Pete Vonder Haar

A subject like the Holodomor demands something more than a TV-movie aesthetic and pitched battle scenes featuring a couple dozen combatants.

The unique setting aside, there's just not much to sink your fangs into.

Director Adam Randall keeps the action tightly paced and the dialogue to a refreshing minimum, helping to heighten Matt's growing isolation.

Standoff holds up as a welcome alternative to its more strident brethren.

While his story is moving, Godspeed would perhaps have been more powerful if Barry spent more time balancing Jones's relative good fortune with the monumental hurdles faced by the less fortunate with similar injuries, instead of touching upon the issue in the film's final minutes.

Predictably ridiculous.

What starts as a somewhat charming — if prosaic — story of love in the time of gentrification inexplicably spends most of its third act mired in the finer points of apartment hunting, like a tastefully lit HGTV show.

Home Sweet Hell is a pleasantly unpleasant dark comedy, one that gives new meaning to "detached and subdivided" in the mass production zone.

The tension in Missionary is surprisingly effective, especially given how easy it should be to put out an APB on a guy on a freaking bicycle, and there are enough scares to remind you to keep the chain latched when those polite young men in the slacks and neckties drop by.

It's serviceable.

A broad and occasionally disjointed indictment of the New York art scene and horrorcore rap that leaves no broad side of a barn untargeted.

Intermittently refreshing yet thoroughly unpleasant.

Mostly, Guilty of Romance seems content allowing characters to verbally abuse each other before eventually reaching the inevitable conclusion that life is a burden and all love is illusory.

Sommers's script relies on rapid-fire banter between Odd, girlfriend Stormy Llewellyn (Addison Timlin) — yes, that's her real name — and Chief Porter (Dafoe), but occasionally feels forced.

It's in the film's second half that Parkland goes all Tony Romo and fumbles. Instead of becoming truly engrossing, it threatens to descend into unreserved melodrama.

The doc affords us a look into a world rarely seen by the lumpenproletariat, though we could have done with fewer aerial/time-lapse shots and more history.

As an official history, Spark shines adequate light; I just wish it had spent a little more time on the shadows.

Writer-director Clément Michel can't escape the usual infant-related movie pitfalls.

Hunky Dory isn't blazing any trails, but if you're not wholly burned out by the genre and/or look back fondly on the Glam era, you'll find musicals haven't yet completely gone to the (diamond) dogs.

Firewall’s predictable second half betrays the film's early promise.

The Longest Yard lives or dies with its physical humor, a form of recent comedy I like to call slapstick sadism.

On the whole, The Brothers Grimm is a mess; a formerly daring director’s attempt to cash in on big studio backing even after the rug has been pulled out from under him.

Works best when it sticks to some of the tenets of successful horror; namely, gore and surprise.

One of the drawbacks to rushing your sequel to theaters is that there's not a lot of time to hone dialogue and performances.

It's noisy, nonsensical, and will fade from your consciousness even before you make it out of the theater lobby, but it's entertaining enough, and Tamahori throws us a few curve balls to keep things interesting.

Leatherheads is as trifling as Clooney’s second movie (“Good Night and Good Luck”) was significant, but that’s okay. It succeeds where so many other romantic comedies fail because of a superior script and because everyone involved has the good sense not to take themselves too seriously.

It has its share of eye-rolling moments, but at its heart there's a decent story.

Should have billed itself as a fairy tale, as that’s the only possible way to swallow what Prince-Bythewood and Kidd are feeding us.

Like all of his previous films, it's visually arresting - if any recent film embodies the concept of cinema as poetry, this it it - but unlike "Pi" or "Requiem for a Dream," these aren't characters we're ever invested in.

Too much of the time, Jackson is a complete blank, like he's bored with his own story.

Right out of the gate, we realize that bringing the series to the big screen makes the flaws that much more obvious. The voices are too thin, the music and lyrics too simplistic, and the production values are – frankly – too "televisual."

The movie is engrossing and well-acted throughout (especially Khan), but ultimately leaves us less optimistic about the prospects for peace.

Not only did those so-called "demons" take the form of animals, but they actually talked!

The "star-studded" cast seems to have been cast according to their Premiere power ranking and/or desperation for exposure.

The direction is lackluster, the child actors – with the exception of Eisenberg – are pretty dismal, and the whole thing is about 15 minutes too long.

A curious little film. On the surface, it's a story about one man's mission to create an Orthodox monastery in Denmark, and along the way it manages to say something about everyone's desire to be remembered after they pass away.

The film is depressingly wholesome. In that respect, it accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to distract the children of America from the horror of their eventual futures for a couple more hours.

Something of a letdown. Previous statements aside, I understand Warner Bros. has to set the table for "Half-Blood Prince" and "Deathly Hallows," but too much of Phoenix is filler. And with only two movies left, we better get to the main course in short order.

1. It has the potential to supplant "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" as the greatest audience participation movie of all time. 2. It is, simultaneously, one of the worst and best movies I’ve ever seen.

Unfortunately, Black Sheep takes so long to get going and misses so many easy opportunities for classic comedy it has to be regarded as a noble failure.

It's impressive enough to look at, and the voice talent – especially Black and Hoffman - doesn't disappoint, but all the CGI wankery and high-end talent only barely allows Kung Fu Panda to rise above cliché.

What ultimately keeps The Weather Man from being a better film than it is that it doesn't no when to quit.

While The Break-Up fancies itself the heir apparent to other vindictive failed relationship movies like "Modern Romance" and "War of the Roses," its lead actors lack the comparable appeal to hold our interest

Won't make anybody’s "best of" lists a year from now, but it's nowhere near as offensive as some other examples of this moldy genre.

Monotonous. For while it offers a few precious laughs, Talladega Nights simply apes the look and feel of most recent Ferrell movies.

Comes up short in many ways, but none more so than its failure to fulfill Penn's and Zaillian's desire to provide the catalyst for political sea change.

Let's be honest; a great deal of the sh-- you find funny when you're high really isn't (as anyone who's smoked a few bowls and laughed like a hyena to "Assy McGee" can attest). So hopefully nobody will be too disappointed when I tell them that "Express" is largely hit and miss.

A handful of nifty battle scenes and some decent performances aren't quite enough to make Kingdom memorable.

How much you join in will depend on how big a fan you are of the collegiate comedy formula, how many times you've seen "Animal House" and "Caddyshack," and how much you hate Long in those smarmy Mac commercials.

It's worth a look, even taking into consideration the lack of zombies.

Intermittently amusing.

Your enjoyment of Alpha Dog may very well depend on how put off you are by these facts, as well as how much you buy Timberlake in his role, and how in the mood you are to sit through "River’s Edge" set in the "Entourage" universe.

An above average film, and features fine performances (Theron and McDormand are probably stone locks for more Oscar nominations), but be wary of the advertising pointing out the film's similarities to movies like "Erin Brockovich."

Doesn't do much besides giving original "Ringu" and "Ringu 2" director Hideo Nakata the chance to strut his stuff in front of a wide-release audience.

It's funnier than "Wild Hogs," which is about as ringing an endorsement as I'm capable of these days.

As with "Napoleon Dynamite," Hess' sense of humor is an acquired taste, where all the characters speak in peculiar cadences and are afflicted with a terminal case of the "quirkies." What’s unfortunately missing from Nacho Libre is much in the way of humor.

Land falls well short of the greatness of Romero’s previous zombie efforts.

Exactly the kind of thing most of us have in mind when we think "popcorn movie." It's largely brainless, pretty to look at, and produced solely as a lead-in to another moneymaking sequel for Disney.

Younger children getting in on the ground floor of fantasy will enjoy the film.

Has some nice touches. Cheadle is capable as always, and Paula Newsome kills as his acerbic receptionist.

Every so often you catch glimpses of a better movie behind the simplistic structure and formulaic plot.

The action IS pretty engaging, Sao Feng and his gang of South Asian cutthroats are a nice addition, and the constant plot explication does require you to pay attention.

It's a simple and sweet-natured movie, and one that seems appropriate even for the very young.

Almost unforgivably sentimental.

If you're over the age of 11, there's obviously not much reason to see this.

Fracture may be smarter than the majority of movies out there, but it's not half as clever as it thinks it is.

The movie's front-loaded with puerile, junior high humor (and, admittedly, several laugh out loud moments), which is fine, but all this still followed by an increasingly awkward and clichéd third act.

There are a handful of intense sequences and a few scenes of squirm-inducing gore in The Ruins, but not much else.

Overall, New York Doll is an affectionate (occasionally too much so) look at Arthur Kane.

Fortunately for Redford, Lions for Lambs is a less ham-handed effort than Sayles’ “Silver City,” but it’s a near thing.

Spends too much time straddling the line between exuberant carnage and serious plotline when it should've gleefully backflipped into the former. Grudgingly recommended, but only if you've put your cerebral cortex in neutral for the evening.

I wanted to like Superman Returns, but Singer and company are so concerned about doing justice to Superman’s past, they fail to generate much interest in what, if any, future the franchise might have.

Diggers isn't a bad film, but the underlying premise - the longing one feels to escape from a dead-end, small town life - has been so beaten to death in the movies that no amount of accurate 70s design or subtlety in the performances can hide the fact.

Seriously, that kid is creepy as hell.

Had Lucky You played strictly as a father-son drama set against the background of competitive Texas Hold 'Em, it would've been a much better movie based on the strength of Hanson's direction and Duvall's performance alone. But no, somewhere along the line they had to make this a romance, and that's the movie's fatal flaw.

"The Beginning" is a better movie than the 2003 remake, even if the plot is understandably similar. There are only so many ways hapless teens can get brutally slaughtered, after all, but Liebesman and company keep things appropriately creepy, right down to aping the look of the 1974 original.

Is love a disease, as Marquez possibly wanted us to believe? Maybe, but in the case of this adaptation, it’s more of a laughing sickness.

It ain't art, and it's dumber than I'd like, but I don't imagine you were expecting Kieslowski.

Formulaic and creaky as a Harrison Ford action sequence, but sufficiently gussied up with good actors and a decent director so that you don’t entirely mind.

The biggest problem with Elizabethtown isn't in its shopworn theme, but that it's perhaps the first of Crowe's movies (though "Jerry Maguire"comes very close) that really feels forced.

Davis and company need to be taken to task for giving us a movie that makes rescue divers, arguably among the most death-defying of professionals, boring.

There’s a lot of talent up there on the screen, and some authentic laughs, but too much of it is comedy territory that was claimed long ago.

Cash is a legend, and deserving of a more thoughtful portrayal than what we’re offered here.

Some of the footage is exceptional, yet several of the more impressive stunts are shot from so far away on digital cameras that the resulting onscreen resolution is just a shade above god-awful.

Isn't as dark or sinister as its source material, but it comes closer than any other filmed attempts to this point. It may only be a decent movie, but it's a pretty fine PKD adaptation.

Starts off promisingly, but gets bogged down when it abandons humor for gravity.

There are glimpses of the wit McKenna displayed in “Prada,” but these brief gasps of life are quickly suffocated by the inevitable schmaltz.

In the plus column, Poseidon is a tightly-paced action movie that doesn’t depend too much on special effects for its thrills.

Computer movies have come a long way since the good old days of monitors projecting vector graphics on hackers’ faces, but there are still some forehead slappers in Untraceable.

Far from a disaster, but doesn't rank with Mann's best work.

Especially to anyone with kids, the film packs some punch. Apart from that, The Pursuit of Happyness is emotionally manipulative and way too glossy to really hit home.

As Ferrell’s films go, Semi-Pro is, honestly, pretty damn boring.

Dumb, loud, and ludicrous in the extreme, and I actually enjoyed it.

Honestly, this movie would've worked a lot better had the Red Sox not won the World Series.

There are some genuine scares to be had here, and not just of the “Boo!” variety.

It's a reasonably entertaining actioner, and Zwick doesn't shy away from depicting violence or the horrors of war, but as a social statement it falls a little short. And emeralds are prettier anyway.

Isn’t exactly dull, but it isn’t scary either.

For all the effort Giamatti gives in making George a convincing character, the movie itself, never quite gets off the ground. The feel is too deliberately peculiar, and Goldberger's detached style never gives us a reason to invest ourselves in anyone but George.