Peter Travers

The pie looks delicious, but Labor Day feels stale.

It's stupid. It's in bad taste. It impossible. I know all that. Look, Quentin Tarantino killed Hitler in "Inglourious Basterds" and the neo-Nazis stayed quiet. It's a farce, people.

Brazilian director José Padilha (Elite Squad, Bus 174) soldiers on stolidly, but lacks the Dutch Verheoeven's abiding sense of mischief.

It's a bigger yawn than it sounds.

A ragtag charmer. You will laugh.

It's not much of a movie. But raging bull Robert De Niro, suited up to play for humor and heart, proves he can be a world-class charmer.

A dynamite Naomi Ackie acts and lip-synchs her heart out as the legendary songbird, but Whitney deserved a much better movie than this patchwork, cobbled-together biopic that barely skims the professional highs and personal lows that made up her tragically short life.

It’s the sort true-story premise would be a fascinating starting point for a movie … if said film had more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth.

Me, I just think it blows. What does it matter if you spend millions on a movie - love the talking, battling bears! - if the effects are cheesy, the story runs off on tangents and after watching the movie fail utterly to be the next Lord of the Rings, you just want to go home.

This sequel has the perfunctory vibe that comes from filmmakers who cynically believe the public will buy anything T. Rex-related, no matter how shoddy the goods or warmed-over the plot.

If Singleton, 25, stumbles, it is over ambition and not the complacency of a new Hollywood hotshot riding a trend.

The code talkers deserved better than a hollow tribute.

The Big Lebowski is the best movie ever set mostly in a bowling alley.

A sequel of twisted thrills and sly surprises.

What I can't buy is that Refn has made a movie this lifeless and devoid of human interest.

Robinson means to leave you in tears, no matter how heavy-handed his approach. But the sentimental ending that suggests all loose ends have been tied up does a disservice to the battle ahead and a war still to be won in the name of the people left to pick up the pieces.

As actor, screenwriter and dynamite debuting director, a seriously funny B.J. Novak takes aim at an America broken by disconnection. He doesn’t always hit his target, but when he does this tale of a New York liberal battling Texas gun nuts comes alive with mirth and menace.

Wahlberg could sleepwalk through this role, and does. See this movie and you'll surely follow his lead.

Does the script by William Nicholson sometimes hit the sentiment pedal too hard? It does. But look at the tale it's telling.

Charm magnets Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd do their best to lift this horror comedy out of the quicksand of cliches that surround it but it’s a losing proposition.

If you're a Gilliam junkie, as I am, you go with it, even when the script by Ehren Kruger (The Skeleton Key) loses its shaky hold on coherence.

Dench and Nighy are class personified. The secret here is merely to luxuriate in the pleasure of their company.

Recipe for nutso fun: Mix Zach Galifianakis with Robert Downey Jr. Apply the same mold John Hughes used for "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Have Todd Phillips stir with wack-ass abandon. Don't worry about missing ingredients, like plot. Serve to an audience ready to lap it up.

Though Wilson is always reason enough to see a movie, she’s stuck here in a fluffball that plays like warmed-over subplots from "Sex and the City."

Let Clarkson and Fanning take you to the rabbit hole of seductive enchantment that defines this movie. And don't ask what to do -- jump.

It's a bloodless, gutless piece of PG-13 fodder, geared to go down easy. That it does. It practically evaporates while you're watching it, lulling when you most want it to levitate.

It's as gorgeous as anything the French filmmaker has made and as empty as a Trump tweet.

The haunting, hypnotic, palm-sweating score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross promises way more than the film delivers. By the way, the birds in the box are meant to set off alarms when the monsters approach. They see way more than we do, which is part of the problem. Why should birds have all the fun?

Keep your eye on Kidman, whose kinky, kittenish performance turns unexpected emotional corners that pull you up short.

Acted with relish by a note-perfect cast -- a romantic comedy of true sophistication. There's a sting in every laugh.

Meryl Streep can do anything: sing, dance, do splits, act her heart out. She (almost) saves this clumsy, overwrought film version of the Abba musical that's been running on stages from Broadway to Barcelona since 1999.

Whatever this eye-popping head trip lacks in plausibility, it makes up for in flash and a sense of a world spinning off its axis.

It would be easy and convenient to dismiss Irreversible as blatant sensationalism. But Noe's bruising film is too artfully crafted to write off as exploitation.

So Risen joins the swelling ranks of faith-based films that pander to audiences instead of serving them.

The scares are Hichcock hand-me-downs.

Spacey holds center. He's a bonfire.

The Grinch offers a solid service to anyone with kids in need of a nap under a blanket of bland.

Though Poison Ivy is more than whoopee, audiences may find the movie easier to get off on than to get into. But why settle for the usual walk around the exploitation block when Shea offers a wild ride with the top down into uncharted territory?

Will Ferrell and Danny McBride can find the dumb fun in anything. Too bad that Land of the Lost is so much less than anything.

This live-action re-imagining of Disney’s 1941 animated classic may be the sweetest film Tim Burton has ever made. It’s also the safest.

The women in Rough Night are terrific company. They never wear out their welcome. You can't say the same for the movie.

There are funny scenes, nicely directed by Barry Levinson. Other stuff, involving De Niro's ex-wife (Robin Wright Penn) and their daughter (Kristen Stewart), are not much of anything. It's a tossup. Your call.

It's a mouthful of a title for a rowdy, ramshackle funfest that flies by on its spirited humor and surprising heart.

Aussie singer Natalie Imbruglia gets to play the babe, nothing more, but she does that brightly. The rest of the movie is a dim bulb.

The performances are uniformly terrific, finding the specific details that create a universal truth.

It’s the human devastation that gets short shrift in a movie that turns the hot, hilarious, out-for-blood Bernadette into the thing she hates most: conventional.

Money, madness, incest and murder! Just the recipe for a twisted mesmerizer of a movie, if it doesn't creep you out.

This one means well, a kiss-of-death review if there ever was one.

This flabby comedy deserves only one thing: to fall on its fat one.

As always, Tom Hanks is in there pitching, but this time it’s mostly softballs. The cliched plot about a reformed grumpy old man is so obvious you can see it from outer space.

It also doesn't grapple deeply enough with the core questions it raises, settling for telling a sob story that will go down easy at the box office. Still, you can't blame audiences too much for being seduced by two shining young stars in a movie romance that hits the spot, bitter and sweet.

In telling a tale of love across time, Aronofsky is sometimes guilty of creating arty, pretentious psychobabble. But in visual terms, he's trying to expose his own raw, romantic heart. Folly? Maybe. But a risk worth taking.

A blast of comic irreverence that serves as a starring vehicle for two stoner characters who had previously been relegated to the sidelines.

Malick has created a war film without a single scene of war, of Jewish persecution, of the thought process that helped Franz hold steadfast. It’s one thing to fashion a film about one man’s blind faith; it’s another to keep audiences in the dark about the fundamentals that made him human.

Preposterous can be defined in many, many ways. But for now, let's use the plot details of The Accountant as Exhibit A.

Even Dinklage and Fanning can’t give this failed experiment a heartbeat. You won’t wish for the end of world while watching I Think We’re Alone Now, just the end of the movie.

Trolls World Tour hits the home market at exactly the right time, celebrating music as a joyful, community experience that excludes no one. Nothing wrong with a movie, even this kiddie piffle, that steps up and does that.

Duvall missteps in trying to mesh suspense with a love story that also involves the woman (Kathy Baker) John J. lives with and her young daughter (Katherine Micheaux Miller), on whom he disturbingly dotes.

For stranding these talents in a one-gag movie that wears thin somewhere between the first choir practice and the second chase, the filmmakers should say a sincere Act of Contrition.

So what if this sequel plays like a mashup of random story threads. Thanks to Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Santa and the missus have never been this cool.

Like the 2010 original, The Expendables 2 is all sound and fury signifying nothing, when at the very least it should add up to big, dumb fun.

The best of what's onscreen is a mesmerizing mind-teaser.

A sappy-sweet romcom that seems to have been invaded by a screenwriter - one Geoff LaTulippe - with delusions that he's David Mamet.

It's a bummer that the jokes don't land often enough, especially in the final third when the tone takes a turn for the tame. WTF!?!

Papillon pushes too hard with diminishing returns. Though Hunnam and Malek give it everything they’ve got, they’re denied the chance to make their characters as indelible as McQueen and Hoffman did.

A slumming Jamie Foxx is cool to the max as a vampire hunter gunning down bloodsuckers in sunny LA. But you leave this goofy but mostly godawful action-comedy feeling pummeled, beaten down by an avalanche of sound and fury signifying the usual nothing.

The Avengers has it all. And then some. Six superheroes for the price of one ticket... It's also the blockbuster I saw in my head when I imagined a movie that brought together the idols of the Marvel world in one, shiny, stupendously exciting package. It's "Transformers" with a brain, a heart and working sense of humor. Suck on that, Michael Bay. [10 May 2012, p.74]

Though Yeon can still deliver memorable frights, like the car horn that literally does wake the dead, he can’t decide what kind of movie to make. So he does a genre mashup, tops it with a sappy ending, and hopes for the best. The result is decidedly uneven.

We could give you 21 reasons not to see 21 Bridges — and not single one that’s worth the price of admission.

We pity Linda, but it's no substitute for understanding her.

It’s shameless fluff wrapped in a blanket of bland. You won’t believe a word of this romcom knockoff, but JLo and Owen Wilson work real hard to convince you that love is the answer.

It's all about the ride, the relentless wallop and whoosh. But, hey, sometimes that's all a cine-junkie needs for a fix.

Sadly, what Parkland becomes is a crying shame.

John Carter bites off more than even Woola can chew, but it's built on something rare: wonder instead of Hollywood cynicism.

The infuriating cop–out ending reduces the premise to mush. I wanted to scream. Here goes: Arghh!

Starting at infantile and regressing hysterically from there, Step Brothers flies on the comic chemistry of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.

Cage and Caruso strike sparks in this riveting piece of pulp fiction, but it’s that first Kiss you’ll remember.

Say this for Emmerich, he's not stuffy. And he lucks out big-time with his cast.

This is Cruise's show. And he nails it. The patented smile is gone, replaced by a glower that makes Jack Reacher a dark and dazzling ride into a new kind of hell.

Wait till you get a load of this babe from hell in scenes that are sure to put the gorgeously lurid Romeo Is Bleeding on the Moral Majority’s shit list. The rest of us – those who believe it’s children and not adults who need protection from movie mayhem – will be too busy relishing the riveting fireworks display from Olin and Oldman in this scorcher of a thriller. Director Peter Medak (The Krays, The Ruling Class) keeps the action stylish, sexy and fiendishly funny. The film rarely makes a lick of sense, but it’s compulsively watchable.

Does romantic comedy have to come off as sugared stupidity? It does here.

The Saint leaves star Val Kilmer and director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games) fighting to enliven an exhausted character.

Campbell Scott swings at one of the year's juiciest roles and knocks it out of the park.

The true story of the LaMarcas, well told by the late Mike McAlary in Esquire, has been pounded into TV-crime mush by screenwriter Ken Hixon and director Michael Caton-Jones. Shockingly, the acting doesn't help.

Director Brian Robbins ("Good Burger") and screenwriter W. Peter Iliff ("Prayer of the Rollerboys") have wrapped their moral fable in a glossy package of hard football action and towel-slapping, hard-body fun that might seem exciting if you've never seen a movie before.

Williams is an actor of protean gifts, a super pitchman when it comes to putting across flimsy material (Dead Poets Society). But even he can't palm off this lemon as a peach. When it's not being offensive, Ken Friedman's screenplay is merely oafish.

What pulls us in are the performances of Franco and Hill, who know how to hold and reward the camera's tight scrutiny. They play a riveting game of cat-and-mouse.

The Death Cure plot is the essence of rehash.

In The Water Diviner, Crowe strives to strike a universal chord about the futility of war. Simplistic? Maybe. But in crafting a film about the pain a parent feels after losing a child in battle, Crowe transcends borders and politics. It's not war being honored here, it's sacrifice and inconsolable loss. I'd call that a substantial achievement.

The cheap thrills wear off way fast, and we're left with atrocious acting, feeble writing and clueless directing (from first-timer Steven Quale). The horror! The horror!

Jesse Eisenberg and his magician crew plan a diamond heist, but slinky, shady Rosamund Pike steals this zircon of a movie

Poised between goofy and godawful and plagued by rewrites and reshoots, this 33rd entry in the Marvel cinematic universe is in serious disrepair. The MCU, once the spawner of glories, is stuck in a rut. The time for a rethink is now.

What's in this cliché grab bag for moviegoers? Well, Portman and Kutcher are a cute mismatch. She's short to his tall, sassy to his sweet, etc. I dried up here. So does the movie.

First-time filmmaker Kate Barker-Froyland trusts the silences that occur when two people aren't talking. That's a good thing. What's not so good is when the talk grows enervating.

A zowie Zazie Beetz takes a fiery axe to anyone who messes with her sister, but we’ve seen it all before and better. Boring is too small a word to hold the heaps of tedium that come with relentless repetition of kill scenes where no one dies

This slapstick road movie feels tossed off by people on a raunchy bender. I mean that as a good thing. The trouble with Hit & Run is that it can't sustain its trippy effervescence.

If Freeheld cuts corners to get its point across, Moore and Page never do. You'll be with them all the way.

The movie left me with the feeling of being trapped with a person of privilege who won't stop with the whine whine whine.

Shaft scores by lacing ba-da-boom action with social pertinence.

With the exception of a battle scene with apes on all fours charging the humans, the film is monumentally silly.

Rules needs that dose of hilarity. Ellis' satire, filtered through Avary's harsh lens, is hard to stomach, harder to ignore.

The movie dulls the social edge of J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir about the Rust Belt’s white working class, but the performances of Glenn Close and Amy Adams make up the difference. As Mamaw, the chain-smoking matriarch of the clan, Close is simply sensational.

The choice for the uninitiated is simple: Take the ride for its fitful thrills and dark elements, or just say the hell with it.

The boldness of director Danny DeVito's violent epic is matched by Nicholson's astonishing physical and vocal transformation into Jimmy Hoffa.

The Equalizer 2 feels uneven and off balance. But not Washington. Despite his trashy trappings, there’s no one cooler to watch in action.

Beware all male viewers who enter here, you are in chick-movie hell.

It’s impossible for Ferrell and McAdams to top Stevens for campy pyrotechnics, so they’re left to hard-sell a Lars-Sigrit romance that’s too tepid to strike a jaja ding dong.

If you have to ask why this sucks, you deserve to waste your money. Why not also check out "Like Mike," "Juwanna Man" and "Hey Arnold! The Movie"?

There are times when Braff and Melfi hint at the darkness of a world that ignores seniors by making them invisible. But this new version of Going in Style sells uplift so hard it loses touch with reality – and any genuine reason for being.

Prom has its modest delights, chiefly its young cast.

Eisenberg and Stewart stay appealing to the last. The movie, not so much.

The Rock and Emily Blunt knock themselves out to entertain in this dopey, derivative, theme-park ride of a movie. But, hey, the kids will love it and in the words of the Metallica thrasher that bizarrely found its way onto the soundtrack, “nothing else matters.

Playwright Stephen Belber (Match), in his directing debut, comes close to the sweet spot. He's not there yet. But he'll be worth watching next time.

A sappy big-screen version of TV's "CSI."

What the film lacks is suspense, surprise (the new ending is a dud) and passion.

The good news first: Keith Richards totally rocks it playing pirate daddy to Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow. The deep rumble of his voice and those hooded eyes that narrowly open like the creaky gates of hell make him what the rest of this three-peat is not: authentically scary...So what's the bad news? Richards is onscreen for barely two minutes.

Downey makes something lively, sexy and moving out of a role that's just a thin concept. But the movie feels like it's still in the darkroom.

Instead of a scalding brew of mirth and malice, served black, Donner settles up a tepid latte, decaf.

The jokes never go deep, the toothless bites at the system leave no marks. It's only the wild-card energy of Ferrell and Galifianakis that keeps you on the ticket.

In a valiant effort to bring back the romcom, George Clooney and Julia Roberts sprinkle their stardust on a stale storyline that Rock Hudson and Doris Day might have found retro in the last century. Their hearts are in it, though, and that’s something.

A movie that advances the career of a demonstrably gifted filmmaker, a fearlessly funny movie whose laughs draw blood, a bracingly provocative movie that won't apologize for its bad temper.

It's unapologetic schmaltz, deftly directed by Gary Winick (Tadpole) as if it really meant something.

A borrowed idea -- hello, "Blade Runner," hi there, "Matrix" -- but an idea nonetheless.

Director Kenya Barris disastrously trades cutting social satire for romcom pablum when a Jewish podcaster (Jonah Hill) and his a Black fiancé (Lauren London) find their love imploding after her dad (Eddie Murphy) and his mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) plan a wedding across racial battle lines

This is ambitious, challenging filmmaking, elevated by Franco's compassion and Haze's revelatory acting. OK, the film trips up on its attempt to lace tragedy with gallows humor. But Franco is out there trying something, balancing literature and cinema in a tightrope act that is never less than exciting to watch.

If the script for this comic spin on Fatal Attraction were only a tenth as hot as Uma Thurman, director Ivan Reitman might have had something here.

The actors and admirably sensitive director Jake Scott (son of Ridley) can't compensate for Ken Hixon's long slog of a script.

You'll end up entertained if you forgive the cliches and let Petersen grab you with the visuals.

I left this movie feeling I’d been had. And not in a good way.

In Portman's dynamic performance you can see strength and vulnerability warring for Anne's soul. In this bedroom view of history, it's that image that sticks.

What's missing in Prince of Persia is a sense that all the running, jumping, climbing and fighting is leading to something. The best video games challenge you to reach the next level. Prince of Persia is content to skim the surface.

Even when her film dips into melodrama, Rose Byrne grounds her portrayal of an unhoused woman living her car in a humanity that feels detailed and true.

It looks slick, pricey and starry – Indiana Jones teams up with James Bond for a gunfight with space demons. But even Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig can't save a movie that's all concept, no content.

Ana de Armas is raw and riveting as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s surreal journey through a star’s subconscious that leaves out the fun parts to cloak her life in abject misery. The nearly three hour result is hard to watch, but oddly impossible to forget.

With Newman, the movie emerges as a lively character piece with flashes of humor and grace.

It should have been an old-fashioned rouser, and sometimes it is. The great cinematographer Robert Richardson (JFK) lights the battle scenes like action paintings. But Kapur weighs down the tale with bogus profundities.

Makes you gag.

The only touch of Caine's brutal sexiness is in the thrilling songs by Mick Jagger and Dave Stewart that should win Sir Mick his first Oscar. The rest is marshmallow.

You know a ghost story is a hot mess when it strands a stellar Amanda Seyfried and a top cast in a remote, country house haunted by toxic masculinity, dangling plot threads and nothing worth hearing or seeing.

Allen, who stays behind the camera, brings too little wit and too much contrivance to material that quickly dissolves into warmed-over Dostoevski.

I didn't believe a word of it.

Missed opportunities hobble the film as a whole, but Harrelson is in there pitching his best game. That alone is a sight to see.

Sleepers, for all the doubts it raises, is the work of a man who speaks for absent friends and "for the children we were." It's his secret heart.

Guess what? It's almost bearable.

Writer-director Andrew Niccol -- gets this Hollywood satire off to a rousing start. But the middle flattens, despite Pacino firing on all cylinders. And the end just nose-dives into something silly and, worse, sentimental.

Shopworn propaganda.

Even at its hokiest, Far and Away is never less than heartfelt.

Dazzling, sometimes hilarious and surprisingly emotional documentary.

Satire in a blanket of bland.

This is Soderbergh's show, and a haunting and hypnotic show it is.

Then the aliens show up, chased by Morgan Freeman as a nut-job Army colonel, and the movie degenerates into a sorry, silly, gory, punishingly overlong creature feature.

There's not much to say about a jerry-built caper comedy, except that this one has timeliness on it side, and some first-rate clowns.

When humor is served black, they call it dramedy. When it's done in this movie, I call it indigestible.

Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching "Transformers 2" for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity.

Lewis’s vintage rock is still cause for cheering. Too bad the movie that contains these Killer sounds never rises above a whimper.

If you cherrypick the good stuff from a sea of unfocused choices, McKay’s all-star comedy (Leo! JLaw! Meryl!) about impending doom has its playful and provocative pleasures. But the laughs don’t stick in the throat the way they must in a screwball farce that ends in utter hopelessness.

Henson looks ready to come out firing on all cylinders, but the comic cowardice of What Men Want leaves her shooting blanks.

Bridges has a fine time playing with himself, so to speak. Add Garrett Hedlund as Flynn's son Sam, the rebel who zaps himself into the server to find his lost dad, and director Joseph Kosinski has a recipe for adventure that should delight gamers. Non-techies are on their own.

A knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags.

Offers action in the Arnold Schwarzenegger style. Well, not right away.

But the film exerts a hold. The crux is: for how long?

Scrappy, funny, hot-to-trot biopic.

One gut-busting death after another, terror giving way to tedium. Your call.

The Fifth Estate is stuck running in place.

The laughs that do achieve liftoff are killer. But the real kick is seeing the old gang back and ready to party.

Netflix broke the bank on this formula action epic fronted by A-listers Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans as assassins for hire. It’s good enough to rank as watchable. But even in these inflationary times, shouldn't 200 million bucks buy us more than good enough?

Pine is driven and touchingly vulnerable. And Banks, heartbreakingly good, nails every nuance in a raw wound of a role. Thanks to their teamwork, we believe we are watching people like us.

This wet dream for action junkies leaves out logic and motivation --you know, all the boring stuff.

Another January dud. Broken City drops hot-shot actors in a quicksand of clichés and watches them sink.

Doesn't deliver an ounce of charm.

Bale even cedes the juiciest part to Aussie newcomer Sam Worthington, who is star material as a machine with a conscience. T4 is a mixed bag, but it's not f***ing amateur.

The rousing life that Malek brings to this extraordinary recreation deserves all the cheers it gets. Screw the film’s flaws — you don’t want to miss his performance.

Here's the movie of the month for those who like their escapism big, brutal and brainless. Two fine young actors – James Marshall (Twin Peaks) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Boyz n the Hood) – have inexplicably agreed to strike suitable-for-leering poses in their underwear while director Rowdy Herrington (Road House) devises other distractions from the idiotic plot.

Bateman doesn't make a false move, and a stellar Charlize Theron springs her own bolts from the blue as Ray's wife. As for Smith, he's on fire. There's nothing like a star shining on his highest beams. You follow him anywhere.

Depending on your reaction to the cinematic outrages perpetrated by Danish director Lars von Trier (remember Dogville?), you might want to add or subtract two stars from the halfway (half-assed?) rating I just gave Antichrist.

Brad Pitt’s laidback movie star magnetism is a joy forever. Too bad that the action-heavy, incoherently-edited, Japanese choo-choo he’s riding goes too quickly off rails from exhilarating to downright exhausting.

What holds us are the actors, including Terrence Howard as a cop who grew up with the brothers.

David O. Russell strands an A-list cast —Bale! Robbie! Washington! De Niro!— in a pokey and problematic mystery romp. You can feel Russell’s cage-rattling intensity, but only in fits and starts as the convoluted conspiracy plot goes out in a fizzle.

The film belongs to Phoenix ("To Die For"), who is terrific. He has the gift, shared with his late brother, River, of conveying emotions without pushing them at you. The delicacy of his scenes with Tyler lets you enjoy the film for what it truly is: a heartbreaker.

This kinky game of murder and eroticism is preposterous but never boring.

Downhill is sure as hell not the farce it’s been advertised to look like in the trailer. And you’ll search in vain for "Force Majeure’s" grounding in existential crisis. I don’t know what the Swedes would call Downhill. What’s Swedish for an unholy mess?

Director Elie Chouraqui, who co-wrote the script, catches the chaotic horror of war, but why bother if you're going to subjugate truth to the tear-jerking demands of soap opera?

In a summer of clones, Harvard Man is something rare and riveting: a wild ride that relies on more than special effects.

Should have been a fun update on the 1967 Brit farce. Director/co-writer Ramis comes on too strong with the camper trickery.

In the end, Shelley and the audience are cheated of a tale truly told. De Niro, on the brink of giving a landmark performance, settles for being a gross special effect. And the promise Branagh once showed as a filmmaker, like the hope of revitalizing Frankenstein, is dead again.

Alternately smarmy and achingly familiar, Little squeezes "Big" for one more run through the Hollywood grinder.

It's a perversely comic movie ride into the wild blue of crime and punishment.

The real burned-out case is director-writer Peter Bogdanovich. The Last Picture Show made his reputation, and these aging Texans trying to rediscover their innocence obviously touch him deeply. But Bogdanovich’s style has turned heavy, crude and incoherent.

Hook may keep the action spinning, but the noise you hear isn’t life. It’s the sound of symbols crashing.

Maika Monroe brings battered heart and soul to a Colleen Hoover soap opera that renders “big” emotions with the small details that make them count.

Mixing Rock with ooh-la-la turns out to be as appetizing as chalk and cheese.

An alternately kick-ass and clumsy piece of sci-fi claptrap that puts its empty head down and gets the job done.

It's visual magic, and director Barry Sonnenfeld, who followed his MIB high with the lows of "Wild Wild West" and "Big Trouble," revels in it. He doesn't so much direct MIBII as load it with cool stuff and flit around to whatever takes his fancy. As summer escapism goes, you could do worse.

Maika Monroe plays a drug dealer facing off with her rodeo champ dad Troy Kotsur in a by-the-numbers thriller minus any real thrills. It’s the hints of a better film—fiercer, funnier, more attuned to a woman’s point of view—that nag at you.

Looks and flows great, dripping with the 1940s crime-thriller atmosphere that James Ellroy described in his 1987 novel. On other levels -- plot (overstuffed), suspense (muted), acting (Hilary Swank as a femme fatale? Please!), posing (Scarlett Johansson plays dress-up as a mini Lana Turner), sex (it's all before and after) -- the movie is a bust.

What the film, based on books by Felt and John D. O'Connor, lacks in narrative drive it strives to make up for with psychological probing.

It's not just that Jennifer Lopez looks lost and out of her league acting with Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman. That's to be expected. It's the drag-ass solemnity of this turgid family drama that makes you crazy.

In this sadly stunted comic thriller, a delightfully depraved Glen Powell must kill seven of his family members to inherit $28 billion. Would you? By the end, the film’s lockstep quality commits the worst crime of all by killing our interest.

The actors do what they can to keep their heads above the sudsy script. No go. It’s distressing to see a great subject go wrong in the right hands.

Irresistibly deranged.

Carell is the life of the party and the main reason this animated blast of slapstick silliness packs appeal beyond the PG crowd.

For all the spectacular settings and visionary designs, Cloud Atlas left me feeling disconnected. Sad. But that's the true true.

Rob Marshall's flawed but frequently dazzling Nine is a hot-blooded musical fantasia full of song, dance, raging emotion and simmering sexuality.

Fleischer isn't much on details. It's all about the zigzagging rush of the ride. Fair trade.

Soul Men is a chance to salute these masters of mirth and music. Take it.

"Paranormal Activity" has been here before, of course, but Silent House springs tangy new tricks, and Olsen is a primo scream queen.

Quick and the Dead plays like a crazed compilation of highlights from famous westerns. Raimi finds the right look but misses the heartbeat. You leave the film dazed instead of dazzled, as if an expert marksman had drawn his gun only to shoot himself in the foot.

Director Gregory Hoblit ("Primal Fear") is merely arranging cliches in new patterns until the surprise ending blows enough pro-military fervor up the audience's ass to make Colin Powell call a halt.

Alleged family fun.

Director Michael Hoffman sprays on the tears like a toxic mist. Avoid like the plague.

The result is just good enough to pass as an action flick you watch with the forgiving gaze that comes from too many beers and too little sleep.

As a movie, Gold is slim pickings. But McConaughey keeps you riveted.

Costner’s real reverence for the classic western dances with disaster by passing off the first of his four-part saga as epic filmmaking instead of a trio of speechifying, clumsily linked one-hour episodes that play like a TV series with no direction home.

There’s enough here for half a dozen movies, and you can feel the severe overcrowding. But you can't keep your eyes off it.

Barbie fever is everywhere, but this botch job about the Beanie Bables—another doll craze from last century—is no collector’s item as it runs off the rails and wastes a terrific cast led by Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Geraldine Viswanathan and Sarah Snook.

What's onscreen feels squeezed, truncated and curiously embalmed. It's got no kick to it.

Kid'n Play have charm, but it's disturbing to see them settle for the slick. Their rap used to stand for something; now it's just easy listening.

Walken is so funny, he almost makes you forget this flick is one joke stretched thinner than Calista Flockhart.

A cheerless exercise.

If you can't see where this is going, you've probably never seen a movie before. But the script plods on, complete with an ending that futilely tries to tidy up the scenario strands. Miraculously, Aniston maintains our rooting interest.

Since heist movies are a dime a dozen, don’t get your hopes up. But thanks to the easy chemistry between Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, there is the kick of an acting job well done.

What nearly saves the movie, besides the Rasmussen eye candy, is Paris itself, shot in shimmering black-and-white by the gifted Thierry Arbogast. Talk is cheap here, and often inane, but as a silent film, Angel-A could have been magic.

Run, Fat Boy, Run stays out of sitcom quicksand long enough to make you think that Schwimmer has a knack for this comedy-directing thing.

No more than a beguiling trifle. But in the dog days of summer, it's a perk to wallow in inspired silliness.

Is there an audience for this? Sadly, yes. There’s nothing wrong with a movie that cheers American heroes. But this one does so by reducing everything else to cardboard.

How did talent like this conspire to pump out such bilge? I mean, really.

As the film stopped counting back in years and switched to months, I panicked that it would slog on to weeks, hours and seconds before reaching its inevitable end. I was wrong. About A Lot Like Love leaving you wanting a lot less, I am right.

Director Gillian Armstrong turns Sebastian Faulks' pungent novel about World War II into a soporific.

Something cold and mechanical has seeped into the sequel. The divas push so hard for fun, it kills the spontaneity that fun needs to breathe.

Distressingly shallow.

So the sequel, A Game of Shadows, is more of the stupid same. It wouldn't matter so much if Downey and Jude Law, as the bromantic Dr. Watson, didn't look so ready to turn on the cerebral dazzle. Instead, Ritchie treats them like action goons out of his "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" basement.

It’s a juicy premise: Eddie Izzard’s British spy vs. a school for daughters of the Nazi high command run by the great Judi Dench. But the crackerjack espionage thriller that might have been, the one filled with ideas and purpose, is defeated by flat execution.

A numbingly dull follow-up to two “TRON” epics that even Jared Leto and a great score by Nine Inch Nails can’t make great again.

Potent if hardly evenhanded documentary.

The movie plays like an evangelical prayer meeting, though I'd hold the hallelujahs. The characters we came to admire as vulnerable misfits hit the stage like visiting royalty and with a nonstop perkiness that makes the Von Trapps look like manic-depressives.

If you're ready to go with the hit-and-miss flow, you'll laugh your ass off.

Spacey's deft directing can't offset a script that wants to be Chinatown and ends up as indigestible chop suey.

Except for Kate Winslet's fearsome turn as a villain, the only terror Divergent roused in me was that the drag-ass thing would never end. Sorry, I'm a Candor.

I'm convinced there is a good movie trying to punch itself out of The Greatest Showman. What a shame that Gracey buried Jackman and company in a pile of marshmallow.

This 1960s-era soap opera is less a movie than an excuse for Oscar-winners Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain to dress to thrill and try to kill each other. With stars like these, you can almost forget how quickly the plot drifts off into absurdity.

Special kudos to Freeman, who kills it on the dance floor and later while drunk off his ass on vodka and Red Bull. You'll groan as much as howl at the jokes, but the veteran stars have a ball acting their age. Even when all else fails them, they're good company.

A rich blend of humor and heartbreak.

It's a kick to see the adorably sexy Barrymore back in relaxed form again after the "Duplex" debacle and that calamitous "Charlie's Angels" sequel. Right now, she's the closest thing to sunshine you'll find at the movies.

Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) can stage action, but he can't save a trivializing, reactionary script featuring a Hollywood star (read America) as a global savior.

For starters, it blows. Madonna continues to mistake a knack for striking poses with the interpretive skill of a real actor.

Oddly, the published screenplay – while far from McCarthy's top-drawer – reads better than it plays. What's onscreen recalls a line from No Country: "It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?"

If you’re longing for a delicious romantic romp to take your mind off the world going to hell in hand basket, Paris Can Wait is it.

Shot three years ago, this soggy horrorshow gives credence to the belief that January is the month Hollywood uses to bury its mistakes.

This is the kind of movie that they show on planes -- white noise that lulls you to sleep.

Give the girls a cheer, but remember: "Bring It On" is still the poo, Missy. Take a big whiff.

Winds up being faster and funnier than the first time. Chan's acrobatic high jinks play strikingly off of Tucker's wiseass humor.

Would it be asking too much if the hit-and-miss jokes could maybe nudge an inch beyond the obvious?

Rifkin has conjured up a new low in cinematic ineptitude.

Rushed off to Netflix when theaters are readily available, this fitfully competent “Jaws” ripoff will have to do until the real thing comes along. Condolences to leading lady Phoebe Dynevor who deserved better.

Only near the end, when MacArthur and Hirohito meet in person, do we get fireworks. And that's thanks to Jones, who makes sure this old soldier will never die in our memory. As for this tepid movie, it just fades away.

See this romcom for the soft side of Kevin James as a jilted groom in Roma and Italian scenery that’s gorgeous in any language. That’s the only way to come out ahead.

The gore, which is plentiful, grows repetitive and dull.

With shocking humor and surprising grace, Von Trier creates something unique and memorable.

21 drags itself to a climax that puts credulity in splints. So what? In a multiplex of dumb-luck hits, it's a kick to watch Spacey and a gifted young cast use smarts to deal audiences a winning hand.

Pulls off thrilling stunts that will leave you a sweaty-palmed mess. It's top-tier movie escapism.

The Core -- with its by-the-numbers plot and performances -- isn't offensive, just unblushingly tacky and derivative.

It's the new year's first happy surprise.

Broken Lizard does it with a shit-faced integrity that's worth a salute.

I can't detect the hand of Hill in even a single scene in Bullet in the Head. It plays like a Stallone vanity project, impure and stupefyingly simple.

Affleck's provocative, postmodern take on JP as half-joke, half-victim is the damnedest plunge into the dark heart of our "reality" culture since Sacha Baron Cohen invented Borat.

That's Emily Blunt, and she is perfection, playing the hell out of this blackout drunk and adding a touch of welcome empathy.

The movie can be enjoyed for the hell-raising hooey it is.

Shot five years ago by director Michael Ritchie. No release until now. Uh-oh. Disaster? Pretty much.

For the first time, the Farrellys seem to be embarrassed by their own crudeness. For the first time, they should be.

What links the two films in fun and ferocity is the big game, a ripsnorter that is irresistibly entertaining.

This tear-jerking twaddle, adapted by David Nicholls from his 2009 bestseller, is nearly as bad as Anne Hathaway's British accent, which is heading for infamy.

A bit of a stiff as cinema, rich in atmospherics but starved for the human spark that might uncover the man behind the myth.

The dialogue is witty and spiked with delicious malice. At least it is when Pierce delivers it.

Penelope is dead on arrival.

I'd see Tina Fey and Paul Rudd in anything, but this is pushing it. Admission is so slight that a breeze could flatten it.

What should have been an affecting film becomes a rank blend of sentiment and sadism in the hands of Bruce Beresford, the Australian writer and director.

Except for Ashley Judd, who shows true grit as Vivi in her babe days, the effect is like being buried in molasses. For guys whose pain threshold is way low when it comes to the bonding of Steel Magnolias, Ya-Ya is a definite no-no.

The once playful runt of the Marvel litter has come down with a case of bloated excess and despite the ever-likable Paul Rudd as Ant-Man and a pow villain in Jonathan Majors, the third time is not the charm for a sequel that ignores its own cardinal rule -- less is more.

It’s a savagely funny ride fueled by Araki’s insight and blunt compassion.

Ford is at his droll, grumpy-old-man best, so he can do his own acting without having his emotions computer generated. At least for now.

All the drama seems to have happened off camera for director Olivia Wilde and stars Harry Styles and Florence Pugh. What's on screen is a glossy, repetitive retread of The Stepford Wives with a dash of The Truman Show and no discernible personality of its own.

But still: Is it really OK to get off making plus-size jokes just because you tack on a moralizing ending that teaches a lesson about body positivity? Can you have it both ways?

And just when you think this movie cannot get more unendurable ... it does. And then some. You can see every twist telegraphed from miles away even in a driving blizzard. The Mountain Between Us is epic all right – an epic waste of talent and your time.

Director Burr Steers, of the terrific "Igby Goes Down," is stuck polishing clichès.

Buffy isn't heinous, just disposable. As a friend tells Buffy while she eyes a fashion purchase, "It's so five minutes ago."

How do you cram a cast of A-listers, led by Bill Murray, Jennifer Coolidge and Pete Davidson, into a crime caper so laugh deprived that calling it a comedy qualifies as false advertising? Here’s your answer. And it’s a crying shame.

A romantic comedy so numbing it feels like Novocaine.

The chance to see giant monsters go apeshit — a few more are added near the end — is almost worth the price of admission. Seeing, however, is part of the problem. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is often so lost in the shadows of digital muck that it makes the squinting chaos of the Battle of Winterfell in "Game of Thrones" look like a lightshow.

The film takes a true story and drags it through a swamp of hyped-up Hollywood cliches.

We have to suffer through two hours of this rancid summer cheese.

It's hard to hate a movie, even one this droolingly crass, that knows how to laugh at itself.

It's stale, like something you wrap in yesterday's newspaper.

It's the stunning location photography of camera ace Elliot Davis that provides what the movie itself lacks: authenticity.

The most shocking thing here is the fact that Peter Chelsom directed it. His 1995 movie, "Funny Bones," is a genuinely transgressive piece of dark comedy. I can't detect a trace of Chelsom in Hannah Montana, which means he won't have to wear a blonde wig to hide his shame.

It could have been worse, but that’s no excuse for turning an exciting nine-minute theme-park ride into an overlong, star-stuffed 122 minute feature that is only fitfully funny and scary and soon wears out its welcome.

Lee Cronin makes two hours of borrowed horror inspiration—The Exorcist should sue—feel like an eternity.