Roger Moore

It’s an American "Love Actually" without the warmth that writer-director Richard Curtis stuffs into his all-star confections, without the wit, without much love, actually.

An awkward blend of ultra-realistic violence, boundaries-bending satire and low comedy.

It begins with such promise, a kinky modernist twist on a classical sci-fi morality tale. That it degenerates into conventional, genre horror is all the more disappointing.

It’s a poetic, mystical and meandering immersion in the life-as-a-slave experience, both for the viewer and for our on-screen surrogate.

This comic travelogue is like a “Manhattan” era Woody Allen starring in an Italian/Roman version of Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” — droll, scenic and adorable.

It's light in tone, feather-weight. But there aren't many laughs in it.

Hart’s portrayal of the young Lennon, cocky before the confidence that universal adoration swept over him, remains definitive and makes one want to revisit “Backbeat” (where I first interviewed him) and get the fuller picture, John in living color.

The Fortune Cookie still plays as funny. Not as funny as “One, Two, Three,” his grandest farce, or the more celebrated “Some Like It Hot.” Matthau makes it amusing. But there’s just a sliver of hope and the tiniest hint of “bittersweet” about it, something Wilder occasionally allowed into his screenplays.

A chilling detective tale, a horrific sexual abuse drama and an overlong, emotional, tie-up-every-loose-end melodrama that is sure to be half an hour shorter when Hollywood remakes it without the Swedish dialogue and probably without the cool Swedish edge.

This adorable documentary places this comic survivor and pioneer on a pedestal and recounts an epic career that had her on stage with Evelyn Nesbit — the scandalous vamp of “Ragtime” — in the ’20s.

There’s nobody delivering the laughs in this arid action comedy.

So while we can appreciate the decent effects, the bang-up settings and a good cast, we can only hope they got some sight-seeing in on their days off. Whatever magic there was on this shoot is probably in their home movies.

Still, this is Zhang at his peak — twenty years before the horrors of “The Great Wall,” working with his muse (Gong Li will be seen next in Disney’s “Mulan”) and showing off a China that the Communist oligarchs would eventually come to emulate — of Western style luxury and opulence, and the casual, business-as-usual corruption that helps one acquire it.

Schuster wrote Frau Stern specifically for Sommerfeld, and we can see what he saw in her in just a scene or two.

Vorozhbit opens up her play just enough to make it cinematic, without losing the power that these disparate stories from a combat zone carry. One watches it with the hope that some day she’ll get to make another, and that Ukrainian cinemas will be open to show it, if they’re still standing.

A generally joyless pastiche of sorcery history, imitation Potter "chosen one" Messianics and mirthless silliness, it's another in a string of recent black marks against Cage's Oscar-owning reputation.

It's an unblinking look into the lives of soldiers doing the most thankless job of all.

There are a few sensitive scenes, but it’s the big blasts of raunchy that deliver its laughs.

It's not as scary as it needs to be or as clever as it thinks it is, but the new 3D version of "Piranha" is at least as gimmicky as those fabled 3D films of yore. With all the pointless 3D cartoons and joyless 3D ""Clash of the Titans" conversions, at last here's a picture that tosses its cookies, its coffee cups and its D-cups right in your lap.

A perfectly adequate superhero comic-book movie, all explosions, chases, gunfights, sword fights and blood feuds. There’s even a little humor in it.

The mercurial Brand is spot on as the mercurial Aldous, putting over outrageously titled tunes with panache.

“Thriller” doesn’t quite fit here, because no matter what the stakes, nobody seems that worked up about them. It’s more disquieting than fun, but more amusing than troubling.

The film’s scruffy charms do not dim with age. If you’re in the mood for a musical roman a clef where the songs are sharp and the singing is effortlessly on key, don’t underestimate Songwriter.

See it for the glories of young stars about to take over Hollywood. Because it’s hard to figure out another reason to get all the way through this version of “Going All the Way.”

Dreamworks hired the directors of "Lilo & Stitch" to turn Cressida Cowell’s romp of a novel into an animated film and can’t be too surprised that they made, in essence, "Hiccup and Stitch."

In simplifying the stakes, narrowing the focus, giving us a fixed villain, and shooting in “WWII period piece” black and white, Frankenheimer gives us a riveting ride through a war fought over values and fundamental freedoms — among them, the freedom to create, value and appreciate whatever artistic expression you choose, and not just the oompah music, idealized landscapes and muscular propaganda of the tasteless goons in charge.

If you’re a demonic possession movie completist, if you simply must see everything in this worn genre that crosses your path as it crosses itself, you could do worse.

A trio of writers took New York critic turned studio exec Mark Hellinger’s notion for a “Roaring” era gangster saga and peppered it with enough snappy dialogue to pass for a screwball comedy.

Baumbach overreaches, making this character a selfish, off-putting cultural (LA) and generational scold. But Stiller, in his most “real” performance in ages, finds the function in this catalog of dysfunctions, the humanity in this humanity-hating crank.

A Remarkable Tale stays upbeat and positive, and manages to have a little fun with a subject that’s roiled the world for a decade. Cute or not, that’s saying something.

Hearts and Bones isn’t particularly graceful in the way it unfolds, and it doesn’t hide one man’s secret well enough or give the other’s the weight it seems to represent. But some very fine acting, a few poignant scenes and a general earnestness carry it off.

The Luring owes a bit to Stephen King — lots of bits. But writer-director Christoper Welles doesn’t grab enough of King’s horror leftovers to make a meal. Still, when you get bored — and you will — the “borrowings” will stand out and sort of accumulate in your mind.

Limp and lifeless, this Next Door neighbor should be evicted to DVD.

It’s a somber film with flashes of wit, with funereal pacing and long, poignant close-ups that let the players — especially Ashkenazi and Adler — let us see there’s more than what we see on the surface, just with a look.

This plot, with its murderous, sexy love and murder entanglements, can work. This cast might make it come off, when more of them have movie and not mostly stage experience.

One of the finest films of the ’80s, a high point for Caine, Walters and Gilbert and a movie I think about all the time because it literally changed my life.

Yes, “schmaltzy” and “corny” fit in any description of this 1940 film. The soundstages don’t do justice to Holland or London or the North Atlantic. But what plays over 80 years later is the wit, the Ben Hecht (“The Front Page”) and Benchley-written exchanges between the posh Brit and the American trying to work his way into the political inner circles where Europe was about to take a stand against fascism.

Its grisly violence and ridicule-religion tone make it sort of the anti-"Exorcism of Emily Rose."

Director Thomas Balmes and his editors find moments of humor in “discoveries” or the unfettered urinating of a baby brought up without diapers.

Fey flirts and Carell kvetches, Walhberg goes shirtless and Liotta eats Italian. No surprises there. What really clicks is the couple at the core.

A broad and formulaic culture-clash comedy built on fill-in-the-blank wedding comedy clichés.

A ditzy film that offers more evidence that good actors, good action and one-liners don’t solve the one thing missing in every movie video game adaptation – a story that makes sense.

The Square may be played in a thick Aussie dialect that’s hard to fathom. But thanks to bravura filmmaking that never violates the classic rules of the genre, they could be household names here someday, too.

It is the colors, the life contained in those vivid those tableux, the theaters, street scenes of this or that army marching by, the shadows and fog of “reality” intruding on the rigidly constrained theatrical performances that stick in the memory from this masterpiece.

The script, by actor turned writer John Posey, has structural problems and motivational issues in between the cliches. And Cena, a few movies into his career, is still all presence and no acting.

The direction, by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland), is breathless, with lovely grace notes — he uses silences to end his action beats. And if this incarnation of Bond still doesn't inspire affection, he does command respect, awe, a sense that a real man is risking life and limb for queen and crown.

The suspense Hitchcock mastered in his films of the ’30s becomes excruciating here as we watch the various threads unravel into a deadly finale.

These guys set out to make a movie where they could crack each other up. At this late date, they can't even manage that.

It's stunning work, movingly narrated by actors from Josh Lucas to Robert Duvall, all telling the stories of those who fought and bled and lived to tell the tale. [23 Mar 2007, p.21]

The Joneses manages a deft blend of the sexy, the sad and the silly. And Borte doles out his secrets and surprises in ways that make it easy to keep up with these Joneses.

Scattered, indulgent and flat-footed.

Terminator Salvation is one of the most visually impressive films in the series. The action is non-stop and the look borders on dazzling.... But ironically for a series that's supposed to be about an embattled humanity struggling against those who lack it, there isn't an emotional moment in this.

Before the Fall has the germ of a great idea, one that will get the film noticed and some festival play. But the promise of “Pride” is, in this case, not fully kept. It lacks the wit and the light touch to come off.

“Camp” is a word that’s falling into disuse in these more tolerant times. But back then, that was the whole point, and full ownership of it was reflected in the name of the pageant. This was “camp” back when camp meant something.

It's a delightful cartoon that truly feels African in the way it carries the wisdom of the ages. It feels like a great fable, preserved for generations because of the wise lessons it imparts. [04 Aug 2000, p.19]

Those Jackasses from "Jackass" aren't getting better, they're getting older.

Strip away the French and Arabic subtitles, the French-prison setting and the Muslim-messianic title, and A Prophet, opening Friday at The Enzian, would still be the grittiest prison thriller in years.

It’s a movie that demands we tune out long before it tries to “explain” away its shortcomings.

The obstacles to love are all winners and include losing contact (pre-Internet), moving, closing a business, changing jobs, falling into trouble over and over again. And the payoff, set to a certain song in a certain year after 11 years have passed, is worth it.

The plot, for all its tried and true conventions, has eye-rolling leaps in logic and sort of lumbers between star cameos until we reach a far-fetched if generic conclusion.

A flipped take on tween-to-teen romance that make it such a minor gem.

That humor is a the delicious underpinning to whatever melodrama happens as these five connect and clash. And that humor is what reassures us, even at its darkest moments, that no matter how things work out for the adults, these kids are going to be all right.

The film’s tone is all wrong, the pacing is dead and the veering between sex, sadness and sado-masochistic violence is enough to give you motion sickness. It’s a bad movie.

The ghost of John Hughes smiles upon Easy A, a film that freely and giddily borrows from and pays tribute to Hughes' famous Holy Trinity of '80s teen angst comedies.

It's the best heist picture since "Heat."

A well-acted tale of an underdog's triumph that sorely lacks an underdog, it teeters between pleasantly generic film biography and rank manipulation.

Green Zone isn't so much a bad movie as a misguided one.

Nice period detail, a few cute situations, one half-interesting character and three laughs, that’s the pickle this picture puts itself in.

Chung goes to such effort to avoid melodrama — predictable, artificial or over-the-top confrontations — that Munyurangabo never alters its sedate, almost somnambular pacing.

As with any movie, this kids' film is only as good as its writing - the jokes, the cute bits, the heart. And that's where Alpha and Omega comes up short.

As uneven as it is, Life as We Know It still goes down like comic comfort food, especially for anybody who's ever dealt with parenthood.

Jackie Earle Haley, the fans' choice to take on the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of the 1984 boogeyman blockbuster A Nightmare on Elm Street proves stunningly, rousingly…adequate…for the job.

A transgressive blend of stoner comedy, horny teenager movie and "Blair Witch" reality riff, this no-budget romp through teen New Orleans crosses the line and erases that line in a hell-bent pursuit of hell-bound laughs. And yeah, it's often funny as all get out.

Ju Dou has an attention to detail, the “mise en scene” of set dressing and filming of an ancient, human-and-animal-powered dye works, a world of folk medicine, village gossip, rites and traditions, that raised the bar for the period pieces of Zhang and Chen, their contemporaries and the Chinese filmmakers to follow. And that attention to detail reminds us that nothing is on screen by accident.

It isn’t much, amusing junk at best. But Dead Ant lets Busey be a stoner-philosopher, Hailey be a rock-chick heroine (’80s style) and Coiro (“Entourage”) demonstrate the power of a “power chord” in a “power ballad,” especially where there are murderous insects concerned.

Cute, bordering on cutesy, yes. Light and shallow and inconsequential in a lot of ways. But funny? Rarely.

Dazzling, scary and sentimental.

Paltrow and McGrath’s interpretation of the character and recreation of the mores of the time are spot-on. This is an “Emma” of her era — young, privileged, cosseted and a busybody who sticks her nose in others’ business without noting that her own happiness and chief means of providing happiness to others are being neglected.

It's rooting against grandma that drives this violent, hardhearted film, and waiting for the pride of lions she's created to devour her that gives Animal Kingdom its animal energy.

You have to remind yourself to breathe.

If “the gals” have to bow out, at least they try to do it in a sprint -- in their Manolo Blahniks. It’s a pity nobody told them you can’t run in heels -- in sand dunes.

For all the impressive (but not dazzling) effects, the scattered jokes and stentorian acting (especially from the Olympians), there’s not much here that will stick with you after the popcorn’s gone. But as any ancient Greek could tell you, that’s sort of the point.

This colossal folly, the fiasco of the summer of 2010 - gives us all a ringside seat at the sight of Mr. "I See Dead People's" career gurgling down the drain.