Nick Pinkerton

All Good Things patina of fictionalization has not prevented the cagey Durst Organization from threatening a lawsuit. They need not worry, though. The film succeeds only in indicting its authors.

Single-mindedly action-oriented to the point where Milius's film seems relatively ruminative.

The same laxity given to the performers extends, unfortunately, to the film's structuring, a lazy Susan rotation between storylines and monotonous settings.

His (Snyder) mash-up set pieces ("Call of Duty" meets "Castlevania," etc.) blend into so-awesome-they're-awful slo-mo monotony, and the awful sisterhood stuff in between makes you anticipate the action as though waiting for the bus.

The cocky presumption of charm that isn't actually there is precisely the problem with action-comedy This Means War.

Bereavement-miraculously as dull as its title-is neither far gone enough to be funny nor well thought-out enough to be disturbing.

Anyone who's seen a martial-arts picture expects a certain amount of thumb-twiddling between the big numbers, but director Andrew Lau's handling of exposition is markedly poor, distended with rubbish plotlines, flashy sadism, and overwrought jingo.

Not everything that is human is naturally interesting, and Schleinzer approaches his subject not as an investigator, but as though covering up a crime scene and scrubbing it of anything that might provide insight or empathy or psychological traction.

Sillen ennobles the havoc of his life with a measure of down-and-out romance, but no moments really puncture a viewer, and the darkness is all too easily shaken off.

(It) notably liberated itself from the fusty tradition that a sex comedy should either titillate or tickle an audience.

It's not a total wash. Faris's ample talents are squandered with a should-I-stay-or-should-I-go romantic dilemma, but there's just enough of Demetri Martin doing a prick act, and Fogler excels as a Rabelaisian dynamo.

Boom was produced under the auspices of pal Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, which has a tendency toward broad-comic morality tales and multiplex populism that often shades into remedial-level pandering.

The crazy-barista melodrama-slapstick collision seems not like a nimble twist, but tone-deaf blundering-what once came naturally now seems like trying too hard, as the Farrellys face their own mid-life crisis.

Like a child bluffing at knowing a secret, St. Nick teases and frustrates.

Silent House does superficially spiff up the haunted-house movie, but it's not built to last.

The film is flecked with moments of interest, though this decidedly minor and not particularly cinematographic affair is clearly best suited to television.

Scaling new heights of inessentiality is The Beat Hotel, which chronicles the period, roughly 1958–63.

None of the dialogue, presumably arrived at through improvisation, is either funny or memorable.

Much as I want to believe in Cortés, who is clearly talented and ambitious, there is just too much in Red Lights that encourages agnosticism.

The production design is nice enough, but Bouchareb's four-country co-production isn't an epic-it's just long.

Ceremony is a callow movie: Winkler exhibits no comprehension of the class anxieties he addresses, and extends precocity into adulthood. That callowness is Ceremony's subject scarcely makes it funnier.

Really, the movie has absolutely everything except the light touch required for unaffected charm - the mugging is savage - a single piece of memorable original music, or a production number that's celebratory rather than trampling.

The inevitable all-you-can-eat orgy of zombies pulling stringy mouthfuls away from red, wet rib cages may satisfy gorehounds, but big set pieces showing how atrophied Romero's cutting and tactical framing have become is depressing to anyone who has valued his films for more than just splatter.

To understand Apart's Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown tommyrot any better, one would need a psychic bond to first-time writer/director Aaron Rottinghaus, for his movie doesn't do much of a job explaining it.

It's the kind of thing you feel you should laugh at through a phlegmy, hacking cough-and it does get laughs, if inconsistently, predictable given the circumstances of production.

Rather than viewing moral chaos from the eye of a storm, director David Pomes watches his movie blow off into the storm itself.

Michael's motivations remain arbitrary and inscrutable, right down to his entry into the seminary. This is brought up by a number of characters, who interpret his implausible career decision as A Sign. It is-of bad writing.

"Arrested Development's" Tony Hale nearly overcomes the gently worthless script, playing Annie's dork suitor, and convincingly transforming himself from toad to prince.

Taken 2 rarely embodies the values of concision and focus that it extols, and any breathing room from the hurtling narrative illogic only allows the audience opportunity to notice slips in Mills's father-knows-best infallibility.

If Skateland is the sort of work Ritchie's future holds, it's proof that some talents are better off staying home.

Anderson['s] lavish visual imagination is matched to a placeholder idea of character that's almost avant-garde in its generic stylization, dialogue buffed of personality by passing through 10,000 previous movies.

It all smacks of that overdone "passion for literature" common in English teachers who send any healthy-minded kid running from books.

Ultimately, however, People Like Us is infected with the "life-affirming" pox; this means making a narrative priority of redeeming everyone before adequately explaining them.

Unrelentingly mundane, as if made with the sole purpose of draining the topic of adultery of any prurient interest.

While making a priority of squeezing in every usable bit of celebrity face-time, Mansome passes by potentially interesting digressions without more than a wayward glance.

Possible resulting "fun" is only slightly mitigated by contemplation of the wearisome decadence of American popular culture.

Each segment feels more like an extended trailer for itself than a sound narrative unit. Maybe this incompletion is purposeful, but it's a problem when what's invariably elided or taken for granted is the very human connection and commiseration that is supposedly the most vital force in the universe.

There are moments when the tedium loosens you to melt into the landscape, and you swear you can hear the moss on the rocks start talking.

Lockout is, not unexpectedly, a potluck of derivative references.

"Wood" is still by far Depp and Burton's best collaboration, exhibiting the balance of tone between kitsch parody and zealous fantasy that's missing in Dark Shadows, less a resurrection than a clumsy desecration.

A send-up of a communal project made of vague goals and empty postures that is ultimately indistinguishable from its target.

Par for the course in blowout CGI adaptations, a great deal of detail and bustle is gained at the expense of charm - for all the miracles these armies of animators can achieve, they have yet to successfully reproduce a humble artist's line.

It should be mentioned that Garriott's father, Owen, was himself a Skylab astronaut, a fact of which much is made - but that only more obviously shows Man on a Mission for what it is: a puffed-up home movie.

With neither the moral bite of satire nor a voluptuary surrender that really basks in shallowness, this is a vague, unsatisfying work.

The Dark Knight Rises is a shallow repository of ideas, but as a work of sheer sensation, it has something to recommend.

Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay.

Too scattered in its arguments and piecemeal in its sources to weave together a convincing institutional condemnation.

Has the parallel between the actor and the mercenary's trade ever been so overt?

The rather unappealing character of Axel is indulged with every opportunity for redemption, as Spacey is indulged with every opportunity to showboat.

Aspires to nothing more or less than carrying along an audience through a string of unremarkable kills, often involving high-jumping fish.

Despite such ubiquitous timidity, one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions here.

Refraining images of the mind-controlled sleepwalker Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seem to submit Adrien as a Svengali-like figure to the kids, even as his "Iggy used to say . . ." pickups to fresh-faced scenesters don't seem to pay off.

The exuberant editing and puke-into-the-camera edginess indicate a film more interested in boasting of hell-raising than in exorcising it.

The screenplay is by Variety editor Steven Gaydos, and it combines a working knowledge of on-set dynamics with corny cinephile in-joking, frequently elevated by the fresh evidence of Hellman's craft in the tranquil, largely nocturnal atmosphere, until the closing-credits song ruins everything.

Gigandet fills every close-up with flirtatious face wrinkles, embarrassed smiles, and anything else he can think of, to the point where Jake seems downright spastic; although not terribly good at acting, Gigandet seeks to compensate for this fact by doing a lot of it.

This is intended as one of those kid's comeuppance stories, in which a new maturity is won through contact with salt-of-the-earth types and honest labor but is done with an almost total lack of charm.

As de-mythologizings go, Trollhunter has neither the wit, nor art, nor social insight to honor the legacy of George A. Romero's "Martin."

Graynor is a muddle of kooky indie girlfriend and materialistic fortune hunter; Hanks has neither threat nor pathos at his command.

Game performances and a couple of half-laughs, sure, but this is the screen comedy equivalent of the televised Yule log.

Weixler is an alert, mobile comedienne who deserves better than this awkward pause, nervous stammer, social-anxiety comedy.

It's impossible to imagine how anything this convoluted could have already earned a sequel, but it has.

Arguably a good lesson for kids about preserving our environment, To the Arctic is definitely a threat to our equally endangered good taste.

Your Highness plays like a dirty-joke blooper reel made by the cast of a junky sword-and-sorcery epic.

Rid of Me is a bad movie, but at least it's a flailing, innocent badness.

If the success of epic storytelling were determined by the sheer number of unnecessary on-screen name tags, 1911 would be a masterpiece. But the small matters of characterization, audience identification, and scene-making are entirely absent here.

It's a pathetic missed opportunity - and one occasion of actually going broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Sauvaire, hesitating between a protest picture and a glam-squalid imagist orgy, only succeeds in scattering human rubble across the screen.

It's an overloaded, overwrought, profligate production inclined to hysteria and, in cumulative effect, something like being pelted with scenes until buried alive - but it helps keep it from being boring.