Robert Koehler

Boilerplate crime comedy.

Nocturnal settings and musical interludes create their own kind of allure, but picture feels like an art film imitation, not an authentic art film itself.

The street action is vivid, but the dramatics are distinctly not, lending the film an unintended sense of fakery.

Darkly amusing idea delivers an early salvo that fades as the film swings across a range of styles and tones director Sergio Arau gamely tries to corral. Even at its half-realized level, pic will anger some as it amuses others.

Increasingly complicated comic maneuvers turn what should have been a hip look at sexuality into an antsy pic too busy to settle down.

An unappealing, stiff melodrama.

A string of scenes in search of a movie.

Uninspired star turns from Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman suggest something less than full belief in this quickly forgettable thriller.

The latest and most calculated re-do on the formulaic fantasy of an innocent conquering Gotham.

Penn looks bewildered in a role that simply doesn't track, but Kechiche rises to the occasion. Stanzler's helming, shot blandly in digital vid, amounts to point-and-shoot.

Undone by an idea capable of hanging together for 30 minutes at best.

Lacks the consistent tone, pace and point of view for either a science fiction thriller or medieval war adventure.

Suffers from the same rancid dialogue and acting problems as the original but with a much funnier pulse. The real progenitor here is less the previous pic than the sick-funny horror cinema of George Romero.

Imposter is a penny-pinched "Blade Runner," a stubbornly unexciting ride into the near future.

Plainly disappointing as a well-sustained kick-butt thriller, and politically toxic.

The strain needed to extend The Whole Ten Yards a yard -- and to feature length -- is so painfully evident it breaks new pic's comedy spirit, making it a particularly dubious member of the Sequel Hall of Shame.

Picturesque pic, however, lacks even a penalty kick's worth of tension and is paradoxically inert for a movie about guys running up and down the pitch for the glory of the U.S.

Ridiculous would-be thriller.

This overlong march will bore all but the most nobly patriotic.

Archival material -- especially rare B&W Soviet footage -- is a knockout, though the assembly of talking heads, nearly all Reagan loyalists, is predictable and uninspired.

The court action contains only a fraction of the hoops energy one would expect from a pic co-produced by NBA Entertainment -- and film suffers from the conspicuous absence of the title's Michael Jordan.

Except for Eisenberg's superb comic timing and his ability to make the familiar seem interesting, the high school scenes play like "Scream" outtakes.

The result under Penny Marshall's direction is a film with genuinely serious intentions that falls considerably short of its intentions.

A disappointingly mild re-creation of true events.

Stumbling its way down the comedy runway, Miss Congeniality is yet another miscalculated vehicle for the ever-feisty Sandra Bullock.

Couldn't be less involving and more sentimentalized.

Messy admixtures of drama and mockery crucially undermine pic's serious message.

A virtual template of every imaginable cliche of the musical biopic, picture suffers from a lack of narrative and character focus