Kyle Smith

The script, narrated by Queen Latifah, is so embarrassingly dorky (it was co-written by Kristin Gore) that it's like Fred Rogers gone hip-hop.

DiCaprio and Connelly give off the sexual tension of pickled herring.

Swank's character, Erin Gruwell, is a real educator who, in the years following the Rodney King riots, coaxed her students into writing about their bullet-riddled lives.

Starts out as a hilarious take on cop-movie cliches, then turns into Will Ferrell's own "Capitalism: A Love Story."

The good news is that The Hangover Part III isn't a rerun like the second episode. The bad news is everything else. For all the promise of mayhem and WTF moments, the final episode hits you with all the force of a warm can of O'Doul's.

Somewhere on the axis where David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson and Joey Bishop intersect, a man in a Salvation Army tuxedo wanders the Mojave Desert supplying anti-comedy to every cocktail lounge and prison in his path. This is Entertainment.

Mr. Scott seems content to restage story beats and action scenes from the first film. Most cold-case sequels aren’t very good, and maybe there’s a reason for that.

It’s a film that demands to be watched several times to figure it out, but although I occasionally enjoyed its mordant humor, it’s so unpleasant that it’s hard to sit through once.

Dreamin’ Wild is an elegant appreciation of the many textures of aging, balancing the feel of rhapsodic memories and shuddery regrets.

Edward's a remarkable young gentleman when you consider the hell he's been through: It turns out he's always 17, his fate to keep repeating high school, forever and ever. If that's my only option, kindly burn me at the stake.

A scrapbook of bits from better Allen films that builds up to a hearty shrug.

Taken strictly as drama, the film is tartly written and superbly acted, at least until it takes that polemical turn in its final stages. I’ve seen and heard enough about Trump to actively, if ineffectively, avoid content relating to him, but most of The Apprentice held me in thrall.

Takes a bit of "Swingers" and a bit of "Manhattan" to create a slacktacular vision of uncertain youth in today's L.A.

Lymelife, set amid marital decay and teen frustration, isn't quite the "American Beauty" of the 516 area code, but it'll do.

Forsaken in a cruel wilderness, a man looks to God and pleads for help. Receiving no answer, he says, "F- -k, I'll do it myself."

If I wanted to spend $10.75 making myself sick, I'd buy a bottle of cheap tequila.

The best Parisian action movie of the week is District 13: Ultimatum, a serviceable thriller with a lefty message.

Needlessly violent? No, Rambo is needfully violent. Johnny R. is a man constructed of violence.

The more the film trumpets its thematic seriousness, the sillier it gets.

Funny more often than not. Worth checking out on video.

Even I realize that other people's babies are boring. So is Babies.

A working-class hero of a film.

Proves that what might be (but probably isn't) worth five minutes of your time while you're passing through the Times Square subway station really isn't worth a 1 1/2-hour movie.

Borrowing the look of The Lego Movie, Piece by Piece is as bouncy and playful as a room full of rambunctious toddlers.

Mr. Ritchie has fashioned a simple, meat-and-potatoes action thriller, in the same category as “12 Strong” (2018) and “Lone Survivor” (2013). Yet unlike those films, this one is pure fiction, which both untethers it from reality and imbues it with a certain free-floating meaninglessness.

This genre flat-lined a long time ago. Why won't it stay dead?

Not as aca-mazing as “Pitch Perfect” (which made my 10-best list for 2012), the follow-up should have been cut by 10 or 15 minutes. First-time director Elizabeth Banks (who returns as a snarky announcer) doesn’t have the zippy comic timing of the first film’s helmer, Jason Moore.

The film is painfully slow from the beginning, then really starts to drag as it reveals that it essentially has no plot. A late turn to drama makes a bad film even worse. May Mr. Brown and Ms. Hall quickly move on to more rewarding roles. The way this movie squanders their talents is a sin.

The film proves to be as smug and shallow as the plutocrats it lampoons.

Whelk, I hope the makers of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs earned a nice celery, but I’m afraid they made a hash of things. A hash seasoned with oy sauce.

The atmosphere is convincing - there is an "Eight Mile" desperation to Raya's plight - but nothing makes sense.

One of the pleasures of films about being stuck in a place -- "The Wicker Man" is maybe the best example -- comes from the skill with which the writers keep their protagonist locked in his box. On this test, The Last Exorcism pretty much flunks.

This "Alfie" meets "Boogie Nights" bio fizzles because, although Sassoon never stops talking, he never says anything.

Melding a morality play with a glossy soap, Italy’s Human Capital is a fairly successful balance of entertainment and ideas.

There may be a lot left to say about Hurricane Katrina, but if so, I'm Carolyn Parker doesn't say it.

Dafoe proves to have the right blend of ruggedness and sensitivity for this conflicted hero. The actor's habit of maintaining a lavishly styled coiffure in all situations, even when his character is meant to be sleeping in the rain for days on end, is becoming distracting, though.

Writer-director Antonio Campos, making excellent use of the queasy rhythms of a percussive musical score, keeps piling up the dread as we wonder just how dangerous Simon can be to the women who keep taking pity on him.

No catharsis redeems the horrors we’ve witnessed; no useful lesson is learned; there isn’t even so much as a sociological observation. One leaves the theater with an unpleasant feeling, equal parts depleted and cheated.

Better than decent. But if Stallone (who wrote and directed the flick) had pulled a few punches to the heart, it could have been truly worthy of that first, glorious movie.

A caper comedy that forgot to put in the laughs.

Though the metaphor becomes somewhat strained as the film goes on, the religious implications of Narvel’s pursuit give the story considerable heft as Mr. Schrader beautifully balances outer tranquility with inner tumult.

The movie is as loaded with fun as it is with social implications. Its broad comedy about the modeling world plays like a deadpan version of “Zoolander,” and its third act has more primal drama than a season’s worth of “Survivor.”

This time the execs are lobbying us, yet the public grows increasingly furious as our tax dollars fund corporate welfare, bailouts and dumb ideas like the $41,000 golf cart that is the Chevy Volt.

An Irish indie that is well-observed and well-acted - but ultimately, not much more exciting than the love lives of its lead characters.

Made to win awards, and I'm here to present it with one: the Cliché of the Year honors, otherwise known as the Hackney.

So once you figure out the first rule of Zombie Fight Club — nothing too bad can happen to Brad Pitt — the movie is, despite intermittent thrills, rote.

On a scene-to-scene basis, it’s an impressively taut film, but it left me wishing for a more compelling conclusion than “people are nasty to one another.”

The movie is so heavily weighted toward the Simmons character that no one else really gets to breathe. And though McBride's shtick is brilliant - he could get rich by playing variations on this character for the next few years, and probably will.

I respect a film for being as daring, original and personal as this one is, but by the third act it starts to feel like an extended therapy session about mommy issues. The final sequences are more embarrassing than exhilarating.

I was at least interested in the spooky goings-on, even as I grew increasingly tired of Mr. Branagh’s labored attempts to twist an ordinary detective story into a horror flick.

The film has enough funny lines and weird situations - some comedy business with a sex chair lovingly constructed by the Clooney character is the highlight - that it could age into a cult film like "The Big Lebowski."

They’ve been around so long that they’re now the Middle-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles, and their ’80s vibe — cowabunga, dude! — is so strong that I kept expecting a cameo by Huey Lewis or Max Headroom.

A sort of grown-up version of “Moonrise Kingdom,” France’s Love at First Fight has some youthful free-range charm but not nearly as much as its predecessor.

Dylan was the idol of an era; many weedy intellectuals have sought to explain why. Mr. Mangold and Mr. Chalamet don’t expound on the man’s talent; they simply, exuberantly, show it.

Who better to lead us into this netherworld than a late-night bartender, the kind who is still slinging shots at 4 a.m.? As Hank, Austin Butler turns in yet another starburst performance in Darren Aronofsky’s careening, sordid, often hilarious noir about a man on the run in a metropolis abounding with weirdos, poseurs and goons.

An improbable but hilarious combine of losin’-it comedies and the rarefied, Europhile air of the Cinema du Twee.

Picture "Fargo" played with no sense of comedy, and you'll get some idea of the absurdity of this drunken floozy, clicking and wobbling on high heels, often with bits of her anatomy hanging out, trying to pull off the perfect crime.

Overrun with malicious goblins, a vengeance-minded pig, a fast-moving troll and a giant horned ogre, but the true source of terror is scarier than all of these combined: New York real estate prices.

The film seeks no more than to be fan service, a two-hour hangout with favorite characters and situations. Like many a runway trend, it isn’t going to last more than a season in anyone’s memory.

In their refusal to be up-to-the-moment, the Narnia movies are bound to age beautifully, perhaps much more so than the two Shrek films Adamson directed.

Neither the director, Ellen Kuras, a cinematographer and documentarian whose debut narrative feature this is, nor the film’s three screenwriters can solve its essential problem, which is that it amounts to a string of grisly anecdotes.

The villains are all wrong, the motivations are muddy, even the gadgetry is off. And the swaggering genius at the center of it all has become a preening fool.

There is less artistry to the film than there is sloganeering. Call Jane would be more effective if it stuck to human drama rather than having its characters make sweeping assertions that sound like stump speeches given at political rallies.

Carlyle gives a quietly engaging performance as a Golden State farmworker with a secret in the likable indie California Solo.

A sleazy and pointless film about sleazy and pointless people, Killer Joe reminds us that what Quentin Tarantino does isn't easy.

In the most thrilling sequence of this consistently rousing old-school adventure, Heyerdahl grabs a passing shark with his bare hands, thrusts a hook into it, drags it aboard and guts it with a knife. Now that’s what I call entertainment. I haven’t seen such crazed brutality since Lou Lumenick’s review of “Movie 43.”

Though rousing in places, “Young Woman and the Sea” is a routine effort that feels made for television, and was (originally slated for Disney+). Clichés and predictability are more forgivable at home, but asking people to take the plunge on a movie ticket for this so-so offering is asking a lot.

This is a one-joke skit that trots in a straight line, and your enjoyment of it will depend entirely on how many times you need to see gonzo sheep rip out human entrails.

If “Once” was a bracing blast of cool spring water, Begin Again is a can of Fanta. If “Once” was a piano, Begin Again is a keytar. If “Once” was Otis Redding, Begin Again is Bruno Mars.

Caligula is still far from great, but it has risen to the level of an enjoyable, intermittently campy soap about ruthlessness, with one or two affecting moments.

Everything is predictable three scenes in advance, and it's all stale, stuck, stolid.

Aptly enough considering its title, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is two pictures in one: a dead section set with the living and a lively part that takes place among the dead.

Who gets to say what art is? Does honest emotion count for more than cold abstraction? If Andy Warhol likes it, does that make it OK? Big Eyes toys with some amusing ideas, and that’s enough.

Not that a film as taut and exciting as this one needs punchy dialogue, but Black Sea has that, too.

Vogt-Roberts never develops the characters enough to make us care whether anyone lives or dies and never whips up even a flirtation between Hiddleston and Larson.

See his movie now, brag about your discerning taste for undiscovered talent later.

Their '50s-style comedy mugging not only don't come across to Americans, it's hard to believe even New Zealanders would care.

If your film is as downbeat and deflated as this one, you had better be leading up to a more interesting insight than, "The older I get, the more I know that I don't know anyone."

To the extent this literary feud evolves into a thriller, it’s not an especially thrilling one.

The surprise of Ted is that it goes for honest Spielbergian wonder, too, and even earns some tears.

The Entourage formula feels warmed-over, played-out, spent.

Even if the movie had more shadings, though, Marshall's political point would undo his he-man action-flick format. If you're looking for a rallying cry to make the emotions sizzle, "Quagmire!" isn't it.

There should be a word for the friendly rudeness of deli waiters: In the documentary Deli Man, they’re described as being as brusque and familiar with you as if you’re there three times a day — even if they’ve never seen you before.

It is said that everyone either loved or hated radical defense lawyer William Kunstler. A documentary by his daughters asks, "Why choose 'or' instead of 'both'?"

Daddio is a bracingly naturalistic conversation with a sneakily brilliant screenplay and two wonderfully textured lead performances.

Buzzes around in random menace for an hour until its third act, when - zzzzzt! - it flies straight into the zapper.

Appalachian mountains get blown up to extract coal in the documentary The Last Mountain, a film in which activists are at least as hot as the TNT.

A dull drama about domestic squabbling that hopes to be mistaken for a thriller.

Cuckoo brings up a lot of ideas but doesn’t organize them into anything like a satisfying resolution. As frenzy follows frenzy, it aspires merely to create a feeling of senseless chaos.

Adolescent is the ruling adjective here; this is an increasingly tiresome and almost wholly senseless feature.

Wilkinson's reflective and regretful searcher, burdened by secrets, is also touching, as are Dench and Nighy's creations, so it's easy to cheer them on as they inch toward revelations and rebirth.

As directed with a wonderful combination of whimsy, deadpan humor and childlike exhilaration by Ms. Regan, the film is impish and full of bounce.

In a captivating climax, the movie turns attractively freaky, though somewhat marred by cheesy special effects, and there’s a huge debt to the immense leaps of “2001.” An abrupt ending feels frustrating and leaves questions floating in space. Then again, I’m using only 3 to 5 percent of my capacity, so what do I know?

A pretentious Euro-snore that should occasion a fraud prosecution for any marketer who calls it a thriller -- and which stars an actor who seems to wish his name were Jorg Clooné.

As phony as a re-enactment with finger pup pets.

The movie generally looks great, thanks also to Dominic Watkins’s expansive production design, yet it thinks very little of its audience and comes across as a pee-wee “Game of Thrones.”

The second half, though, is chilling, as the trio’s actions come into sharp, painful focus. Too bad Reichardt has no ending.

For a 90-minute movie, Margaret has a thin story. So it's unfortunate that it runs 2 1/2 hours.

Engaging as it is to look at, this stop-motion animation film from the young Oregon studio Laika seems to have been masterminded by people thinking, “Everyone loves Pixar. So let’s do everything the opposite!” Admirably contrarian. Like being cast overboard and calling out for an anvil.

Soulfully directed by Michael Cuesta ("L.I.E."), Roadie is short on narrative momentum, but it's a perfectly attuned character study of this rock relic and his middle-aged sorrows.

Notwithstanding some clunky moments, Mr. Ansari not only engineers up-to-the-minute twists on the musty Hollywood angel movie, but decorates his story with clever dialogue and wicked observations about street-level existence in the City of Angels.

Only intermittently does the film treat us to more than snippets of Beal’s woozy, misshapen folk-blues, but perhaps these are best taken in small doses anyway.

The determination to find greatness in the ordinary gives Song Sung Blue a magical, unforced luminescence that much more immodest films usually lack.

Wraps a sari around the kind of suffering-housewife picture that became a cliché 30 years ago.

The third entry features visual effects that are no longer novel, which means the writing deficiencies are now impossible to overlook. Without a compelling story, what emerges is not a movie but . . . a ride.

Anchorman 2 is like watching “Anchorman” being re-enacted by semi-professionals trying to cover up their lapses by being extra-emphatic, super-doofy: 2013 Steve Carell does a lousy impression of 2004 Steve Carell.

At least there is a happy ending — DeChristopher, for wasting the government’s resources, properly served 21 months in federal prison. Now, he has moved on to Harvard Divinity School, where his sanctimony will serve him well.

It’s a tiresome, preachy, repetitive, disorganized and dismally unfunny attempt to appeal to Michael Moore fans. The overall temperature of their efforts is strictly room: Call this “Fahrenheit 68.”

In keeping with the exuberance of early Hollywood, Mr. Chazelle and his creative team—Linus Sandgren’s cinematography, Florencia Martin’s production design and Mary Zophres’s costumes all have to be dazzling to maintain Mr. Chazelle’s vision, and they are—create the feeling of a madcap, whirling ride.

The tone is dry farce that never strays into camp, with a mildly sardonic appreciation of oddballs recalling such Robert Altman films as “The Long Goodbye.” A creepily discordant musical score by Fatima Al Qadiri adds immensely to the feeling that everyone is hiding something and no good will come of it.

Cool It -- complete with its own slide show and witty graphics -- amounts to a devastating rebuttal to Gore-ism.

Forswearing anything like a pedantic message and giving the audience plenty of reasons to be sympathetic to the viewpoints of all three characters, Ms. Chinn has created a heartbreakingly real coming-of-age story.

Less a movie than a checklist of indiecinema clichés. Youth on a journey of self-discovery? Got it. Dead mom? Uh-huh. Wounded and entitled when it’s trying to be soulful, plotless, laden with indie rock and entirely overhyped at Sundance? Checkarooney.

Strip away the alt-country soundtrack, though, and you've got a Bette Davis fallen-woman-redeemed picture from 1937.

Not many surprises are in store, but the film’s affection for the dramatist is pleasing.

Yet the moral at the end is that we should all be more tolerant of different cultures. Is that really true, though, if the culture you're trying to tolerate is trying to open your skull with a circular saw?

With its feel for both beauty and ugliness, the film transports us to this unfamiliar milieu with a richness rarely attempted in the cinema anymore.

I'm not, finally, sure what Leigh is saying - but she is a filmmaker with a voice.

Shouldn’t Moore run his yellow crime-scene tape around the White House instead of Wall Street? Anyway, President Obama said this month that in cases where the government has fully sold its TARP bank holdings, it has gotten back its money plus 17 percent. Damn those capitalist barons, breaking into our treasury and filling it with their filthy money.

Transporter 3 is made for airplane viewing, and not just any airplane: an Eastern European one, on the flight from Hrubbishnik to Slutnya.

Tina Fey is adorable as a gulag guard who yearns to sing, but even better is Ty Burrell as a Clouseau-like Interpol inspector.

White trash meets white collar in Extract, Mike Judge's workplace comedy -- which contains more reality than the last five documentaries I've seen.

Role Models isn't a classic like "Superbad" or as hilarious as this summer's "Step Brothers," but it's excellent fun for males in the mental age bracket of 14 to 22, which is most males.

Sundance Mopey Alienation Flick No. 4,228 is For Ellen, an empty angst-athon that proves 90 minutes of close-ups of Paul Dano looking wounded can be even less interesting than it sounds.

Like everyone else on hand, Mr. Woodall deserves a better director than he gets here, just as the audience deserves a better script than one that asks us to believe Göring was so clever he nearly dodged blame for the Holocaust.

Fighting arrives fully charged by the charisma of its star, Channing Tatum, who has landed the lead in the upcoming "G.I. Joe."

Though it may have some novel elements, the franchise already feels tired, and isn’t much more promising than recent DC efforts “Black Adam” and “The Flash.” This beetle doesn’t have much juice.

This movie is basically “Spinal Tap” minus the jokes. Two of the band members have the word “Metallica” emblazoned on their clothing. Metallica — it’s the band that has to remind fans whom they’re watching!

This exhilarating brain-twister is a nonstop visual, aural and intellectual delight, steeped in movie conventions and yet fizzing with freshness. It’s what happens when film noir goes out to a rave.

McAleer is an expert practitioner of cinematic jujitsu.

Ghostface tends to veer from fiendishly brilliant to unbelievably thick depending on the writers’ limitations.

For a 99 percenter movie, then, Elysium is kind of a head-scratcher. It throws away its best opportunity for drama. It’s as if Han and Leia parked on the Death Star and started asking, “How much is a two-bedroom around here?”

I liked that The Wolverine (which saves a nifty twist for a surprise scene in the middle of the end credits) turns down the volume on the usual din of colliding mutant superpowers.

A popcorn picture that thinks it’s “The Last Emperor,” The Karate Kid is about as likely to grab your youngster’s attention as any other propaganda film made by the Chinese government.

There is injustice here, but Mr. Hallström doesn’t push too hard on the theme; instead of interjecting what’s happening in the script, he simply allows us to experience Af Klint’s dignified frustration.

Kingsman: The Secret Service borrows the tone, story, characters and humor of “Kick-Ass,” only this time in a 007 world instead of Batman’s. Nearly everything it does, it does poorly: This one is “Weak-Ass.”

This kinetic, documentary-style, fly-on-the-wall and in-the-halls tale proves that in the hands of capable dramatists the rack of suspense can be tightened to an almost unbearable degree even when the outcome is known.

Turns out to be one of the most absorbing films of the year. Plus it has lots of wiener jokes.

Beautifully photographed and acted, with a somberly affecting tone, the film, by Derek Cianfrance, is nevertheless marred by severely contrived elements.

If Swedish villains are this dumb, put me on the next plane to Stockholm. Just don't make me watch these idiotic movies on the flight.

The real mystery is this: Even if you find this guerrilla art project utterly fascinating, why would anyone bother to release an incomplete film about it?

So this bourgeois-bohemian movie is, in a way, as serene in its obliviousness to the exterior world as its man-child subject. It's not essential, but it is endearing.

Though Anora frequently sparkles, it’s also inconsistent, so it falls short of becoming a classic of its genre. Still, thanks to its appealingly youthful energy and its earthy performances, it’s one of the spiciest comedies of the year.

As directed by Tom George from a script by Mark Chappell, See How They Run hits like a watered-down cocktail rather than a bracing belt of intrigue.

Kill the Messenger tries to be the “JFK” of crack, but offers only shrill self-righteousness to answer the crazed energy of Oliver Stone’s masterpiece of deceit.

Top performances by Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones, though, make the film emotionally rich.

A decent idea for an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," The Do-Deca-Pentathlon falls short as a movie.

The plot beats are so dull, contrived and poorly engineered (for a few minutes the wolves must pretend to be rivals who don’t know each other) that the movie becomes an onerous chore comparable to the one that launches the action. Who can I call to make this dead movie disappear?

Ms. Findlay’s work is nevertheless so delicate as to be slight, so unassuming as to be unsatisfying. The friction between the two leads could form a strong backdrop to the film; instead, it is the film.

Making a true story of social injustice into a gripping narrative requires more imagination than is contained in this well-intentioned but uninspired effort.

Fightville, you had me at "gladiator school."

Allied is slow-footed and tepid, its plot twists dopey and soapy. I was rooting for things to get interesting, but I would have settled for a few surprises.

All I wanted to do was escape from this aggressively ugly world and its equally unattractive characters. It's not that the movie is in bad taste or cheesy (though it is) but that all of its hyperviolence adds up to nothing: This thing is dedd.

It’s nice to know that Team Pixar can still recognize the importance of fun. Though Lightyear isn’t as funny as the original “Toy Story,” nor as emotionally potent as “Toy Story 2,” and hence probably won’t be rewatched nearly as many times as those two classics, it’s a plucky and rousing little sci-fi saga.

Much closer to Scorsese than "Scarface," Notorious gives a heartfelt yet clear-eyed sendoff to the late Brooklyn rapper Christopher Wallace.

Mr. Fraser looks so spectacularly awful as Charlie in the film, directed by Darren Aronofsky, that this chamber piece amounts to a variation of torture porn for highbrows, with a fat suit rather than a meat cleaver as the bringer of cinematic shock.

An honorable, sober but completely unnecessary take on the Dickens novel, Great Expectations serves as a fine introduction to the story but won’t excite those familiar with previous versions.

The leads are likeable enough, but the script reanimates "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" tactics - a monster story supposedly made hilarious by being told by a savvy high schooler. These lines aren't even jokes, though, they're just collisions of the brutal and the banal.

The Concert is an art-house trap, the cinematic equivalent of one of those salads that turns out to have more calories than a Big Mac. And for the same reason: gobs of thick, sweet dressing.

Lazy, shallow and repetitive, Phil Donahue's Body of War is one of the most incompetent documentaries to emerge from the Iraq war.

Any movie that finds a plausible reason to give Lindsay Lohan a nun's habit and a machine gun is worth your attention.

Universal conscription for every able-bodied man from 18 to 40 is about to be instituted, and the events of this shallow, cheap and corny story seem unlikely to offer much in the way of comforting memories for those who get sent to the trenches.

Provides a different take on its subject than many of us are accustomed to: Nelson Mandela is no Martin Luther King Jr., and he was far more radical than even Malcolm X. If you’re under the impression that his ideas got him imprisoned for 25 years, think again: It was his bombs.

This documentary, which begins at a low key, gradually becomes intense and psychologically complicated.

The power of the film lies in how it crafts excitement out of a granular understanding of Russian state brutishness and the degree of determination it will require to evade it. It will take a spy’s level of resourcefulness to emerge from the labyrinth, and Kompromat has the punch of a first-rate spy thriller.

Red has more snappy joy in store than practically all of last summer's busted blockbusters.

What everyone will remember about Goosebumps is . . . nothing. Except that it was kinda like “Gremlins.”

Though the affair dragged on so long before Dreyfus was finally cleared that Mr. Polanski confines the resolution to an epilogue, he has nevertheless made an oft-told tale lively and urgent. “An Officer and a Spy” is Mr. Polanski’s finest work in many years.

This is Beatty’s first film in 15 years, a project he’s been working on for 40 years, and it’s immensely pleasing to see him in such fine form. Or, as his obsessive-compulsive subject would say, such fine form. Such fine form.

Since they seem like real people we want them to work out their differences. In the second half, their story is nearly lost in favor of lots of documentary footage of the actual protests. This stuff was pretty ho-hum to look at two years ago, and it hasn't gotten more interesting with age.

The Spandau Ballet documentary Soul Boys of the Western World has all the kooky clothes, zippy songs and ’80s optimism you could ask for in a film about a group that had only one big US hit (but several in the UK). Why do I find it hard to write the next line? The band wasn’t that great.

The script is blaring and obvious at all times, and in his second directorial effort, David Schwimmer doesn't have a clue how dull it is for the audience to endure scene after scene of anguish, crying and screaming matches

There hasn’t been this bizarre mixture of hooah and death since John Wayne hung up his combat boots.

Bad Moms is like “Sex and the City: The Sneakers-and-Minivan Years,” a good-natured girl-power comedy that balances a bland sitcom structure with some weird and hilarious moments.

The cheesehead noir Thin Ice presents Greg Kinnear in a role that's almost too easy for him: He's a morally flexible Wisconsin insurance salesman for whom honesty is the least-likely policy.

The only conceivable reason for Warner Bros. to (barely) release this mush is as a favor to Clint Eastwood, whose daughter Alison directed.

The film is well shot and edited, backed with a bouncy hip-hop soundtrack and full of pep.

For rock fans, hearing many Led Zeppelin and U2 classics on a theater sound system is worth the price of a ticket.

Unbroken, is a cinematic scrapbook, a collection of well-composed scenes practically cut and pasted from “Memphis Belle,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Life of Pi” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Unlike those other films, though, Angelina Jolie’s second effort as a director is more a series of similar events than a story, and lacks an underlying message except that torture hurts.

The girl kept talking and strategizing as heavy string music played on the soundtrack. This was doubly weird because: a) it made me feel like the bad guy; and b) life doesn’t normally have a soundtrack. Somehow the bitch got hold of a flare gun. Ever had a flare gun fired into your hide? Unpleasant.

A likable cast and interior-­décor porn worthy of Martha Stewart Living are the highlights of The Best Man Holiday, but the mix of raunchy sex comedy and Christian faith doesn’t quite come off.

This movie doesn't get huffy, it gets laughs.

Sarah's Key belongs to the Holocaust for Dummies section of Harvey Weinstein's History for Dummies series of mer etricious glossy dramas that ransack global events and turn them into middlebrow women's weepies to fill his trophy case.

It’s adequately visionary, it’s routinely spectacular, it breathes fire and yet somehow feels room-temperature.

Why an Oscar-winning screenwriter would make a film that makes so little attempt to dig into its central character is baffling. That an Oscar-nominated director with a celebrated eye for the ethereal, strange world of girl-women living in beautiful boxes could make a film as workaday as this one is frustrating.

Uneven though it is . . . No Hard Feelings devises some smart new twists for the teen sex comedy while expertly counterbalancing Mr. Feldman’s doe-eyed innocence with Ms. Lawrence’s vamping.

Few documentaries have covered such an important matter so convincingly and with such clarity. When it comes to public education, we are all New Jerseyans.

I think I’d rather have the waterboarding than the movie’s bromides about how we’re all victims and hate must end.

If (like me) you have a parental obsession with brainwashing your children to adore everything from Sinatra to “Shake It Off,” Sing may be your most effective weapon since “Happy Feet.”

There are a couple of grams of interesting stories about Miami's drug traffic in Cocaine Cowboys, but the good stuff is cut with 50 kilos of cinematic baking soda.

The tone of The Playroom is one of soppy moroseness. This imitation “Ice Storm” is as refreshing as a step into a puddle of slush.

Occasionally the movie does offer up a pleasing little nugget about the creative process, as when Springsteen changes a lyric from the third person to the first: There is glory in such little adjustments. But most of the movie’s backstage material is uninspired.

Splashed with Monte Carlo glamour, physical comedy and nimble scams, the movie rolls along enjoyably to its goofy but endearing big scene: an homage to "Dirty Dancing."

Run All Night is routine in its contours, occasionally sloppy in its editing and filled with the usual implausibilities.

Too slow to be a guilty pleasure and too dumb to be an innocent one.

It's a shame that, after nearly 40 years of writing about rock, Cameron Crowe is receptive to the clichés of the genre.

Despite its excesses, Savage" is never unintentionally funny, just gritty and mean. The run time is more than two hours, yet it's also tight: no drag, no waste, no message.

The Great Playwrights for Dummies series that began with "Shakespeare in Love" continues with Molière, a French clone of that grating and smarmy Best Picture winner.

Some movies are toxically misconceived, and “The Drama” is among them. It wants to be wicked and outrageous but it’s really just dismal and depressing.

Limitless may please a few looking for a shallow fantasy thriller, but won't fire up the synapses of the intellectually demanding.

It’s a lot of fun, but nothing special, another in a long line of semi-comical fight movies.

It’s Margaux, the tragic supermodel and failed actress who took her own life at 42, who emerges as the film’s fount of heartbreak in several stunning scenes.

None of this is ever quite as great as it is in Spielberg’s work, but it’s reasonably close; the worst you can say about the movie is that it sticks to a highly potent formula.

Picture Monty Python writing an unusually odd "Twilight Zone" episode directed by surrealist Luis Buñuel. Or just empty your mind of all sense: This is Rubber.

The movie is at its best when Gekko gets back into the game, with his impish smile and his perfect hair.

A pointless drama that trafficks in cliché.

Like one of those five-minute featurettes on star athletes deployed to soak up time on the pregame show -- expanded to a paralytic length.

The movie putters along as softly as Wendy drives. Despite its lack of narrative horsepower, though, its character sketches are pleasing. And amusing.

The movie is like a two-hour trailer, with one viscerally intense fight scene following another, filmed as usual for the series in long, fluid takes to maximize the wow factor.

The shtick movie Paranormal Activity 3 is the horror equivalent of vaudeville comedy: a little patter, a little pie in the face, repeat.

Though the new Little Mermaid makes excellent use of all that digital wizardry has to offer, its heart is lost at sea.

The story quietly builds to a rueful and fraught climax in which Campbell Scott does his usual exceptional work

What If is a case of the cutes the way the Black Death was a case of infectious disease. The movie is saturated with cute, teeming with cute, rancid with cute. I’d endured all a man could fairly be expected to take when I glanced at my watch and realized there were still 95 minutes to go.

Old Dogs does to the screen what old dogs do to the carpet. It's unfortunate that only the latter can be taken out and shot.

If Bono is melodramatic, Mr. Dominik is an enabler. Thom Zimny’s matter-of-fact direction of another paternally damaged rock star’s concert confessional, “Springsteen on Broadway,” let its star’s charisma shine through. “Stories of Surrender” is more like an epic of self-parody.

I don't think he (Apatow) did enough research on his topic. Because no one could be as whiny, spoiled, tasteless, combative and reliant on annoying stand-up comedy riffs as the entire cast of this film, the most disappointing one of the year.

It’s a pleasure to report that the 100-minute conversation is as wonderful as the actors who deliver it—by turns witty, wistful and revealing, steeped in an appreciation for the hard learning that comes with age.

As the Roses start to become increasingly hostile to each other in front of others, the tone is meant to be hilariously nasty. Instead it’s merely monotonously vulgar, as a long string of one-liners relies more on the supposed shock value of profanity than on wit.

The almost nonstop fighting and Mr. Quaid’s low-key charm are enough to make the movie a serviceable action offering. Moreover, the script, though focused on wacky spasms of violence, has a strong human element at its core.

I suppose you have to give credit to the movie for coming up with some badass killer mermaids.

There isn't enough revealing material in the tedious documentary Jimmy Carter Man From Plains to sustain an 800-word magazine profile, let alone a two-hour film.

As a French Resistance thriller, Free Men is so-so, but it is driven by a mischievously interesting idea: that Muslims and Jews have more in common than they normally allow.

The gorgeous heartache of songs by the group Belle and Sebastian gives God Help the Girl its dreamy appeal, but thanks to a poky story line it essentially amounts to a series of music videos.

For a sex movie, Norwegian Wood is about as dry as a pocketful of sand. Even for a film set in a land that considers paper folding an exciting activity, this is dull stuff.

Typically, To the Wonder seems mostly locked in the thoughts of its characters, whispered so only we can hear, with no more actual back-and-forth dialogue than would cover the back of your ticket stub.

It’s a bloody comedy that’s also a buddy comedy.

Even for a movie about complying with USDA regulations, Dolphin Tale 2 is a little lacking in excitement.

Though very funny at times, and refreshing in the way it keeps us guessing, Spin Me Round is only partially successful.

A pretentious left-wing monster movie with about 15 minutes of alarming creatures and a whole lot of bickering, is a pre-9/11 story which Stephen King wrote eons ago. It operates in the post-9/11 era about as well as a Studebaker at the Daytona 500.

Goldblum's wobbly German accent and the staginess of the script doom this effort by Paul Schrader ("American Gigolo").

The climax is as dull as reading the dictionary of a language you do not speak.

Footloose won me over early, with a sequence in which the hero gets all heavy metal while restoring his badass ... VW Bug.

I love the series, but Jason Bourne is the worst of the five.

Bursting with the usual colorful pop music numbers and lighter-than-a-soap-bubble quandaries, the film is a typical Bollywood entry, not likely to win over many new converts

For its wicked innocence, this is the finest rock movie since "Almost Famous."

Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."

Baseball movies tend to be lyrical, deeply felt, aggressively metaphorical and (consequently) terrible, but Trouble With the Curve has something most others lack: Eastwood's superb, cruel sense of humor, which reaches all the way back to "Every Which Way But Loose."

The sharpest, wildest and most unpredictable thriller I’ve seen this year.

It’s kind of cute but mostly just awkward, somewhere between watching bros who slept through French class trying to work their game in Nice and endless CBS sitcoms about nutty guys ruled by exasperated, boring women.

An intensity of purpose and a patient, suspenseful directing style make the B-movie Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning superior to most of the big-budget action films I've seen lately.

Tired? This series is as exhausted as Shrek after a day of baby wrangling and diaper changing.

Revenge is a dish best served with bullets, high explosives and giant rolling flameballs. In Quantum of Solace, James Bond orders the revenge buffet, deluxe.

I can't remember ever seeing such a spectacular implosion of a squad of all-stars as Rise of the Guardians. Well, not since Yankee Stadium in October.

A decent football movie, just about good enough to be the 40th best episode of "Friday Night Lights" . . . which has aired 39 episodes.

Dispenses with much of the caramel gooeyness of the first two episodes in favor of decent action, some heartfelt tender moments and even a splash of wit. This time they’re actually Twi-ing.

In the title role, Sydney Sweeney must be relieved to be giving people a reason to discuss her acting. She’s excellent in the role, small and vulnerable yet tough and fierce, a pink-clad dynamo who is nevertheless beholden to others.

There have been worse horror flicks, but although this one offers a few scares, it doesn't have a lot of imagination.

The audience is left to feel sorry for characters we’re meant to find amusingly contemptible and to groan at the way the writing keeps taking potshots at the most obvious targets. When the film thinks it’s being wicked, it’s closer to being trite.

The movie (Untitled) is a tinny satire destined to go "(Unwatched)" because it is "(Uninteresting)."

Snowden could have been a character portrait, but instead it’s like “The Bourne Identity” minus the chases and fights, which is like a ham and cheese sandwich minus the ham and cheese. As a consequence, I suspect, this film will make no bread.

First-time writer-director Adam Reid has a lightly endearing touch as he allows the actors plenty of space to be warm without being cute.

Having seen the trailer for Brothers and now the finished film, I feel as though I just watched the trailer twice.

For boldness of execution as well as vision, The Red Chapel stands out as a singular, important comedy.

To describe this as a movie about a mediocre businessman biding his time before an appointment probably makes it sound more exciting than it is.

The film’s airless, cramped quality demands consistently high-level dialogue—words that sting and burn. Instead, the two big speeches, especially the second one, land somewhat like filibusters.

The entire movie comes across as awkward, even flailing to hold our interest.

Del Toro overdoes the anguish to the point of looking like he’s playing advanced constipation, and the film, by France’s Arnaud Desplechin, gets stuck in an endless series of therapy scenes built around cheesy re-enactments of Jimmy P’s dreams.

A solid high-school comedy keeps stopping dead for a series of what amount to so-so MTV videos.

For those who can tolerate—or better yet, relish—extreme violence, The Equalizer 3 is diverting enough. If the script is so-so, the beautiful Italian locations, Mr. Washington’s still-world-class charm and an eerie, frightening musical score by Marcelo Zarvos lift it (slightly) above average for the action-thriller genre.

The big new addition in Shrek the Third is Justin Timberlake as the high school-age future King Arthur, but if Timberlake contributed a song to the soundtrack it would have to be "WhinyBack."

Somm does a fairly impressive job of making wine tasting somewhat cinematic despite its being essentially unfilmable, at least until taste-o-vision comes along.

For a kiddie adventure, the movie, based on the Jeanne DuPrau book, has a pleasingly moody, eerie quality.

I was searching for a metaphor to capture the experience of watching The Night Before when a character fell backward into a dumpster full of garbage bags. Thanks, guys!

An invigorating and surprising journey.

The strange thing about the movie is its idea that such couples are rare flowers. But you can scarcely take a step in Seattle or San Francisco or Los Feliz without meeting them in hordes.

A supernatural take on "Death Wish" meets "Faust," Heartless is an uneasy mixture of B-movie shocks, social commentary and sentimentality that shows a potent imagination at work.

With Fading Gigolo, writer-director-star John Turturro does a passable imitation of a mediocre Woody Allen sex comedy, and guess who tags along for this would-be romp?

Laden with witty ironies, the film by Anne Fontaine suggests men may not play exactly the roles they think they do in women’s lives.

A movie steeped in sin that squats awkwardly in a cinematic purgatory between tawdry and talky.

"Dial of Destiny” is, if anything, even more breathless and filled with stunts than “Raiders,” but everyone’s feats look like insipid fakery.

Mr. Chu knows exactly how to bring this story emphatically home, and as we’ve heard before, there’s no place like it.

Turns out to be a dour, shouty atheist manifesto. With a change of scenery it could have been called "Godless in Seattle."

The pair’s growing fascination for each other is as unmistakable as the beauty of their surroundings, and so a film about inanimate elements turns out to be a delightfully human love story.

Possibly the least sexy vampire flick ever to crawl out of the crypt (it never occurs to anyone that biting someone's neck is kinda intimate; the act is strictly utilitarian), but it's unusually detailed in its imagining.

Mr. Stanfield is a gifted performer. Thanks to an amateurish script, however, Clarence is a lifeless Brian.

Much of this footage might have been illuminating, even fascinating, in 2003. But seven years on, it's ancient history lacking insight, hindsight or a fresh take.

Bateman has rarely had the opportunity to play a snarling lawman, but with his cool aviators and his bristling putdowns he's perfect, too.

Sounds like a great idea for a gay porno, but the soapy Save Me actually takes itself seriously.

If “Spinal Tap II” doesn’t quite earn an 11 on a scale of one to 10, I’d say it rates a strong 7.

The gimmicky title is doubly misleading: The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby is neither a mystery nor Beatles-themed, but it is an elegantly wrought tale of anguish.

There's plenty of smash, thunder and brawl for the kids. But in taking a bit of Hulk and a bit of Superman while re-imagining Excalibur as a hammer, Thor amounts to putting new horns on old ideas. And the screenplay sounds like the lyrics of Spinal Tap.

Rising star Michael Shannon makes a riveting shamus hired to chase a runaway husband in the quiet but resonant little noir The Missing Person.

Although the film is, by design, an unwatchable mess on one level and its one joke about 8 mm filmmaking would play better as a music video or a TV commercial, there's no denying the crazed dedication to detail.

There aren’t enough movies in which Tina Fey fires an AK-47 while grinning maniacally. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot turns out to make excellent use of her established skills while revealing new ones: It’s “30 Rock Me to the Casbah.”

A dismal, low-energy affair.

As the movie's feet get stuck in its own misery, it made me appreciate "Trainspotting" all over again - its wit, how it moved, the way any outcome for its characters seemed possible.

A young Jack Nicholson might have pulled this off, but Jason Bateman is not Jack Nicholson. Pity the actor who thinks he’s edgier than he actually is.

It's good-natured myth-making cut into kid-size pieces.

The finest 1947 boxing picture of 2015 is here: Southpaw, a film that’s gruntingly insistent on its clichés.

Burton may give us a bland hero, a tepid love story and a muddled plot but, hey, at least he’s got a skeleton army doing battle with giant tentacle monsters at an amusement park.

If you're old enough to pluck gray hairs, you may find yourself rubbing away a few tears.

Najafi stages action scenes with an intense, queasy beauty and elevates what is in its outlines a routine crime drama to near-operatic proportions.

The script depends heavily on familiar stand-up comedy bits, but it's full of sharp wisecracks and slacker charm.

Thor: Love and Thunder is, like most of the Marvel films since Iron Man died, only intermittently amusing, a bit wobbly in its storytelling, thin in its emotional impact and more geared toward spectacle than coherence.

Mr. Pearce (“Iron Man 3,” “Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation”) and his director have no idea what kind of picture they want to make. Instead they have four or five different concepts which they set loose like cars ramming into each other as they jostle for position.

Things are so dull, rote and humorless that when signboards in a European scene read "Mondiale Grand Prix," I at first thought they said "Mondale Grand Prix," which sounds like an unwanted award this movie could easily win.