Scott Foundas

The Place Beyond the Pines is a much bigger canvas, and scene by scene it can be riveting...But the disparate pieces never quite jell; the movie is all trees and no forest.

Glazer has always been longer on atmosphere and uncanny moods than on narrative, but the fatal flaw of Under the Skin isn’t that not much happens; it’s that what does happen isn’t all that interesting.

The visual effects are predictably excellent -- sometimes, in the case of a three-man free fall through space, unexpectedly lyrical -- but most of the movie's dramatic conflicts feel strictly pro forma.

There is something too dry and austere about Greengrass and Ray’s telescoped vision, which touches only fleetingly on the pirates’ motives, the suffering of the Somali people and the collateral damage of global capitalism.

Came alive only in the presence of a supposed dead man -- specifically, the nefarious Lord Voldemort.

King Kong isn't terrible, but it's something that none of Jackson's previous movies ever was -- it's enervating.

This big-hearted underdog comedy from director Shawn Levy is, much like its two leads, exceedingly affable and good-natured despite being undeniably long in the tooth.

Z for Zachariah is a handsome-looking film (shot in widescreen, on remote New Zealand locations, by veteran David Gordon Green d.p. Tim Orr) and it doesn’t lack for provocative ideas, though it never digs quite deep enough into any of them.

But while some may leave the theater tapping their toes and whistling the lyrics to such inimitable original ballads as "Hard for a Pimp" and "Whoop That Trick," they should hang their heads low and mourn the sorry state of the contemporary African-American movie.

Nary an original idea abounds in The Island.

A routine memory piece about long-buried family secrets that bubble back to the surface to wreak havoc.

Assembled in a straightforward, television-style presentation that gets the better of it.

As factoids do-si-do with testimonials from the likes of drinking buddy Sean Penn and fan-boy Bono, the movie all but becomes the very A&E Hagiography for which Bukowski would have had little or no patience.

Bay can be a master of exuberant chaos, but here the violence mostly lands with a sickening thud, which is fitting, one supposes, but also ultimately numbing.

Unfortunately, whenever Ledger isn't onscreen, Lords of Dogtown takes a spill.

Touches of apocalyptic comedy run throughout Nightcrawler, but the movie’s overriding tone is one of strident, finger-wagging self-seriousness.

If this is what qualifies, as some critics have suggested, as an artistic advance for Mr. Park, let us pray for a hasty retreat.

An odd concoction: an English-language movie made by Dutch filmmakers working with an American cast on location in Russia and Mexico. That strangeness, combined with sharp casting and affectionate performances, is a big part of "Affair's" charm.

The attempt to draw certain connections between Griffin's material and its autobiographical origins feels slapped together, shortchanging both aspects of the film.

It's rarely a good sign when a movie feels obliged to add the words "a fable" beneath its main title -- and Undertaking Betty is no exception.

Open Water is just one tedious scene stretched out to feature length. It's terrifying all right, but only for what it says about the extents to which a couple of hungry actors and a bullish director will go to turn themselves into overnight celebrities.

Intolerable Cruelty seems the kind of movie that results from two essentially erudite, anarchic talents playing down to the masses.

Like this summer's other slapstick cause célèbre, "Pineapple Express," it's a comedy with as high or higher a body count as the movies it purports to be parodying, and the problem isn't the violence per se but rather the fact that neither movie ever finds a satisfactory balance between tongue-in-cheek and guts-in-hand.

Between them, first-time screenwriter Carl Ellsworth and director Wes Craven don't come up with a single clever way to generate suspense, and the movie's onboard atmosphere is so phony.

Although in many respects a more stylish, authentic, tougher-minded film than "Hotel Rwanda," director Michael Caton-Jones' respectable and well-intentioned Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) still falls into the trap of filtering an inherently African story through the eyes of a noble white protagonist -- in this case, two of them.

Compulsively watchable, with its fair share of effective sledgehammer shocks; it just isn't very good.

Hendrickson shot “Colossus” from a partial script, leaving room for improvisation, and the movie’s loose, shapeless feel and scenes that go on far too long are the telltale signs of a filmmaker who fell so in love with his own material that he couldn’t bring himself to kill his darlings.

As lead Columbine investigator Kate Battan has herself put it, “Everybody wants a quick answer. They want an easy answer so that they can sleep at night and know this is not going to happen tomorrow.” And now they have Gus Van Sant's Elephant.

Gets stuck in a rut. Hearing Santa say “f---” isn't nearly as funny the 50th time as it is the first 49.

A cobwebbed, mummified horror entry that makes obvious, cartoonishly grotesque demands for attention.

Fascinating and frustrating in nearly equal measure.

Most of the time Wedding Crashers is more genteel than it is outrageous (or funny), playing like an only slightly less benign spin on the tiresome fish-out-of-water farce that fueled the two Meet the Parents movies.

Ellis and screenwriter Eric Bress even go all meta on us with an "Inglourious Basterds"–esque finale set inside a 3D cinema, though their set pieces never quite muster the giddy brio of "Final Destination 1" and "3" auteur James Wong at his best.

Put simply, this second feature by the young Austrian director Hans Weingartner is a put-on -- a glib anti-capitalist rant in which the rhetoric rarely rises above the you-too-can-save-a-child-for-less-than-the-price-of-coffee level.

The movie is leaden and self-serious, with an unusually hollow performance from Norton, who's not for a moment convincing as a man of raging passion. Far better is Paul Giamatti.

Doesn't risk ruffling any feathers, and that's exactly what's wrong with it: It's less a satirical bite at the hand that feeds Guest than it is a toothless nibble, and it isn't particularly funny.

There may not be two equal sides to every argument, but in giving such little credence to those who might oppose him, Jarecki makes us wonder what exactly it is he’s so afraid of.

Winning performances by a number of fresh-faced newcomers are almost but not quite enough to recommend The Secret Lives of Dorks, a fitfully amusing, more often shrill and overstated teen comedy that, like its dweeby protagonist, tries too hard to impress.

The result is 90 minutes in the company of some of the nicest and most boring people you can imagine ever having a movie made about them.

Director Black is competent with the camera, but he seems to have instructed the entire cast to deliver their lines in hushed tones and pauses pregnant with hoped-for meaning -- except for Kwanten, whose overenthusiastic impersonation of a red-state rube is as grating as horseshoes on a blackboard.

The movie is affectionate without exactly being infectious, and Browne, who begins his film with the Michael Moore–esque revelation that Americans bowl in greater numbers than they vote, disappoints by not devoting more attention to bowling in its amateur incarnations.

It's "Rain Man" with ageism substituted for autism.

While the respectable result is a more meaningful film than just about anything Mandoki worked on during his 17 years in Hollywood ("Angel Eyes," "Message in a Bottle"), pic suffers from an overindulgence of triumph-over-adversity cliches and a meandering narrative.

This represents at least as much of an artistic setback for Smith as "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma" were advances.

The concept here holds more promise than the execution.

Rich in its love of surfing but curiously short on such footage, well-meaning directorial debut by producer Robert Mickelson is boosted by winning performances, but ultimately about as memorable as a day of 3-4 foot swells.

Things could be worse. At the end of the day, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is nothing if not consistent -- taking care of business solidly, professionally and without a lick of the genuine wonderment or inspiration that you can find in surplus in Jon Favreau's Spielberg-influenced "Iron Man."

McKinnon's direction is nothing if not atmospheric -- his best scenes unfold with a pungent languor that suggests the power of the backwoods to turn hours into days and days into years. If only the sum total were a movie more "In the Bedroom" than it is everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.

Bardem, given the only fully fleshed-out character to play, is a marvel to behold...If only he had found a more soulful, less didactic movie to be plunked down into.

Beyond that surface grit, Intermission is still a fairly saccharine collage of self-redemptive gestures and happy endings that, true to its title, only fitfully compels.

While the entertainment value of Cloverfield is highly negotiable, it's clear that Abrams has consciously aligned himself with those filmmakers who have used the template of a grade-B monster/invasion movie -- Don Siegel, George Romero, Steven Spielberg -- as a stealth vessel for social commentary.

The problem, dare I say it, is that the movie just ... isn't ... that ... funny.

On a storytelling level, Robots is in dire need of an upgrade.

A deep-fried piece of Southern Gothic that wears its unpleasantness like a merit badge.

It can be thrilling to watch Stander and his gang of gentlemen bandits rack up the loot without ruffling their (or anyone else's) shirt collars. The movie isn't content to rest there, though; it wants to be a caper with a conscience.

Iron Man 3 is more perfunctory and workmanlike than its two predecessors, but this solid production still delivers more than enough of what fans expect.

A relentlessly formulaic biopic that succeeds at transforming one of the most compelling sports narratives of the 20th century into a home run of hagiography.

By the time of its medical-operation climax, Stuck On You has focused so much on ennobling the disabled that it comes to resemble a segment of the Jerry Lewis telethon.

A screwball road movie set in a middle-of-nowhere town, Kwik Stop suggests "It Happened One Night" as reimagined by David Lynch or Hal Hartley.

An amiable, but cluttered dramedy.

Despite agreeably short running time and committed performances, Edmond is rendered inert by its stagy atmosphere and failure to fully mine the depths of its protagonist's complex psyche.

Those viewers who found anti-Semitism lurking under every stone in The Passion of the Christ may rejoice in this celebration of Jewish heroism; all others should rest assured that falling asleep in the cinema is not a mortal sin.

All the trappings of an energetic, extreme-sports adventure, but ends up more of a creaky "Pretty Woman" retread, with the emphasis on self-empowering schmaltz and with the big-wave surfing that gives pic its title seemingly an afterthought.

A colossally overproduced white elephant of a movie that obfuscates both its own protagonist and his important message with layer upon layer of unnecessary “style.”

Most impressive in an objective sense, as a technical exercise -- its staccato technique preventing greater involvement.

Reverts to a fire-sale slapstick scenario that includes multiple tumbles into toilets/sewers/ dumpsters; a visit to a Harlem beauty shop that's all homily-spouting mammies and swishy, finger-snapping dandies; and the attempted inducement of a constipated dog's bowel movement.

There's a whiff of exploitation about any movie that claims the Holocaust as a “backdrop,” and Rolf Schübel’s treacly tale of three men lovesick for the same blue-eyed beauty fairly reeks of it.

For all its failings, there is one thing about “Long Walk to Freedom” that can’t be denied: Idris Elba gives a towering performance, a Mandela for the ages.

Terrifically terrible, Spartan could well be Mamet's first true comedy. Only the movie thinks it's a nail biter.

The real-life calendar girls were actual human beings, and here they're merely comic patsies, lacking the distinctive personalities that made the men of "The Full Monty" so endearing, their final act of revelation so peculiarly dignified.

An accomplished but singularly unpleasant immersion in Mexico's vicious cycle of drug-fueled violence.

The satirical jabs at celebrity culture smell like rotted leftovers from "The Fantastic Four." The token ruminations on the tension between a superhero's public and private lives seem flown in from Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns" (to say nothing of Raimi's own, superior "Darkman"). Most egregious, though, is the way Raimi and the writers reduce Spider-Man 3 to the very sort of abject distinctions between virtue and sin that the series has heretofore studiously avoided.

Though harmless and amusing, this Quebecois comedy set in an impoverished fishing village is a bit too festooned with provincial humor and a bit too short on memorable perfs or feel-good climaxes to break out commercially beyond French-speaking Canadian territories.

There are a lot of compelling ideas afloat in “Amnesia” that never fully congeal, but the undeniable sincerity and personal commitment of Schroeder’s vision help to carry the film over its rough patches.

Despite its origins, nearly every visual and storytelling idea in this green-and-black-tinted martial-arts fantasy seems to derive from "Mad Max," "The Matrix" and/or "The Lord of the Rings."

More palatable than "Texas," Dawn also seems even less necessary, given how effectively the original was reworked last year in Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later."

It’s fun enough while it lasts, but somehow, finally, all too much and not enough. The problem isn’t that dinosaurs have ceased to impress us, but that dinosaurs alone are not enough to sustain us

Long before the movie's climax, in which Magneto (Ian McKellen) turns smashed-up automobiles into fiery projectiles to be hurled at his enemies, those in the audience will know what it means to behold a flaming hunk of junk.

Curiously, Jarhead transforms Swofford himself (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) from the book’s duty-bound youth, desperate to live up to his father's military legacy, into an enigmatic voyeur whose feelings and motivations are rarely made clear.

Far too often, Douglas indulges his preference for the superficial over the substantive: The plentiful performance footage -- shot in overproduced, music-video fashion -- overwhelms the film, as do White’s purplish, faux-poetic musings.

The more things drag on, the more monotonous they become and, by the end, Hard Candy has devolved into a rather transparent game of one-upmanship in which Hayley and Jeff come across in almost equally repellent measure, their behaviors driven less by organic impulses than by their need to satisfy the script's elaborate series of reversals and counter-reversals.

Beneath the sitcom cutesiness and boldfaced sentimentality, the film manages to keep just enough reality coursing through to stay grounded.

Two superb, nervy and delicately nuanced performances by newcomers Clint Jordan and Kirsten Russell enliven and momentarily elevate writer-director Joe Maggio's Virgil Bliss above the familiar post-prison-drama cliches to which it so strenuously adheres.

Glory Road keeps its focus frustratingly narrow. There's a nugget of an interesting idea here...But first-time director James Gartner's movie is less a study of race than it is a fast break of underdog clichés and "inspirational" speeches.

It’s a familiar story of music-world success, failure and addiction, admirably but unevenly told by first-time feature director Jeff Preiss, who certainly knows the music and the milieu, but proves less adept at shaping the material into a consistently compelling narrative.

The director of 13 Going on 30, Gary Winick, was unable to infuse this material with either the sustained screwball cadences of his earlier "Tadpole" or an emotional resonance comparable to that of his superb "The Tic Code."

As both book and film, The Human Stain comes to vividest life in its extended flashbacks, which offer the most compelling exploration of Roth's perennial themes of self-loathing and reinvention.

Despite early-on guffaws, pic suffers from the same problem that has plagued nearly all of the similarly adapted “Saturday Night Live” films: It fails to sustain its initial burst of comic inspiration over the course of its feature-length running time.

Spottiswoode's lackluster film fails to offer any fresh perspective on these now well-known events.

More often than not, Two Men Went to War resembles a feature-length episode of "Hogan's Heroes," with the brave but clumsy Brits continually managing to outfox the even more bungling Nazis.

The movie cries out for the bawdy, rompy air that filled Richard Lester's "Three Musketeers" movies, and what it gets instead is the same dispassionate "professionalism" that has made Hallström a steady fixture in a Hollywood that could do with an infusion of Casanova's own virile lifeblood.

Ponderously overlong and not even half as much fun as it should have been, The Equalizer still gets a lot of mileage out of Washington’s unassailable star presence.

Unfunny, charmless and hopelessly ordinary.

The result is something neither scary nor funny.

The Chorus is sham art and questionable entertainment, but at the very least it sends you whistling out of the theater.

Even in the movie’s most ridiculous moments, Collet-Serra keeps the pacing brisk and knows how to divert our attention with a well-timed bit of comic relief.

Features a standout central performance by newcomer Boyd Holbrook (“The Host”), but suffers from predictable plotting and shallow characterizations that keep the movie from ever transcending the obvious.

The whole movie is curiously distant and flat, like a museum object encased in extra-thick glass.