M. E. Russell

In the films at least, there's something so naked about the Potter/Percy story parallels that's it's hard not to sit there as a viewer and get distracted playing connect the dots.

There's a potentially innovative teen comedy in here somewhere, but it's surrounded by one that's much duller.

Jim Carrey kills it every time he shows up in his supporting role as street magician Steve Gray.

Quality-wise, the crime drama Broken City lives in a frustrating mid-range area: It's too complex and competently crafted to dismiss as junk -- but it's also nowhere near sharp enough to work as the serious grown-up detective movie it clearly wants to be.

The surfing scenes are gorgeous and overwhelming. But the rest of the film...

The movie's excessive and logistically goofy in a way "Taken" wasn't.

The end result is mediocre, slightly sloppy and a mild waste of a great cast.

When it sticks to its central flirtation, the latest movie based on a Nicholas Sparks romance, The Lucky One, is blandly pleasant enough.

There are several things to enjoy here. The use of motel service-industry code words by the safe-house staff is dryly funny.

To my thinking, this splendid low-key bummer of a ghost story was eventually undermined by the film's increasing reliance on shock-scares, in which something suddenly and noisily jumps into the frame, over and over and over.

A modestly charming family crowd-pleaser despite too-broad characterizations by many in the supporting cast.

I just wish the movie wasn't also so monologue-choked, muted to a fault and fond of oversimplifying financial lingo to the point of meaninglessness.

Dolphin Tale is inoffensive enough -- little kids will probably dig it -- and I'm not suggesting that family-friendly docudramas should tightly conform to real life. But when they do embellish, they should distill the story into something more compelling, rather than watering it down with pleasant-but-utterly-forgettable inspirational boilerplate.

Our Idiot Brother lives in a sort of relaxed in-between place where it doesn't really bite as drama or comedy, but the movie's world-class cast and big heart push it over.

Surprisingly dull.

There's pleasure to be found in the resolute offbeatness of Henry's Crime. It's nearly as concerned with the play as it is with the heist (and with drawing parallels between the two).

That cast is precisely what makes the new Arthur so frustrating.

Carrey fearlessly gives it his best shot, but this fundamental schizophrenia strong-armed me out of the film, and left me feeling like McGregor's more grounded performance existed in another movie entirely.

Still, this feels like minor Phillips to me -- something in the neighborhood of 2006's "School for Scoundrels," quality-wise, though with a much grimmer heart.

The drama is telegraphed and glossy and un-fascinating; the edges have been belt-sanded until any camp value is lost. And it's filmed in that "Moulin Rouge"/"Chicago" style where you see half a dance move before the shot cuts -- which somehow makes a lot of difficult, sexy work seem simultaneously frenetic and boring.

A comedy that's only kind of funny some of the time.

At the end of Martian Child, we're told the movie is "inspired by actual events." But the movie isn't even fully inspired by David Gerrold's source novel that was inspired by actual events.

Eat Pray Love is magazine-spread self-help bullcorn with the highest possible production values, and I wasn't having any of it.

Bees is a movie in which a bunch of powerful African American women get their lives upended and in some cases destroyed so a little white girl can feel better about herself.

The dialogue is almost primitive at times, almost every female character is an idiot and McConaughey grossly overplays the bachelor-sleazeball antics at the beginning.

The verdict? Could have been worse. Yes, it's a slightly hollow endorsement, but Guess Who is probably worth your matinee/pub-theater dollar.

The humor tends toward the mildly crass -- bare buttocks and inappropriate scratching are Schwimmer's go-to comedy staples -- and the story is ridiculous. But Pegg, who co-wrote the script, plays to his strengths. You can't help but root for the loser.

14-year-old girls will dig its amiable energy.

Sadly, director Jaume Serra has taken the Gothic premise of a madman casting his living victims in wax and, no doubt at the behest of copycat-hungry producers, turned House of Wax into yet another teens-versus-hillbillies slasher flick

As pointless suspense exercises go, The Strangers at least gets off to a good start.

Nicolas Cageologists will be sad to hear that he's entirely too normal in National Treasure -- he's mildly funny but doesn't make any of the kooky dramatic choices (needless accents, ranting about the orifices of Greek gods) that made his other Bruckheimer performances so much fun to watch.

The uneven filmmaking renders Minot's ideas impossibly trite.

King is good enough that you can't help but root for her. But frankly, I can't imagine paying full ticket price plus concessions for that privilege.

It's not a disaster: Branagh is an actor's director, and there are biting moments throughout and solid performances from Caine and Law.

You might be better off reading the book and imagining Nolte as Socrates.

Fans of Franken's wittier print and broadcast work might smile. But I haven't seen this much smug, awkward laughter and bathos since, well, "Man of the Year."

The fun thing about Eclipse is watching Lautner emerge as the Han Solo of this series, getting all the laughs and calling Edward and Bella on their preciousness.

The movie never recovers from its cheesy center.

Super Ex does have a certain low-key, adult-contemporary charm. It's almost entirely because of Luke Wilson.

A few bodies pile up. Surprisingly little sex is had. And given that Catherine's true nature was revealed at the end of the first "Basic," the mystery seems superfluous.

Are Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay getting tired of their own shtick?

Chris Rock probably has a solid writer/director effort in him. This isn't it.

An unfunny, undramatic comedy-drama that asks us to care about lying idiots making implausible choices.

Hilariously, gut-bustingly, mind-blowingly, jaw-droppingly stupid.

As a chronicle of an extreme surfing subculture, Bra Boys is semi-fascinating. As a chronicle of rough-and-tumble street life, it's appallingly biased and self-glorifying.

Unfortunately, the film loses its merciless rage toward the end, devolving into a stock and broadly comic thriller about unpleasant people you never quite get to know.

As satire, it doesn't add up -- but it's an admirable, if dull, experiment.

It's just another bland, junior-high-basketball riff on "The Bad News Bears" formula, one that takes every single dramatic cue from the underdog sports-movie playbook.

Keaton offers glimpses of a directorial gift, but this odd little piece feels like a warm-up for something more compelling.

Sets up a situation so weird, it's almost weirder that Rob Reiner directs it as a cookie-cutter romantic comedy.

Despite some fast-paced direction by Wes Craven, Red Eye finally gets so silly, it's practically popping its wing-rivets.

A movie full of actors improvising their idea of how cops in a Scorsese flick would talk. It's a special sort of cartoonishness, a hard-to-pin-down brand of emotionally grandstanding fakeness you sometimes see in movies trying way too hard to be "gritty."

Does have its charms. While the videography and most of the supporting performances are amateurish, Clark and Caland are winning actors.

Joins the growing list of blandly made erotic thrillers that contain no eroticism, few thrills and fewer likable characters.

It's a cartoon that thinks it isn't one.

This will personally go down as the flick that really made me realize how much I hate CGI stunts.

Freeman and Nicholson mostly stand in front of special-effects green screens and have the locales projected, like they're in a "Road" picture.

The film is competent without being spectacular or thrilling.

The movie is not so much horrible as it is drab -- from its lazy plotting to its uninspired yuks to its cop-out ending to its relentlessly yellow-brown sets. "Mad Money" does little more than take up space, and you will be two hours closer to the grave when you leave the theater.

A mild disaster.

Dramatizes and occasionally overdramatizes Albert's 24-year career. For a while, it's a study of a decent man who puts his life into compartments so he can do terrible deeds.

There are two solid sight gags and funny supporting work by Amy Poehler as a boozy publicist.

For starters, everything's grimy and humorless in a way that infects even Aniston.

Three stories in one. This might be two stories too many.

The dialogue is dippy. And there's no real suspense: The filmmakers are so deadly earnest about the power of music and love and all that stuff, you just twiddle your thumbs waiting for the inevitable.

Eraser-dull.

This is a totally predictable exercise if you're not in the target market.

This is a perfectly serviceable thriller. It's just not the New York family crime saga it clearly wants to be.

Competently done and harmless enough to entertain the tots. It's just that the movie's kind of . . . sparse.

Good intentions and strong thespians aside, Seidelman's writing and filmmaking are bland, obvious and uninvolving.

Director Stefen Fangmeier, a well-regarded special-effects man and second-unit director ("Master and Commander," "Galaxy Quest") does a superb job visualizing the CGI dragon. But Fangmeier is working with a script without a single memorable line and far too many characters and creatures with silly names.

Do yourself a favor. Rent "My Bodyguard" instead.

Feels like a movie that wants to bare its fangs, but only manages a mild gumming.

If anyone could take a movie about a bunch of jerks who play poker and make it interesting, it should be Curtis Hanson. Or rather, it should have been.

Modest in every sense but one: Its cast is huge.

Its easy to see why Don Cheadle wanted to play Samir Horn, the hero of the post-9/11 thriller Traitor. Cheadles face is basically a perfect delivery system for woe, sadness and internal conflict. And Samir a deep-cover operative trying to infiltrate a terrorist outfit has to make brutal Sophies Choices roughly three times a day.

The movie gets just enough right that the things it doesn't get right (beyond its overdependence on a not-so-surprising story puzzle) smack you cold in the face.

Sporadically funny, bland, talent-wasting junk.

Kind of a drag.

In drama, tone, character and examination of the social issues tormenting these kids, Wassup Rockers is . . . taxing.

Feels less like a movie and more like a Tony Robbins motivational seminar.

I love that fanboys fought for Fanboys. Unfortunately, their passion was misplaced.

The writing is lazy, the movie focuses on all the wrong things and the tone lurches unpleasantly between gum-soft comedy and lukewarm thriller.

Transplanting so much of the original story to a 21st-century setting only amplifies how badly the story has aged.

The only bright spot is Marsden, a great actor who's always stuck playing the less-desirable romantic rival (see: "The Notebook," "X-Men," "Superman Returns"). He finally gets the fun-guy role for a change and does everything he can to rip it up. He can only do so much.

Yet another mediocre-to-lame thriller shot in Portland.

Maybe the real Ernie Davis really was this perfect, but the movie plays as if the filmmakers didn't want to offend his family.

Seraphim isn't totally satisfying, even if you're prepared for an arty Western. It's pokey and odd in a distant, slightly self-conscious way.

More solidly crafted and insults its audience quite a bit less than its predecessor, and it sets up several nice emotionally complicated cliffhangers for the next installment. I hope its target audience has a blast.

Starts well, builds drama and then proceeds to fly sort of crazily off the rails.

Putting it another way: When spoofs of bad singing and songwriting are the sharpest arrows in your quiver, and your politics are diluted until they hit about as hard as someone sticking their tongue out, your satire has a problem.

Poseidon '06 is spectacularly noisy, uninteresting and character-free.

The movie pads the good stuff out with a bunch of mediocre mainstream-thriller junk. It takes too long to get started, it pulls some key punches, its dialogue is deeply uninteresting, it relies way too heavily on endless jump-scares and its finale is pure slasher-flick formula.

The movie's anchored by a strong lead performance and a steady sense of humor.

I appreciate that talented people wanted to honor Shelly by making this film. They likely would have better honored her by mounting her script as a play.

The bad news? The movie is monumentally stupid. The good news? It's a fun kind of stupid.

Norbit might have worked if it had fully committed to being over the top or made Rasputia the lead character and found the human inside the cartoon. Instead, the movie doesn't give us anyone to care about.

It gives me no pleasure to report that the Pimentel biopic Music Within plays like a well-intentioned TV movie.