Marc Mohan

The plot, as hinted, goes strictly by the "How April Got Her Groove Back" book, but it must be said that the performances push it a notch above pedestrian.

The ensemble can't bring enough, though, to overcome the unoriginal setup and predictable story arc.

The only problem is that he's been such a shallow, ridiculous figure that exhuming any real sympathy for the guy is a Herculean task.

Moderately amusing.

If the two most gorgeous people in the world alternately bantering and making out isn't enough to compel the attention of the average American moviegoer, then we are truly doomed.

If the title hadn't already been taken by another equally strained recent comedy, the new Kevin Costner vehicle could have been dubbed "Idiocracy."

Whereas Carver writes about alcoholics, this movie is about alcoholism, which is completely different.

A thoroughly mundane experience.

Isn't a complete waste of time. If Kutcher seeks to transition from national joke to lightweight actor, he's made a decent stab at it.

Perhaps the most curious omission from the movie Grassroots is that there's no mention at all of the classic "Simpsons" episode "Marge vs. the Monorail."

Made with a slapdash non-style that doesn't seem quite lame enough to have been intentional, this aptly titled low-budget horror comedy serves up tame amounts of both guts and gut-busters.

Ultimately, the movie takes its characters, and the absurd ethical dilemma it subjects them to, far too seriously.

It's a shame that a movie centered on such a powerful and unique work of art is itself so obviously a corporate product.

There are some attempts at a comic-bookish, film noir vibe, including a hotel where all the crooks and killers stay, forbidden by house rules from "doing business"on the premises. And everywhere Keanu turns, he bumps into a character from HBO.

A rather schizophrenic comedy that gives respected performers Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins a chance to show they don't take themselves too seriously.

The relationship between Trishna and Jay never rings as true as it needs to for the downbeat third act to resonate the way it was presumably intended to do.

Papale's story is more than any fan could dream of, which is why it's frustrating that Invincible feels the need to embellish it. While mentioning he never played football in college, the film ignores that he did play in a semipro league prior to his Eagles tryout.

It's not that Pan isn't entertaining. There's plenty of color and action and some inventive 3-D effects. Jackman's unhinged performance is either gloriously great or gloriously terrible, but captivating either way. There's no magic, though.

Ultimately, ATL is the same old teenager angst in a mildly novel package.

There are plenty of very funny jokes in the movie, but near-fatal lulls whenever it tries to make MacFarlane into a romantic lead or a genuinely inspiring hero — in other words, whenever it tries to make us like him.

Crimson Peak ends up feeling like a bit of make-work, a project to keep the visionary filmmaker busy until something that truly sparks his passion comes along.

It's beautifully photographed, but pretentious, overlong and trite.

Stage magicians often depend on sleight of hand to succeed at their art, but Woody Allen's new movie, Magic in the Moonlight, is just plain slight.

Harris gamely attacks his tortured, cliche-ridden character, but Deschanel, so likably offbeat in "All the Real Girls" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," comes off as just plain annoying and self-centered.

Free Zone is similar to the car-based films of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami but with a more improvised, less-finished feel.

It's not a political film, but it's also not a bland recitation of homilies about the honor of serving one's country. It's a jokey road movie, in which three soldiers heading home from Iraq are forced into a cross-country van ride together.

You never really end up rooting for their happiness, as a couple or individually, so emotionally there's not much at stake.

Exploring the possibilities of low-budget digital filmmaking is a worthy endeavor, but November is a little too in love with the grittiness of it all.

It's a fine idea, but Dominik beats that drum without cease, making his passionately furious message come across anything but softly.

It's not as if empathetic peeks into the lives of America's poor white boys aren't valuable, and Hellion has nothing if not empathy for every one of its characters. But without a more original story or a distinctive visual presence, it's hard for it to rise above a crowded field.

Not content to make his point through sharp-tongued comedy, Hogan ends up beating a dead horse -- or shark, as the case may be.

It's just a shame that the search for the missing formula ends up feeling so formulaic.

Terminator: Genisys isn't so much a sequel or a reboot but a piece of fan fiction come to ludicrous, big-budget life. Even for an unnecessary entry in a series of movies about indestructible time-traveling robots and genocidal computer networks, it's pretty silly.

What could have been a complex portrait of a flawed man dealing with the perils of success ends up far less interesting.

Once all the pieces of the story are assembled, the whole thing turns out to be not that big of a deal.

The movie's conceit grows a bit stale even with a short running time, and ultimately the whole thing feels more like an acting workshop than a full-fledged human story.

It devolves too often into slapstick shenanigans and comedy of embarrassment.

No matter how noble, not everyone's life should be made into a movie.

The oddball cast, by the way, includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, who is infinitely more convincing speaking Cantonese than she is in her (presumably native) English.

The increasingly unlikely escapades culminate in a finale that's as narratively lazy as it is morally questionable, lending further credence to the voices that proclaimed Haggis absurdly overpraised for the 2004 Oscar-winner "Crash."

It's also exhausting, despite an engaging premise.

The result is a cast of characters who are little better than automatons themselves. This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the film were as captivating as it was surely meant to be. Instead, the Quays work overtime to make both their story line and images as obscure as possible.

With more discipline and a keener sense of family dysfunction, these ingredients could have gelled into something impressive. As it is, Awful Nice is closer to the former than the latter.

This ode to indie legitimacy proves to be too cartoonish to feel real and not outrageous enough to be memorable.

Although the filmmakers reportedly worked with David Copperfield and other renowned real-life illusionists and tried to minimize the use of CGI, you're still left wondering how much of the magic is merely the kind Hollywood spits out by the terabyte.

Fonda gets some of the movie's best moments as the sexually frank, silicone-enhanced mom who got rich off a best-selling memoir that exposed her children's intimate habits.

Although the primary plot line turns out to be a letdown, there are aspects of The Machinist that redeem it. Bale's performance is one; another is the dull, metallic look of the picture.

Brittain's life and literary output are worthy of celebration, and there's no better time that the centenary of "The War to End All Wars" to commemorate its bloody folly. It's a shame that Testament of Youth does both in such a bloodless way.

Every generation gets the cinematic vampires it deserves...The current decade, judging from the bloodsuckers on display in Twilight, will be remembered as one of guilt, restraint and denial. It's just not that fun to be undead anymore.

Portland's dreary climate is used to good effect, but it's not enough to make up for the director's needlessly convoluted approach.

While it's an effective memoriam for the well-meaning Germans whose lives were ruined by Hitler's mad dream, the refusal of Generation War to focus on any other sort of German makes it both dramatically and historically suspect.

The Bling Ring still feels more like a magazine article overstretched into a feature length film.

In retrospect, and with no disrespect meant, it may have been a mistake to entrust a story this polarizing to Bill Condon, the filmmaker who most recently made “Twilight: Breaking Dawn,” and “Dreamgirls.”

When you have to ask yourself whether this parable is intended as comedic satire or stone-cold-serious moralizing, that's a big sign that you're watching a misfire.

If the plot unfolded in a less formulaic way, this could have been an impressive dark-tinged comedy. But in the end, it's more a case of talented actors trying to find something fresh in a fairly stale tale.

This may have been fertile grounds for satire in 1925, when Noel Coward's drawing-room melodrama Easy Virtue debuted on the stage, but by now this film version feels rather done.

It says a lot about this movie that the most arresting character in it is Mary, whom Morton unsurprisingly endows with a fanatical combination of narcissism and rage.

Lily Tomlin gives the movie a boost as Portia's radical feminist mother, who would hate this movie.

There's a conflict between the film's need for some sort of closure and the messiness of the reality it depicts that leaves The Whistleblower even more unsatisfying than it was meant to be.

So, be warned: You may not learn anything from this mild, unremarkable film, but you might be tempted to order the deluxe, four-volume “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” after watching it. I was, and I don’t regret it a bit.

It's clear that Fidell meant to craft a nonjudgmental, non-exploitative exploration of this taboo situation. And she deserves credit for avoiding both tawdry melodrama and earnest moralizing. But by refusing to judge or exploit, she ultimately ends up without much of interest to say on the topic.

By trying to inflate one remarkable life story into the chronicle of a generation, Daniels fills what could have been an inspirational, personal saga with a lot of hot air.

Perhaps a better moniker would have been "One Flew Over My Left Foot."

Instead of a unique directorial style and a memorable soundtrack, we get a movie that, visually and aurally, pretty much goes by the book.

There's potential here, as well as in Junn's touching relationship with a fellow resident at the home, for real intensity, but Khaou insists on sticking with a glacial pace and lip-trembling emotional repression when a little bit of melodrama might have gone a long way.

The real star of the film is Horton, whose straight-talking ways and supportive circle of friends are a stark contrast to the haughty insults of academia.

Well-intentioned but underdeveloped and self-satisfied, it feels at times like the ultimate movie for the millennial generation, or at least its stereotype.

Politics and art come together in predictable, moderately enjoyable fashion in Paris 36.

Its smallness of scale, and undemonstrative nature, could make it a welcome change of pace from Hollywood bombast, especially for fans of the life aquatic.

The film never gets beyond Chapman's obsession with "Catcher in the Rye" and a few bits of "Taxi Driver" dialogue to show us anything we didn't already know.

Herzog's drive to bring Dengler's story to a wide audience might have paradoxically caused him to do what he seems normally to abhor: compromise.

If the star does his utmost to make a one-dimensional character interesting, his director, Clint Eastwood, adapts Kyle's memoir — a life story rife with moral complexity — by hammering it flat.

If the behavior of the characters had been more recognizably human in its venality, and the film's perspective more ruthless, this custom-made compound might have worked.

Makes good, unobtrusive use of its European locations, and has a couple of well-orchestrated urban chase scenes. But, even in these days of renewed U.S.-Russian tensions, its Cold War demeanor feels anachronistic, and its simple cynicism comes off as recycled and cheap.

Overall, The Pretty One suffers from excessive, unfocused quirk and a predictable sitcom resolution.

Oscar-winner Davis can maintain her dignity in just about anything, and she almost gives Lila enough depth to be a compelling character. Lopez gets points for trying something a bit more challenging than the hot-for-teacher dreck of "The Boy Next Door," but she inevitably struggles to hit more than one note.

First-time director Jeff Baena struggles with framing, editing, tone and casting, leading to an unimpressive entry in the ever-burgeoning zombie comedy genre.

Blumberg tries to split the difference and ends up with a movie that wants us to make us laugh and cry, but fails to do either.

Worst of all, not once does Mulder answer his cell phone to hear those immortal lines: "It's Scully. There's been another death."

As the action moves from Vienna to Paris to London to Denver to Phoenix and then back again, the vignettes blur into one another.

Although 2012 is what they call "critic-proof," it's not immune to analysis. It depicts a world where no one, man or God, has much say in what happens to the planet, and where the survival of one family outweighs the deaths of billions.

The storyline would appear trite and the message muddled even to someone who'd never heard the name Mel Gibson.

The plot is straight off the shelf, the performances are television-caliber and the message of providing solace through deception is a little creepy. Then again, that formula resulted in record-breaking ticket sales for "Greek Wedding."

A recent article in Film Comment magazine praised Saint Laurent for avoiding "banal psychologizing," but Bonello avoids any insight into his subject's state of mind, banal or not.

It's a forgettable series of bullet points barely strung together by charismatic performances.

The performance of Bening (and, quietly, Irons) keeps Being Julia from being too tiresome.

The scenes between Gainsbourg and Skarsgard are fewer and less engaging than in the first volume, and the dichotomy between them is simpler and more obvious. And that doesn't even include an ending that is as impulsive and deranged as anything Joe comes up with during all of her taboo-breaking adventures.

As far as the company Redford keeps, I liked it better when he hung out with Paul Newman and Sydney Pollack, but those days are long gone.

Decent performances aside, the only interesting bits involve Geoffrey Rush as a chemistry professor who enables their self-abuse.

The two stories never come close to meshing the way the filmmaker intended. The result is a well-acted movie that simply doesn't gel.

There's visual poetry here, in small doses, but it doesn't take long for one's patience to run out.

Unfortunately, the precision and presence Hurt brings to the table aren't enough to carry this warmed-over Southern melodrama.

It wallows in misery so much that the two-hour experience ends up being about as much fun as a real divorce.

Unfortunately, neither of these fascinating artistic giants is given much of a personality.

It's probably not a good idea to examine the political content of a film in which the leader of the free world proves that the pen is mightier than the sword by stabbing someone in the neck with one.

If the filmmakers had opted to play things closer to the vest, this could have been the clever "Pineapple Express"-meets-"The Bourne Identity" mashup it wants to be instead of the shallow, gratuitously violent exercise it actually is.

Man of Steel has too many characters and too much plot, resulting in a movie that feels overstuffed and overlong.

Aselton is clearly trying to broaden her reach as both actress and director beyond the rumpled indie comedy of "The Freebie," her directing debut, and the concept is there, but a movie like this needs a much more polished execution that Black Rock gets.