Pete Vonder Haar

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.

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

What this movie needed was a leaner narrative focusing on Earl and Marshall while keeping Moore’s character in the background. What we end up with is a goofy and occasionally enjoyable mix of horror, comedy, and action that can’t entirely shed its excess narrative flab.

A better-quality sequel, but that wasn't really too difficult. The original was one of the worst movies of 2005, and while "Rise" won't win any awards, it's (mostly) less offensive than its predecessor. Faint praise, but I'll be damned if I go any further than that.

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.

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

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.

Easily one of the most lackadaisical movies I've seen. Don't get me wrong, the plot is entertaining enough, and there are some genuine laughs, but almost everyone in the movie is half-a--ing it.

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.

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

“Syriana's” dumber, louder cousin.

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

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

It's serviceable.

It isn't going to set the world on fire, but it's perfectly acceptable for what it is.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Almost unforgivably sentimental.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The question isn't whether Nispel's remake is better than the 1980 original (it isn't) but whether anything original is brought into the mix. And minus a mild plot twist you"ll probably see coming from the first five minutes, there isn't.

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

Predictably ridiculous.

Doesn’t break any new ground – it actually steals from half a dozen other sci-fi movies – but it’ll make enough at the box office to justify further game flicks.

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

What, a white woman can’t take an innocent drive through the ghetto without arousing suspicion? What’s this world coming to?

The original “Elizabeth” was visually lush and quite engaging, but this is a sprawling mess.

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

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.

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

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

The release of Fantastic Four marks the beginning of the end for movies based on Marvel Comics' upper tier of characters.

The problem with Sandler’s latest movies is that he now feels the need to inject some sort of dramatic conflict in order to complete his character’s shallow story arc of maturation/redemption. Introducing such mawkish sentimentality causes the humor level in his films, never that elevated to begin with, to sink like America’s credibility overseas.

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

Depressingly inert.