Mark Olsen

The entire movie has a disappointing air of smug self-regard about it, with an expectation the audience will adore everything about the characters as much as they do. What at moments feels like a nascent interrogation of contemporary masculinity ultimately suffers from the very impulses it seems to want to parody.

With Tuesday, Pusić shows great promise as a visual storyteller and director of performers. Yet it is in her work as a screenwriter where the film falters. Without the power and nuance that Louis-Dreyfus brings to the role, the drama would not have nearly as much spine or impact as it does.

There is a journeyman’s proficiency to “Chapter 1” but little in the way of real spark.

Boutella often has an otherworldly screen presence that makes her perfectly suited for this kind of material, but the fussiness of all that is happening around Kora means that the character and performance never get a chance to breathe and blossom, or to fully come to life.

Despite a few scattered moments, the team-up action of The 355 never fully comes together.

The film’s politics are not exactly sophisticated, motivated more by the convenience of the moment than any cohesive worldview.

Though Logelin’s story of loss and perseverance is touching, there isn’t really anything deep or convincing about grief or parenting in Fatherhood, making this promising tale something more middling and a touch disappointing.

The highlight of the movie by far is the relaxed, easy chemistry between McCarthy and Cannavale.

As with even the worst of Allen’s films, there is just enough to satiate fans and make the whole thing seem maybe, possibly worth the effort.

While the performances ensure that the movie is always watchable, the hesitant storytelling makes it far from compelling, a bad trip about a bummer vacation.

The Outpost is a visceral battle picture but little more.

The movie would like to see itself as a feminist allegory of abuse and systemic oppression, but it comes off as something far more scattered and unfocused.

Rae and Nanjiani have a quicksilver chemistry, flashing from playful banter to genuine, hurtful arguing in an instant.

The Wrong Missy is a lightweight throwaway, the kind of movie it is difficult to suggest one actually choose to watch, but if your algorithm somehow lands on it provides a certain harmless diversion.

The original film was not a time capsule; it was a snapshot, capturing a unique time and place. The new film simply doesn’t have the same spark and energy.

Extraction would be better if it just doubled down on being dumb. Instead, although the movie does indeed have some dazzling action sequences, they are interspersed with dramatic scenes that feel increasingly belabored, giving the movie a peculiar stop-start rhythm as it makes its way to a lumbering, extended gun battle final set piece.

Endings, Beginnings has some genuinely engaging moments somewhere in between its beginning and its ending, but too much gets lost in a saggy, shaggy middle.

The movie feels disjointed and made up of parts that Dolan couldn’t bring together as it shuffles between three story strands.

After a strong start the movie steadily declines, one set piece after another, and there are many moments where the mind wanders and then asks: “Is this still going on?”

The movie is all over the place and there is no attempt to weave it into a coherent whole — which is regrettable as scene for scene it often works.

Von Trier has managed to cobble together just enough of interest — odd moments, pieces of performance, stray ideas and the simple audacity of putting this mess out into the world, that it feels like there may be something there worth considering, a maddening possibility. And that may be his cruelest prank of all.

The movie is handsomely mounted with upscale production values, but it feels sluggish and disjointed.

Like husbands who think that carrying in the groceries is really pitching in, Lucas and Moore have their hearts in the right place, but their efforts have little real insight or impact.

The movie isn't fantastical enough to sustain itself outside the bounds of reality, yet every time something real creeps in, the movie stumbles and cowers.

There is so much about its package – the stars, the premise, the talented supporting cast – that would make for a film of warmth, humor and insight on the struggles of leaving the past behind and getting out of your own way on the path to fulfilment. Instead, the movie settles for being a party comedy and little else.

The film works better as social satire than straight horror, as the murder plot that drives it along always feels unconvincing.

As told by Helgeland this Legend simply isn't memorable, because a tremendous effort by Hardy is let down by unfocused storytelling.

The movie is pleasant and charming, but when making a big-screen adaptation of a beloved classic and genuine touchstone for generations, adequate doesn't feel like quite enough.

The movie is visually inventive and with enough good moments and smart moves to never be entirely dismissible, while not strong enough to overcome its essential thinness.

A pleasant if somewhat by-the-numbers family film that lacks any real crack-of-the-bat energy.

The action set-pieces and the comedic character scenes in the film seem to be taking turns and are rarely brought together in a meaningful way.

Being a mildly pleasant, passingly amusing light entertainment isn't exactly saving the world, yet the film crosses its wires to blow up even that modest assignment.

The new Poltergeist is a pleasant enough diversion, better as a low-simmer suspense story than a full-blown effects extravaganza.

It's an unsurprisingly ambitious movie from the notoriously, proudly headstrong Crowe, which makes it such a disappointment that it feels so blandly earnest and unexpectedly hesitant, with none of the unnerving conviction the actor often brings even to lightweight promotional appearances.

The film has only the sheer charm of its cast to get it by, and it says a lot about the actors that they nearly pull it off.

Wyatt, Monahan and Wahlberg never seem quite settled on what they want to say with the character or the story, so the film feels marked not by ambiguity but uncertainty.

There is just enough in Comet to keep it from fizzling out entirely – largely in the performances of Long and Rossum – but its conceits also get in the way of its characters, making it feel fussy and convoluted when it aims for something more simple and elegant.

Not out-and-out terrible enough to be completely dismissed, while also not particularly memorable either, perhaps the truest summation of the film is to say simply that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a movie that exists.

Grudge Match never settles on the movie it wants to be, wavering uncertainly between a jokey old-guys comedy and something more dramatic and heartfelt.

The movie has a fan's heart, a sense of loving every goofball moment, but as directed by Mike Mendez it also seems perpetually caught between being a spoof or playing it straight and winds up falling between the cracks rather than rising above.

The effects may be cheap and unconvincing, the sets spare, the costumes from some unwanted back rack, but Argento still brings enough moments of kinky madness to his not-great "Dracula" to indicate there may yet be greatness lurking within him.

A messy brew that is a bit too slack to get all the way to actually being good.

One Direction: This Is Us is not the raw confessional that title might imply but rather both a primer and new product presentation.

Kick-Ass 2 is a lesser version of what it appears to be, an uncertain jumble rather than a true exploration of outrage, violence and identity.

Breaking the Girls isn't exactly a throwaway, but more an extended act of teasing foreplay, a movie that is fine for what it is but also never really shifts into something more.

Just as with the 2011 film "The Smurfs," the new The Smurfs 2 is a passable mediocrity.

Solidly done if somewhat unremarkable, there is nothing particularly wrong with "Broken," nothing that needs fixing exactly, and yet it never fully comes together.

My Brother the Devil is a promising debut that marks El Hosaini as a filmmaker to watch, but one still very much in the developmental stages.

At times, Lipsky's storytelling is too cutely self-aware, trying too hard, making Molly's Theory of Relativity something of an intriguing, if not entirely successful, exoticism.

"Rubber" felt inventive and complex, but here Dupieux's absurdism is simply muddled, masking the fact he doesn't really have much to say.

Family Weekend is no worse than many of the dysfunctional family comedies that populate the Sundance Film Festival — "Little Miss Sunshine" is name-checked within the movie itself — but isn't any better either.

With good intentions and a warm heart but undone by uneven performances and shaky storytelling, Bob's New Suit never quite finds the right fit.

Though the film at times works scene by scene, Webley can't quite tie it all together. A disjointed jumble, The Kill Hole can't dig itself out.

The Last Exorcism Part II is an effectively unnerving, slow-burn supernatural horror tale. The film is smartly different enough from the original to survive on its own, though it lacks some of the first film's sense of surprise.

Phantom is a relatively tight, gripping story told with efficiency that makes room for its fine roster of actors to explore old-fashioned ideas on honor and loyalty.

Really the biggest problem with Dark Skies is that Stewart can never quite decide just what story he is telling — a slow-burn horror parable or paranoid invasion flick — or whether to focus on this character or that, instead struggling to string together scares regardless of how they fit together overall.

The first "Ghost Rider" film, directed by Mark Steven Johnson, was sort of a fizzy goof, the kind of movie where you don't expect much and then think, "Hey, that was actually kind of fun." Spirit of Vengeance, though, is undone by increased expectations, as promising more only makes it feel they are somehow delivering less.

Though its elusive character is undoubtedly part of its strength, Dogtooth ends up feeling somehow like a dodge and a sidestep. As a film, it's pure and singular, but it's not quite fully formed enough to be what one could call truly visionary.

There is much clattering and clanking plus a couple of songs; some of the gothic-inspired, neo-Victorian visuals are quite arresting; and the corpse bride herself is, dare one say, surprisingly hot. But the whole thing just isn’t much fun.

Intermittently fun, but mostly just efficiently passable.

It'll give fans exactly what they expect while passing unseen by anyone else.

There is something fun about a movie that so brazenly portrays excessive pot smoking.

The plot frequently resets/realigns itself in the fashion of "Lost" or "Alias," as good guys become bad guys, friends become enemies, and combatants become lovers. To portray confusion and uncertainty is one thing; to make a film this unsure of itself, wracked by its own faulty footing and reticence, is quite another.

Tamara simply doesn't cover all the bases in its drive to be both a grubby teen splatter flick and a more high-minded thriller.

Watt seems to want to say something about the role of fate and happenstance in creating connections between people, but she never quite brings the strands of her ideas together.

Frankly, the story behind Manna From Heaven is a truckload more interesting than the movie itself.

The film essentially grinds along in second gear. A promising debut, Dirt Boy nevertheless fails to fully deliver.

Cholodenko's new film relies on easy caricature over true character such that the film fails to build emotional momentum or resonance.

What at times feels like a maniacal romp becomes just another sporadically funny, but mostly lame, piece of disposable product.

The laugh always comes first, and Myers' puppy-dog tenacity to that cast-iron tenet of low comedy, disarming and even somewhat charming in the first film, now has an air of careerist desperation about it.

Roaming freely between comedy (which mostly works) and drama (which mostly doesn't) before settling on trite sentimentality, the film may not be an altogether unpleasant way to pass the time, but, ultimately, the innocuous Captain Pantoja doesn't earn its stripes.

And whenever the film shifts from spunky "let's put on a show" fun to overly earnest drama, it slows to a crawl, with mawkish performances that fail to rise above the soggy material.

Undiscovered is beaten on all counts by TV’s "Entourage" and "Unscripted" in its portrayal of the aspirational lifestyle and its end-of-the-rainbow spoils.

There is a great divide between a film about people in the throes of aimless, meandering lives and a film that is simply aimless and meandering. Smokers Only never acknowledges, let alone bridges, that gap.

Watching Americano is like hearing a long story about someone else's holiday, and while it seems everyone had a nice time, it's too bad they didn't shoot a better film while they were there.

Gores certainly seems to be enjoying himself, and diplomacy and plain old good taste prevent one from saying much of anything about his screen performance. Arnold doesn't merit such kindness, nor does producer and director Penelope Spheeris, whose work barely rates above the level of rote competence.

Mo’Nique's character here is so underwritten that the actress doesn't get a chance to really capitalize on her extra screen-time. Her sassy forte may be talking so straight-up she sounds crazy, but she seems a little advanced to be doing "yo mamma" jokes.

There may be an audience out there for any movie about gospel music, regardless of how bad it is, but as filmmaking or as drama, it's hard to imagine anyone singing the praises of this one.

Doogal is one of those pickup-and-redub jobs, the original version having been made by European studio Pathé based on a 1960s British children’s show, "The Magic Roundabout." And lacking even the minimal pop-cultural pizzazz of "Hoodwinked," the story, dialogue and animation here really are for-kids-only.

Has moments of real interest, but they require wading through a lot of dead air.

Director Erik Van Looy has filmmaking chops to spare, and while he has created a sharply shot and crisply paced film, he isn't able to make it all cohere.

It’s a tantalizing idea - a little rom-com sugar to help the Big Pharma exposé pill go down -but Slattery-Moschkau is simply not a writer of the caliber necessary to pull off that delicate balancing act.

With its chatty, overstuffed patter, Hoodwinked strains at the seams to look with it, like one of those dressed-alike Beverly Hills mother-daughter combos. Having said all that, the songs (yes, there are songs, too), mostly written by Todd Edwards, provide an unexpected bright spot.

Among the film's other drawbacks are how conventional it feels in its structure and strategy, often misguidedly going for the epic high-key feel of classic NFL Films on a low-key, DV budget.

The sex-comedy-for-girls idea never quite takes off.

Not for the squeamish (a guy rips out his own arm, for goodness' sake), the film is nevertheless more than just a gonzo gross-out. But not by much.

While there is something to be said for a movie that aims to grapple with some of the “big questions” about the very nature of existence and reality, Down the Rabbit Hole makes teen sex comedies, action-chick sci-fi and the other usual multiplex chum seem like high-minded discourse.

A project such as Operation Homecoming should shed light on their experiences, but Robbins' film just falls short. [06 Apr 2007, p.E17]

During the all-important underwater sequences, the three-dimensional effects are surprisingly muted.