Kirk Honeycutt

La Ronde 2011-style is simply a game and its makers expert gamesmen. The film is never less than intriguing. But the artifice shows all too clearly.

The saving grace to the utter predictability in Christina Mengert and Joseph Muszynski's screenplay is reasonably personable characters and spirited acting by director Bruce Beresford's cast.

Harrelson goes full bore from the opening scene and there are no scenes he is not in. But the effect is wearying rather than exhilarating.

The cast is fine, but the roles are superficial and too concentrated on the film's theme.

A mildly diverting naughty comedy, lacking the pure comic nastiness of "Bad Santa" or the sheer audacity of "Up in Smoke."

The movie does say a lot about female athletes and the changing role of women in American society, but in aggressively pursuing the formula, writer-director-producer Tim Chambers is prone to exaggeration and a moralizing tone.

Comedies don't get much more unfunny than Father of Invention, a lame and somewhat preachy comic take on a father trying to get back into his daughter's good graces.

Like many lab experiments, this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion. Only someone as talented as Almodóvar could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie.

Dennis Lee comes up empty. Kids, parents, siblings, an aunt and an estranged wife all bicker and yell, but the noise cancels itself out. The movie is one long argument, tiresome and repetitive, that produces more heat than light.

Mild vulgarity and discreet nudity garner the sought-after R rating, but this effort feels forced. The real "bad" here is the sheer formulaic nature of everything. There are no surprises but for once you don't much mind.

Everyone's comments are thoughtful and articulate but everyone stays "on message" so steadfastly that no dialogue ever ensues. It's 20 people giving the same lecture.

Moshe, who wrote and directed, creates a boldly Expressionistic alternate reality to background this heavy-on-the-action story, but neglects narrative and character beyond the most basic strokes.

The film, well made in every way, smartly focuses on an unlikely friendship between Gretel and the athlete who ultimately replaced her -- a high jumper who was later revealed to be a man!

As a thriller, The Debt performs many if not all the right moves. Where the John Madden-directed film gets into trouble is in wanting to deal with the Holocaust without being entirely a period film.

The result is a scary movie that is genuinely scary in parts, although an adult can't help noticing this is set in the very worn and tattered territory of the haunted-house genre. Then when you get a glimpse of the CGI critters causing all the mayhem, the scares completely vanish.

Taylor does capture the Jim Crow era and its anxieties well, but his characters tend toward the facile and his white heroine is too idealized.

Fleischer stages one chase scene with a bit of comic flair but otherwise never locates that mix of macabre action and comedy that at least made "Zombieland" amusing.

The Change-Up bravely attempts to revive the dormant subgenre but it's a lame effort that grows increasingly frantic and foul-mouthed as the realization sets in that the gimmick isn't working.

Green has chosen for his focus to fall on Enrique, in many ways the least interesting character in his story, rather than the son or even the mother who is surprisingly protective and understanding.

Charlie Hunnam and Terrence Howard put enough actors' oomph into these ledge mates to make them authentic characters even though the film fails to achieve anything like the same level of authenticity.

Every scene is on the prowl for laughs at the expense of the inherent drama in the lives of its colorful characters.

The millions of man hours put into producing this techno shock and awe must be staggering. Everyone got his job done, but somewhere along the way, the movie got lost.

The film wants to put on screen the sense of random play and concentrated games that fill a child's world for a few summers. In this it succeeds, but the film does not welcome others who might still retain memories of those NOT bummer summers.

While Kirkpatrick does a fine job in establishing a gritty inner-city milieu and a collection of more than credible street characters caught up in an endless cycle of crime and violence, his body count reaches the proportions of the worst sort of studio schlock. Going for a shock effect, he instead strains credulity and risks unintended laughs.

The film just doesn't mine enough humor or drama from this situation. Meanwhile most of the developments are wholly predictable.

British writer-director Roland Joffé dips a toe into explosive material - the Spanish Civil War, betrayal, sainthood, Opus Dei - but all these big themes and characters slip from his grasp.

Last Night is a sex tease, but that makes it sound more exciting than it ever becomes.

A wedding comedy that grows increasingly unfunny with each passing minute.

Doesn't so much borrow from other movies as settle into a comfort zone of raising provocative questions regarding love, commitment and marriage only to dismiss them with a brush of a hand as so much dandruff.

A true story of courage, determination and guts that deserves a more exciting approach.

In The 5th Quarter, the filmmakers' hearts are in the right place but the execution couldn't be more wrong-headed.

This time, tedium sets in early and never loosens its grip. The gags are obvious, predictable and dull.

Limitless should be so much smarter than it is.

The movie boils down to one character, acting under enormous pressures of space and time, racing to solve a mystery. In this case, that may be good enough.

Horror film buffs like to giggle as much as scream but there're no giggles here.

The three most important things in movies are story, story, story so the movie never comes off as the considerable achievement it truly is.

Michael Dowse's aggressively unfunny film which seeks the lowest common denominator in nearly every scene.

The film is fresh and funny, but it is also meandering, at times vague and defiantly uncommercial.

Skateland is every coming-of-age-after-high-school movie you've ever seen with a formulaic plot and well-worn characters.

There are eight individual decisions to be made here, yet Beauvois never humanizes any of his monks. The film instead consumes itself with songs, communal prayers and nightly meals.

Won't likely disappoint fans of men-in-drag comedy but doesn't offer much that's original or funny.

The movie is a mixed bag, with many of the elements fun and intriguing, but since this is also a Michael Bay-produced movie, CG monsters and cartoon bad guys gum up a third act.

Whatever one's view of Christian evangelical beliefs, from strictly a horror-film standpoint the movie needs a better villain.

The Dilemma is so tone deaf to its themes that it thinks it's a light and slightly rude Vince Vaughn movie. It's not.

Cage supplies energy but no depth in his portrayal of a disillusioned knight. Ditto that for Perlman, who never feels comfortable in the sidekick role so he pretty much goes through the (exaggerated) motions.

While not the worst in recent 3D films, Gulliver's Travels is more gimmicky than a crackling good yarn.

Yogi is still smarter than the average bear, but Yogi Bear is much less smart than most of the year's kid-friendly cartoons.

How she (Dunham) made her movie is more impressive or at least unique than the actual story she chooses to tell.

The film starts out as a gentle Hollywood satire, shifts abruptly into a comedy of (bad) manners, turns into a crime story and deviates into a suicide attempt before it reverts to a Hollywood satire with a happy ending. No Hollywood satire should ever have a happy ending.

The film does achieve moments of catharsis, but it can be heavy going.

So like much of this film, the viewer is turned into an observer. You never feel close enough to the action, either in the ring or in the kitchens, living rooms and tough streets where the story takes place. The characters engage you up to a point but never really pull you in.

One ticket buys you cowboys, samurais, gangsters, ninjas, spaghetti Westerns, Hong Kong martial artists, knife throwers and even Fellini-esque circus performers. But like kimchi pasta, some things aren't meant to mix.

Indeed, White Swan/Black Swan dynamics almost work, but the horror-movie nonsense drags everything down the rabbit hole of preposterousness.

It merely recycles 1987's "Broadcast News" with only a single reference to YouTube.

The movie never overcomes the triteness of its premise.

There is not a credible moment in this overly calculated melodrama.

If sheer cleverness were everything, Robots would be the best computer-animated cartoon yet…Yet, unlike the very best CG animation, Robots doesn't quite connect with the emotions and humor for which one yearns in cartoons.

A psychological thriller without bothering much with psychology. Come to think of it, the thrills are pretty much missing, as well.

Da Vinci never rises to the level of a guilty pleasure. Too much guilt. Not enough pleasure.

Vin Diesel is out of his element in this lame family comedy.

Unlike his songs, the film holds something back. It goes deep into a life filled with as much trouble and pain as triumph and accomplishment but never quite gets at the root of who Ray is.

Designed to maximize the visual opportunities for Imax's cameras even as it minimizes the dramatic conflicts that make for a satisfying moviegoing experience.

Sticking to one joke in an unconscionably long film makes for a very stale, witless and repetitive comedy.

What a cast but what a disappointment.

Stalls at the intersection of fantasy and science fiction.

There is nothing we haven't seen here before in terms of chases, intrigue and betrayals, so for all its A-list cast and production values, the film comes off as routine.

Everything today's young audiences are conditioned to want: incessant noise, jumpy editing, torrential music, shallow, overblown characters and sheer emptiness at its core. Imagine yourself trapped inside a two-hour video game, and you've got the Night Watch experience.

An artistically arresting yet narratively lame and strangely unfocused cartoon aimed at older children and young adults.

This is the perfect illustration of the banality of most scare movies.

The film isn't just not funny, it is off-putting.

An entertaining piece of supernatural nonsense whose sheer audacity disarms all (well, nearly all) skepticism.

All of this results in way too much relationship chatter and not nearly enough comedy, romance or even dysfunctional relationships. We want to laugh -- but at what?

Only one of the three episodes of the anthology film Eros delivers on the title's promise.

The curious thing here is that Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor rewrote this long-in-development screenplay. Yet the authors of such smart comedies as "Sideways," "About Schmidt" and "Citizen Ruth" can't move the film away from the world of easy laughs and sitcom jokes into a realm where sexual prejudices and presumptions get examined in a whimsical yet insightful manner.

The film, while heartfelt and directed by multiple-Oscar nominee Lasse Hallstrom, is dramatically stillborn.

This is a discouragingly limp movie in which nothing is at stake.

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

"Phoenix" might go down as the problematic film, full of plot but little fun.

This fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.

Legally bland.

Director Steven Spielberg seems intent on celebrating his entire early career here. Whatever the story there is, a vague journey to return a spectacular archeological find to its rightful home -- an unusual goal of the old grave-robber, you must admit -- gets swamped in a sea of stunts and CGI that are relentless as the scenes and character relationships are charmless.

You do wish Pate and writer Thomas Moffett had gone for more wit given the outlandishness of the melodrama since it would be more fun to laugh at this than take it seriously.

A temperate, evenhanded perhaps overly timid film about an intemperate time in South Africa.

What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger.

Indeed a wary viewer must get past the film's infatuation with celebrity culture to enjoy this movie's charms. But charms it has.

Edward Norton serves as lead actor and producer, but even his star power won't help this misfire reach a wide domestic audience.

If you're going to tell a wildly implausible tale of fortune hunting and unlikely heroes, you could do worse than National Treasure.

Some may find the film overly schematic, but Garcia smartly uses three parallel narratives to probe the extraordinary nature of motherhood.

Boys will be happy at the mild grossness; parents will tolerate anything that entertains their hyperkinetic boys; and sisters will agree with the film's lone girl.

A downbeat story line layered with philosophical discourses will restrict the audience to fans of the animated genre.

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage doesn't so much play a protagonist, warts and all, as he plays a protagonist who is all warts.

For all its biographical truth, Get Rich's journey into a ghetto of hustlers, gangstas and mindless violence is all too familiar.

While the film sometimes plays like an hour TV medical drama padded to reach feature length, Sawant achieves touching, naturalistic performances from a fine ensemble cast.

The writer-director's inquiry into this tragedy makes for a moving and intelligent film, but the dark story never feels fully realized.

Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.

The biggest surprise in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist is that there are no surprises.

In I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock does something entirely unexpected. He isn't funny.