Shawn Levy

This isn't the "Right Thing" in any sense.

By the time the film reaches its convoluted, bombastic and preposterous climax, any sense of real magic that it once conveyed has utterly vanished.

That strong presence in the center almost makes Lola Versus watchable even as it starts to get formulaic, preachy and tiresome.

Tepid, boilerplate production.

There's handmade and then there's amateurish. This, alas, is the latter.

The Dictator has a few laughs along its bumpy path, but not enough of them to indicate that Cohen has found a means to escape the shadows of his early career and forge a second act for himself.

'Bloodless' is the word for the whole enterprise.

Comedy means different things to different people, but I'm pretty sure that most everyone agrees that it's best when it's quick and funny. The Five-Year Engagement is neither.

Befitting a film about Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven is dark and grisly and ghoulish. But it also has qualities that Poe's work never does: It's dull and mechanical and, most of all, phony.

The nearest thing to W. E. is Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette," which tried to make a sympathetic victim of another of history's most notorious royal wives.

Alas, none of it, save Kristin Scott Thomas giving a peach of a performance as a political operative, smacks of real life or vitality. Even when it evinces spasms of life, this film is, more or less, a dead fish.

The result is a handsome but deeply fractured tale.

Doesn't demand much of the audience, sure, but it doesn't provide much, either. It's as if an all-star gang of would-be crooks got together to rip off...moviegoers.

Begins with an eye on satire but dissolves quickly into grotesquerie -- and if the first tack was a bit narrow, the second is far too scattershot.

The art of Miranda July, the former Portlander and hyphenate extraordinaire, balances on the edge of the cunning and the precious, of depth and naivety, of the fetching and (sorry) the revolting.

At 118 minutes it's longer than "The Philadelphia Story" or "Annie Hall" or "When Harry Met Sally" or "500 Days of Summer" or, well, you get it. Working from a script by Dan Fogelman that wasn't overly bright or sharp to begin with, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa dawdle and stretch and repeat themselves, until what should have been light and brisk becomes leaden and overdone.

The film is built as a series of (possibly tall) tales that don't add up to a plot, a theme or a purpose.

As a director, Hanks makes some nice choices (Larry Crowne lives in a very naturally integrated suburb, for one) but there's little in the film that doesn't feel made-for-TV.

Not a great movie -- not even a great sci-fi action movie based on toys. But it is brisk and eye-catching, it builds to a truly impressive action set piece, and it's the most fully-realized 3D film since "Avatar."

The chief thing he (Susser) has going for him is Gordon-Levitt, whose intense immersion in his overwritten character is laudable if the result isn't exactly likeable.

Kung Fu 2 does almost NOTHING to advance the story, to deepen the characters, or to charm, amuse or entertain.

There's plenty of blood and screaming and mayhem, and it's not particularly well-staged, shot or cut -- though I suppose actually caring about film craft denotes one as a spoilsport in this context.

It's lovely, truly, but so heavy-handed and slipshod that it's probably best enjoyed with the sound off -- an option they're not likely to offer at the movie theater.

The film is as one-sided and overstacked as anything her prosecutors dreamed up. And the craft of the thing is so pedestrian as to crawl.

It's certainly all Araki up there, and the film is handsome and swiftly paced. But it also feels terribly routine and even, strangely, for all the trangressiveness it strives for, retrograde.

The crudeness with which Mottola made "Superbad" suited that film; here, a similarly rudimentary technique detracts and distracts.

It's woeful as a documentary history -- a real missed opportunity.

Has its heart someplace worthy. But its head -- not so much.