Peter Travers

Jokes dying on the lips of these easy riders are hard to stomach.

In a shameless weeper that plays it strictly by the cliché book, compensation comes from the rugged sincerity of Justin Timberlake as an ex-con who becomes a surrogate dad to a gender-nonconformist seven-year-old boy, wonderfully acted by Ryder Allen.

Many a road to movie hell is paved with good intentions. To that list of lost causes add Being Charlie, a well-meaning study of addiction that hits too many banal beats to snap us to attention.

Sadly, Abominable fails to carve out its own place in a crowded field. The movie huffs and puffs, but there’s no fear of any houses being blown down.

As I write these words, I feel myself experiencing a loss of consciousness, wondering how this recipe for sugar shock could interest any sentient being over the age of nine.

Gadgets abound, especially a Lotus sports car that transforms into a submarine. But the scene-stealer is 7'2" Richard Kiel as Jaws, a shark-eating man with steel teeth.

McConaughey, despite alarmingly orange makeup, does justice to the role, a hard-drinking, shipwreck- hunting senator's son with a 007 way with the ladies.

Their banter is fun at the start until it becomes relentless.

Dogfight doesn’t sum up an era; it merely romanticizes it. What could have been an incisive movie about alienation deteriorates into a conventional romance.

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

It's fun to see Sean Penn portray a playboy, like Bogart in "Casablanca," who hides his true heart behind a layer of cynicism.

What starts as freshly spun cotton candy ends as something pink, sticky and indigestible. You leave the theater wanting to puke it up.

If looks were everything, director Baz Luhrmann's epic salute to his native land would be the movie of the year. But, crikey, a padded script bloated with subplots and shameless sentimentality can wear you down.

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

Luckily, Stewart, Balinska, and Scott are just the angels you need when a movie needs rescuing. They make the salvage operation that is Charlie’s Angels go down easy.

What happens to the film's title character — and the audience — shouldn't happen to a dog.

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

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

It’s good to see Eddie Murphy again as Zumundan royalty, but the laughs in this tame, PG-13 sequel to the raucous, R-rated 1988 original feel predictable and played out as they strain to slide by on nostalgia. Your call.

Don Roos's script for Single White Female, from the 1990 potboiler SWF Seeks Same, by John Lutz, is as empty as a hack's head. Schroeder goes through the motions — the movie is elegantly made — but this synthetic Hollywood package panders shamelessly to the baser instincts.

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.

There's no script to speak of, just two appealing actors volleying comic-romantic cliches at each other.

The film falls short; only Peet goes the whole nine yards.

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.

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.

There's no arguing that Cuba Gooding Jr. is trying to do right by the mentally disabled James Robert Kennedy.

This intriguing fraction of a biopic rises above a clumsy script and stagnant direction on the strength of watching rock icon Bruce Springsteen, admirably played by Jeremy Allen White, show depression who’s the boss.

Despite the lofty tone of his literary, artistic and metaphysical allusions, Greenaway is working the same streets of human depravity as John Waters; he's just more pretentious about it. At best, Greenaway's film is a provocative and diabolically funny foray into the roots of passion and cruelty. At worst, the symbolic bric-a-brac gets so thick you lose sight of the characters.

DeMonaco shows a sure hand at building tension. Too bad the film devolves into a series of home-invasion clichés. The Purge was almost on to something.

A bear does cocaine and kills people. That’s it. Director Elizabeth Banks revels in deliciously cheap thrills, but then treats her overqualified actors (Keri Russell, the late Ray Liotta) like bear chewtoys while the overcrowded script drifts into hibernation.

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.

A flabby farce that might win a pass at the box office because it's just so cute and family friendly. But where's your edge, guys? Where are the laughs that walk a tightrope?

Worse, Safe House asks us to believe that Ryan Reynolds can outclass Denzel Washington in the art of being a hard-ass. Not on this planet, baby.

The film's problems lie with the lack of spark between a wired Dunst and a bland Bloom, and the meltdown of Drew's mother (Susan Sarandon), who grieves by tap-dancing.

It's no mystery that the target audience for this G-rated bubblegum fantasy is tweens, parents of tweens and the occasional pervert. They'll be so pleased. Anything for the rest of humanity? Not so much.

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.

Chainsaw is produced by Michael Bay (Bad Boys I and II), which explains its soullessness. But nothing explains the flaw in this bad boy: How can a movie scare you when you’ve seen it all before?

It’s clear that a verité, fly-on-the-wall record of these SNL livewires on vacation would have made a hilarious documentary. What we have instead follows the Sitcom 101 formula.

Your chances for enjoying this will depend on giving up a search for depth and just strapping in for a B-movie hell ride.

There's no disguising the fact that Shrek the Third has come down with a bad case of sequelitis. You know the symptoms: Lots of razzle-dazzle to distract from the hole at the center of the story. You know, the place where fresh ideas should be.

Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland can do anything – except, perhaps, save this sentimental drool bucket of senior cinema.

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

It helps that Kevin Kline excels as Ricki's ex, and Mamie Gummer, Streep's real-life daughter, imbues the fictional version with rare grit and grace. Otherwise, too many wrong notes.

The cliched script by Carol Heikkinen plays like "Dawson's Creek" in toeshoes.

In this romcom that evaporates while you’re watching it, a mismatched Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page fight a losing battle to outshine the scenery.

An adventure that never met a cliche it couldn't saddle, mount and ride for a butt-numbing two hours and sixteen minutes.

Ever since "True Blood" glamoured me, Twilight seems even more sexless and toothless. I prefer my undead with a little life in them.

Maybe money never sleeps, but this missed opportunity of a movie will have audiences dozing.

Before the jacked-up antics get to be too much, director Tony Leondis and co-writers Erich Siegel and Mike White get in a few satiric licks at a technology we've all come to call home.

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.

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.

Ninety minutes of being buried alive with Ryan Reynolds: Didn't we all suffer that in "The Proposal"?

It's all a jumble and, worse, a damned impersonal one.

The movie is so soggy and anonymous, I had to remind myself that the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, directed it. It's sad to watch the kingpins of gross-out try to dial down to cute. Swung at and missed.

Where "Drive" shrewdly mystifies, Only God Forgives stupefies. You can see its gears grinding. But I'll always hang on for a rare talent like Refn. Even when he stumbles, he leaves you eager to see what he's up to next.

Isn't much of a movie, but it's worth a look just to see screen legend Kirk Douglas, Michael's eighty-three-year-old father, kick ass.

May be only loosely true, but it is thoroughly Hollywood.

So flimsy it gives froth a bad name.

When the movie stalls, it’s Enzo to the rescue. Since the film covers a decade in the lives of its characters, two dogs take turns playing Enzo, at age 2 and 9. They’re both picks of the litters. And Ventimiglia contributes an emotional honesty that serves him well even when the plot sinks into marshmallow.

The film version of Carnage hasn't just lost God from its title, it's lost the laughs from the play that brought it life.

Peachy for fans and painful for newbies, this animated joyride is on the run for box-office glory. So what if doesn’t have an ending. It just stops as if totally exhausted. Now that I can relate to.

The questions is: Can the minions carry a movie all by their mischievous mini-selves? 'Fraid not. This origin story, while being utterly harmless and far from despicable, wears out its welcome way too soon.

Essentially an old-fashioned weepie gussied up for Y2K.

A punishingly long (133 minutes), shamelessly shallow downer that makes the mistake of taking itself oh-so-seriously. Big mistake.

Confessions is no more than a painless time-waster. But the beguiling Fisher is well worth the investment.

The swerve into bizarre melodrama in the final third knocks the film permanently off course, reducing a potentially rich examination of religious extremism into a missed opportunity.

I didn't believe a word of it.

Of all the World War II movies about the plots to kill the architects of the Third Reich, Anthropoid is guilty of being the dullest.

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.

It gets the job done for trick-or-treat season, but this sequel falls short of expectations by sidelining its luminous star Jamie Lee Curtis and substituting rote mayhem for an inventively scary frightfest.

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.

How special.

Things go wrong quickly with Amazing 2. Am I the only one who hates the word Amazing to describe a movie that isn't? Just asking. If I had to pinpoint where this epic goes south, I'd start with the tonal shifts.

What begins brightly gets bogged down over 140 minutes. A film that took off like a hare on speed ends like a winded tortoise.

Cate Blanchett is the spark that keeps this well-meaning but by-the-numbers biopic going.

There’s nothing fresh or surprising about a boy coming of age with the help of his bartender uncle (Ben Affleck reminding us what a terrific actor he can be), but director George Clooney’s affection for the characters serves up a winning blend of laughs and tears.

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.

Some may enjoy the slapstick, which plays like "Harold & Kumar Go to Old Peking," but this bloodless Coen crib job is simply not my cup of noodles.

By the time Fry lets darkness encroach on these bright young things, the fizz is gone, and so is any reason to make us give a damn.

Funny? Sometimes. Scary? Almost never. PP&Z spins merrily and menacingly along for about half an hour. Bad luck that the movie's running time is 107 minutes.

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

Hell, I really meant to at least like 2 Guns. But I couldn't. The movie just didn't make the extra effort.

Killer Elite pretends to be fact-based and true to its 1980s period. Just know it's all baloney.

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.

It’s a promising premise—a nerdy CIA decoder (Rami Malek) turns unlikely action hero when his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is murdered by terrorists—but the movie promises more than it delivers in terms of suspense, escalating tension and a reason for being.

It's a gimmick, it's not a movie.

Elliot fails to make the needed connection between the audience and a peeper who has lost his moral balance.

Director Tony Goldwyn tries for the lyrical melancholy he brought to "A Walk on the Moon," but as Michael waits for days on Jenna's porch getting drenched (as irritating a scene as any in recent cinema), only the most rabid chick-flick fan will fail to notice that it's the movie that's all wet.

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.

The Rock has a flair for action and comedy; he's a real movie star.

The film collapses because Lee can't sew these vignettes into a seamless tapestry. He's more interested in getting even than he is in getting it right.

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.

If you can't watch John Malkovich being John Malkovich, it's still a kick watching him play Alan Conway, a gay Brit who pretended to be the legendary and reclusive director Stanley Kubrick during the 1990s.

Wobbly but well-intentioned broadside against racism.

In his sappiest film since 1989's "Always," director Steven Spielberg has come down with a case of the cutes that the whole cast catches.

In these times of pandemic isolation it’s no crime to look for the film equivalent of comfort food. Military Wives, though deeply reliant on formula and wrapped in a blanket of bland, fits the bill.

Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina excel in this space thriller that sizzles with Russia vs America tension but all too predictably fizzles into a mild ride that is better than you might expect while falling way short of the wonder it so wants to inspire.

A frustratingly uneven satire with undeniably sharp teeth, isn't afraid to shoot comic darts at its targets until blood is drawn.

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

With raw shock and a riveting Uma Thurman absent this time, Nymphomaniac: Volume II is a metaphoric limp dick.

Somewhere along the road of development hell, the movie settled for delivering standard-issue jolts for jocks.

Miller's monochrome palette, splashed with color that shines like a whore's lip gloss, doesn't startle as it once did. It's like running into an ex-love and realizing that, damn, the thrill is gone.

Remember "Limitless," the 2011 thriller in which Bradley Cooper becomes a whirling killer dervish from a drug that lets him access 100 percent of his brain? Well, Lucy is basically the same movie with Scarlett Johansson in the Cooper role. It's not a good trade-off.

Think of it as Jaws on Safari and you'll have some idea what to expect from this generic thrill machine that requires Idris Elba to look great (he does) while doing battle with a digital lion.

I never rooted for them as a couple, never felt a chemistry in their bond. And in a romance, even one with tragic notes, that really is the end of the world.

Despite Bates' mastery at bringing unexpected depth to unhinged characters, Dolores is a few pints low on chills and challenge.

The Photograph comes down with a teary case of "The Notebook," laying on flashbacks that yank us out of the present, where our stars live, and into a past riddled with sentimental clichés.

After a lively start -- the sorority sisters, shaken by the slightest imperfection in themselves, cannot cope with handicapped athletes -- the film smooths its rough edges and reduces complex characters to sitcom stooges. Call it an opportunity missed.

Just what we didn't need: another kick-ass cop flick in which we know the guys are macho because they rough up their wives and the gals are hot because they totter on spike heels like hookers.

It's too bad. Jones deserved better than a biopic with a TV-movie heart.

What a cast, indeed. And what a bust as persuasive drama.

A dash of Tarantino might have juiced up Walter Salles' wrongheadedly well-mannered take on Jack Kerouac's 1957 Beat Generation landmark. Kerouac's semi-autobiographical novel comes to the screen looking good but feeling shallow.

What you get in this cop drama is NYPD Blue lite. That's not bad. In fact, it's compulsively watchable. But there are no leaps, just fits and starts.

An opportunity missed.

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.

Hackman and Hoffman, old pals in their first film together, make a lively business of their one scene together -– in a toilet, no less. The rest you can flush.

The pie looks delicious, but Labor Day feels stale.

So it’s a kick to see Spencer dig into the title role in Ma, a Blumhouse scarefest that tries but rarely lives up to the irresistible dynamo at its center.

Last stand? My ass. Billed as the climax of a trilogy, the third and weakest chapter in the X-Men series is a blatant attempt to prove there is still life in the franchise.

Central Intelligence always takes the lazy way out. You go along for the ride because Hart and Johnson promise something they can't deliver: a movie as funny as they are.

Sugar Ray Leonard helped with the motion-capture, and it shows. Good stuff. But the tear-jerking in Real Steel is as shameless as its product placement. We're being hustled.

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.

Their (Travolta/Jackson) teamwork was classic. Basic breaks up the team. What's up with that?

Kate Winslet can do anything ... except save this movie from quirky overkill.

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.

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

What if director Joseph Ruben didn't resort to B-movie suspense tricks? What if the fine cast wasn't saddled with a shamelessly contrived script by Wesley Strick and Bruce Robinson? Then Return to Paradise would be a better movie, that's what if.

DiCaprio is terrific, but he can't save this lecture from the shame of using Africa as a vehicle for another white man's redemption.

You always know where it's going even as it meanders for two and a half hours getting there.

The Death Cure plot is the essence of rehash.

As killer ape movies go, this one’s a bloody wonder—it’s too bad no one bothered to add plot, character or a reason to care

Sollett, hoping for a "Before Sunrise/Before Sunset" vibe, sadly settles for a soggy aftertaste.

Aside from Hardy’s full-on commitment, Capone seems too dramatically dull and laborious to support its ambition as a subversive biopic or a deeply personal take on public vilification.

What's your take on Edward Snowden: A patriot deserving of a presidential pardon? A traitor deserving of execution, as Trump believes? Something in between? In Snowden the movie, in which a fiercely committed Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the title role, Oliver Stone removes all doubt. He's Saint Edward.

Jobs is a one-man show that needed to go for broke and doesn't. My guess is that Jobs would give it a swat.

The four actresses supply enough humor and heart to light any movie’s fuse, even this cliched retread of Thelma and Louise. Like the characters they play, the sisters deserve better.

Admirers of Irving's sprawling tome are sure to find Birch a botch.

Here's the problem: The movie was made just four years ago by Argentinian director Fabian Bielinsky. It is called "Nine Queens," and it is vastly superior to this blah U.S. remake from director Gregory Jacobs.

By playing it safe, the new Precinct leaves the audience sorry and restores thirteen to its place as the unluckiest number.

This socially-conscious horror film keeps tripping over its big ideas, but Janelle Monae—in her first starring film role—blazes with ferocity and feeling.

Let's hope that Ridley Scott follows his own blueprint better in the upcoming "Alien: Covenant." The dull and derivative Life is no competition. It's DOA.

Still, a movie that even glancingly grapples with questions of ethnic and spiritual identity, past and present, is hardly hack work. It’ll do in a pickle.

Will Smith has an easy charm, and this labored romantic farce works it hard. Too hard.

Lulls aside, Wain and Showalter deserve camp kudos for getting the details right.

Star Jake Gyllenhaal and director Doug Liman huff and puff to reimagine the bawdy B-movie punch of the 1989 original with Patrick Swayze, but despite putting a fresh coat of paint on this rickety old jalopy, there’s still nothing under the hood.

Fine directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel take a detour into mumbo jumbo.

Cate Blanchett can do anything, even play Bob Dylan, but she can't save this creaky sequel to her star-making 1998 biopic of Elizabeth I.

If you fell for the 2013 original — and surprisingly, many did — then Now You See Me 2 has got your number. For the rest of us, however, this longer, louder sequel adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada."

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.

What’s missing? Let’s start with intangibles such as heart, soul and the faintest hint of originality.

Doesn't seem directed at all; you half expect the actors to crash into each other. Still, give me the attempted satire of Head of State over the racial stereotyping of "Bringing Down the House" anyday. You can feel a mind at work when you watch Rock.

Though the movie stalls frequently before it finds its balance, Woodley makes us care.

It's the strafing satire that's MIA.

De Niro's decision to make Dwight a loony from the get-go throws the delicate symmetry of the story out of whack.

The film ultimately gives in to a case of TV-movie blahs.

It's subpar sitcom.

Now, after a deluge of comic book epics and other CGI-filled sci-fi fantasies, the movie feels like it’s way past its sell-by date. Alita: Battle Angel looks ready to rock, but time has sucked the life out of the party.

Kline finds every nuance of mirth and melancholy in this wonder of a role and rides it to glory. You can't take your eyes off him.

Just soak up that Tuscan sun and wonder when Lane will get another movie, like "Unfaithful" or "A Walk on the Moon," that will let her really shine.

The film feels more like a thesis than vivid drama.

Sherrybaby is the kind of pretend-arty Sundance thing that gives indie cinema a bad name.

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.

Though Exit is often bold and imaginative, it is also curiously lifeless. The screenplay, by Desmond Nakano (Boulevard Nights), which combines the novel’s six separate stories, never adds up to a coherent whole.

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

There's heart but not much heat in this film version of "The Echoing Grove."

If you're thinking "yuck," you're right. I added the extra star for Zooey Deschanel, who is so delicious as his honey that you want not to say no to Yes Man.

Lots of talented young singers decorate the scenery, notably Jeremy Jordan (late of Broadway's failed Bonnie & Clyde but soon-to-open in Newsies)who has vocal and acting chops that shine even in this bucket of Glee Goes Gospel cornpone.

Jennifer Aniston is a friend in need of a movie script that will really let her talent blossom. Picture Perfect is too TV-ish and timid a romantic farce to do the trick.

What Shelton fails to provide is a coherent structure; the film is wearyingly repetitive. The boys do the same hustle and hurl the same racial epithets as our goodwill dribbles away.

Even the best actors -- and I'd rank Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo among their generation's finest -- can't save a movie that aims for tragedy but stalls at soap opera.

Jewison dodges the issues in the script by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) to focus on cat-and-mouse chases that kill interest.

In an effort to blend Thackeray and "Sex and the City," Vanity Fair ends up nowhere.

Colorful and exciting, as far as it goes. But Boyle and Hodge pull back on their usual wit and grit.

It strikes me that their teasing and one-upmanship are more brother and sister at play than lovers in heat. Cruise and Diaz are in it for the action rush.

The satire loses its edge as the filmmakers wrongheadedly try to humanize this nest of vipers. Soapdish is more fun when it's spitting venom than when it's licking wounds.

Forget anything new. Director Renny Harlin is merely spitpolishing his same old bag of shark tricks. But the dude knows how to deliver assembly line product like nobody’s business.

Must all films about alienation be themselves alienating? Take a walk on the beach and ponder that one. There's a line between artful and arty, and Malick has crossed it.

A film that could have been the first cleareyed view of the jazz world from a black perspective ends as a romanticized fable. For the only time in his remarkable career, Spike Lee has failed to tell it like it is.

As sexist propaganda, the film is shameless.

Writer-director Mike Binder, who worked beautifully with Costner on 2005's "The Upside of Anger," finds himself on the downside of juggling stereotypes.

Only glints of the old whiplash magic remain in chapter 10 as thrills give way to thudding formula and paycheck acting—not you Jason Momoa—that slow down the action to forge the limping runt of the F&F litter.

Submission – despite valiant performances from Stanley Tucci and Addison Timlin as the parties involved – lacks the spark it needs to spring to life.

In his debut as a writer-director, Sean Penn shows a sure hand with actors and a knack for setting up a scene visually and dramatically. But he’s a bust at following through.

The comic pairing of Jack Black and Jason Momoa makes this video game-turned-PG-movie pablum seem better than the cash grab it is. But not by much. Still, there’s no shame in being strictly kids’ stuff that knows how to serve and entertain its audience.

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.

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

In relying on narration, Redford's movie is too little show and too much tell.

What a bummer that a movie that paints itself as a scintillating, sexually-charged, art-world thriller ends in a swamp of failed intentions.

At the risk of understatement, The Matrix Revolutions sucks.

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.

The main problem with this treatise on racial politics undercover as an exercise in suspense is that the director, Neil LaBute, didn't write the script.

Take this walk for the appetizing scenery, which includes Reeves and Sanchez-Gijon. The rest deserves squashing.

Life mirroring nature in all its wayward ferocity. Too much? You bet. But Fassbender (Magneto in X-Men) and Vikander (an Oscar winner for The Danish Girl), who fell in love during the making of the film, fully commit to their roles and hold us in their grip. The movie, sad to say, can't keep its head above water.

The sequel barely makes the grade as holiday fun, but wash it down with holiday cheer, put your brain on low power, let forgiveness into your heart and it’s—sound the trumpets—passable.

Surprise is lacking. Ditto humor, though Miles Teller (Whiplash), as a thorn in Four's side, gets in a few fun licks by not staying on the film's draggy tempo. Otherwise, Insurgent stubbornly fails to surge.

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.

It doesn't help that Damon and Cruz fail to generate sparks or that the second half of the film, in which John and Lacey face hell in a Mexican prison, feels bluntly edited to fit a two-hour running time.

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

What the movie damagingly lacks is a personality of its own.

The film is torn between a tough-minded plea for animal rights and edge-free, PG family entertainment. But its advocacy of kindness to man and animal is indisputable.

Despite a hint that Peter (Jeremy Sumpter) and Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) might get it on, there's nothing to crow about.

One raucous night, one raunchy party, "American Graffiti filtered through "Dazed and Confused" and the Shermer High films of John Hughes.

What doesn't spark is the love story. Morton still seems soggy from her "Minority Report" role as a drenched pre-cog. Who wants romance in a future where glum is the word?

For all the bells and whistles – an electronic score by M83, a screen-busting Imax presentation and Cruise going full throttle – Oblivion feels arid and antiseptic, untouched by human hands. Bummer.

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

No matter Bateman and Reynolds make The Change-Up seem a lot better than it is. Each earns a star in my review. The movie would be literally nothing without them.

It's no go. Green and Gothic make for a clumsy fit.

Until the last half-hour, when Lucas actually does establish a emotional connection between the landmark he created in 1977 and the prequel investment portfolio he laid out in 1999, the movie is one spectacularly designed letdown after another.

The sequel, also directed by Harold Ramis, is painfully padded.

The team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala drops the ball with this droopy, snail-paced prigs-in-wigs movie.

Watching John Travolta ease into a role is always a pleasure, but this film version of Nelson DeMille's 1992 best-selling mystery novel is a lurid mess.

With so little to show for its staggering ambition to synthesize modern New York with the fall of the Roman Empire, Francis Ford Coppola's all-star, self-financed passion project is a mess, but the lion who made it is still roaring, even in winter.

Cornball? Maybe. But it helps that O’Connor dexterously avoids the usual lump-in-the-throat tearjerking. And it helps even more that the star radiates a soul-deep belief that it’s the small steps that matter more than a rah-rah victory. He makes us root for Jack — just us The Way Back makes us root for Affleck, no matter how long the road ahead.

What does work is hearing Grace take the stage for a new song, “Love Myself” that shows Ross can hold the screen as if by divine right. Loving her is easy — it’s swallowing the movie’s sudsy, soap-operatics that’s hard.

Before it goes off the rails into strained sermonizing, this sorta-sequel to 2008’s delightful "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" gets in big laughs.

Towne doesn't weave all the elements as deftly as before, and his political observations seem secondhand.

You wouldn’t be wrong if you’re thinking this wish-fulfillment tale of a working-class woman bum-rushing the corporate world is trying to be a "Working Girl" for millennials. And while it can’t deliver the boundary-pushing kick of that seminal 1988 Melanie Griffith-vs.-the glass ceiling smash, the charms this movie does possess — its star being chief among them — will get you over the gaping plot holes and lackluster dialogue.

It's easy to root for George. The movie deserves the finger.

Reynolds and Jackson make this summer lunacy go down easy with their banter and bullet-dodging skills. They're the only reason that The Hitman’s Bodyguard doesn't completely sink into the generic quicksand from whence it came.

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

There is nothing new in Robert Greenwald's sobering doc.

Lavishly produced swashbuckler that should have been far more entertaining.

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.

Close gets laughs, as does Bette Midler as a Jewish rebel. But the sting is gone.

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

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?

The Stooges were always better in short doses. And 90 minutes of PG nyuk-nyuk-nyuk can seem like an eternity.

To sum up, Definitely, Maybe is crap with compensations.

Angelina Jolie, back in action mode as a haunted smokejumper seeking redemption, gets the job done if you’re looking for action escapism, but those who wish for something deeper and more resonant are plum out of luck.

The script is too primly PG-13 to really go for it. Warm Bodies even suggests that true love can help the right zombie grow a new heart. That's a con job that makes Bodies lukewarm at best.

The actors, especially Grace, fight hard against a schizoid script (the kids are rubes one sec, hipsters the next) and cotton-candy direction from Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde). It's a losing battle.

As a movie, Papa improves every time it shuts up and allows action to define character.

This oddball mix of "The Cotton Club" and "Six Feet Under" is a big, beautiful mess. But it offers the not-uninstructive spectacle of talented people stumbling over large and unwieldy ambitions.

What we have left in Godard Mon Amour, after the laughs dry up, is a thin sketch of a filmmaker who inspired a hero worship in his young bride that dissolved in squabbling, as had Godard's first marriage to another of his leading ladies, actress Anna Karina.

Edgy comic Kevin Hart smooths out his rough edges to play a widower trying to raise his daughter alone. Hart can act, but he can’t act his way out of a sappy script that too often mistakes manipulative laughs and tears for genuine emotion.

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

Miles below the Woodman's class. It's possible that a more astringent script could have provided fuel for the actors and A-list director Ron Howard.

What good is a wallow in sicko sadism if you take all the fun out of it?

How could a 2009 raunchfest that slapped a grin on my face I couldn't unglue degenerate into a cold dish of sloppy seconds?

Though shot for maximum moodiness by the gifted Peter Deming ("Mulholland Drive"), the movie straps you in for a head trip that promises hallucinatory wonders but delivers the same old Hollywood formula with sugar on top.

Shelton obviously wants to distill something innocent and romantic from a relationship the world saw as sleazy. A noble mission. But he's left out a few essentials — like the facts.

It's simply a retread of the first Ride Along, a 2014 box-office hit, and proof positive that a bigger budget doesn’t buy bigger laughs.

Wait a hot minute here. Can a new Transformers movie actually be bearable? Let’s not get carried away, but a diverse cast and the absence of ham-handed former director Michael Bay qualify as a step in the right direction.

Certainly blunt, and since Anderson and Bach are veterans of the porn trade, there is no skimping on the sex.

The fourth round for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence isn’t a bad movie, really, just another mediocrity trying to cash in on what came before, the kind of money grab that’s killing movies by serving leftovers as the main course. Resist, people, before it's too late.

There was a time when guys would grab a six-pack and watch this kind of flick at a drive-in. I mean that as a compliment.

Do Hollywood suits think we want nothing more from a Christmas movie than to feed on the dead carcass of an undeserving horror franchise? The scary part is they may be right.

Stroman should have studied the original Producers that Brooks directed in 1968, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. It answers the question "Where did they go right?"

As a thriller, Firewall is flabby and familiar.

The filmmakers don't trust us to understand what Eddie is feeling about the Olympics without blaring a musical message from Hall and Oates on the soundtrack, "you make my dreams come true."

It’s feels like the New Puritanism (recently repped by the outcry over Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl) is seeping in. But in the barbershop? Say it isn’t so.

Imagine David Mamet rewriting his political satire "Wag the Dog" -- in which a president and his advisers declare war to distract the media from the prez's horn-dog activities -- as a joke-free kidnap drama.

The film looks and feels authentic, but Duchovny has powered his undeniably personal journey with a counterfeit heart.

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

Props to Charli xcx for grabbing her brat moment at Sundance. The dance-pop princess shows real acting potential, even though this misbegotten mockumentary gives her few chances to show her range.

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

It's slick girlie stuff, but the cast makes it go down easy.

What a shame that Kelly's pacing doesn't run as fast as his imagination. Instead of sweeping you along, The Box just sits there like something unclaimed at lost and found. Damaged goods.

To cut Toys a minor break, it is ambitious. It is also a gimmicky, obvious and pious bore, not to mention overproduced and overlong.

Watching Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds is usually time well spent, but this woebegone wintery love story makes you want to jump into an Amsterdam canal.

Dragon errs by trafficking too much in what made Bruce Lee sell instead of what made him tick.

The estrogen overload damn near did me in.

Jokester Karl Urban leads a cast of battling gamer brawlers against a plot that doesn’t exist. No matter. All you need to love it is blind devotion

For a while, The Dark Half is a compelling study, in chiller guise, of an artist wrestling with his creative demons. But Stark is a real terror only in the shadows. When he emerges, all we see is Hutton — in a showy makeup job — struggling to change his wimp image.

Pitt and Ford try to dig deeper, but the script undercuts them with preachy dialogue that might as well read, "Insert stereotype here."

Wood, whose mostly mute turn is defined by his black suit and glasses, can only stare in stupefaction at Schreiber's jittery mix of broad laughs and sentiment. Audiences will share the feeling.

The pop diva goes down with the bubbles in this hopelessly shallow soap opera.

Suffers from lulls and lapses and one lulu of a casting gaffe, but this keenly observant spoof of the fame game is hardly the work of a burnout.

Guess what? It's almost bearable.

Affleck is modest and engaging, which keeps the movie out of "Gigli" territory. But it's close.

Disney deserves praise for raising the ante on its ambitions in animation. Next time, though, a little less civics lesson and a little more heart.

Strains credulity at every turn.

The Art of Self-Defense sets itself up as the 90-pound weakling destined to live forever in the shadow of "Fight Club." The good news is that writer-director Riley Stearns gets in a few good licks at toxic masculinity before odious comparisons to David Fincher’s masterpiece blunt the film’s comic and dramatic impact.