Marjorie Baumgarten

Coppola never manages to get his themes to coalesce into anything terribly coherent.

A mildly diverting comedy but has little of real substance to recommend it.

Across-the-board, the kids are extremely adorable to watch (not an easy thing to pull off) and will appeal to the other kids in the audience who might identify with them and see the story from the kids’ point of view. But looking at this film from any other perspective, will give you brain rot.

Stuff the cork back in: This wine movie was sold before its time.

Not even this sprightly cast can buck the privileged sense of entitlement that bedevils this movie. Don’t count on the impish humor that Simon Pegg has unleashed so successfully in other movies to save the day.

The problem lies with the unimaginative story premise and the quip/reverse quip dialogue that just may be better-suited to half-hour television shows than this nearly 2½-hour movie feature.

Collateral Beauty is ultimately as mushy a movie as the phrase itself, whose definition is never fully explained by the script. It’s another example of something sounding good but meaning little.

Sex may, indeed, be all in the mind, but Romance fails to score in the mind's eye.

In the wake of the debacle known as Showgirls, Striptease has had to fight to establish its separate identity and credentials. In retrospect, it appears to have been wasted energy.

"Avatar’s" Worthington is adept at playing a tortured soul, but his American accent and dramatic range are both wanting in this movie.

Delivers sinister atmosphere but few shocks.

Despite an A-list cast and director, it's astonishing how bad this movie is.

Breaks down before it gets out of the driveway.

Even though it’s fair to say that Pixels is on steadier ground than most of Sandler’s recent comedies, the film is nevertheless flat-footed and grows tedious after the first hour.

Even at 82 minutes in length, Superstar feels uncomfortably stretched.

The rescuing of our public schools is a national necessity. I just don't know that we are aiding that cause by sending out oversimplified and dogmatic messages about not backing down.

The title, The Last Song, may be wishful thinking for some, but the best they can probably hope for is the close of the era of Hannah Montana movies.

There's no getting around this dumb script that's just too silly for words.

This is a bad movie, but one that awakens your senses every so often with flashes of originality and abundant self-belief.

The interfacing of the two-dimensional and three-dimensional characters is so shabbily accomplished that it makes you start noticing all the other technical glitches in the work.

Christian filmmaking has entered a new phase in which its creators have discovered how to soft-pedal their message under wraps of a conventional story.

Mother’s Day, the movie, feels as contrived and inauthentic as the holiday itself.

Each of the characters is dull and boorish instead of witty and urbane.

This Italian import may have greater resonance for the men of Casanova's native land than it does internationally, but it definitely hits on truths infrequently addressed in the movies.

Creating plot from lyrics, in this case, leads to heavy-handed literalism and limited creativity. The wall of music is amusing for a while, but grows into a loud, wearying assault long before the movie's two hours are up.

It’s mildly entertaining while also masking criminal deceptions as romantic foreplay. Yet this remake has little of the real-life sizzle that Hawn and Russell added to the story.

The Mighty Ducks may satisfy the Pee Wee hockey players in your household but the rest of you may be turned off by the simplified penance and redemption formula.

There are moments here in which Shore actually behaves like a recognizable human being with some semblance of feelings, emotions and conscience. Happily, his acting skills are adequate to the task.

Although the original Red Dawn was far-fetched, the remake offers little but vicarious thrills.

The religious charlatans who are the primary characters in Don Verdean are ripe for comic deflation, but the film’s unsteady tone has no discernible target.

Spotlessly dull.

The film lacks any undercurrent of believability.

Posey and Sheen appear to have a blast playing oversized characters so obnoxious that it's obvious they belong together.

It's staged like something straight out of King Kong with the look of an old 1930s Universal horror movie where the lightning flashes strobe across the undulating coils of tubing in the mad scientist's laboratory. There's a lot of really ugly violence in Ricochet, the kind of images and thoughts that just make you feel scummy to be involved with, no matter how passively.

In contrast to its great title, Mad Hot Ballroom is anything but: Let’s just say I was not spellbound.

Although the plot is pretty bare-bones, it’s propped up by plenty of gratuitous dialogue and imagery that do nothing to further the story.

The movie makes use of every avian pun possible, a pattern that becomes quickly monotonous and predictable, if not contagious.

Sirens, is unable to rise above its intrinsic prurience.

Hardly lives up to its name -- bedeviled is more like it.

What the movie ultimately demonstrates is that the sum total is less than the individual parts when you add together Rocky, the Terminator, Indiana Jones, Mad Max, Blade, Zorro, Hercules, and the Transporter.

Fortunately, Brian Cox delivers a bravura performance that keeps things watchable, if not always dramatically truthful.

Writer/director Damien Lay’s screenplay has some head-scratchers in addition to its flat dialogue, but it’s clear that the airplanes rather than the characters are his real passion. Unfortunately, his film never takes flight.

Moog is an inventor's movie all the way.

Deathbed scenes and colonoscopy humor, Bible quotations and Maury Povich "Who Is the Real Baby Daddy" episodes: All cohabit with equal relevance in the world of Tyler Perry.

The laziness is what irks me most about Blended. Everything from the re-teaming of the two stars and their "Wedding Singer" director, Frank Coraci, reeks of moviemaking by checklist.

This comedy has a few genuine laughs, but The Bronze never even comes close to making it to qualifiers.

Phenomenon flails about in a search for direction: inspirational drama, romance, social study, government intrigue- nothing fits or is explored very deeply.

How the devastating story of the senseless murder of a 14-year-old could be stripped of emotion is a feat in itself, though one of dubious achievement.

The kindest thing that might be said of this Eighties nostalgia trip is that its formulaic plot and overall mirthlessness are meant as mimetic tributes to that blasted decade.

Arthur overextends its welcome and relies too much on prop comedy.

Ultimately sinks under the weight of its good intentions. It’s like watching Univision or Telemundo on the big screen.

Although I'm generally a fan of movies that choose to star girls (of any age) as their lead subjects, Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer simply strikes the same whiny chord over and over.

Somewhere between conception and execution the movie turned sour and most of the cuteness was replaced with venom and malice.

The kind of film that will be suitable for all-ages entertainment once the family runs out of conversation after devouring all the turkey, but it's unlikely to expand its audience beyond these captives.

The comedy is often harsh and cruel.

The lesson learned from The Tale of Despereaux is that an overabundance of vocal talent does not a good cartoon make.

When this stereotype masquerades as a storyline, it needs to have a unique spin or radical narrative disruption for it to stand out from all the other self-made movies about white male artists with girl problems and self-worth issues. In Stereo is not the movie that stands out from the rest.

Seeing what St. Andrews’ greens must have looked like in their native days before all golf courses became zealously manicured is refreshing. The film’s action, however, is rarely filmed in a way that highlights the action, and the story’s biographical elements lack dimension and drama.

What begins as a cute idea grows annoyingly sentimental before it is through.

Much more "Splish" than "Splash."

The movie's suspense derives from figuring out how wide the evil net has been cast. But in terms of suspense, this Net is full of holes.

When a human joke like Tony Robbins is the only one who comes away from your movie smelling like a rose, there's a real problem in Farrellyland.

Seems more like an amateur revue, perfectly all right for what it is, but not meant to be seen beyond an audience of friends and family.

Images seem to be grafted into the film that have little to do with the actual story.

Could have used a touch of Madea’s down-home, self-reliant wisdom to spice up the marital doldrums of these four buppie couples.

Aloft’s characters exude a certain impregnability, and the story’s structure only further distances us from them.

It seems nothing is left out, and the movie makes us begin to feel as though we've witnessed every swing the man ever swung.

The film feels about as genuine and spontaneous as its evident lip-synching.

There's an interesting story here, but Joffe never firmly wraps his arms around it.

Unlike its multifaceted director, the film never stretches its boundaries.

Learn from the Evers family: The Haunted Mansion is not worth the detour.

As cold and unseemly as that stiff found in the shower.

There is a new definition of the term, "critic-proof movie," and it goes by the name Pokémon: The First Movie.

Despite the filmmakers' efforts to humanize Wilson, however, Bill W. still dabbles in hagiography, valorizing the man while also painting him as a reluctant hero.

It's all rather clumsy and routine.

Pleasant but dull formula film.

The revelation of Little Ashes turns out to be none of the leading men but rather Gatell, a riveting actress cast as the girlfriend who is mystified by Lorca’s lack of sexual interest in her.

A hackneyed police story, rife with clichés, implausibilities, and weak performances.

Not even the always reliable talents of McKean and Lynch can help pull this comedy out of its ironic slump.

Lacks the bite that can equal the Bruckheimer bark.

The film squanders any potential it had to be a revealing look into female intimacy and instead uses broad-scale melodramatic strokes.

Bratz is way too long.

The kind of movie that gives "chick flicks" a bad reputation.

Molina and Weaver, who, most of the time, perform brilliantly, move through Abduction as if on autopilot.

An awful lot of good talent has been squandered in this by-the-numbers film.

Have we such short memories that we have already forgotten last year's feeble "Johnson Family Vacation?"

Davies and Affleck are affecting and engaging as the callow young men on the verge of independent adulthood. One wishes that we had seen more of their personal drama instead of Going All the Way's myopic male gauntlet of shrews and Jews.

Linda Blair finds herself locked-up in this women-in-prison cheez fest. The warden has a hot tub in his office and Stella Stevens cracks the whip.

Duigan has the makings of a good yarn, but instead of trusting the story and his characters, he becomes fatally bogged down in trying to make statements.

Everybody’s Fine – a movie about the lies grown children tell their parents – is, ironically, one of the most disingenuous movies to come out of Hollywood in a while.

The special effects feature the most up-to-the-minute flash and dazzle that the Industrial Light and Magic gang has to offer -- but it plays like someone forgot to plug in the power cord; in other words, no sparks or electricity.

If there were any brooms in Disney's new Sorcerer's Apprentice they would have to be used to sweep this tired dreck to the curb.

With Filth and Wisdom, the Material Girl has now spliced the title of film writer and director into her list of accomplishments, but the result is, well, immaterial.

Burlesque bumps and grinds. And then it continues to grind and grind and grind.

Even if some of its history and buckles are askew, the film is still an original take on a Christian redemption story.

My favorite line from the movie: "The god---- truth won't fit in your brain." How's that for cheap gimmicks for getting out of having to make a movie make sense?

Fathers' Day offers little in the way of comic relief.

Despite a title change from "The Boat That Rocked" to Pirate Radio, this British import exudes about as much outlaw swagger as Tom DeLay in a dance competition.