Pete Vonder Haar

A sweetly engaging effort that manages a fair amount of charm and innocence in spite of the rather seedy surroundings.

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.

Not many actors could do justice to the vanilla story presented by Grogan and screenwriters Scott Frank and Don Roos, but Wilson and Aniston – two of the blandest, most uninteresting actors working today – are just the actors to pull it off.

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.

Dark Water isn't a bad horror movie, simply because it isn’t horror at all: a full hour passes before anything remotely scary occurs, and all the suspenseful scenes take place in the final ten minutes (and are all fully shown in the trailer). What's left is tedium and a seemingly endless build-up to nothing much at all, making it a bad movie. Period.

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.

300 is a feast for the senses (well, two of them anyway) and an impressive technical achievement. More than that, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

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.

When the most sympathetic character in your comedy is a skinhead, you’re definitely on to something, and Jensen definitely is here.

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.

It looks stylish, sure, but the script is laughable and the acting is ridiculous.

Scoop is about 50 minutes of plot padded with 40 minutes of Woody being Woody.

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.

Seriously, it's a bad sign for your "kids movie" when the kids in question are asking their parents, "When is something going to happen?"

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

A typical end-of-the-year dump film, in that there's almost no reason to see it.

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.

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

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

Whatever the final analysis, Reno 911!: Miami is a welcome breath of fresh air in a year that's already forced audiences to endure the likes of "Norbit."

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

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.

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

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

You won’t want to sit through.

It doesn't hurt to have excellent support from the likes of Emma Roberts (as Ed's love interest Eloise) and Sarah Silverman, surprisingly winning as Ed's affection-starved mother. But it's Wolff and Rourke who have to carry the load, and for the most part they do.

The Calling breathes new life into a moribund genre by touching oft-ignored themes and offering a bit of introspection to go along with the obligatory slashed throats and biblical portents.

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.

Fails to satisfy.

As it is, you'd get the same level of excitement watching "T.J. Hooker" reruns.

Granted, you'e going to enjoy it a lot more if you spent a healthy chunk of your late teens/early 20s playing Bullshit and doing keg stands, but it's far from the worst comedy of the year.

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

Could have been both a gripping courtroom drama and a chilling "is she or isn’t she?" horror tale. What we have instead is a movie that drifts, almost unmanned, from plot point to plot point.

The movie wastes the talents of its two leads by refusing to take any risks with the material, marching in lockstep to every genre cliché.

Better than I expected, but since I expected it to be a horrific failure, that isn’t saying much.

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.

The only mildly interesting bit of casting comes from bringing Cartwright back (as one of Bennell’s patients).

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Even understanding the audience for which Kicking & Screaming is aiming, it's hard not to notice the flaws.

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.

The biggest loser in all of this is Chan, whose legacy over here won’t be his 20+ years as a martial arts pioneer, but rather his playing straight man to the likes of Tucker and Owen Wilson.