Ronnie Scheib

It is the presence of Duncan as a Mike Tyson-esque, malaprop-spouting ex-champion that, at least momentarily, lifts the pic out of its mediocrity.

The overly simplistic script by Zac Stanford (“The Chumscrubber”) hits nothing but high notes, making the whole dramatically less than the sum of its parts.

Thesping is more engaging than accomplished, as Anderson's constant smile cracks around the edges and Northover's dourness is a bit overdone.

Even a magnificently inspired Maria Bello proves insufficiently daring to save Richard Alfieri and Arthur Allan Seidelman's Chekhov-based chamber piece Sisters from pretentious psychodrama.

Tracing a journey of self-discovery through six North Indian states without a formal script, Ali’s actors, like his characters, effectively improvise in a meandering present tense, stripped of any viable destination.

Icelandic helmer Baltasar Kormakur ("101 Reykjavik," "Jar City") injects notes of hysteria into the script's frenetic pileup of gratuitous cliches, as Dermot Mulroney pushes his square-jawed, desperate hero to near-masochistic extremes.

The leads jell well but the film overcompensates to justify their union, surrounding them with broadly drawn secondary characters presented in an uncertain, inconsistent comic tone.

Trite, sententious and generally unfunny.

After a seductively moody intro, Michael Walker's domestic thriller devolves into a cartoonish attack on the filthy rich.

Tracks the race-to-the-deadline scramble of a personable young designer preparing an underfunded fashion show, but offers few threads that were not already more solidly and stylishly woven into "Unzipped," "Seamless" or "11 Hours."

Picture narrowly avoids outright bathos, thanks largely to first-rate perfs by its child thesps and by Ray Liotta. But by self-righteously rejecting facile solutions, then employing them anyway in the tradition of "no ending left behind," the result conforms to parents' old-fashioned notions of kid movies rather than demonstrating true kid appeal.

Unfortunately, the documentary's impact is mitigated the benefactor's constant presence and paternalistic, infomercial-like exposition.

Pic contains its share of viable gags and stars generate a certain degree of convincing chemistry. But eventually, the seams in personality design and artificially stitched-together script construction begin to show.

Another in the procession of dead children movies that followed Atom Egoyan's magisterial "The Sweet Hereafter," helmer Gaby Dellal's sophomore effort unfolds in a similarly snow-blanketed small town filled with grieving adults, the community divided in apportioning blame. In contrast with Egoyan's labyrinthine structure and complex storylines, Crest cobbles together bits of plot and a motley assortment of half-formed characters.

Pic relies on nerdy world-weary irony to carry the day, but doesn't convincingly draw its characters.

Brit helmer Malcolm Mowbray's film assumes the constrictions of a stagebound farce, taking place on a single set in real time, and swept along in magisterially broad strokes by Jeffrey Tambor's playfully theatrical perf.

Clunky allegorical elements, however, remain unsatisfyingly ambiguous throughout the picture.

Sarah Jessica Parker's myriad fans will doubtless appreciate her frazzled warmth in a part she energetically inhabits, but the picture at times feels out of step with contemporary reality and humorless in its adaptation of a comic bestseller.

Functions swimmingly as both a bigscreen inflation of smallscreen icons and a fairly hilarious stand-alone.

Stellar thesps gamely strive to elevate the one-note material, but gravity ultimately defeats them in this relentless downer.

Featuring a strong central perf by Bill Sage, a raincoated detective turn by Roy Scheider and the upscale autumnal serenity of the Hamptons, If I Didn't Care remains a stylistic exercise in elegant gratuitousness.

The film is hamstrung by its fidelity to real-life inspirational models.

French actress-writer-director Josiane Balasko plunges in with all the finesse of a hopped-up Pollyanna, her simplistic interpretation of an impaired sexagenarian coming close to outright parody.

In the central role, first-time feature helmer Alexander Poe may trigger sheepish identification among the neurotic with the protag's vaguely ridiculous reactions. While his character registers as white-bread bland, strong performances from the two "exes" save this indie from a surfeit of self-deprecating charm.

The picture's assorted characters, though credible, feel wearisomely one-dimensional, while the pumped-up action, unfolding in a single day, basically consists of an extended game of hide-and-seek.

The Sweet Inspirations ranked as one of the most important backup singing groups in record-industry history, having performed with Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Dionne Warwick, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, the Drifters, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield and Elvis Presley. Yet, aside from an occasional still photograph, not a single frame of archival footage from their illustrious careers shows up in This Time.

Lack of perspective and shaky comic tone plague Tollbooth -- sinking it in a morass of whiny cliches.

An ambitious, low-budget neo-noir, Stephen Purvis' El Cortez navigates the genre's tawdry twists and crosses and double-crosses with intermittent flair.