M. E. Russell

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.

In "Upside" Allen's marble face acts as the pressure-cooker lid on a hilarious hissy fit.

The Boys of Baraka leaves you outraged in the way only the best documentaries can.

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

With his periodic porn-star mustache, shaggy hair and reckless demeanor, the movie Stander embodies a certain brand of brooding outlaw cool that feels increasingly rare.

Nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, it's deeply humane and even more deeply unsettling, in a way that most documentaries about Iraq, which tend toward the polemic, never manage.

A rough little comedy of tone. White, making his directorial debut, asks if the search for self is still heroic when the discoveries are unpleasant.

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 Other Guys finds McKay back to trying something wildly ambitious with his comedy, and largely succeeding.

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.

This is a violent, romantic, beautifully shot and performed film -- with brutal battle scenes and charisma-bomb performances by Asano as the future Khan and Honglei Sun as a rival chieftain and brother-in-arms.

A mild disaster.

In small doses, this looks kind of cool. For two hours, it's excruciating.

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.

The surprisingly funny Role Models does three things extremely well. It gives killer roles to comic actors frequently stuck in ensembles. It directs hilariously harsh words at children and lets the children direct even harsher words back at the adults. And it's oddly determined to give a fair shake to fans of both medieval role-playing and the band Kiss.

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

If you're willing to do the work, Triad Election pays you in tragedy.

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.

Daniel Day-Lewis may be one of our great actors, but he trips over a few Method-acting speed bumps in wife Rebecca Miller's third writer-director effort.

This sci-fi thriller -- which is alternately nail-biting, gorgeous and a little silly -- spends most of its time throwing mechanical and human errors at the most important space mission ever.

Kazan has a gift for letting you see her think, even when she's perfectly still; the film's title refers to the ferocious trauma happening between Ivy's ears and her silent struggle to keep it in check.

I was annoyed by Levasseur and Aja's desertion of their tense, simple plot in favor of tedious "plot twists" that could, frankly, use a rest. It's a waste of a good first half. (Grade: A- for first hour, C- thereafter.)

The movie's biggest charm is its unpredictable, offbeat tone.

Endless and tedious. It's also written-in-crayon, smack-your-face dumb, and edited so that every other shot is a close-up of a flailing limb.

The bright spot, again, is Grant.