Pete Vonder Haar

The real problem is that Sex and the City is, except for a few laughs, mostly just irritating.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What Flags of Our Fathers is not, however, is moving, evocative, or very unique.

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.

Dreamgirls is a better musical than "Chicago" or "Rent," but then, that isn't really saying much.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Benjamin Button is pretty much just "Gump" with better cinematography.

Predictably ridiculous.

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

I can't condemn it outright, but damned if I can remember anything (aside from Izzard's performance) that would make me recommend it.

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

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."

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.

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 strength is in the performances. And they're enough to make Steel City worth a look.

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.

Almost unforgivably sentimental.

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

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.

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.

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

Watching this movie is like sitting on your couch for two hours to catch a little network prime time: you may be mildly entertained, but damned if you’ll remember any of it five minutes later. On the plus side, you probably won’t care.

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

1408 isn’t great cinema, but does an adequate job in spite of its flaws.

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

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.

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.

For my money, no movie comes close to capturing the high school experience like "The Substitute."

It'll appeal to that segment of the population that goes to movies like this on Valentine's Day, but other than that, Something New feels pretty worn.

Is Walk Hard” funny? Sure; very much so, in places. At least I think it is. It might just be the “Date Movie” talking.

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

Once you become accustomed to her material and begin to anticipate it, some of the shine comes off the act.

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

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

In the end, nothing about The Interpreter strikes us as very original.

Stop-Loss is a bit uneven. Mixed messages abound.

Let’s not lose sight of what's really been accomplished here. Alex and Marty – just like Batman and Robin, Fred and Barney, and Snagglepuss – are welcome additions to the gay animation pantheon.

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

As it is, Flightplan is half of a pretty good movie. But to maintain that impression, I recommend you take a nap for the last 40 minutes.

A film about a family billed as "bizarrely dysfunctional" – is a pleasant enough experience. However, it probably could have used a little more of the bizarre or dysfunctional to spice things up.

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

The plot is paper-thin, and the set-up is beyond contrived (a plant waterer?), but there are a surprising number of laughs, and the saccharine content is kept to a minimum. A mostly enjoyable experience, all told.

The Wicker Man isn't all that bad a movie; it's visually striking and ambitious in some ways. It just fails to bring enough to the table to fully distance itself from the original.

Has a few high points, but feels far too disjointed and slapdash to favorably compare to what came before.

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.

Depressingly inert.

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.

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."

It's a bit of a shaky first screenwriting effort for Coupland, but not without its charms.

“Syriana's” dumber, louder cousin.

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

Give Harsh Times an "E" for effort, but not much else.

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.

Watchmen is indeed gorgeous, with Gibbons' original work reproduced and – in some cases – improved upon by detailed F/X, but even at a healthy two hours and 41 minutes the story feels truncated. Even abrupt.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Very little in Reservation Road ultimately rings true, which makes the anguished theatrics on display that much more exasperating.

There's no denying Banderas' talent as an actor, and he's admittedly fun to watch. The rest of the cast are serviceable, meaning Woodard finds new ways to show us how this Latin heartthrob melts her icy exterior.

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.

As a look at the disenfranchised of America, Explicit Ills could use some work. As a debut, however, it's quite promising. I'm looking forward to seeing what Webber comes up with next.

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.

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.

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.

For an origin story about one of the most compelling and important characters in history, The Nativity Story is pretty damn boring.

Murphy doesn't have much of a handle on juggling laughs with pathos, and this makes some of the more touching scenes unintentionally amusing. The film, like Augusten's life, is uneven but not without its charms.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Aside from the slightly fresh take on a familiar concept, The Boss Baby is barely a moderate success as a kid's flick. Perhaps it will come as good news to studio and audience alike that it works much better as an existential horror movie.

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.

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

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

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.

Plays like a 108 minute episode of Hawaii 5-0, minus the exotic locale.

Intermittently amusing.

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

It’s more than adequate as an old school action movie slightly updated for modern audiences.

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.

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.

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