Tasha Robinson

Though Prometheus follows "Alien's" story beats, it's a looser and less satisfying story, more intellectual than visceral, and not fully satisfying on either level. But in part, that's because it's trying to do so much more.

For the much-cheaper-looking sequel, Piranha 3DD, director John Gulager mostly seems to be trying to see how much he can degrade the old "Jaws" formula and still have it interpreted as parody rather than apathy.

It's stylish, pretty fun, but not the kind of ambitious effort that should make the world sit up and take notice.

There are complicated elements at work here, with threads of curdled vengeance, victim entitlement, and insanity bound together in ways it would take a much smarter film to unravel. Snow White And The Huntsman doesn't try, and the film just keeps getting dumber as it goes along.

What the film lacks in specificity and interest in taking sides, it makes up for in style, authentic emotion, and terrific performances.

Poe was a flawed figure, but his greatest strength was in avoiding convention, or reinterpreting it to create something new. The Raven aspires to both, but abandons those ambitions to lie limply on the floor - only this, and nothing more.

Pirates! comes with all the usual Aardman strengths intact, particularly the sense that its characters and creators alike are too good-hearted and sweet to nitpick.

All of Mirror Mirror is visually striking, even when it works on no other levels. But the humor is erratic, the heroism isn't necessarily compelling, and the whole thing feels like a grab bag of bits that don't entirely cohere.

While the ending is wretchedly fakey and predictable, Murphy in subdued mode gives it a little authentic sweetness.

Genesis And Lady Jaye accurately portrays a restless artist with a kitchen-sink aesthetic, and offers up a film to match.

Westfeldt has a tendency to go over the top, and Friends With Kids in particular has a shrill, smug edge that kills the comedy and the drama alike.

The handful of songs are catchy, and the whole film feels pleasantly airy. But this is a dark story with a heavy message, and it's been transformed into a harmless, pretty confection. In defanging it for comic effect, the filmmakers have done Seuss as much of a disrespectful disservice as if they'd laid on the fart gags.

Weitz's sense of play and the Badly Drawn Boy soundtrack each give Being Flynn an enjoyable lightness; meanwhile, the curdled, hidden rage lurking within both Flynns gives it an equally enjoyable edge.

The film's pieces don't always fit together, but even in isolation, some of those pieces are well worth watching.

Even when making movies for small children, Studio Ghibli produces stories that are more emotionally sophisticated, and less philosophically polarized, than most adult fare.

It's too focused on capturing a bygone moment and portraying it as the present, while the band and the couple have inevitably moved on, to a new album, a high-profile suicide at one of their concerts, a band hiatus, and well beyond.

The characters are simply rendered, but when it comes to capturing cities and scenes, the cinematography takes on the color and detail of a Mexican street mural.

While In Darkness sticks to formula, it brings across that formula effectively.

Watching the film is strangely like looking at the same three still frames of supernatural battles over and over for 90 minutes.

Many of Flowers' individual performances and scenes are striking and masterful, but taken as a whole, it's less a film than a rallying cry of "Our people feel more deeply than yours."

Like so many underdog movies, Joyful Noise will go over best with those who show up hugely eager for it to be exactly what it looks like, and to tell them exactly what they want to hear.

Strangely, this Thatcher biopic might have been far more worthwhile if it wasn't about Thatcher: The aged, dotty stranger hanging out with her dead husband is a more compelling subject.

While it's essentially just another slick Spielberg action machine, it's operating effectively on all cylinders throughout.

It's a beautifully shot, beautifully acted piece of fluff.

In some ways, it's a more grown-up story than Happy Feet, with more complicated messages delivered in subtler ways.

As mythic spectacles go, it beats "Clash Of The Titans," particularly in the areas of intimidating villainy and actual Titan-clashing. Nonetheless, it isn't any smarter than its inspirations, just prettier.

Eastwood's prim, respectful biography presents Hoover in turn as a muddy political metaphor, a lesson in self-mythologizing, and a case history in repression, but never particularly as a man.

As a sheer visual experience, Puss In Boots makes a great theme-park ride, a thrill-a-minute feast for the eyes and the semicircular canals.

Much like Niccol's "Gattaca," in which genetic perfection rather than time was the weapon a small group of snobby, unworthy elites used to hold down the meek masses, In Time is a chilly, stiff movie where clever ideas are delivered as self-righteous sermons.

For a film that takes place in such a cold locale, it all feels awfully warmed-over.

Blackthorn could use more depth and less of a sense of weary inevitability, but it never lacks for the arid, vista-prone beauty of a classic Western, or for a sense of lived-in wear and tear that remains convincing even though it's more stylized than realistic.

Essentially, The Way starts out as "Eat Pray Love" and takes a long, surprising trip toward becoming David Lynch's "The Straight Story." And that's a longer trip than a mere monthlong trek across Spain.

The film's ambitions are woefully small and familiar.

Finding Joe feels like a homemade quilt: It's warm and comforting, but visually busy, with a repeating pattern that some will find stuffy and overwhelming.

Puncture excels in the smaller touches, from Shaw's quiet performance to the woozy, unrushed motel idylls where the hard-driving Weiss finally slows down for a few breaths.

Machine Gun Preacher is stirring when it presents Childers as a hero, but it does its most impressive work when it addresses him as a flawed, struggling, but still determined man.

All this experimentation is enjoyable enough in the moment, but it's disappointing when Tykwer drops it in favor of a conventional, obvious ending.

In theory, the film is another hoary exploration of the pressures of modern womanhood, but in practice, it offers the exact same thing as those NYC ingénue books: cookie-cutter wish-fulfillment and lifestyle porn for easily pleased, lonely romantics.

Shark Night 3D barely bothered to show up, let alone deliver the minimal goods.

At times, Higher Ground feels like a lower-stakes "Welcome To The Dollhouse" for adults: It's a systematically built portrait of disappointment and despair, centering on a perpetual underdog looking for affection and surety in any possible form. But while Higher Ground is less painful than Dollhouse, it's also less passionate.

Ultimately, Amigo is as much about Iraq and Afghanistan as it is about a century-old chapter of history - and it's as much about human nature as it is about either era.

The ultimate end of the story reveals that it's all about Sturgess' suffering, which just isn't that compelling a topic. Given its lack of center and balance, the film might more appropriately be called "One Dude."

One amusing disadvantage of the crystal-clear, you-are-there 3-D cinematography, and the focus on the audience experience is that in practically every shot, it's easy to pick out off-message concertgoers who are bored, tired, or otherwise disengaged.

While FD5 is less generic and less facilely goofy and ironic than past series installments, it's still a rote execution of formula that scores its biggest points with self-aware references to its predecessors - including a closing-credits montage of kills from Final Destinations past.

Actual kids may find this fun, but for adults, watching The Smurfs may feel a little too much like trying to wrangle an overcrowded kiddie birthday party.

For the most part, it manages to balance laughs, genuinely rousing moments, and a fully packed agenda into something fleet enough to keep running under the weight of its rich ambitions.

Veers in and out of conventionality, and ultimately sinks into it at the end. But first, it deals with old types in new ways, raising issues as it raises hackles.

It's an ambitious premise and a risky approach, but Cahill and his cast execute it beautifully.

This is the most epic of the Harry Potter movies, the one that finally dispenses with side-quests and open-ended plotlines and offers up all the final payoffs.

Solidly mindless, breathless summer fun.

A Better Life leans too heavily on sad music, broad symbols, and weighty speeches to tell its story; it's more effective when it lets images speak in place of words.

By the end, the most charming thing about The Art Of Getting By is that while its adults cut Highmore far too much slack, they aren't Hughes-movie oblivious idiots, and they eventually draw a few firm lines. Unfortunately, the movie isn't daring enough to follow suit.

Not that anything in Judy Moody is meant to be taken seriously - or could be, even if it was meant to - but even for sugary neon fluff, it's awfully lightweight.

Another crowd-pleasing comic-book film designed to bring in new fans while gratifying the old ones.

The sequel remains visually beautiful and strikingly designed, but otherwise, it's a surprise in all the wrong ways.

Apart from Cruz, who throws herself lustily into her tough-seductress role, the actors give negligible performances, with McShane, Rush, and Keith Richards in a repeat cameo all playing nigh-identical smug glowerers.

The filmmaking is prosaic, the pacing sleepy. It's a solid but unremarkable experience, perfect for insomniacs watching the History Channel late at night, but not nearly as satisfying as simply re-reading Lee's book.

While Broom largely isn't a broad comedy, it still rarely goes for restraint in anything but tone.

While The Beaver starts with Gibson in "What Women Want" slapstick mode, it eventually goes to such exaggerated, extreme places that it becomes as much of a must-watch train-wreck as Gibson's own real-life situation.

While the film will likely stick with viewers, it's ultimately a tossup what they'll remember most: the stunning buildup, or the massive letdown.

It's a tastefully managed, passionless melodrama, full of brooding looks and reasonably sweet moments, but typified by a scantly characterized central couple who bring no sense of engagement to their relationship.

The results are scattershot but entertaining, and occasionally eye-opening.

Rio could use fresher ingredients and more spice.

A grating muddle.

Unique as an inspirational personal-achievement film in the way it focuses on the protagonist not merely as a bastion of strength, but as part of a supportive community and family.

Win Win is less quirky than "The Station Agent" and less soulful (and political) than "The Visitor," but it still does little to buck the trend.

The main difference is that while the "Twilight" films strive for straight-faced grimness, Red Riding Hood often verges on outright florid hilarity. It isn't laughing at itself, but that needn't stop the audience.

Wasikowska doesn't seem much changed from her "Alice" role, and she trips through Jane's adulthood as though it were a fantasia instead of a moody suspense story.

Ignoring the weak storyline entirely, Rango is a joyously weird experience.

In every aspect, from story to tone to characterization to visual aesthetic, it's laughably perfunctory, as though everyone involved were too embarrassed to give it more than a half-ironic token effort.

Frey didn't really need a ghostwriter for this story, he just needed an archivist with a Xerox machine and a mercenary streak.

Far too much of the film is devoted to eye-rolling pop-culture gags and long montages set to recycled Elton John songs.

While Sanctum is frustratingly familiar, it's easy to get caught up in the action.

Simply put, From Prada To Nada is "Sense And Sensibility For Dummies."

The film, lacking narration or much explanation of the character, is an outsider's version rather than his own. It's intriguing, but almost always frustrating.

The film looks dispiritingly cheap and, as if in response, most of his cast seems half-committed at best, as if they're counting the moments until they can move on to a bigger picture.

The performances are winning, the story is surprising without relying on unlikely twists, and the relationships are the richest and most nuanced since Leigh's "Secrets & Lies."

There's nothing wrong with animation aimed at adults, but this may be the first kids' movie that throws fewer bones to its supposed intended viewers than to their parents.

The King's Speech is admirably free of easy answers and simple, happy endings; it's a skewed, awards-ready version of history, but one polished to a fine, satisfying shine.

The story should be a standard mismatched-couple-falls-in-love tale, but the script and the sprightly directing give the story plenty of snap and humor, and the animation is so luminously beautiful that even a falling-in-love sequence cribbed in part from The Little Mermaid is overwhelmingly magical.

They essentially replace the book's blank spaces with gaping plot holes and laughable clichés.

Most of the content of this film is wheel-spinning or conscious setup for the final installment, and that feels apparent at every melodramatic moment.

Nutcracker In 3D doesn't just compound past errors in re-imagining the story. Thanks to a big budget, huge staging, massive overacting, and the non-wonders of post-production 3-D conversion, it adds a wide bevy of new errors.

By experiencing Block's films, we aren't merely witnessing his neurosis, we're abetting and validating it.

It's rarely tedious, but it's also rarely insightful or propulsive, and since there's nothing new to discover about the characters or their world, much of the film feels like a protracted, contrived pause, as everyone waits for Rapace to finally get back into the game.

It's unclear whether Frederick's an awful actress or a tremendous one pretending to be awful, but either way, it's hard to pity her nasal, pushy, babyish Iowa girl.

The film's merry, enthusiastic tone--set largely by Robert De Niro, playing a giddy transvestite sky-pirate to the hilt--is hard to beat.

The film looks great, with vivid colors and sharp, snappy staging, but its 92 minutes drag by interminably. Tim Curry in fishnets might have helped, but a coherent storyline would have been far better.

Trouble is, it's too rambling and digressive to feel focused, yet too calculating to feel as observational and natural as a good Altman flick.

For the first time in years, it feels like Disney has done its namesake proud.

The script is always shakier than the performers trying to bring it across, and by the third act, it lets them down completely.

Trouble is, most of the major changes took place inside her head and heart, which makes her story a natural fit for a book, but an awkward one for a film.

The film never lets banter, visual gags, or the usual manic kid-flick running about interfere with its more delicately handled thoughts on loyalty, longing, broken relationships, and generational continuity. It honestly earns its emotion, moment by painstakingly executed moment.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower doesn’t just borrow elements from Ghibli, it feels like a complete continuation of the studio’s work. It’s a welcome relief for every animation fan who thought that particular era of Japanese animation had, after 30 years, quietly come to a close.

At least there’s plenty to look at among Selick’s beautifully detailed characters, who each have expressive bodies and their own ways of moving.

It is, in short, a strange and unrepeatable success, driven by its own uniqueness as much as anything else.

Impatient adult escorts ought to appreciate the brevity, and their kids should find plenty of good-natured diversion in the film's generally charming story.

It’s essentially a stroll through a fantastically detailed pastel world, in which the plot is little more than an excuse for Miyazaki to dive into a world teeming with colorful (and sometimes prehistoric) life.