Lou Lumenick

Forget those weepie liberal clichés. This starless and vividly authentic romantic thriller set in Central America really rocks, and is one of the most exciting directorial debuts in years.

A rare dud from great Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, I’m So Excited! is a campy, sex-obsessed spoof of airborne-disaster movies that never really gets off the ground.

A disappointingly superficial treatment of a fascinating historical incident.

So s-l-o-w-l-y paced it seems twice as long as its two-hour running time.

The most devastating spoof of reality TV since Albert Brooks' 1978 "Real Life."

Lively, well-acted and directed with assurance.

This warped masochistic cousin to David Cronenberg's "Crash" - not to be confused with the Oscar winner of the same name - is well worth seeing for Farmiga's stunning performance.

Deploying an impeccable American accent, Brit Henry Cavill may be as charming as the late great Christopher Reeve.

Relentlessly grim.

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock achieves an amazing feat: It turns the fabled music festival, a key cultural moment of the late 20th century, into an exceedingly lame, heavily clichéd, thumb-sucking bore.

A flawed drama offering a rare look at the Catholic Church's canonization process.

Good acting and some very good scenes don't quite add up to a good film.

The movie fails to add up to the sum of its laborious parts. There's no emotional investment in any of the characters, and you can see the writer-director's windup con coming a mile away.

Well, it smells, all right, but authentic isn't the word I'd use for this maudlin male weepie, a compendium of the worst clichés of sports and journalism movies.

The title It's About You is something Kurt Markus claims Mellencamp told him when he commissioned the film. With the elder Markus' self-important, egotistical narration rarely shutting up, it was a fairly prophetic remark.

Half as long and twice as much fun as the self-important "Lincoln," Roger Michell's charming sex-and-politics comedy Hyde Park on Hudson is basically a frothy tabloid take on presidential history. And for my money, that's a good thing in a season filled with puffed-up prestige pictures.

Maybe it's because I share Burton"s twisted affection for the 1970s, but for all its shortcomings, I'd sooner watch a sequel to Dark Shadows than another installment of the bloated "Pirates of the Caribbean" saga any day.

The new "Pelham," although no classic, is a lot of fun if you're in the right mood.

A substandard attempt to outfit a World War II submarine with every haunted-house cliché known to man and filmmakers.

A summery confection crammed with fresh young talented faces that's hard not to love.

Cross “Dog Day Afternoon’’ with “The Big Short’’ and throw in a dash of “Network’’ and you’ve got Money Monster, a clever financial thriller with comic overtones that’s a solid investment of your time thanks to stellar work by George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

Like its monstrous hero, The Incredible Hulk gets the job done with minimal artistry and a lot of noise.

Does briefly sizzle in the scenes between Newton and French actress Christine Boisson, as the bisexual French police commander assigned to the case.

All movies require suspension of disbelief to a certain degree, but p.s. really pushes the envelope.

Satisfying, well-acted drama.

A hard-hitting exposé of a shameful episode.

There are nice cameos by Joan Chen and Kyle MacLachlan as Li's mother and lawyer, respectively.

Strictly for the 8-and-under crowd.

Manages to be a satisfying meal, if not quite a feast, for famished adult audiences.

The demand for her services is so great that she suffers from "penis elbow," but her popularity also brings self-esteem and a possible boyfriend in her boss (Miki Manojlovic) in this lethargically directed comedy.

Vanity, thy name is Kevin Spacey.

Fails to dig out the dramatic meat, despite a yeoman performance by Danny Aiello.

A typically well-acted, if ultimately minor, effort by John Sayles, the socially conscious indie icon who's unafraid to take on unfashionable subjects.

So haphazardly written and directed that it barely qualifies as a movie, The House Bunny is watchable solely for the comic stylings of the blond veteran of the "Scary Movie" series.

Would the Mayans have predicted the end of the world in 2012 if they'd known it would inspire not only "The Tree of Life'' and "Melancholia'' but an endless supply of more dreary depictions of end-times like this one?

You could do worse for a date movie than Gurinder Chadha's campy, exuberant cross-cultural take on Austen's much-filmed 1812 novel.

A satisfying Irish stew made from very familiar ingredients.

Tautly directed by Kiefer’s longtime “24’’ helmer Jon Cassar, Forsaken greatly benefits from the poignant teaming of its father-and-son stars — as well as Michael Wincott as an especially elegant and eloquent gunfighter who has great respect for John.

A witty and wise midlife comedy, not only represents Peter Riegert's debut as a feature director but gives this gifted veteran performer his juiciest big-screen role in quite some time.

Redford's history lesson illustrates the old maxim that those who forget history are bound to repeat it.

Jeff Goldblum is a hoot as Hatosy's pot-smoking shrink, who also happens to be his mom's boyfriend, but Dallas 362 is basically a road movie that doesn't really go anywhere.

The Astronaut Farmer stalls narratively in the third act, but rest assured it finally achieves liftoff. See it before it disappears into the ether.

Unlike "Dirty Harry," this film doesn't particularly have an overt political ax to grind. But it thankfully strips away the veneer of glamour that Guy Ritchie and his imitators have applied to British crime films over the last decade or so.

Never really gets out of the starting gate.

A fussy piece of schmaltz that makes you long for "Stand By Me," a vastly superior coming-of-age tale from King's pen.

A crock - a pandering epic that's as phony as it is condescending.

Surely, if Fey herself had written Baby Mama, this mild cross between "Baby Boom" and "The Odd Couple" would not be so crushingly predictable.

Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton have unexpectedly great chemistry in this warm and funny comedy.

This is the sort of film that will admittedly make some people uncomfortable, and that’s sort of the point.

Some fine performances shine through in Joe Maggio's pretentious, credulity-straining dramedy.

Sometimes gets repetitive and is slightly overlong. But it's got solid performances.

A cheerfully crude, well-cast (and frequently uproarious) campus comedy in the tradition of "There's Something About Mary."

Rarely less than compelling, must-see entertainment, thanks to Farrell, Schumacher and company.

Slick as a pig and reeking of phony sympathy for recession-wracked consumers, The Joneses is a black comedy about stealth marketing made by a filmmaker who's evidently much too close to the subject to bite the hand that feeds him.

It's basically a series of music videos - a few quite good - strung together over two long hours and loosely connected by a weak story line loaded with anachronisms.

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is the first must-see film of Hollywood’s summer season, if for no other reason than its jaw-dropping evocation of Roaring ’20s New York — in 3-D, no less.

For those willing to work a bit at it, this is the sort of artistry many American independent movies aspire to - but rarely achieve.

A campy erotic thriller that’s seriously short of, well, passion.

This messy, disappointing, self-important and utterly humorless version of the Marvel comic book character may be the toughest flick with a green protagonist to sit through since "The Grinch."

All-too-familiar and schmaltzy territory for both coming-of-age films and movies with elderly actors.

One part cabaret, one part travelogue, one part comic heist, one part romantic tearjerker -- and all pretty tedious.

While the Kassen brothers do an impressive job for newcomers -- the film looks great and performances are uniformly solid -- there's some overly blunt dialogue and dead-end subplots that would have been pruned by more experienced filmmakers.

Starts to get a bit preachy as it works its way toward a climax heavily influenced by "Rushmore," but it's still well above average for this type of film.

Directed with sledgehammer subtlety by Dennis Dugan ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry").

Shepard, who directed "The Matador" and the pilot for "Ugly Betty," can't quite get the disparate elements of The Hunting Party to mesh into a satisfying whole.

A technological landmark that couldn't look or sound better.

In his directing debut Battle in Seattle, actor Stuart Towns end does an impressive job (on a shoestring budget) of re-creating the massive street protests that forced the cancellation of the World Trade Organization summit in 1999.

Jersey Boys tells a familiar story, yes — but rarely told this well and with this much heart and soul.

While often diverting and physically impressive in an old-fashioned way, Hidalgo suffers from weird shifts in tone, offensively outdated stereotypes, a cumbersome subplot - and a supposedly fact-based story that bears only a nodding acquaintance with reality.

Their misadventures in the Big Apple, including Giamatti’s involvement with a Russian house sitter (a bizarrely cast Sally Hawkins) are neither funny nor touching, just tedious.

It doesn't help that the central character, Jerome - earnestly played by Max Minghella of "Bee Season" - is essentially a passive observer.

Strictly remainder-bin material.

Glossy, big-budget thriller that qualifies as the season's biggest and most rewarding surprise.

Gandolfini acquits himself well in a rare big-screen lead as the depressed operator of a rinky-dink amusement park in the waning days of winter.

I'd call Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days harmless if it weren't for some totally unnecessary gay-panic jokes that could actually encourage bullying.

Probably more gut-bustingly funny than anything else out there right now.

When disaster struck, the documentary says, the powerful corps went to extraordinary lengths to silence, discredit and punish whistleblowers, many of whose allegations were supported by congressional investigators.

Woody Allen certainly hasn't managed anything remotely this funny lately.

Max's even more fabled shoe phone also makes an appearance - and, fortunately for Get Smart, the self-deprecating Carell isn't shoe-phoning in his inspired performance.

The cinematic equivalent of meat loaf -- comfort food that's reassuring in its utter lack of sophistication and surprises.

Gripping and stylish thriller.

O'Brien also provided the lethargic direction and collaborated with Messina on the cliché-infested script, which is long on booze-filled confessions.

One of the year's worst movies.

Something most have gotten lost in the translation.

Hits one out of the park.

Watching Meryl Streep act can be an exhausting experience - and never more so than during Music of the Heart.

Admirable for venturing into very dark places rarely glimpsed in big-studio comedies.

This entertaining and handsome-looking version of The Magnificent Seven is very much tailored to his star, right down to Washington’s real-life history as a preacher’s son.

Only sporadically amusing. (review of re-release)

The MPAA's rating explanation for this PG-13-rated snoozer misleadingly claims it contains "intense sequences of terror/violence"; it would be more accurate to state that Boogeyman contains "virtually every horror-movie cliché of the past 30 years."

It may not have songs by ABBA, but Bran Nue Dae is roughly Australia's far less elaborate answer to "Mamma Mia!" -- a cheerful and proudly corny musical that's pretty hard to resist if you're in the right frame of mind.

For those with a high tolerance for violence, Asssault on Precinct 13 is a thriller that actually thrills.

Only mildly diverting and way too long for a movie aimed at kids.

The acting is solid, especially Whaley, whose nasty variation on Norman Bates is his showiest role since he memorably played Kevin Bacon's assistant in "Swimming With Sharks."

This unlikely micro-budgeted project is written and directed by Marianna Palka, who also plays the female lead. The guy is portrayed by her real-life boyfriend, Jason Ritter (son of the late John). Their performances are quite remarkable and their chemistry is palpable, even if Good Dick is primarily intended for more adventurous moviegoers.

The Notebook is well worth the risk of diabetic shock for the sake of superb acting that transcends its teary milieu.

An alarmingly unfunny French comedy where the two main characters are constantly yakking on a cell phone at an airport.

Nasty but compulsively watchable.

A superficial documentary based on a best-selling book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons -- which is being released just before the ex-president's memoir hits the bookstores.

Entertaining, if maddeningly superficial.

It must have sounded great on paper.

Depp's nonsense-spouting Mad Hatter, decked out in a red fright wig and possibly more makeup than Michael Jackson, is an unlikely resistance leader.

Yet despite the efforts of an excellent cast headed by three top comedy names -- Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black -- and tons of beautiful scenery (mostly British Columbia and the Canadian Yukon), this movie stubbornly refuses to take flight, or generate more than a few chuckles.

Beowulf & Grendel has its moments, as well as its debits. Among the later is the grating Canadian accent of Sarah Polley, who plays a witch named Selma.

A strained, ultra-predictable and headache-inducing mockumentary.

Justin Timberlake shows that he can do more as an actor than just take his shirt off - though he does that a lot as well - in the irresponsible, uncommercial but surprisingly watchable Alpha Dog.

Interestingly for an Israeli movie, the bombers are not Palestinians -- they're young, ultra-Orthodox fanatics.

A too-cute-by-half Irish romantic comedy that's overloaded with movie references that begin with the title.

Basically a feature-length rock video from Germany with appealing performers, decently written characters, a killer score, and an interesting premise.

Recycles every cliché of the genre to sleep-inducing effect.

An ugly-looking mismash of a fairytale.

Chop Suey is, in the end, as much a tease as Weber's photographs -- not much substance, but rather sweet and with style to burn.

What makes The Blind Side a Thanksgiving treat is director Hancock's subtle touch and admirable refusal to yield to sports movie clichés, something he did previously with "The Rookie" and "Remember the Titans."

You'd think it would be hard to make an uninteresting movie based on the true story of Bethany Hamilton... But the terminally bland Soul Surfer comes perilously close.

Overall, it’s engaging and serves its young audience well — a rare Holocaust movie that doesn’t strain to become Oscar bait.

A well-written and in many ways pleasing update of a character who has endured in print for 78 years. Too bad it's sadly slow-paced.

Irrational Man is so clumsily staged and lethargically paced that it makes such clunkers as “Small Time Crooks” and “Cassandra’s Dream” look like minor classics.

Feels like it was written and directed by an audience focus group in Omaha?

A very elegant and fit-looking Omar Sharif appears as the on-screen narrator and Kate Maberly ("The Secret Garden") plays his granddaughter in a framing story.

Would be solid family entertainment if it weren't for the funereal pacing, which may kill its appeal among young audiences.

Amenta draws from the diary that Rita kept in the nine months before her death in 1991, interviews with survivors and news footage to tell a riveting and inspiring story right out of "The Godfather."

A thoroughly enjoyable caper that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

It's a sly, low-key comedy in which he casts himself as a neurotic, self-absorbed curmudgeon.

The real coup de grace for this would-be serious-minded drama is the sledgehammer-subtle direction of Paul Weitz (who is also the screenwriter), who enabled his star's paycheck mugging in the execrable "Little Fockers."

A smug, deliberately convoluted mix tape of Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Guy Ritchie and Hitchcock with (mostly) a cast to die for, Lucky Number Slevin is great fun for, say, 20 minutes.

Head and shoulders above the sort of lightheaded epics Hollywood typically offers during the summer season.

The performances are more than serviceable and The Fluffer is well-paced and engaging until the flaccid climax.

A couple of heavyweight actors — Tim Roth and Cillian Murphy — get top billing, but this British drama belongs to young Eloise Laurence, memorable as Skunk, the diabetic daughter of Roth’s kindly solicitor.

Perabo gives a fairly impressive and flashy performance, even when the script descends into melodrama.

Initially shows promise, but filmmaker Frank Cappello (the early Russell Crowe vehicle "No Way Back") gets bogged down when Slater becomes involved with Elisa Cuthbert, a paraplegic survivor of the shooting who wants him to kill her.

An entertaining, well-made plea for tolerance told from the point of view of a 12-year-old.

Overlong and heavy-handed.

Sam Rockwell's films are almost always worth watching be cause of this indie stalwart's taste in offbeat projects -- and his refusal to play to the audience's sympathy.

A lazy, noisy ADHD-addled collection of animated clichés guaranteed to give anyone older than 5 a headache, even if you don’t see it in optional 3-D.

Obviously a labor of love for all involved, including GOP mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg, who bankrolled the production and receives full producer credit. He deserves it.

Enemy at the Gates, is no "Saving Private Ryan" - but thrilling, bravura stretches make it consistently entertaining, if less than profound, filmmaking.

Toothless, unbelievable and not particularly funny, New Suit is no threat to "The Player," "Swimming With Sharks" or "The Big Picture," to name but three more interesting pictures in this inside-baseball genre.

Moves at a poky pace even by American indie standards. But it's worth checking out for the fine cast, which also includes Joanna Lumley as Rossellini's earthy pal, and scene-stealing Doreen Mantle as her tart-tongued but wise mother.

Johansson never looked more beautiful, nor gave a lamer performance, than in A Good Woman.

Most of the interviews are as brief as they are obvious, and it doesn't help that none of those interviewees, including clergymen who served as technical advisers, are identified.

This familiar scenario works because of well-written and acted characters. The disciplined direction is by Peter Cattaneo, who tackled somewhat similar material in "The Full Monty" a decade ago.

Long-winded and often over-the-top Italian soap opera about a neurotic, middle-class Roman family.

The clever screenplay, co-written by director Kelly Asbury (who co-helmed "Shrek 2"), follows the DreamWorks template of combining pop culture references, sight gags and action for the kids, and more sophisticated humor for adults.

A raunchy, often hilarious satire from the Judd Apatow stable that lacks any real bite.

An expertly crafted, deeply moving film.

Zookeeper barely avoids a zero-star rating because of James.

O'Grady is very good, but she can't make the hard-to-watch Rid of Me dramatically credible.

The film’s cool-looking desaturated look (not unlike “The Road”), plentiful action and Washington’s charismatic gravitas as the taciturn hero make it relatively easy to overlook the pretensions and implausibilities in the script.

Baz Luhrmann's Australia has it all - unfortunately. With four major story lines and more endings than "The Return of the King," this ambitious 165-minute epic is the movie equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Exceptionally intelligent and powerful contemporary adaptation.

Beautifully shot and well-meant -- but fairly snoozy.

So eyeball-gougingly awful that you're tempted to give up movies for Lent.

Ultimately has a somewhat unfinished quality that complements the movie's themes -- and Hall's haunting performance.

Though the performances are uniformly good -- Adams is a standout -- the movie plays like one long, meandering sketch inspired by the works of John Waters and Todd Solondz, rather than a fully developed story.

The kind of movie that cries out for the fast-forward button.

The best drag movie since "Vegas in Space." That's hardly a huge recommendation.

A cut above what you'd expect from the spinoff of a sequel.

Big Game is goofy fun, whether Jackson is rolling down a hill in a freezer, the kid is trying to stop a bazooka with an arrow, or we’re witnessing other stunts that are just too preposterous to describe.

Dull and creaky soap opera.

Has its share of laughs.

Hollywood’s ongoing campaign to remake every horror movie of the 1970s and ’80s has finally caught up with the Stephen King-Brian De Palma classic “Carrie,’’ and the results are distressingly anemic, pig blood and all.

Pretty dry stuff that verges on an infomercial, despite cameo appearances by Sarah Jessica Parker and Mizrahi himself.

Sort of a poor man's "Rent" - minus the music and the AIDS - and much blander than the title would have you expect.

Has precious little to add to the canon -- and does so in a highly melodramatic manner.

The most depressing date movie since "Random Hearts."

A lark for anyone who's willing to check their brains at the concession stand for 100 minutes.

Excruciatingly bad.

A valuable reminder that for nearly three decades, basketball was dominated by Jewish players - and coaches who found the sport an ideal vehicle for assimilation in the United States.

The Manzanar Fishing Club has enough interesting footage for perhaps a 15-minute segment of a TV news magazine. Beyond that, my eyes started to glaze over with endless talk about rods, reels and bait.

You couldn’t ask for a more fun summer popcorn movie than White House Down.

A deadly dull, by-the-numbers rendition of the Nativity story.

A ragged piece of filmmaking, but the odds are you'll have as good a time watching it as Nicholson and Sandler seemed to have making it.

Woody Allen's most purely entertaining film in years.

Complaining about the gooey and generic The Holiday is as useless as railing against fruitcake - this is a slick, throwaway chick flick designed to provide nothing more than mindless diversion between bouts of shopping.

Brewer, who romanticized the world of pimps and ho's in "Hustle & Flow," is obviously out to push some politically incorrect buttons with this ludicrous - yet, in the end, sweetly involving - Southern Gothic pulp yarn.

The Sons of Tennessee Williams, which offers touching interviews with many older gay men, somewhat awkwardly connects this history with the efforts of a gay Mardi Gras crew to keep going in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

A disarming Spanish dramedy of late-life love, speaks a universal language.

Hot Summer Days makes a lukewarm case for global warming. It's a better argument that the production of mindless fluff is not just limited to Hollywood.

Love is Strange is very well worth seeing for its two stars, who acutely convey the pain their characters feel over their separation as well as displaying their considerable comic chops to keep things from getting too grim.

This sort of violent comedy — think “True Lies’’ meets “Grosse Pointe Blank’’ — is tough to pull off, but Spanish director Paco Cabezas and screenwriter Max Landis (“American Ultra’’) nail a screwball fantasy vibe that stops just inches short of downright silliness.

Eschews the heavy sexual content (and most of the clichés) of so many gay films -- it also has a lot of heart.

This long and overly genteel adaptation of Peter Cameron's 2002 novel never quite comes to a boil.

Christopher Plummer confronts Nazi horrors again in Atom Egoyan’s preposterous thriller, which squanders a terrific performance by the Oscar-winning actor.

Purposely amateurish.

A lame teen comedy.

Much sillier - and the movie's nearly two-hour running time seems to last nearly as long as a vampire's afterlife.

As in Allen's films, the extensive shooting -- mostly at locations in and around Central Park -- takes place in a whitebread world where the only person of color is Rosemary's nanny.

Ranks somewhere between the barely watchable "The Back-Up Plan" and the good but wildly overrated "The Kids Are All Right."

As Lydia Lunch of Teenage Jesus & the Jerks puts it, "They seem so desperate to be liked, desperate to have their music used in the next car commercial."

A glacially paced, extremely moist, terminally gloomy and cliché-laden romantic drama with a supernatural twist.

Wind Chill is very much Blunt's show - there are no other major characters save Holmes - and she even gets to climb a telephone pole in her Prada heels. Brava!

There's nothing you haven't seen before - and better - in Deadfall, which would seem to appeal mostly to fans of snowmobile chases.

Uncommonly well-acted and beautifully shot on location in southern India, but it's not exactly riveting.

A boring, wincingly cute and nauseatingly politically correct cartoon guaranteed to drive anyone much over age 4 screaming from the theater.

A mild, slow-moving drama that belatedly tries to argue that graffiti writers are political artists, not an urban blight.

Pigs fly and perform a Busby Berkeley-style water ballet. Maggie Gyllenhaal sports a posh British accent. Everybody steps in dung repeatedly. These are the high points of Nanny McPhee Returns.

A lush, genteel romance of the Merchant-Ivory school that qualifies as a guilty pleasure -- largely because of the unexpected chemistry between its improbably matched leads, Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart.

The best dance movie since "Flashdance."

Honestly, it's still pretty hard to resist as a guilty pleasure: A fluffy date-night movie that wrung a tear or two from more than one hardened male critic's eyes, chick flick or no.

If you can check your brain at the popcorn stand and keep your expectations low, Dark Water is an OK genre exercise that maintains a consistently creepy tone.

While Murphy never manages to make this crazy quilt dramatically credible, he does hit the mark for laughs and has written some juicy scenes for his excellent cast.

A thoroughly mediocre dramedy.

Markopolos repeatedly tells us he was scared for his life -- accompanied by hokey archival clips and music -- though nothing actually happened to him.

Basically it's an acting exercise - a one-set rendition of that old stage and movie standby, the ex-convict struggling to go straight who's tempted to attempt one last score.

Occasionally funny but more often hackneyed, schmaltzy, predictable and overdone fairy tale that seems longer than 100 choruses of ''Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

An utterly clueless, relentlessly grim and rambling action epic guaranteed to displease devout Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, amuse atheists — and generally bore everyone.

Disney's disappointing Atlantis, sadly, is a lot like much of the studio's recent animated output: eye-popping visuals and great vocal characterizations sunk by a dead-in-the-water script.

Osment, playing a fatherless 14-year-old, has entered the sort of awkward adolescence that afflicts so many male child stars - and seems utterly intimidated by his esteemed co-stars.

Certainly nails the era, right down to a lengthy pan across a none-too-appealing dinner buffet.

The film slowly builds up to Justin's first appearance at Madison Square Garden, where his show sold out in 22 minutes.

A love letter to the technology and movies of the 1980s as well as celebrating the DIY ethos of the YouTube generation.

A testosterone- and cliché-fueled epic that will have some hoping for sudden death as it stumbles toward the three-hour mark.

Overlong and not well-acted.

The Spanish Inquisition was better summed up in an eight-minute musical number by Mel Brooks than in the entirety of Goya's Ghosts, an across-the-board disaster from one of my favorite directors, Milos Forman.

An engaging documentary.

Less fun than any circus movie I've ever seen - and I've seen lots. Maybe they should send in the clowns.

Very slowly builds to a powerful climax for this arty cross between "Straw Dogs" and "First Blood."

Except possibly for a superlative supporting performance by Hugh Bonneville of “Downton Abbey,’’ Clooney’s low-key directorial effort is not quite an Oscar-caliber movie, though it’s got a great cast, a worthy theme and plenty of things to reward adult moviegoers.

Remarkably dull thriller.

In the end, this relentlessly nihilistic crime-caper thriller adds up to less than the sum of its impressive parts.

Its message is sugarcoated in a schmaltzy, clichéd story line about Smith's conflicts with streetwise black minister (Jeff Obafemi Carr) - and sabotaged by hackneyed dialogue, sluggish pacing and a listless performance by Smith, who only springs to life when he's singing.

A cheesy affair with no big winners. Especially the audience.

Rarely since the tale of the Corleones has a movie presented such a compelling, sympathetic portrait of a criminal lowlife.

The emotional honesty of [Lane's] performance provides a foundation that supports this shaky and often unbelievable Italian-set hybrid of "Shirley Valentine" and "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House."

Winslet and Brolin have wonderful chemistry together, and Reitman makes well-worn metaphors like steamy weather and pie making (the film has been embraced by the American Pie Council) seem newly invented.

Sometimes painfully sincere male weepie.

Slicker than most attempts to document Monroe's successes and tragic trajectory, but even her own words don't provide much more of an insight into what made this troubled icon tick.

Less than compelling as drama -- but boy is this an impressive collection of wildly ugly hairstyles, moustaches, clothing and "earth tone" furniture from 1983.

A Walk in the Woods is broad as a barn door, with two stars who have minimal chemistry — and there’s not much in the way of reflection about mortality.

an overlong and surprisingly dull documentary.

Hyperactive.

It's in the teenage section where the film goes seriously wrong and veers from an absorbing family story.

Gets pinned down in a barrage of schmaltz, cliché, stereotype and racial condescension - not to mention a historically dubious premise.

Endearingly offbeat romantic comedy with a great meet-cute gimmick.

Sequels don't get much better - or smarter - than the action-, drama-, romance- and comedy-packed Spider-Man 2, which miraculously improves on the webslinger's hugely popular first screen adventure in every imaginable department.

This overlong drama is the first (mostly) English-language film from the talented Swedish filmmaker Moodysson (“Lilya 4-Ever”). Any semblance of subtlety was unfortunately lost in translation.

Could easily have become a schmaltzy variation on “Whiplash.” But it’s not, thanks to astringent direction by François Girard (“The Red Violin’’), an excellent cast and heavenly young voices.

Seriously lost in the woods. This aimless epic about a pair of charlatan brothers sinks under the weight of a problematic script, questionable star casting, hamfisted editing -- and penny-pinching by Gilliam’s latest patrons, the Brothers Weinstein.

This sequel sorely misses the presence of Tom Wilkinson, whose out-of-the-closet character grounded the first film (but died at the end).

A raunchy, sporadically funny comedy.

You can see better stuff on TV any night of the week.

A micro-budget black-and-white musical set in outer space, The American Astronaut is obviously not for all tastes -- but it's quite unlike anything else out there at the moment.

For all of its in-your-face, full-frontal sex scenes and threesomes (one involving a transsexual), this autobiographical story is almost sweet.

Phoebe in Wonderland happens to be at least partly a Lifetime movie, but this special little film is no disease-of-the-week tear-jerker.

It's because of a superior cast that this version of "Death at a Funeral" is the rare comedy remake that's funnier than the original, however slightly. Personally, though, I'm not sure it was worth the effort.

McKellen, Csokas, Bonneville and particularly Richardson are so good and convincing in their characterizations that you can almost overlook the increasingly unbelievable twists that Asylum takes. Almost.

Ultimately, Birthday Girl disintegrates into a fairly routine -- and brutal -- caper movie.

An exuberant if not always brilliantly crafted adaptation of the campy ABBA musical.

A glorified TV movie.

It’s the wonderful performances by Bening and Harris that make this flawed, somewhat maudlin film worth seeing.

Truthfully, it's all incredibly boring. Noé tosses in some dime-store existentialism ("Time destroys everything"), but this is a movie with not a whole lot on its mind except rank exploitation.

Ends up taking enough detours to keep DreamWorks' latest animated epic from striking cinematic gold.

If you're able to check your brain at the popcorn stand, you'll stand a much better chance of enjoying this crowd pleaser.

One of the highlights of Casino Jack is Abramoff doing dead-on impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan, among others.

Nuanced work by the great John Slattery ("Mad Men") as an emotionally distant dad isn't enough to sustain more than sporadic interest in Brian Savelson's underwritten, slow-moving indie, which plays distressingly like a photographed off-Broadway drama.

Harrelson's charming flamboyance - seen to great effect in "No Country for Old Men" - is a great fit for Carter, who carries no small amount of self-loathing under his carefully coifed toupee.

Will Ferrell's terminally stupid, sloppy, campy and cheesy -- and thoroughly unexciting and unfunny -- experiment in "family entertainment."

Much of Finding Amanda doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but at its best the still-boyish Broderick suggests his most famous character, Ferris Bueller, going through a midlife crisis.

Set in a bar that echoes the far superior "Big Night," this labored two-hander plays more like an acting exercise than an actual movie.

Even the great Helen Mirren can do only so much to elevate this relentlessly mediocre, fact-inspired drama.

Easily the worst movie I've seen so far this year.

Unfortunately, this ultra-glossy romantic drama derived from a best seller twists into very dark territory — a drastic tonal shift that neither its stars nor debuting director, Thea Sharrock, a respected stage veteran, manage with dramatic credibility.

A flaccidly pretentious and snooze-inducing trilogy of allegedly racy tales.

Seems almost like a self-parody of Williams' earlier work.

About as exciting as watching someone else's home movies -- albeit, beautifully photographed ones.

“Scratch the surface and there’s only more surface,’’ a character all too accurately observes in this clunky, ugly and dull mash-up of a mystery.

The extra money has bought a professional crew for scripted sequences, in which Jonathan and his mother too often mug for the camera.

After 23 years and three attempts, Predators finally delivers a solid sequel to the Arnold Schwarzenegger B-movie classic.

A very rare contemporary romantic comedy that doesn't succumb to terminal stupidity.

The most interesting parts of the movie are the long, sexy and well-staged dance sequences, some of them involving a very nimble Duvall.

A rare drug-crime movie devoid of violence, and pretty much anything in the way of excitement.

Bland and timid.

More fun and somewhat more coherent than its Sylvester Stallone-directed predecessor, The Expendables 2 serves up a planeload of thickly sliced, well-aged beef and ham amid lots of stuff getting blown up.

Writer-director Keith Bearden was also smart enough to round up a couple of other old pros: Brian Dennehy, as the hero's eccentric grandfather, and Keith David, as a wise collector of pop-culture artifacts.

Features a riveting performance by Michael Shannon as oldest son Son. He's definitely an actor to watch.

The stars' utter failure to create sparks is only one of the problems with this Labor Day weekend dump job.

Roth goes to town with this juicy part, and seems to enjoy herself immensely in this merry farce, which runs out of gas toward the end due to an over-complicated plot.

This Sundance dud is a turgid gay soap opera with a limp twist, showcasing Robin Williams at his maudlin worst.

Lawrence’s script for The Rewrite could have used one, and his direction is uneven, but it’s still rewarding watching Grant dispensing his dithery charm surrounded by old pros.

The superficial script doesn’t go nearly deep enough to begin explaining Lovelace.

Interminably long, dull and incomprehensible, John Carter evokes pretty much every sci-fi classic from the past 50 years without having any real personality of its own.

A lighter hand would have enhanced some very good performances.

A mediocre music documentary about veteran country rocker and activist Steve Earle, who created a furor with a song sympathetic to American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

Where Anonymous has it all over "Shakespeare in Love'' is its detailed evocation of London from four centuries ago. The rowdy audience for Shakespeare's first works at the Globe Theatre is especially colorful.

A slickly entertaining war movie that's sometimes striking, sometimes silly -- but never, ever boring.

A spoof of you-know-what that's a lot less funny than it sounds.

Thanks to Scott's charismatic Roger and Eisenberg's sweet nephew, Roger Dodger is one of the most compelling variations on "In the Company of Men."

Not as elaborate or entertaining as Anderson's last feature, "Transsiberian," but it's got enough shocks for an entirely respectable addition to the post-apocalyptic genre.

A murky, vaguely fact-based melodrama that quickly sinks into the same swamp as such recent De Niro mistakes as "15 Minutes" and "Showtime."

Franco’s distancing routine helps sink True Story, an already turgid and tone-deaf adaptation of a self-serving memoir by a disgraced New York Times reporter (played by two-time Oscar nominee Jonah Hill) who bonds with a murderer he’s trying to exploit.

The movie quickly sinks into a terminal case of the cutes and extreme predictability - amid the usual surfeit of wacky supporting characters.

Rebecca Hall is wasted as Sandvig's sister and the film's voice of reason.

A credulity-straining thriller featuring a few good paranoid moments — and, perhaps most important, Rebecca Hall running in high heels.

"Precious" worked partly because it did not wrap its sordid tale in Christian uplift and dime-store psychology -- elements that have made Tyler Perry a rich filmmaker but have turned For Colored Girls shrill and manipulative.

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field they're not, but you could do worse for mindless late-summer entertainment than Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell in Hit & Run.

It’s a disappointment as a movie, though Shannon is especially fine in a rare sympathetic role.

A very shallow, very glossy 2½-hour travelogue starring a miscast Julia Roberts as a spoiled, self-centered divorcée who decides to get away from it all.