Nick Pinkerton

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.