Melissa Anderson

Immediately forgettable family entertainment, suitable for release only in the dung-heap month of January.

The abundant charm of first-time actor James Rolleston, playing the 11-year-old of the title in Boy, doesn't quite save the aimless, nostalgia-woozy second feature from Taika Waititi (2007's Eagle vs. Shark).

By the end of Christine — and of Christine — the reporter is at once burdened with too many signifiers (is Chubbuck a tragic heroine of second-wave feminism? of our current macabre newsscape? of untreated depression?) and a cipher. As with most biopics that resort to maximalism, more is less.

A film only Hilton Kramer could love, (Untitled) aims wide and misses.

Forget "Son of Brazil": This syrupy origin story/biopic on the nation's beloved reformist president, whose second term ended in 2010, should be titled Mama's Boy.

Breezy, superficial documentary.

Impersonally directed by cinéma du look pioneer Luc Besson, The Lady was written by first-timer Rebecca Frayn, whose script has all the elegance and nuance of Google Translate.

Unconvincing, flawed matriarch Mendes and junior showboat Ramirez appear to be acting in entirely different movies.

For a film about the perils of too much talk, there's quite a lot of babbling presented as profundity. The political statements in Pontypool, much like those in another recent Canadian offering, Atom Egoyan's trite terrorism hand-wringer "Adoration," seem all the less provocative for appearing several years too late--McDonald's film might have had more punch if it were released when Bluetooth first rolled out.

Though Crawford's bangs and facial hair are the most art-directed aspect of the movie, he's costumed to look like a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia (Madison Avenue branch).

Beyond fans of Mélanie Laurent--who furiously fingers a fiddle and wears flashback wigs--The Concert may appeal to those who delight in stereotypes.

While rooting for the marine mammals (and wishing for more footage of them - and even of their animatronic incarnations), your heart will also go out to the cast, stuck even more pitiably in syrupy manufactured crises.

Though lazily mocking hyper-vigilant parenting, the film treats the moldiest clichés - as gospel.

It's uncertain whether or not Taranto and debuting helmer Anders Anderson looked at the "Law & Order: SVU" and "Cold Case" episodes that also used the crime as a plot thread; the sub-televisual incompetence of their film suggests not.

Greenspan and Harmon's paltry song of themselves concludes with five minutes of outtakes, capping the self-love.

As generic and impersonal as a new credit card offer, Jodie Foster’s Money Monster is the latest big-studio production to try to cash in on populist outrage over Wall Street abuses and New Gilded Age inequality.

Isabelle and Gérard's regrets and laments about their parenting skills betray no bone-deep rue or shame but are delivered with all the conviction of two luminaries merely running their lines.

Wiig's cheering presence in an otherwise depleting project/cross-promoted product highlights the fact that Zoolander 2 is a referendum on dying industries: not just the portfolio of Condé Nast titles that Wintour oversees as artistic director, but also the Frat Pack.

If Markell's instincts for script exhumation are questionable, she's the victim of even worse timing: Who thought releasing her film 10 days after Liv Ullmann and Cate Blanchett's praised-to-the-high-heavens "A Streetcar Named Desire" closed was a good idea?

Glatze's blog entries are read aloud by Franco, an infamous graduate-degree collector not so long ago, in a voice that suggests poetry-MFA earnestness, horrible acting, or both.

Grossly exaggerating his characters' either/or constructions, Moodysson forgoes any real ideas about the world's vast inequities, content to pummel his audience with portentous global guilt-tripping.

She is also played by Sarah Jessica Parker, a performer so aggressively determined to make us like her that no work-life conflicts in the film ever gain any traction; we're too distracted by the actress's manic tics (the head tilts, the popping of the wounded-deer eyes) to notice any real adversity.

The tears and recriminations, eruptions and reconciliations hold a begrudging fascination for about an hour.... After that, though, the volume is never turned down and these characters are never less than the most unendurable company.

Outrageously sentimental and retrograde.

Audiard himself might have benefited from a simple reminder of left from right; his rudderless film confuses a pileup of preposterous, sentimental scenarios with genuine emotion.

Yet it's not entirely forgettable. I'll long be haunted by Dennis Quaid's manic performance as a palm-greasing dad who seems to be under the influence of bath salts-tweaked-out acting that matches the camera movements.

Hough emits all the charisma of a personal assistant.

Hoariest of all are the exhortations to make distinctions between "fiction" and "life."