Richard Corliss

It’s wandering, not urgent, while indicating that all-Shailene-all-the-time can be too much of a pretty good thing.

Sometimes intelligent, often cuddlesome and ultimately bland.

The Keane story is a rich parable that deserves either a wilder or a more acute telling than Burton provides here.

The joke barrage becomes hit-or-miss, as if the creators — including screenwriter Dan Stewart, working from a story by Rogen and Greenberg — don’t know or care which is which.

Though we still believe that Lawrence, who turned 25 in August, can do no wrong, she isn’t given much opportunity to do anything spectacularly right here. Her performance is a medley of sobs and gasps, in mournful or radiant closeup. This time, her Katniss is as much a prisoner of her circumstances as Peeta is. She and the movie are both victims of burnout.

So put it this way: If the Altmans were a real family sitting shiva, I’d drop by to commiserate and give a cheek-kiss to a few of the mourners (Bateman, Driver, Fey, maybe Fonda). I enjoyed seeing them, but I’d hate to be sentenced to being with them for the full seven-day stretch.

Studying the topography of decay in a veteran actor’s face is one of the few worthy pursuits for moviegoers sitting through the epic-length, belligerently inconsequential The Expendables 3 — a picture whose very title proclaims its redundancy.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is on a mission to make you cry. Whether you oblige will depend on your fondness for, or immunity to, the gentler stereotypes of movie romance.

It’s a bit of a botch.

So why is the Jersey Boys film a turgid botch? Eastwood’s résumé hints at a reason. His affinity is for American standards as improvised on piano or guitar by indigenous artists in smoky nightclubs, not for the tightly wound, impeccably pounding songs that Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe wrote for the Four Seasons.

Tries anything for a gross-out laugh — but feels oh-so-familiar

Frantic and rote by turns, mislaying the power of the central love story and piling on the mutant adversaries. For at least this installment, Spider-Man is Amazing no more.

And yet, all three women are less watchable and amusing that Nicki Minaj as Carly’s legal assistant Lydia.

Clever ideas early on go rogue, or go missing, in the gallop toward an action-film climax that then, perversely, doesn’t materialize. The movie’s intelligence is artificial, its affect solemn.

A little less agreeable and way more aggressive than its better begetter, Rio 2 has the overstuffed agenda of a movie that’s been focus-grouped to death.

This is cinema reduced or distilled to its purest definition, of movies that move. If you want dewy humanity in your entertainment, watch Lifetime.

Bad Words seems to be heading into the creepy realm of a sociopath’s case study, yet it’s presented as a breezy satire about a rebel against the system. It must be the Dictionary-Industrious Complex.

For all the energetic milling, Rise of an Empire proves superior to its predecessor by making war a game both sexes can play, on nearly equal terms. In comparison, the R-rated "300" seems as innocent as Adam in the Garden before the delicious complication of Eve — or Eva.

Shot in grainy, unflattering closeups occasionally alleviated by flashily edited fight scenes, Non-Stop is no more or less than what it intends to be: the kind of midlevel brainless entertainment you might watch, between meals and naps, on an international flight. Try to enjoy the ride — and no texting, please.

A wildly flawed but fitfully diverting picture.

If the movie had been content to replicate the Taken formula, and left the fatherhood angle as a subtext, it would be easier to take. Instead, even for Costner admirers, it’s a hard 2 hours to kill.

Ambitious of vision and swooping of camera, I, Frankenstein is no "I, Robot," let alone "I, Claudius," but it’s definitely watchable on a cold Jan. evening or, a few months from now, on your I, Pad.

Too bad that Ride Along never makes it to Ordinary; it sinks into sub-. This is a movie you keep watching only from lethargy.

Provides the familiar cheap thrills but with a salsa tang.

By buying the pitch that its central character’s escapades were the stuff of mesmerizing drama or comedy, Scorsese, Winter and DiCaprio reveal themselves as dupes — the latest in a long line of clever folks swindled by Jordan Belfort.

You may salute Lone Survivor for its desperate intensity; but the film remains pinned down by its military and political dilemma: between gung-ho and F—, no.

Anchorman 2 is more like SNL in the sharper years (1995–2002), when McKay was a writer and Ferrell one of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Expect no more and you should be satisfied. Wine connoisseurs would call this a new Burgundy with an old bouquet.

Like Martin Scorsese’s "The Departed," a bloated Americanizing of the Hong Kong cop movie "Infernal Affairs," the Lee Oldboy will startle newbies with its story ingenuities and morbid revelations, while leaving connoisseurs of the source film wondering why Hollywood couldn’t have left great enough alone.

The clutter makes your head feel like it's about to explode - and not in a good way, with wonders upon wonders. Instead it seems like arcana that might show up on the midterm final: the next Marvel movie.

Hanks has a wonderful scene, late in the film, that shows a strong man collapsing into frailty. It hints at the emotional depth the movie might have plundered. The rest of Captain Phillips must rely for its drive on the relentless mechanical agitation of Henry Jackman’s score. It can’t save an overly muscled docudrama that is more pounding that truly gripping.

This is the rough cut of a good movie, and a splendid opportunity wasted.

Blue Jasmine is the 77-year-old auteur’s first flat-out non-comedy in a quarter century — since "Another Woman" and "September" in the late ’80s, and back to "Interiors" in 1978. Like those more somber studies, this is a portrait of a woman in extremis. But a view from afar: Allen observes Jasmine’s allure and disease without penetrating her soul. That makes for a movie that is both intimate and disinterested, as if Jasmine were a flailing insect in a barren terrarium.

You get 45 minutes of awesome encased in 90 minutes of yawnsome.

It’s got too much on its mind, and it’s unsure of its tone. This is the rough cut of a slimmer, better movie

In space, Jack hopes, someone may hear you dream. But in a movie theater, no one will see you yawn.

It’s "Identity Thief" with flying piranhas, or Plains, Trains & Automobiles on foot.

Raimi, who launched his career with the cheapo horror mini-masterpiece "The Evil Dead" before helming the blockbuster "Spider-Man" trilogy, can’t infuse the story with much verve or joy.

The movie is less to be experienced than to be appreciatively studied, like an insect, a stuffed bird, or the sketch by a gifted artist in the style of an Old Master — in this case, the Master of Suspense. It’s not pure Park or pure Hitchcock but a muted, mildly mesmerizing blend of the two. You might want to take a careful stroll in this Hitchpark.

The blend of fairy-tale sentiment and knowing irony worked exactly once, in "The Princess Bride," and fails here. But there's enough visual ingenuity - eye candy, if you will - to make this Hansel & Gretel an intermittently tasty temptation.

Left-wingers in the mainstream media - by which I mean me - are supposed to lap up a movie that plays to our farm-loving, tree-hugging prejudices. But even we know that well-meaning does not automatically equal good movie. Some organic life is needed. And the only crop Promised Land harvests is Capra Corn.

Painful, and not in a good way. A glimpse into the '60s should give us not just the warm bath of recognition but the shock of the new, as least as it felt in days of old. That doesn't happen, in a movie that evokes less empathy than apathy.

The archivist's meticulousness with which this movie was assembled defeats the starving-hysterical-naked urgency of its source material. Could the old Hollywood pharisees have been right? Maybe On the Road is unfilmable.

Even when the film is cool, it manages to be wrong.

Sensitive souls in search of wrenching emotion can be guaranteed their Kleenex moments; you will get wet. But aside from that opening scene, you will not be cinematically edified. This is a bad movie.

The movie lacks majesty. Grand in parts, the movie is too often grandiose or grandiloquent; and the running time is indefensible.

Deadfall, though, is a thing of pieces: splendidly efficient in its action sequences (car crash, knife fight, snowmobile chase), dawdling in dialogue scenes that should smolder with tension.

The acting ensemble is crucial. Everyone's really fine.

There's a point at which movies become only merchandise, and the Paranormal franchise may be heading for that nexus, that nadir.

The performances here are so sharp that viewers may wish End of Watch has been shot by someone who knew how to find the right point of view for a scene and leave it there.

Watson makes a smooth matriculation from the England-made Harry Potter epics to this movie's thrifty, six-week Pittsburgh shoot.

Most viewers are likely to be impressed more by the magnitude of the effort than the magnificence of the effect. Cloud Atlas is a Terry Gilliam movie without the kinks, a Wong Kar-wai film without the smoky dreamscape, a time-and-Space Oddity that remains frustratingly earthbound. Put it another way: this is no "Speed Racer."

In terms of quality, though, Argo is just so-so.

Despite enough pummeling to flatten Rocky Balboa in all six movies, the only thing that truly rewards your attendance is Pitt in another effortless star performance.

Keough is nearly worth risking life (Diane's) and limb (Martin's) for. The eldest grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, she has a pale, dreamy lusciousness that puts as viewer in mind of Amanda Seyfried, though without the overt sexuality. Her not-quite-there appeal matches both the opacity of Martin's intentions and the entire underhanded, underwhelming experience that The Good Doctor offers.

In this bad-better-best movie, the Flik story is the bad, the choir singing much better and Peters the soul-stirring best.

Lawless tries to be flawless; as a movie, it's often listless - lifeless.

The overall tone is familiar, refried, redundant.

No scene lasts more than a few minutes, but the overall is effect is being subjected to 105 mins. of YouTube vignettes that someone has chosen. 360 is probably best appreciated or endured on a long flight similar to the one Hopkins takes in the movie.

The new PG-13 movie is a fairly close adaptation of the Verhoeven, and lacks not just the earlier film's newness but its vigor, density, humor and R-rated juice. It's like the dinner-theater revival of a classic play, whose single asset is to remind those present how good the original was.

You're unlikely to laugh much, and you may get an unexpected case of the non-art-imitates-bad-life creeps.

Ruby Sparks tries its damnedest to make a picture that seduces moviegoers into accepting it as their best imaginary friend forever. But the sweat shows more than the sparkle.

Watching this is like flipping channels randomly between a Masterpiece Theatre drama and a splatter film on Cinemax. If you're like me, you'll stick with the splatter.

My advice to Scott and Lindelof is, Try harder - to bring the characters as well as the creatures alive; to extend the grandeur of that music-of-the-sphere scene to an entire movie; to devise new horror-film money shots; and to scare the crap out of me.

If the film is to work at all - and it eventually does - the two 27-year-old leads must radiate enough star quality to obviate the ramshackle plot. They just about do.

Until The Raven almost literally loses itself during a chase in the city sewers, it nicely balances its literary gamesmanship with a R-rated thriller's mandatory gross-out tableaux.

All three give performances that would suit a better movie than this pallid shocker with little heart and no bite.

There's nothing profound going on here; the truisms don't blossom into life-enriching truths. It's more like the person you meet at a bar who, on second glance, is surprisingly attractive. Call Think Like a Man a perfectly satisfactory one-night stand at the movies.

The Lady is still titled away from the churning melodrama of Suu Kyi's country and toward the intimate dilemma of a loving couple forced apart by circumstance.

Theirs was a ruthless Cinema of Cruelty; this is whimsy with a coating of corrosion.

Guys and gals from the first film, now thicker and with incipient crow lines, pair up in more or less the same permutations as when they were young and shiny. The movie's message is that the way to face impeding maturity is to embrace your inner teen idiot.

Wrath of the Titans, like its predecessor, is a slightly-better-than-OK mashing of one of history's great literary troves: the Greek myths.

Can The Hunger Games, in the movie version directed by Gary Ross, successfully navigate the crossing from page to screen? Our answer: Eh.

The result is that John Carter plays like an alternate, inferior version of "Avatar"…Plus fleeting hints of John Ford's "The Searchers" - for this is also a Western.

Simultaneously diverting and annoying.

It's a decent February movie that smartly extends Washington's God-on-the-run character.

Carano is her own best stuntwoman, but in the dialogue scenes she's all kick and no charisma. The MMA battler lacks the conviction she so forcefully displayed in the ring. She is not Haywire's heroine but its hostage.

The critic in me can authoritatively declare that the film is crap. The fan in me sent his shirt to the dry cleaners for tear removal.

Seeing Fincher's version is like getting a Christmas gift of a book you already have. This edition has a nicer binding and prettier illustrations than your beloved old paperback, but it's essentially a reproduction of the same old dragon. Dragon Tat-two.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is no "Fast Five."

At 78, Polanski has earned the right to pursue his career-long demons of confinement and anarchy even in a minor film like this. But Carnage is not the word for what he's perpetrated here. Minor irritation is more like it.

Fresh inspiration is sparse here; the sequel is less an extension than a remake. Holmes says of one of his lamer disguises, "It's so overt, it's covert." And the shadow in this game is the imposing penumbra of Ritchie's very satisfying 2009 film. It's overt and overwhelming.

By turns amusing and annoying, Young Adult could be the flip side, plus the sequel, of "Juno."

The pity is that Tarsem's intelligence doesn't connect his cinematic eye to his narrative mind. The director's visual gift is like a brilliant retina, detached.

The film manages to be both sensational and stodgy, like a guided tour that goes on until it drones.

Never to be mistaken for a Christmas classic - or even, strictly speaking, a good movie - H&K 3D Xmas obeys one other solid comedy rule: that after things are broken, they must be repaired and restored.

It's a great idea that Niccol can't translate into a great movie.

Brewer must have convinced himself that a schlocky old movie would speak eloquently to today's teens. About half of the time, he pulls it off.

The director is going through the motions, and he doesn't display the cinematic skill, at least in the release version, to bring off an exercise in either Hitchcockian or Shyamalanian suspense.

All these roles could have been found at a garage sale of comedy stereotypes. To the extent that 50/50 works, it is because of Gordon-Levitt, one of my favorite actors.

I'm a notorious softie, and I found things to like about the film, most particularly Clooney's performance; but I remained untouched.

The problem is that this pot of intrigue takes ages to boil, and the cook refuses to turn up the heat. And if vitality is not an element Sayles cherishes, neither is nuance.

A gaudily ornamented medieval banquet table groaning with junk food and open entrails.

The film also serves as the clearest statement of Glee's sacred mission. Through it, we can see how the entire multimedia phenomenon - the show, the albums, the iTunes hits, the recent concert tour and now this movie - has accrued the odor, say the incense, of a secular religion.

Gradually, though, the movie sinks into ordinariness, serving up too many Spielbergian reaction shots of each cast member gawking or gulping at an alien encounter, and too many moral lessons that must be learned or taught.

It's all mildly deplorable and instantly forgettable. Kevin James remains a potentially appealing movie star - if only he didn't have to be in Kevin James movies.

The scorekeepers at the various sites that rate critics' enthusiasm for a film shouldn't even try to elicit a Pass or Fail grade from me on T3. I'm a fascinated, stupefied outsider. Just mark me Present.

Apart from some spiffy visual effects, which create coherent, scary textures and architecture for outer space, Green Lantern is the most generic of summer time wasters.

Too bad that First Class torpedoes its lofty intentions with flights of idiocy so wrongheaded as to be almost endearing.