirty little corner of the world, however, Trapero's film offers a memorable ride.

It's unashamedly escapist, but a turn for the serious as The Vow nears the finish line only underscores its essential silliness and what a poor job the film has done making it seem like its characters need each other for reasons beyond looking good together.

Once the film finds its true hero, it becomes exactly as good as the idea of a del Toro adaptation promised: the defining 21st century cinematic Frankenstein.

Good Luck feels raggedly put together at times, however precise Verbinski’s filmmaking might be within each scene, but as the story unfolds and the full scope of the threat emerges, a winning sincerity overtakes the film.

As an acting showcase that builds to some unexpectedly moving moments, Elegy has much to recommend it. Had Coixet found better ways to connect those moments, she might have REALLY had something to rival what Roth does on the page.

It’s a brisk, bright, winning effort, even though it already looks sadly out of touch with the times.

Swimming Pool returns Ozon to the psychological complexities of "Under The Sand" and his early mini-feature "See The Sea," and he again proves himself a master of building shocking moments from a series of seemingly insignificant gestures and throwaway lines.

An oddly effective mixture of technical prowess, well-executed cliché, and unexpected political poignancy.

Much of The Edge's success can be credited to Baldwin and Hopkins, who know just how far to push a performance without crossing too far into ham territory.

Finely crafted, tense, scary thriller from start to finish.

Vaughn opts for comic-book bigness—big fights, big laugh lines, big explosions—but without a Spider-Man or Batman at the front of the action, Kick-Ass’s heroes and villains look smaller-than-life in a larger-than-life world.

Fun And Fancy Free is a mixed bag with more than enough interesting material to make it worth seeing, even if it falls short of Disney's shameless self-praise.

The Amazing Spider-Man, helmed by "(500) Days Of Summer" director Marc Webb, doesn't put its own stamp on the material, which feels warmed-over in ways that don't help.

Goldstein and Poots play off each other well, creating the sense of a years-deep connection that’s suddenly threatened by what’s changed between them, but also by what’s remained the same. They’re convincing as two people who don’t know what to do. Unfortunately, they’re stuck in a movie that also doesn’t really know what to do.

Played with black humor that never gets in the way of the horror, Natali’s film cleverly exploits Dren’s uncanny semi-humanity.

By the film's halfway point, the subplots have all started to head in the most obvious directions imaginable, which is too bad, since they all have real potential. Ferrera's story of spending the summer as an out-of-place ethnic element in the milk-white suburbs stays interesting the longest, in large part thanks to her performance.

Whenever it features feet flying through the air, Brick Mansions is a pleasure. Asked to do anything else, it’s one stumble after another.

Yes, it's fundamentally business as usual, but it's the best kind of business as usual, and it finds everyone working in top form. Abrams imports and enlarges "Alias'" smooth, stylish, yet remarkably visceral approach to action, and the actors pack a satisfying amount of drama into the moments between action scenes.

The characters are funny and the cast's characterizations right on, but the movie repeatedly lets them down.

Though the mystery has been spoiled somewhat by an over-revealed twist ending, Soylent Green still succeeds thanks to director Richard Fleischer's sure command of one of the grimmest and most sadly plausible dystopias put to film.

Panayotopoulou's background in photography shows in the way she lets her chiaroscuro lighting mirror her characters' emotions. It also shows in the still-life quality that Hard Goodbyes never quite gets beyond.

Ramona And Beezus has the undeniably nice, pleasantly uninspired feel of film designed to kill time with the kids on a rainy weekend.

Though essentially a straight-faced horror film, You’re Next also taps into a rich vein of black comedy.

Tying The Knot's central point remains insistently stated. It would be hard for anyone to watch it and still think of the demand for same-sex marriage as a mere passing fancy.

As the film goes along, themes and even lines of dialogue resurface, and Jarmusch's comic sensibilities grow more assured.

August's Les Misérables is the sort of film for which such faint-praise terms as "handsome" and "not bad" were invented. It's all of the above, and at times a bit better, but ultimately an experience akin to flipping through Cliffs Notes and a book of French paintings at the same time.

Maybe the broad gestures, colorful costumes, and exaggerated acting worked in the theater. As a movie, it's actively, fascinatingly terrible, with a vision of Christ more likely to instill in viewers a fear of traveling bands of loony street performers than a desire to embrace the Holy Spirit.

The film is much more intriguing in its dread-inducing opening half, when Moll's assured direction keeps suggesting that something horrible will be happening soon, then, when it does, that something even more horrifying may follow.

It's clever enough, but it's mostly a contrivance to hide the fact that there's nothing interesting about the story itself.

It’s not that great a movie, with a plodding pace that makes teenage wildlife look kind of dull, even as it wraps it in attractive packaging.

The plot is only semi-comprehensible, but the nearly non-stop musical numbers-brilliant conflations of glam-rock and showtunes-and transgressive sexual energy keep things moving.

Too bad the story is all over the place. One second, it focuses on a love triangle between students; the next, it's about Washington's efforts to unionize the local farmers.

It looks handsome but seems infected by the idea of playing different roles; a comedy in one scene, it adopts a mood of a high seriousness the next and clutters the stage with minor characters that contribute little. In the end, this inability to make up its mind does the film in.

In the end, it's all a bit too self-consciously mysterious and Lawrence leans a bit too much on the atmosphere to do the work for him as he builds to a frustrating ending. But his vision of a place haunted by a restlessness it can't define proves unsettlingly infectious.

There are moments when Velvet Goldmine threatens to collapse under the weight of writer/director Todd Haynes' (Poison, Safe) ambition. But, sometimes amazingly, it doesn't, becoming in the process one of the year's freshest, most exciting films.

However misguided, it’s clearly one from the heart, a movie that should never have happened, and one that’s hard to believe actually exists. Roar is one of a kind. With any luck, it always will be.

As with her debut feature, "Blue Car," Moncrieff treats sensational material with a disarming matter-of-factness that ultimately makes a deeper impression.

How could someone so frail and terrified at the mere thought of acting in front of the camera become the biggest movie star in the world? And how could someone so unknowable become so familiar? Then the film makes the mistake of trying to answer these questions.

Salt's mechanical command of action is what makes it one of the most entertaining films of a summer thin on its once-abundant variety of cheap thrills.

It's a winning comedy, though some of Pecker's jokes inspire silence and some scenes are awkwardly staged.

When the credits roll and the mood breaks, Japanese Story finally reveals itself as more dewy-eyed than deep, but as long as the mood holds, it holds fast.

Through it all, Muccino piles on one shrill confrontation after another. At times, he seems headed for the melodramatic turf owned and operated by Pedro Almodóvar, but where the young Almodóvar would have deployed a prankish wit and the older Almodóvar scraped toward the humanity beneath.

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

It accumulates weight as it goes along, ultimately becoming as thoughtful and emotionally involving as it is beautiful to behold.

An old-house thriller retrofitted for the 21st century without any touch of unneeded flash, Panic Room is scary enough to do for downtown living what Jaws did for beaches.

Novelist-turned-writer/director Peter Hedges follows up his "Pieces Of April" debut with a comedy that's at once overstuffed and surprisingly subtle.

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

Ali becomes less the story of a boxer than the story of one man hanging onto his soul. With so many wrong ways to dramatize that process, Mann's approach seems all the more right.

Though he (Jordan) directs with admirable skill, his usual touches don't drive the film--which occasionally threatens to lose its shape.

Rourke's hammy, eyeliner-enhanced acting alone almost makes Alex Rider worth a look.

Teeters on the brink of New Age ludicrousness, but it never goes over: Like Kieslowski and others, Shyamalan knows that what makes for lousy metaphysics can make for powerful metaphor, and in the end he creates a deeply, surprisingly affecting film out of a little bit of smoke and brimstone.

Pokily paced for a 78-minute movie, The Jungle Book counts on winning characters and memorable songs to carry it along. That turns out to be a safe bet.

Part of what makes The Parallax View so unnerving is that it also offers no explanation.

From the moment Katja returns to find her life shattered, Akin seldom lets the tension subside, and Kruger’s performance matches the intensity at every step.

When it unexpectedly shifts back into its initial thriller mode, Walk On Water loses in human drama what it gains in tidiness, revealing itself as a film that carries more weight in its light scenes than its heavy moments can sustain.

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.

The film's generous spirit, disarming mixture of beauty and brutality, and gentle, insistent sweep make it easy to surrender to it anyway.

Never quite finds the rhythm of a great film, and it scores no points for subtlety by including a subplot about a horse breaking free of its master, but Shahriar displays a real gift for conveying Taghani's plight in all its grimness.

Adhering to Kerr’s real-life story allows Safdie to skirt clichés, but it’s really only Johnson’s memorable characterization that suggests Kerr’s story had to be told.

Ondine looks heavy and it ends up feeling a little slight, but between those two extremes there's a beguiling siren song of a movie about the way the unexpected has a way of intruding on even the most fatalistic lives.

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.

While Michôd never satisfactorily develops the central relationship, The Rover is still a showcase for two strong performances.

It's a daring move, focusing on the isolated splendor and interior dramas, and letting the politics remain at most a distant rumble; Coppola deserves credit for offering a different, and probably truer, perspective on life as a royal. But the perspective rarely lends itself to compelling filmmaking.

As an imaginative visual experience, there's nothing like it. Today, at least.

Sure, it quickly turns into a one-note exercise in laughing at the yokels, but at least it has a vision.

Rendering in high drama the story of Moses one moment and then underscoring that drama with songs filled with banal "you-can-make-it-if-you-really-try" cliches moves from the sublime to the ridiculous so quickly, you could get the bends.

There's not a relationship in He Got Game that feels right, especially the one between Washington and Allen, and if that doesn't work, neither does the film.

Garcia shoots Mother And Child with minimal flare, an approach that keeps the focus squarely on the cast, whose moving work helps pave over some of the narrative’s lumpier patches.

When the twists arrive, they feel like much of the film: creepy and cliché-free, but still terribly wrong.

Carion and his gifted leads never take the easy way out. Instead, they let the characters get acquainted against the slow change of the seasons, taking their relationship along unexpected turns.

After a sentimental opening sequence, he (Kang) scarcely lets the film pause to breathe, which dulls its effectiveness.

Wanted is a queasily unapologetic power fantasy about becoming a better person through violence.

Cop Land emerges as a first-rate morality play in the form of an effective, if occasionally unwieldy, crime drama.

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

It might be a well-worn tale of demons and satanic beasties at its core, but Undertone’s ingenious form gives it an unnerving intimacy that begins as a dreadful whisper then slowly turns up the volume until it threatens to drown out the rest of the world.

It's well-acted and strikingly shot, and its depiction of contemporary Spanish squalor is hard to forget, but it never quite reconciles its high-drama situations with its low-key approach. It whispers when it really wants to shout.

For much of The Patience Stone, Farahani is the movie, and as she shifts from fear to despair to anger to emotions she’d never previously considered, her magnetic presence goes a long way toward putting a human face on the film, more successfully than the material around her.

Its gloomy speculations on the ephemeral nature of art are paradoxically not easily forgotten, and Godard's daring again pays off, or at least comes close enough to get credit for trying.

Fortunately, no one seems to have clued Bardem in on the game plan, and the fierceness and complexity he brings to his role nearly saves Mondays In The Sun.

Achieves a dullness that defies its pedigree and its story's potential.

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.

In both halves, Soderbergh emphasizes observation over ideology with an eye toward the mundane details of life on the front lines of a revolution.

It’s possible that something’s getting lost in translation, but Demme’s film only occasionally makes it seem like it’s worth the effort for the rest of the world to catch up.

Years from now, Team America will better convey the political character of 2004 than a stack of Time magazines. Staying funny helps even more.

It puts human faces on the victims of mass destruction, faces that might easily have been yours or mine, staring down the maw of something we don't understand.

The film lays on its politics-as-chess-game metaphor a little thick, however, and its refusal to leave the corridors of power to see the impact of its developments on the country at large makes it feel stuffy after a while.

As disappointing-but-worthwhile films go, you could do a lot worse.

Though he never quite rescues the film, Bardem continually suggests the tensions bubbling under the surface that Dancer itself never penetrates.

It's the journey that matters, however, and sometimes the film doesn't seem to know where it's going.

For long stretches, Or is a dialogue-heavy kitchen-sink drama, but its naturalistic style and unselfconscious performances give it an intensity that only builds as it progresses.

In spite of its cast and seemingly can't-miss premise, Wedding Crashers is at its best a succession of mild chuckles.

Essentially, the film stays at the party too long. But for a good stretch, its combination of twirling excitement and dry absurdity captures the spirit of characters too intoxicated to realize they're dancing over a chasm.

As historical speculation, it's clever enough. As a film, it glows with flop-sweat.

Director Kevin Connor, coming off a string of British horror films and Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations, never turns Motel Hell into an all-out comedy, but humor is always part of the mix.

Forbidden Zone never really jells as a movie. But as a tuneful spectacle of weirdness, it doesn't really have an equivalent, and it's easy to see the influence of its free use of pop-culture relics in everything from Tim Burton's films to The Powerpuff Girls.

In just about every way, Insurrection seems as if everyone involved is still stuck in the weekly grind of turning out the series, but the results don't disappoint too terribly.

It's tacky and beautiful, sometimes both at the same time. Occasionally flatfooted even as it sparkles, the film suffers when Hogan lets the scenery do the directing for him, but he's chosen a cast capable of shouldering the film's weight.

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.

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.

Donner moves the film at an unhurried pace. The action scenes, for which Broderick and Hauer seem to have done quite a few of their own stunts, are fun, if not especially ambitious, and spaced out between long stretches of Mouse and Etienne traveling the countryside. But, oh, what countryside!

Developed by Mitchell and the actors, the characters don't always seem consistent from moment to moment, but a sharp sense of humor and comfortable performances by a committed and--it must be said--remarkably limber cast help smooth over the rough edges.

Teghil is a winning lead.

It's a film whose virtues--particularly its rare, intelligent portrayal of the relationship between two generations of women--outweigh its faults.

Trashy enough to envelop its sex scenes in aerobicized glamour (a Lyne trademark), so the fact that it takes itself so seriously almost counts as a daring move.

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.

Occasionally resembling an episode of Seinfeld taken to the big screen, waydowntown shares that show's ability to mine mundane details for humor, and its Tomorrowland-gone-awry setting provides plenty of raw material.

There's something appealing about an unapologetic love story set in an office that's only a few clicks off from looking like a fetish dungeon, and Spader and Gyllenhaal make sure that the romance, kinks and all, carries the day.

In the end, Chaos is as compelling as it is confounding, and it's compelling in large part because of the confusion it stirs.

The story of a much-admired graffiti artist who is tempted by the possibility of mainstream success, Wild Style is extremely clumsy as a drama, with awkward dialogue and even more awkward acting. However, as a showcase for many aspects of the incredible outpouring of creativity that took place in New York during the late '70s and early '80s, it can't be beat.

When the halves of the film collide in the courtroom climax, it looks like a misbegotten pilot for Law & Order: Usury Victims Unit.

There’s a sense that the band has left its mark on Sheffield as surely as the city left its mark on the band. This concert might be Pulp’s last hometown appearance, but it hardly seems like goodbye.

Massoud plays Saladin magnetically, and his arrival only illustrates how many opportunities Kingdom misses. Another, better movie would have made him the focus.

Not every moment works, particularly in the draggy middle section, but the spirit of the thing still carries it along.

It's a stylish, cleverly plotted, perpetually unpredictable film with another electric (albeit brief) performance from Penn. So why is it so unaffecting?

On its own terms, Dear Frankie works much better than it really has any right to. Auerbach tells a small, contrived story, but gives it the weight of life.

The film retains much of what worked about the first film, and it brings a similarly smart, patient, visually striking approach to the gags.

If only the emotions of the performances, the themes of the story, and Wright's cinematic virtuosity synced up more often. A lopsided abridgement that speeds through the plot doesn't help.

Video veteran Sanaa Hamri directs with smooth competence, and the leads all go pleasantly through their paces, but there are no surprises.

Aided by strong performances from Bell and Fabian, Stamm deftly plays with the boundary of fact and fiction, though his game might have worked better with a little more grounding in verisimilitude.

A deft, three-dimensional performance from Dern, playing an almost entirely unlikable character, aids incalculably in exposing what happens when political factions lose touch with the realities of the issues for which they claim to provide answers.

The trouble with the film is that it often feels too respectable for its own good, preserving the facts of yesterday's rebellion while leaving it firmly in the past. Happily, Ginsberg's words still cut recklessly through the years.

In McKay, Ferrell has found an unusually simpatico collaborator for the type of humor that's made him a comedy force: outsized, unexpectedly sweet, and unrelenting.

Eastwood creates a tone that's at once stately and unsettling, allowing a lot of breathing room for Jolie's sad, unyielding performance. She anchors a film that needs an anchor the further it goes along.

While Luna and Tonatiuh play characters transported by movies, the film in which they appear never quite summons the same power.

Verbinski knows when to break out the stunning action sequences and when to let his characters dominate the film, and he handles both modes expertly.

That love triangle is Coastlines' center. Trouble is, it plays more like canned heat than blazing inferno.

A well-chosen cast helps make the wild notions convincing, and director Chris Columbus presents it all in an attractive, thoroughly watchable package. But try imagining a universe in which the Harry Potter series existed only in film form.

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.

Trouble is, the gags just keep finding new ways to make McBride's strip-mall sensei seem pathetic, and the few scattered laughs never justify the cruelty.

Sluggish, laugh-free comedy (or is it an ineffectual drama?).

Romero doesn’t have the best handle on the film as a whole, but he still manages some perfect moments that bring the era’s potential horrors into the heart of America, like a man losing his mind, then his life, against the misty backdrop of a small-town bridge at dawn. The suggestion is inescapable: one small push, and this could be your life.

The Dreamers is a universal story, one that captures the thrill of discovering culture, sex, and politics, and the painful twinge of learning that those worlds aren't enough.

It’s not badly executed, but there’s nothing scary or clever enough to set it apart from similar films beyond the Faces of Death connection, a throwback meta cloak wrapped around a merely good-enough modern horror movie.

This adaptation of Eric Bogosian's 1994 play-- which revolves around several post-high-school drifters hanging around a convenience store while awaiting the return of their rock-star classmate -- doesn't hold up to Linklater's previous work, and the problem is Bogosian's script.

This feels like a second-shelf Coen comedy, particularly when compared to their no-less-shaggy "The Big Lebowski."

Radford’s pacing, which alternates between “stately” and “deathly,” keeps robbing the film of any momentum, and for every charming moment between the two leads, the film offers annoying bits of overstatement.

Mostly, it's content to remain a compelling, visually striking political mystery with some big ideas woven into it--subversive notions about integrity, liberty, and political change.

Anyone looking for handsomely presented, kid-friendly thrills need look no further.

Moss offers few startling revelations, but gently gets at the truth of his subjects' lives by playing the past against the present.

Ultimately, it's an absence of personality that does the film in. The creatures remain beautifully designed and Narnia still looks like a colorful, inviting place, but it feels as lifeless as the fantastical anyworlds found on glittery unicorn posters.

Perfectly in keeping with a series that began by simply putting a monster on a spaceship, then gave itself the creative freedom to explore what that monster and that spaceship really meant. [Quadrilogy]

The most exciting thing about Jackie Brown is the director's seamless transition to a less flashy, revealing style; it's well-suited to the more character-oriented focus of the film... an assured, accomplished, and very good film.

Though it's tough to find much fault with a film so sweet, Piglet's Big Movie never lives up to its title.

There really ought to be a lot more movies like Hit & Run, but only if they're just a little bit better.

Edwards’ film doesn’t care much about metaphorical resonance, and cares even less about its human characters, many of which get forgotten for long stretches of the film. But Godzilla has a way with a disaster setpiece, and it cares a lot about providing awesome monster-on-monster action on a mammoth scale.

Why do Ewing and Grady feel the need to tip their hand by underscoring it all with creepy ambient music or by using Air America host Mike Papantonio as a Greek Chorus expressing the voice of reason?

Lord Of War charges bravely and relentlessly into volatile territory, and it's hard to leave unscarred by the experience.

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.

The pleasure here, as before, comes from watching skilled professionals team up for a job well done.

In the end, the camper-lot prostitution serves as trapping for a weirdly touching coming-of-age film that leaves its heroine sadder but wiser.

Big Eyes contains comedy and tragedy, too, but they pair much less agreeably here, in part because each of the film’s two protagonists belongs much more to one world than the other.

Huo never quite finds the filmic vocabulary to tilt the film toward greatness-and the mawkish synth score does little to help-but Postmen In The Mountains ultimately succeeds.

Hush! takes an excessive, saga-like running time to reach its conclusion, but Hashiguchi frequently makes the trudge worthwhile, particularly when he finds the energy to match his three leads' charming performances.

While the Veronica Mars film feels a bit small and closed-off by big-screen standards, it will no doubt be big and welcoming enough to those who love the series.

It’s nice to see a film unafraid to be quiet and sensitive, but one good gust of coastal breeze would blow this one away.

As a portrait of a man at the top of his profession starting over, it's involving throughout, and funny, too. Its range proves too narrow to support the questions it raises, but it's memorable for the point it repeats.

Without spoiling Normal’s central twist, suffice it to say that it leads to a lot of gunplay that allows Wheatley to off one character after another in violent, sometimes explosive fashion. It’s more wearying than shocking, but not fatally so thanks to a brisk pace, a willingness to shift gears with little warning, and, again, Odenkirk’s humane performance.

Without Radcliffe at the center looking scared out of his wits, The Woman In Black would seem even slighter than it already does.

If director Brian Dannelly were interested in taking his film into the realm of camp, the gag might have worked, but as is, it simply gives the impression that he doesn't quite know what he's talking about.

Both Kennedy and Lewis turn in colorful performances, but it’s Eastwood and Bridges’ film, and their ill-defined, tender friendship makes the movie.

Despite the sharp dialogue...and carefully managed dramatic rhythms, Match still can’t help but seem a bit cramped, particularly once the plot starts to take some predictable turns and the shouting starts. It’s a fine line that divides the intimate from the claustrophobic.

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.

Content to let his work speak for itself, Giger has little to add to the conversation, and while it’s intriguing to see him working in—or sometimes just ambling through—a house filled with his work and sources of inspiration, Sallin too often lets these scenes crowd out the story she’s trying to tell.

Though typically engaging, Ararat occasionally suffers from what's previously been a virtue in Egoyan's filmmaking. His distancing techniques, rather than sharpening his ability to deal with a subject that lends itself to high emotion -- sometimes just seem distancing.

When the suspense setpieces do come, many of them are staged with considerably less imagination—with cheap jolts underscored by an intrusive score—than would be expected from director Wes Craven.

Ramis is at his best when dealing with men facing a soul-defining crisis, and he finds plenty to work with in Russo and Benton's script, which offers Russo's trademark blend of colorful characters and slow-building dilemmas. The Ice Harvest finds them all operating in top form in as dark a territory as they've ever explored.

Mostly The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel stays focused on the cutesy, low-stakes personal journeys of its English characters, characters it would be hard to care about if they weren't brought to life by actors who give the film substance and gravity it doesn't otherwise know how to earn.

Sometimes actors get parts so rich that they almost can't help but make meals of them. Playing a frosty, high-powered editor in The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep turns the role into a four-course dinner and shows up with her own dessert...But it's hard to care about what's going on whenever she's offscreen.

The final effect is less haunting than was probably intended, but Butterfly Kiss is worth a look.

Hoffman (Soapdish, One Fine Day) leads a first-rate cast in an intelligent, fully realized adaptation of Shakespeare's most popular comedy that's at once highly cinematic and true to its source.

De Niro made the right choice in making this a film of cold, gray Leiters rather than dynamic Bonds. But he never makes us feel the chill.

Beyond giving a human face to Uganda's crises, Kiarostami attempts to capture the actual place, a swirl of contradictions as vibrant and beautiful as it is troubled.

Though star-packed to the point of absurdity--juror Luis Guzmán has little to do but nod his head every once in a while--The Runaway Jury doesn't know what to do with its players.

Even more sad is an embarrassingly shrill performance by Faye Dunaway, and an ending which insults the ability of the audience to watch a movie without having a conclusion spoon-fed to them.

As a horror movie, We Bury the Dead is light on scares (and has a little trouble sustaining momentum in its back half), despite some truly upsetting zombies. But Hilditch’s film works extremely well as a mournful mood piece anchored by Ridley’s thoughtful, melancholy performance as a woman trying to understand the fullness of her loss and the impossibility of recovering the past.

Kids won't mind a bit, but adults accustomed to "Shrek" and Pixar will have no trouble spotting what's missing.

It’s the work of someone who didn’t take the time to realize he had nothing to say, then decided to say something anyway.

As a spectacle, The Polar Express looks remarkable. As a film, however, it's the equivalent of an elaborately wrapped Christmas present containing a nice new pair of socks.

Without challenging viewers’ notions of how gay men behave, the film shamed its homophobic characters while showing a loving family headed by longtime same-sex partners who are embraced by their community—boas, makeup, and all. Albin and Renato were onto something. It was the rest of the world’s job to catch up.

It's hard to shake the sense that there's less here than meets the eye, but what meets the eye burns with a rare intensity.

Newman picks up speed and symbolic baggage as the movie progresses, and much of the film’s brilliance lies in the way Sarafian balances the two elements.

It evens out to an engaging-enough biopic, but if Song Sung Blue had found a way to interpret their bittersweet love story with a Lightning & Thunder-like intensity, it could have been even more.

The film’s fundamental earnestness and Cameron’s gift for astounding visuals and kinetic action scenes usually offset most of the flaws and a nagging sense of déjà vu.

It only takes rat trainers and CGI artists to create swarms of vermin, but it takes a twisted kind of genius to treat them as equals.

While fleeting moments from Pearce and Luis Guzmán (as Caviezel's loyal servant) suggest the film might have been even more fun had they been allowed to loosen up a bit, the finished product still offers little cause for complaint.

Its social conscience and deep concern with what it means to be human remains unspoiled.

Oculus takes a potentially corny premise further than most could, but it keeps stumbling on the possibilities, never quite taking any of them all the way.

A combination of criminal smoothness and overloaded neuroses, Cage pulls off the lead role better than any actor imaginable.

Director Jacques Sarasin lazily relies on a talking-heads/archival-footage approach to tell Traoré's story, doing little to put it in context and assuming a lot more knowledge of Malian history than most viewers possess.

There’s a strain of gross-out humor—most bodily fluids make cameos—that doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the movie. But more bothersome is a tendency The To Do List shares with its heroine: mistaking checking items off a list for progress.

Brown probably captures enough to satisfy hardcore enthusiasts, but everyone else might end up wondering why he ignored the glory for the dust.

As generous as the film is to its characters, it also keeps finding ways to criticize their myopia.

Freeway is full of nice touches—such as making the villain a psychologist— that play off the expectations of a familiar story. While also working as a conventional thriller, its many twists on the fairy tale make it work on an almost subliminal level.

A Trojan horse of a teen comedy that balanced lowbrow gags with subtle humor, genuine insight—Crowe spent a year undercover as a high-school student—and pathos.

Star Maps rather transparently equates prostitution with show business; both exploit the impoverished and do no favors to minorities. It's a valid equation, but once the point is made, Star Maps has no place to go.

Occasionally, the film invites a more dynamic touch than the careful slowness Cholodenko carries over from "High Art." But that same care gives the movie a seductive quality that would have been lost in a more hurried approach.

A low-key charmer that balances half a dozen winning performances, Welcome To Collinwood's momentum occasionally stalls, and it doesn't always produce laughs.

Contains enough exciting surf scenes that it could almost get by on visceral thrills alone.

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

Like its immediate predecessor, Muppets Most Wanted has one tremendous advantage, even when it missteps: Muppets.

It's okay to be manipulated, so long as you don't feel the strings being pulled. Here the tug is constant, and constantly distracting.

The Hulk himself looks more steroidal than superheroic, as if the expressive beast from the first film had been replaced by a WWE star.

I’m still deeply fond of De Laurentiis’ King Kong now, no doubt in part because we’ll never see its likes again. Whatever the failings of its ape effects, they have a tangible quality that even Jackson’s great CGI work couldn’t fake.

For all its simple politics, clanging dialogue, and underwritten roles—only Damon’s natural, and deepening, ability to suggest unspoken disappointment gives his character dimension—Elysium works, though never as well as it should.

For his first feature, Canadian director Vincenzo Natali has, like the setting of his film, created a complex piece of work around an essentially simple foundation.

The film never entirely figures out what it wants to do with the myth of the superspy, but at least it has fun along the way.

It's refreshingly unformulaic, but a rambling mess. It's also tremendously funny.

The film is clearly an act of boosterism, and it makes a pretty good case for the Glastonbury cause.

On one hand, it's an ultraviolent revenge fantasy, and on the other hand, it's a masterpiece of over-the-top unintentional hilarity—with a clenched-toothed performance by Baker serving as its centerpiece. It's in the latter capacity that Walking Tall can be highly recommended as an unconscionably good time.

It's a smart, exciting, involving film that's true to its source, which is all it really needs to be.

Already as dark as London soot, the comedy hardly needed work to bring it in line with the Coen brothers' sensibility, but the remake moves to a beat of its own, one unexpectedly in sync with the gospel music dominating its soundtrack.

Martin touches on any number of post-Vietnam ills (urban decay, drug addiction, crises in faith) without overstatement, allowing for a deeply considered exploration of horror's ability to comment on society, a sort of belated answer to Peter Bogdanovich's Targets. At the same time, Romero still forces Martin to work as strictly a horror film, albeit an eccentric one in which the violence has an uncomfortable plausibility, starkly contrasting Amplas' romanticized black-and-white vampiric fantasy life.

In spite of some affecting moments, the film never quite works. It's too theatrical, perhaps unavoidably.

However much the film may mirror the truth, dramatically it feels like a cheat. It omits the human spark that would make it work as a film, rather than a collection of dramatized issues.

While Good Ol’ Freda will surely fascinate hardcore Beatles fans, there simply isn’t a feature-length story here.

It never adds up to much. There's a fair amount of fine acting (with that cast, how could there not be?), but it's in the service of a story that bubbles without ever boiling.

Dredd, a second attempt at making Judge Dredd a movie star, overcorrects, veering in the opposite direction with a dark - literally and otherwise - nearly humorless bit of ultraviolence distinguished largely by a fondness for spurting CGI blood.

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.

Stupidity has worked for the Wayans brothers in the past, but White Chicks will likely test the patience of even their most loyal fans.

Crawl’s virtues, however, remain formidable: It’s fast, efficient, crisply directed, and delivers on the promised alligator thrills. In another year, that might be worth a polite nod. This year, however, those B-movie values feel especially refreshing, and illuminating too.

Though it’s still a disappointment in relation to its two predecessors, it has much to recommend it. It begins and ends brilliantly.

The film works by putting the accelerator to the floor and never looking in the rear-view mirror.

A funny, tightly plotted, well-conceived comedy that transcends both Crystal's '90s curse and its horrible title.

Hobbs & Shaw proves they work well together, stretching out the sparky dynamic of their previous appearances together to feature length.

With much more success than last summer's formula-bound "Atlantis," Treasure Planet finds the common ground between classic Disney animation and newfangled action-adventure films.

Midnight Express is at war with itself. Strong when it focuses on the psychological toll of prison, it falls apart when it turns the focus elsewhere, and its depictions of all Turks as swarthy, corrupt, and sadistic is pretty inexcusable.

Nobody feels anything they're not explicitly told to feel. Not even the audience.

But while Only The Strong Survive is essential viewing for soul fans, as a documentary it never makes the needed connections among the artists, their music, and the lives they lead.

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

The result: some intriguing moments, even more intriguing performances, and a film that doesn't quite work.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie is too much Between Two Ferns to fit into an episode but not enough movie for a sit-down-in-the-theater experience. Still, it’s companionable in the lowered-stakes world of Netflix films where pleasantness and a handful of highlights seem to matter as much as excellence.

By the time of The Searchers, Wayne had toughened to match Ford's darker vision. Redemption is still out there, but it has to be fought for, and sometimes winning it doesn't make anyone happier.

Some good Bob Dylan songs are called in to underline the big moments, but end up eclipsing them instead. There's more drama and insight in a snippet of "One More Cup Of Coffee" than the entirety of Jack & Rose.

While director Joe Mantello (who also helmed the stage production) often uses the opened-up space of the movie well, he doesn't always avoid some of the common pitfalls that come with adapting plays.

While more grim than most Disney films, it's not bleakness that gets in the way of The Black Cauldron succeeding; unmemorable protagonists, annoying sidekicks, an awkwardly episodic plot, and animation that ranges in appearance from impressive to cheap to unfinished take care of that.

Andrew Davis ("The Fugitive," "Steal Big Steal Little") has made a technically competent thriller that's not only thrill-less, but dull.

Hoffman and Sarandon work well together, and Gyllenhaal, who's carved out a niche for himself as the new face of internalized conflict, fits nicely into a role Hoffman would have made a meal of 30 years ago.

Behind the camera, Lee shows a steady hand and saves his best tricks for the big finale, which generates a lot of excitement out of the collision of disco music and some truly impressive skating.

It’s fun, but it’s ultimately more of the same in brand-new packaging.

Part of what made "Koyaanisqatsi" such a revelation was its purely cinematic dependence on unconstructed imagery. Here, he adds a parade of religious, corporate, and political icons, and what's already preachy turns heavy-handed.

The first time around, Wall Street felt like a warning about the perils of excess just as excess started to exact its toll. This one's little more than a reminder that we all got, and remain, screwed. Noted.

Director Chris Terrio adapts Amy Fox's play with flashes of wit, moments of insight, and some fine performances. But Heights' characters move along such preordained paths and perform such familiar movie actions that they might as well sport antennae.

The action, while busy, never produces much excitement, particularly since Thanit never gives the audience any reason to care about the characters, beyond their underdog status.

Night Of The Comet borrows freely from everything from The Omega Man to Romero’s zombie films to Repo Man, but it never borrows so heavily as to feel like a rip-off of anything.

Titans forces all aspects of the movie except the spectacle into the background, and historical accuracy isn't much of a concern. It does feature a better-than-average cast, however, aside from uncharismatic star Harry Hamlin.

The film's a bit like a dessert that could have been dinner, particularly with so many winning elements (including songs by Fountains Of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger and a brief appearance from a wickedly sleazy Campbell Scott). But dessert isn't a bad thing either, particularly when it's prepared with this much heart.

For everything here that’s new and exciting, there’s much that’s way too familiar. The kids are so one-dimensional and unpleasant, it’s hard to care once they start dying off.... Unfriended is often more innovative than scary, too, with some memorable but not particularly chilling and hilariously foreshadowed death scenes.

Adults should steer clear. Kids should be sent to it only if they’ve been extraordinarily naughty.

The perfect movie for 14-year-old girls having a slumber party, and a must for everyone else to avoid.

Roberts skillfully stages some memorable kills but, despite the unusual antagonist, Primate too often feels like a by-the-numbers slasher that expects the novelty of a bloodthirsty chimp will carry it.

In spite of a promising start, an unconventional setup, attractive photography, and game lead performances from Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing quickly turns into exactly the sort of wet cardboard box of a movie its title suggests.

Shaw and Kingsley both create crisp, comic performances, but Sorvino remains a problem throughout. Her physical transformation falls short of the "Boys Don't Cry" standard, to put it mildly.

Starr and Shihabi, a charming newcomer, play off each other beautifully, and even when the film becomes a little too heavy-handed...their relationship keeps it grounded.

Like the creatures in the films, and many of Cronenberg's other films themselves, Shivers is disturbing on an almost biological level.

Moore's scenes with a miscast-but-game Harrelson offer a study in how spouses learn to handle even their partners' most destructive impulses, but in most other moments, Anderson fails to get beyond the surface of her characters' lives.

It’s an appreciably less-engaging film in every way, suffering from lurching storytelling, wild vacillations in tone (even within scenes), and a strong cast that never fully gels as a group.

As Pattinson nears the bottom - both of his fortune, and to all appearances, his sanity - Cronenberg has to take the film somewhere, emptying out into a confrontation between Pattinson and a disgruntled former employee (Paul Giamatti) that never fully ties together all that's come before.

Love Liza needs more than mood on its side. A moment of recognizable human behavior would have been a fine place to start.

In Trouble With The Curve, Eastwood plays a reminder of an older way of doing things, a professional whose likes the world won't see again once he's gone. The role isn't much of a stretch.

One of the film’s greatest strengths is its refusal to oversimplify the matter and a script that allows Turner, Teller, and Olsen to make their characters more than mere type

As grim as the above might sound, it’s also a spry, funny, moving film that never heads in the direction in which it looks like it’s about to head, kind of like its protagonist.

Beloved has an almost gut-wrenching quality to it. But the same can't be said for the movie overall--it's a noble, ambitious failure, but a failure nonetheless.

It's dark and exciting, but with little breathing room.

On the whole, the film is a shallow, shrill, and all-too-familiar marital roundelay.

If there’s a real person beneath Danny’s over-the-top showbiz-lifer persona, Pacino never finds him. Pacino probably still has it in him to do measured, subtle performances, but this isn’t one of them. He’s more mannerism than man, even in some otherwise-relaxed scenes with Bening.

Whatever its flaws as a film, a none-too-scary monster chief among them, The Blob is a uniquely compelling monster movie.

After spending so much time letting the characters' deeds do the talking, the film veers into overkill, which comes as a letdown. But the actions linger longer than the words.

The atmosphere makes a deeper impression than the drama, which might represent a failing on Nelson's part, but could it be avoided? His film portrays the pinholes of light in a place of otherwise unrelenting darkness.

Sweeney’s transformation is more than just physical. She’s convincing as both the scrappy kid no one expected to go anywhere and the swaggering superstar who began throwing verbal blows at opponents.

Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer, who co-write, co-direct, and supply much of the voice talent, soft-pedal the proselytizing and explicitly Christian elements in favor of gags and gentle lessons, keeping the pace fast and the scenery colorful.

What it retains is a playful sense of style, that combines with an anything-goes spirit.

What almost rescues the film is Arterton’s performance.

It's an odd, unsatisfying combination that moves from mopey drama one moment to a reaction shot of a monkey smacking his forehead in exasperation the next. By the end of the film, viewers might understand the monkey's feelings all too well.

It's a classic B-movie move of making much out of little, and while Let's Scare Jessica To Death isn't quite a top-rank B-movie classic, it at least offers further proof that all the teen-idol stars and CGI effects—or a logical plot, for that matter—mean nothing if they don't make you scared to turn out the lights.

But the parts of Foer's lively novel that didn't get cut in the script stage have died on the way to the screen. To be fair, it's not an easy novel to adapt.

The film doesn’t traffic in drollery for its own sake. Between laughs, Lying uses its skewed reality to comment on our own need to create useful fictions to wallpaper over the abyss.

Its a stupid thrill for a while, but the high wears off, and the anything-goes approach gets headache-inducing.

After a while, Daybreakers settles into the lulling rhythms of too many horror movies, as the characters ponder what to do in darkened rooms instead of doing much of anything.

One long tease, not just because it keeps promising sex it doesn't deliver. It teases at deeper themes and cultural commentary.

Perfect for bleary-eyed late-night viewing and pretty much unwatchable at any other hour, it does make for an oddly appropriate refresher course for life under a Republican president.

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.

Though the episodic, low-key action bears a resemblance to Kurosawa's Madadayo -- his little-seen, underrated final film -- neither the characters nor the plot lend it even a hint of dynamism.

As a marriage of big-budget filmmaking and old-fashioned scare tactics, it easily ranks alongside last year's "The Others."

There’s a wealth of information in My Father And The Man In Black, but Holiff’s directorial choices don’t always help in conveying them.

The film feels more thrown-together than thought-through, but the best moments transcend such problems.