Mark Olsen

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Outpost is a visceral battle picture but little more.

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.

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?”

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

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

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.

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.

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.