Todd McCarthy

Perhaps if it had assumed the point of view of one character, such as a longtime teacher at the school, the film might have been invested with some weight and insight. Instead, it just sort of sits there onscreen, provoking no special reaction one way or the other.

Despite the recognizably daunting challenges in telling this long-arc story in an entirely coherent way, The Banker spins a surprising and engaging yarn pinned to central elements that made it hard to tell. Its lively, positive spirit helps it over any number of speed bumps, the social backdrops play to its advantage and the top-line cast members pull their weight and then some.

Even with all its ups and downs, there are more than enough bawdy laughs and truthful emotional moments to put this over as a mainstream audience pleaser during a holiday season short on good comedies.

But where most rugged he-man films feature a few action sequences scattered throughout, director Renny Harlin keeps the adventure stuff in this reputed $ 65 million production coming at an astonishing pace.

The sensitive macho Schoenaerts is pretty much center-screen throughout this sleekly made suspense piece based on a script more loaded with holes than the numerous bad guys he either shoots or stabs to death.

A gritty and gratifying cheap thrill, Rob Cohen's high-octane hot-car meller is a true rarity these days, a really good exploitationer, the sort of thing that would rule at drive-ins if they still existed.

A film that seems drained of life and ideas rather than sustained by them.

If you’re going to attempt a quasi-farcical look at the behavior of thirtysomething strivers in Hollywood, you need to cut more sharply and dig more deeply than does L.A. Times.

Largely set in two of the least appetizing locations imaginable, a concentration camp and an insane asylum, this is a rigorously made film that does almost nothing to invite the viewer into its world.

Part absurdist drama, part personal observational commentary and part hormonal explosion, all seen through the filter of previous war pics, Sam Mendes' third feature has numerous arresting moments but never achieves a confident, consistent or sufficiently audacious tone.

After a strong run of films during the past decade, David Cronenberg blows a tire with Cosmopolis.

The new film may also serve a purpose by showcasing a dynamic and attractive new actor, Kenny Wormald but, otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers affair.

Up until a narratively implausible and logistically ridiculous climactic motorcycle chase through Vegas that feels like a sop to the Fast & Furious crowd, Jason Bourne is an engrossing re-immersion in the violent and mysterious world of Matt Damon's shadowy secret op.

Todd Louiso's directorial debut emerges at once as compelling and as a bit of a specimen due to the entirely singular nature of the protagonist's behavior.

For Altman, this is a major statement about American hypocrisy and society’s haves and have-nots, in line with many of his films, but issued in a kind of offhand way that delivers only glancing emotional impact.

Disclosure is polite pulp fiction, a reasonable rendition of potentially risible material. This lavishly appointed screen version of Michael Crichton's page-turner about sexual harassment and corporate power has what it takes to deliver plenty of year-end bounty into Warner Bros.' coffers, although it might have been even more commercial had it been more shamelessly trashy.

Originally conceived as one film, the two-parter that has finally emerged can now be seen as a truly epic work.

Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.

Rebounding from his biggest career flopflop with "Havana," Sydney Pollack has done an ultra-pro job in giving spit and polish to this star-driven, sure-fire commercial project.

The story of a veritable devil who comes to test and destroy a family of faith, The King is a noxious film morally and an aggravating one dramatically.

Eastwood is vastly entertaining as an old-fashioned scout who disdains computers and fancy statistical charts in favor of his own time-tested instincts.

A spectacular performance by teenage thesp Ellen Page elevates this disturbing slice of designer shocksploitation into a film that's impossible to dismiss on principle.

A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.

As eye and ear candy, pic has its modest pleasures, beginning with the attractive Diggs and Lathan.

Less cranky and inciting than Gran Torino but persuasively expressive in conveying an old man's regrets along with his desire to improve himself even in late age, The Mule shows that Eastwood's still got it, both as a director and actor.

An attractively designed but narratively challenged, one-note film.

At nearly three hours, however, it rather overstays its welcome, trying the patience even as it sustains intrigue regarding its final revelations.

Cohen employs a comic range that ricochets between wicked political barbs and the lowest anatomical farce, to often funny and occasionally hilarious effect.

The spectacle of a dissolute hedonist suddenly acquiring a heart and a conscience late in life is shamelessly, and shamefully, contrived in its emotional trajectory.

The characters and settings are attractively designed, and the vocal performances have real color and a sense of fun that gently undercuts the treacly sincerity of certain obligatory kid-pandering moments.

An effervescent entertainment that marks a welcome return for "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" director Stephan Elliott after a nine-year absence.

Staccato, Mamet-style dialogue exchanges, breathless pacing and remarkably healthy, well-fed-looking actors create a cumulative sense of artificiality that seriously undercuts the devastating effect clearly being sought.

The cartoonishness of it, while amusing at the outset, doesn’t wear well as matters deepen and progress.

Intelligent scripting, solid thesping and eye-catching location shooting aren't enough to make a compelling modern film of The Painted Veil.

Never comes close to making the case that its subject is worthy of the viewer's interest.

The imaginatively illustrated but precariously precious film offers up a string of minor pleasures but never becomes more than moderately amusing or involving.

The film's slender conceit is given some weight by its 11-year-old leading lady Sydney Aguirre, whose portrait of a flinty, instinctively mischievous tomboy growing up without benefit of parental guidance provides gratification even when there's not much going on.

Everything about the film suggests that its makers consider it a deep, emotionally probing drama, but it's merely a soap opera with elevated production values and a sterling cast.

Neatly turning longstanding genre conventions upside down while working squarely within them, director Walter Hill has fashioned a physically impressive, well-acted picture whose slightly stodgy literary quality holds it back from an even greater level of impact.

This is a pure popcorn picture that benefits heavily from its trio of highly skilled, charismatic leading thesps, an unusual setting that provides plenty of visual stimulation, and a confrontational standoff that actually stems from a legitimately provocative premise.

Highlighted by a strong and sensual performance from Salma Hayek as the doomed heroine, elegant pic's muted quality and the central character's vexingly contrary behavior will keep auds from connecting with characters who themselves have trouble establishing bonds.

Hope Gap may engage the mind up to a point with its pithy dialogue and resourceful players, but it offers little insight into the complexities and wages of wedlock.

A purist's delight, something the millions of die-hard fans of his Lord of the Rings trilogy will gorge upon. In pure movie terms, however, it's also a bit of a slog, with an inordinate amount of exposition and lack of strong forward movement...There are elements in this new film that are as spectacular as much of the Rings trilogy was, but there is much that is flat-footed and tedious as well, especially in the early going.

After a buoyantly funny first half-hour, stylish animated comedy takes a breather before ramping it up again for a rambunctious, girrrl-power finale that provides a convenient springboard for further adventures to come.

Proficiently written and directed by newcomer Bart Freundlich, handsome pic brandishes traditional qualities in the areas of acting, character revelation and middlebrow seriousness, but operates within a familiar and narrow emotional range that provides little surprise or excitement.

Cheesy homage to a level of horniness Austin Powers could only imagine will be a dream movie for many a teenage boy.

This smooth inside job benefits from heightened bonhomie among the players, fab Euro locations and a diminished obligation to stick to the heist genre boilerplate.

A knockout documentary with a renegade personality ideally suited to its anarchic subject matter.

Fading Gigolo features enough strange narrative turns and modest laughs, not to mention a substantial role for Woody Allen as a very unlikely pimp, to provide a measure of curiosity value.

Even as a quasi-experimental work of subjective surrealism, Escape From Tomorrow is massively erratic and isn't particularly original. But it must also be said that its take on Disney World, as well as many of its individual images, are indelible and won’t be easily forgotten.

Unfortunately, the film never begins to reveal what's really going on inside Joe Albany.

Wood's powerlessness to break out of the emotive straightjacket hands the picture to his Russian costars on a platter, and they run with it.

Entombs its characters so thoroughly in a prison of palpably predestined tragedy that one knows from the outset that the very worst that can happen most certainly will.

Spielberg is such a talented director it’s a shame to see him lose all sense of subtlety and nuance.

Given that the story’s trajectory isn’t very surprising, it’s up to the character details and local color to imbue it with life, and in this the film largely succeeds.

Comes across in muted fashion, with uninvolving characters and lack of genuine excitement or fright creating a second-rate, second-hand feel.

Despite the filmmaker's obvious smarts and oft-proven skills, there's a kind of off-putting effrontery about Soderbergh's approach here that rather sours the whole experience. The tone is brittle, the attitude arch, the performances by a savvy and diverse cast uneven.

007 is undone by villainous scripting and misguided casting and acting in a couple of key secondary roles.

It's not really either an animal or a kids' film but rather a young adult drama that rings emotionally true.

Francis Ford Coppola's take on the Dracula legend is a bloody visual feast. Both the most extravagant screen telling of the oft-filmed story and the one most faithful to its literary source, this rendition sets grand romantic goals for itself that aren't fulfilled emotionally, and it is gory without being at all scary.

It's hard to dislike a movie this light-hearted, but there's something terribly ephemeral about it as well; it's a film of complete weightlessness.

A mostly formulaic approach that becomes more disappointing as the yarn unwinds.

Towelhead is transgressive without being effectively subversive, gutsy to no particular end. It simply lacks style, which counts for so much in this sort of thing.

A game, disarming lead performance from Jess Weixler, who won a jury acting prize at Sundance, goes some way toward making palatable this mish-mash, whose provocative nature could carve out a certain commercial niche.

Cute, rambunctious, generally amusing rather than outright funny, this clever mix of live action, highlighted by the unequaled skills of basketball superstar Michael Jordan, and animated Looney Tunes antics will be a must-see for kids.

Little Buddha is a visually stunning but dramatically underwhelming attempt to forge a bridge between the ancient Eastern religion and modern Western life. Bernardo Bertolucci's second foray into remote Asian territory is considerably less successful than his first, "The Last Emperor," as the double narrative is awkwardly structured and never comes into sharp focus.

A protracted parade of woefully familiar motifs from the Amerindie playbook, Happy Endings comes off like an undernourished Paul Thomas Anderson wannabe.

An intriguingly plotted mystery that unfortunately forgets to put the noir in film noir. A drab, pale-looking affair without a trace of visual style, this cross-country pursuit yarn fights a losing battle to sustain viewer attention via narrative alone, so much does it flounder for lack of imagistic flair.

As in their previous films (I Love You Phillip Morris; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Focus), directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa enjoy just scattershot success in hitting their seriocomic targets, scoring from time to time with their more coarse and outlandish gambits but rarely inducing one to take what they're watching very seriously.

What starts as potentially interesting apocalyptic speculative fiction devolves into dreary sub-Hunger Games survivalism and banal teen romance.

The prospects, advisability and potential methods of prolonging human life are examined in an engagingly multifaceted manner in How to Live Forever.

Rodrigo Garcia's film only intermittently surmounts the limitations of the central character's parched emotional existence and restricted horizons, and the resolutions to some principal dramatic lines seem rather too easy.

Some privileged nature footage from the African rain forest is dishonored by deeply silly narration in Chimpanzee.

For a time, an appealing gentleness prevails that's rooted in this unique inter-generational romance, a feeling augmented in particular by Purnell's slow-blooming flower of a performance, and if the film had remained focused more on the improbabilities of this love story, it might have emerged as something rather special.

Taymor makes the action clear and easy to follow with her bold physicalization of the story and forceful direction of an astutely chosen cast.

The continuing saga of one of contemporary literature and cinema's most fascinating villains, as played once again with exquisite taste and riveting force by Anthony Hopkins.

Cooler cars and more action follow Lightning and Mater as they mix it up with spies and Formula 1 racers in yet another Pixar winner.

Chris Gorak grabs the viewer by the throat in the first few minutes, but quickly fritters away involvement by concentrating almost exclusively on two characters who are both annoying and boring.

While one can admire the commitment, technique, concentration and stamina required to keep the pressure cooker at maximum temperature, it still feels like an exercise, one so dramatically monotonous and tonally high-pitched that you want to escape almost as much as the characters do.

Literate, sober-minded and almost rigorously chaste, First Knight sweeps the viewer up in the doings of these impressive, larger-than-life characters and offers a credible portrait of regal personages whose priorities are well sorted.

Mismatched marriage of offbeat character study and unimaginative horror riffs. Most compelling element by far is Bruce Campbell's inspired performance as a nursing home patient who insists he is the real Elvis Presley.

A bold rethinking of a familiar old story and striking design elements are undercut by a draggy midsection and undeveloped characters in Snow White and the Huntsman.

A fine cast further illuminates a felicitous script.

Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out.

Its politics and dramatic line are familiar and far from convincing.

It’s an eyebrow-raising true tale, one aided and abetted onscreen by the solid cast and strong sense of commitment. But Heckler is caught somewhere between being a journalistic historian and a dramatist without seeming expert at either. His screenplay connects all the dots of the story with no sense of shaping or modulation.

Moderately inspiring in the way such true-life stories of "the indomitable human spirit" are always constructed to be.

Cute and clever though the plot may be, everything is played out in the broadest possible terms without an iota of nuance or subtlety.

If an age produces the renditions of classic stories that reflect those times, then The Passion of the Christ, which is violent, contentious, emotional, extreme and highly proficient, must be the Jesus movie for this era.

I Origins is a bracingly venturesome, exploratory work that achieves an exceptional balance between the emotional and intellectual aspects of its unusual story.

Hardly inexperienced at playing belligerent, outrageous and offensive a-holes, Hill offers a definitive account of one here, to which Teller can only play the blander, if useful, second fiddle who has to try, and try again, to stand up to the gruff bully.

Ramping up his style to a more dynamic and elegant level than he’s achieved previously, Fuqua socks over the suspense and action but also takes the time for some quiet, even spare moments to emphasize the hero’s calm and apartness.

Efficient, if ultimately rote, political thriller.

Ritchie has never worked on a scale anything approaching this before and, while some of the directorial affectations are distracting, he keeps the action humming.

The Intervention feels bland and without consequence, as it’s not possible to invest in characters about whom we’re offered so little.

Had the young Jack Nicholson played such a character during the height of the Vietnam War, it would have been easy to go along for the ride. But skilled as Phoenix is at pulling off the individual scenes of Elwood's shenanigans, the actor doesn't come across as embodying rebellion to the marrow of his bones, which renders his scams arbitrary and disagreeably irresponsible.

Just two weeks after successfully targeting boys with "Holes," Disney is giving girls something they want with this mild, quasi-romantic romp.

Sports some tasty scenes, mostly in the first half, but also pushes 007 into CGI-driven, quasi-sci-fi territory that feels like a betrayal of what the franchise has always been about.

The film’s small scale is more than compensated for by its insights into adolescent awareness, the passions stoked by global causes and the moral hypocrisy of the ideologically righteous.

It's a film of myriad minor pleasures but scant compelling qualities.

Compared with high-powered action specialists like James Cameron, director Charles Russell seems content to accomplish just one thing per shot, getting the essentials on the screen but creating no special dynamic or look.

It’s an impressive debut, an ambitious project pulled off with confidence.

Jolie deserves significant credit for creating such a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly, even if it is these very strengths that will make people not want to watch what's onscreen.

Overlong and ultra-slow, this meditation on the sad state of things will tax the patience of even dedicated Wenders fans.

A psychotic seizure of a performance by Christian Bale dominates Harsh Times, the directorial debut of David Ayer that channels "Taxi Driver."

Traditionalists and older viewers in general will scoff, while pop culture addicts will no doubt go with the flow.

Charlie Kaufman's clever screenplay bears many traces of the same brand of originality and eccentric imagination that graced his work on "Being John Malkovich," although even at an hour-and-a-half the conceit is stretched almost too thin for audience sustenance.

Like "Waiting to Exhale" except more so, film jerks from scene to scene with little sense of rhythm, continuity or dramatic shaping.

A not-bad futuristic actioner with three or four astounding sequences, an unusual hero, a nifty villain and less mythic and romantic resonance than might be desired.

None of the characters is given much depth or meaningful backgrounding, leaving the capable thesps with plenty of anguish and emotion to play but not much else.

Despite all its agreeable revisionism and breezy bonhomie, Posse has the feel of a mish-mash of elements all thrown into a big pot and stirred. Lacking dramatic grounding and structuring, even the pertinent revelations that will be most surprising and interesting to modern audiences carry more intellectual than emotional resonance.

Del Toro clearly knows his way around the camera, but the shadowy eeriness that saturates the early going slowly becomes monotonous and winds up being just dull, and even partially obscures the action in the long underground finale.

Dee is an engaging, admirable lead character, and the striking, petite Beharie, in only her second screen role, is a real winner, bringing energy and fortitude to a woman who easily could have joined the ranks of society's victims and losers.

Stewart, selected for Marylou five years ago on the basis of her striking debut in "Into the Wild," is perfect in the role, takes off her clothes more than once and nearly always seems to be breaking a sweat, which kicks the sexiness quotient up high.

This ultra-slick, fantasy-inducing visit to an international wonder world of wealth and deception plays more like an inventory of thieving and gambling techniques than a captivating diversion, even if it's hard not to be voyeuristically pulled in by some of its ruses.

Arch and funny in equal measure, this looks like a theatrical non-starter that Clooney fans and football devotees might be tempted to check out down the line on DVD or on the tube.

In its considered, neatly packaged way, the film occupies a safe and solid middle-class middle ground in teen storyland, between crass gross-out comedies and mawkish romance on one side and edgy, exploratory indie fare on the other.

A constant low-boil of ridiculousness both mocks and sustains Non-Stop, a jerry-rigged terror-on-a-plane thriller with a premise so far-fetched as to create a degree of suspense over how the writers will wriggle out of the knot of their own making.

A melodramatic step backward for writer-director Victor Nunez after his last two pictures, the first-rate "Ruby in Paradise" and "Ulee's Gold."

An outstanding lean film trapped in a fat film's body.

Has visual splendor galore, but is a cold work lacking in the requisite tension and suspense.

Still, there is an estimable integrity to the respect and fidelity with which the film regards its subjects, as well as an honesty in its attempt to illuminate the essences of these difficult people.

This new "Sabrina" is more fizzle than fizz. Although the revamping of one of Audrey Hepburn's most enchanting vehicles has its share of diverting scenes and dialogue, Sydney Pollack and his writers have uncomfortably tilted this Cinderella story to less than scintillating results.

It's got a few things going for it and it's not unenjoyable to sit through, but, at the same time, the tone and creative register never feel confident and settled. It's not bad but not quite good enough either.

This punishingly predictable tale will test whether sci-fi action fanboys can stomach having their cherished genre infiltrated by sentimental hokum about a down-on-his-luck dad and his spunky long-lost son.

The film's scabrous, sometimes arch, other times spot-on critique ultimately comes together in an effective finale that retroactively puts a better light on the entire film than might have seemed possible during some of the earlier, rougher moments.

The Rum Diary remains a relatively mild diversion, not at all unpleasant but neither compelling nor convulsive.

Entirely respectable in every way, it nonetheless has a very cool body temperature and thus likely will inspire polite admiration rather than excitement among viewers.

Roman Coppola's first film has sympathetic aims but is distressingly lacking in flair, style, wit or fun.

Gussied up with a host of filmmaking tricks in an attempt to keep things lively, this intensely acted little exercise just doesn't have enough going for it, with the exception of gradually growing interest in lead Colin Farrell.

Too familiar in its basic trajectory to be fresh or compelling.

The souffle falls a little flat in The Ladykillers, a Coen brothers black comedy in which the humor seems arch and narrative momentum doesn't kick in until the final third.

Despite a sensationally attractive cast and an array of well-staged combat scenes presented on a vast scale, Wolfgang Petersen's highly telescoped rendition of the Trojan War lurches ahead in fits and starts for much of its hefty running time, to OK effect.

Brightly drawn, fast-moving and mercifully short, efficient effort is a male bonding saga that hinges upon the fears of teenage pooch Max that he’ll grow up to be just as goofy as Dad.

The whole picture may be hokey, but the first part is agreeably so, the second part not. At the very least, one comes away with a new appreciation of the difficulty of inner-office romance at the CIA.

An eye-popping visual spectacle that serves up a vivid picture of what the planet might have looked like when reptiles ruled the Earth.

2 Days in the Valley will rank high on any list of films containing the greatest number of scenes in which people are threatened at gunpoint. Marked by a wearying amount of hostile and antisocial behavior by its criminal and civilian characters alike, writer-director John Herzfeld's debut outing features a measure of unexpected humor and some good character work by the ensemble cast.

An excellent novel about the Iraq War and its homefront fallout has been turned into a rather flat and disappointing film in The Yellow Birds.

That the film itself is nearly as chaotic as the clan it examines can either be regarded as an admirable artistic correlative or a crippling defect, but the splendidly dextrous cast ensures that this goofy success story, which could just easily be titled American Hustle 2, keeps firing on all cylinders in the manner of the writer-director's previous few outings.

Stars Chris Diamantopoulos, Will Sasso and Sean Hayes are on the money as Moe, Curly and Larry in a film containing more plot and sentiment than the boys' shorts ever had.

Although too devoted to matters literary, theatrical, operatic and sexually outre to make it with general audiences, this adaptation of Jonathan Ames' novel exudes the sort of smarts and sophisticated charm specialized audiences seek.

A film of chuckles, smiles and light amusement rather than big laughs, galvanizing excitement and original invention.

For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, W. is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically.

It would be too much to say that what Smith has come up with here is inspired, but it is pretty funny and very energetic.

A lightweight, modestly engaging yarn sporting reductive mystical and philosophical elements that are both valid and borderline silly.

The film is ultimately too glib in its suggestion that Hitler's discovering his career path was a matter of sheerest chance, even an accident.

Despite its shortcomings as a plausible, compelling story, The Merry Gentleman, Michael Keaton's directorial debut, exhibits genuine promise behind the camera.

Richard Shepard’s film is far from dull, but it just doesn’t feel like the real thing, more like an artificial construct inspired by pumped-up crime favorites from a couple of decades ago.

A film of gorgeous surfaces and negligible emotional resonance, this third rendition of a perennial sentimental favorite is easy on the eyes and has its share of beguiling moments in the early going, but crucially lacks a compelling climax and any sense of urgency in its storytelling.

Fukunaga refrains from artificially amping up excitement for its own sake, maintaining an intimate, observational style that offers up a host of things to look at and think about.

This first dramatic feature by "Hoop Dreams" director Steve James has one foot still squarely planted in the docu aesthetic and notably lacks any psychological interest or emotional depth.

As much spectacle and action — minute-by-minute, frame-by-frame — as any movie anyone could think of. Zack Snyder’s huge, backstory-heavy extravaganza is a rehab job that perhaps didn’t cry out to be done but proves so overwhelmingly insistent in its size and strength that it’s hard not to give in.

Shortchanging traditional animation by literalizing it while robbing actors of their full range of facial expressiveness, the performance-capture technique favored by director Robert Zemeckis looks more than ever like the emperor's new clothes in Disney's A Christmas Carol.

Could scarcely be more dazzling on a purely visual level, but it's mortally anemic in the story, character and thematic departments.

The picture serves up intermittent pleasures but is too raggedy and laid-back for its own good, its images evaporating nearly as soon as they hit the screen.

Cage supplies beaucoup energy, but his highly compromised hustler cop character provides little else in which he can invest his talent. Sinise wears an increasingly grim demeanor in a part that comes to make no sense, and John Heard's role as a local power broker gets lost in the shuffle.

The Eagle is an engaging, if straightforward and one-dimensional.

This narrative directing debut by Sacha Gervasi remains absorbing and aptly droll despite a few dramatic ups and downs and, led by large performances by Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren.

Both in the writing and performance, China is a finely wrought creation, a young lady of manners and a degree of taste but who has been given no guidance, rules, motivation or a stern hand.

Bill Murray as FDR? It takes a few minutes to get used to, but once he settles into the role of the 32nd president, the idiosyncratic comic actor does a wonderfully jaunty job of it in Hyde Park on Hudson.

A dramatic situation that should be wrenching is mostly tedious in Reservation Road.

Dark Shadows sinks its teeth half-way into its potentially meaty material but hesitates to go all the way.

Result is still innocuously mild and inconsequential.

More than anything a fascinating portrait of how much New York has changed in 35 years, the film delivers the goods in excitement and big-star charisma.

This hokey thriller reps what one can only hope will be a one-of-a-kind hybrid between a World War II actioner and a ghost story outfitted with innumerable false-alarm shock cuts and shot with enough colored lights and filters to delight Baz Luhrmann.

Unfortunately, as a director, Foster shows no knack or instinct for building tension; her style is strictly presentational, brisk and efficient, but with no sly trickery, desire to surprise or to forge technique that suggests an imaginative approach to storytelling.

A decidedly specialized affair that will appeal only to certain tastes, but there's plenty to appreciate if you let it seep in.

Wendy in every way feels like a handmade, one-of-a-kind, exceptionally fresh and — one hesitates to use the word — organic piece of work that quite quickly imparts a desire to see it again.

A straightforward actioner that delivers the goods with no unnecessary frills or digressions.

Eventually, the impression is created of notes for good scenes full of pungent observations and sharp asides, but without fully developed drama or emotion, leaving a sketchy, wispy feeling when all is said and done.

Dazzlingly nimble and light on its feet, this breezy but densely textured love letter to modern, multicultural Paris in the guise of a romantic suspenser returns its director to the vibrant vein of his pre-Oscar work in "Something Wild" and "Married to the Mob."

Laura Linney’s beautiful performance is most of the story in p.s.

Strikes some resonant chords but also hits notes that simply don't ring true and are borderline risible at times

An exhaustingly elaborate romantic fantasy actioner.

One is grateful to have Momoa for company. Unlike some strutters who can't hide how delighted they are to show off their trainer-honed bods, Momoa wears his superb physique casually and his take-it-or-leave-it, devil-may-care attitude makes the narrative's long haul much easier to bear than would otherwise have been the case.

A roundly entertaining romantic comedy, Love Actually is still nearly as cloying as it is funny…its cheeky wit, impossibly attractive cast and sure-handed professionalism are beguiling.

In nearly every scene, Wahlberg carries off the central role with what could be called determined elan.

Beautifully made production lacks the emotional depth and dramatic tension needed to command audience attention beyond the level of a talented curiosity.

Promised Land presents its environmental concerns in a clear, upfront manner but hits some narrative and character bumps in the second half that weaken the impact of this fundamentally gentle, sympathetic work.

The mother of all secular humanists fights a losing battle against freshly minted religious zealots in Agora, a visually imposing, high-minded epic that ambitiously puts one of the pivotal moments in Western history onscreen for the first time.

By underplaying the melodrama in the presumed hope of seeming subtle when Kelley Sane’s script is so baldly melodramatic, the “Tsotsi” helmer drains the life out of an obviously explosive subject.

This handsome, not unappealing look at a Scottish legend of nearly 300 years ago is too solemn, wooden and dour for its own good, and feels oddly of another era.

This trifle about a dizzy downtown New York scenester who gets a grip on her life is energized by several attractive characters and enough youthful pep to put it over as an upbeat diversion for teens and twentysomethings, though it has no more substance than bubblegum music.

Once the pieces are all in their places, the deliberate set-up begins to pay some dividends to those who relish the form.

Feels slight and pretty ordinary by the end, with no edge or compelling insights, just a reasonable feel for teen attitudes and banter.

By and large, very few remakes, other than Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot reproduction of Psycho, have adhered as closely to their original versions as this one does. Everything here is so safe and tame and carefully calculated as to seem pre-digested. There's nary a surprise in the whole two hours.

A half-broken adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's great modern Western novel. Neither dull nor exciting.

The few who saw the embalmed adaptation of "Snow Falling on Cedars" will recognize the same stifling approach brought to this more accessible material by director Scott Hicks.

Notable for Kimberly Elise's ferocious lead performance and for the bigscreen exposure pic affords the charismatic Bishop T.D. Jakes, who plays himself and upon whose works the film is based.

A riveting, thematically probing, richly atmospheric and just occasionally troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman.

Although the film manages some disarming insights into the man’s complex makeup and difficult behavior, a service enhanced by Louis Garrel’s very good lead performance, serious cinephiles will likely reject it as glib and disrespectful, while more mainstream viewers could be amused but not that interested.

Ron Howard has never before made a picture this raw and alive. At the same time, this tale of the desperate pursuit of the kidnappers of young women makes for a fundamentally grim and unpleasant experience.

An admirable idea in theory proves to be a real slog to sit through in Everyday.

As rich in period and historical background as it is deficient in fresh dramatic and thematic ideas.

Fey is a delight to watch throughout.

The dark and sometimes funny The D Train is a feel-bad comedy, in that one feels bad for what happens to every character in the film and bad for sometimes being taken to places that feel more implausible than just transgressive.

Can be taken to task for its overt point-making, lackluster style and some late-on dramatic contrivances seemingly dragged in to provide a little violence.

No matter how frenzied and elaborate and sometimes distracting his technique may be, Luhrmann's personal connection and commitment to the material remains palpable, which makes for a film that, most of the time, feels vibrantly alive while remaining quite faithful to the spirit, if not the letter or the tone, of its source.

The Pact demonstrates both why people respond to horror and why it's so routinely scorned.

Magic in the Moonlight does have a not-disagreeable expensive-vacation vibe to it. But the one-dimensional characters are mostly ones you’d want to avoid rather than spend a holiday with.

This impeccably crafted piece of megabuck fantasy storytelling aims to pull off the tricky feat of significantly reworking the superhero format while still providing the expected tentpole-type entertainment thrills for the international masses.

A furiously paced popcorn picture whose outrageous implausibility is somewhat amusing, Volcano delivers enough spectacular action to get it off to a hot B.O. start, although like the lava in the picture, it may not flow quite as far as anticipated.

Allen the writer-director has gone tone-deaf this time around, somehow not realizing that the nonstop prattling of the less-than-scintillating characters almost never rings true.

The lack of a plausible leading lady is enough to sink what is otherwise an eye-catching, although heavily '90s-style, telling of one of history's most frequently filmed stories.

The film is ice cold, never finding a way to invite the viewer into the story, and Richard Gere doesn't convince as a Jewish biblical scholar.

Not the worst but is very far from the best film the star has made in his career.

Artfully evokes the physical realities of Irish poverty, but mostly misses the humor, lyricism and emotional charge of Frank McCourt's magical and magnificent memoir

George Lucas has reached deep into the trove of his self-generated mythological world to produce a grand entertainment that offers a satisfying balance among the series' epic, narrative, technological and emotional qualities.

Preposterous whimsy that sort of gets by thanks to lustrous settings, slick production values and, especially, its ultra-attractive stars.

A dash of showbiz pizzazz has been lost but some welcome emotional depth has been gained in the big-screen version of the still-thriving theatrical smash Jersey Boys.

From a filmmaking point of view, this is a work that the old Hollywood moguls themselves would have been proud to present.

Tells an old-fashioned boys' adventure yarn in an equally old-fashioned way.

The look, styles, dialogue and attitudes all feel more 21st century than 1968, but this new Sparkle still sparkles more brightly than its 1976 namesake, which was a sort of rough draft for Dreamgirls.

It's virtually all Hemsworth's show and he's entirely up to the task of carrying the film on his broad shoulders: He's charismatic, fearless, confident, jokey and a good old Kentucky boy who just wants to get the job done and return home to his wife and daughter.

Rather like a cross between "Up in Smoke" and an episode of "The Jeffersons, Friday is a crudely made, sometimes funny bit of porchfront humor from the 'hood.

Undeniably funny, outrageous and boundary-pushing, this further documentation of Sacha Baron Cohen's sheer nerve will draw an abundant share of "Borat" fans.

More numbing than exciting.

Nocturnal setting, uneven tone, abrasive score and only fitfully successful attempts at humor create a generally grim atmosphere, occasionally leavened by goofy ideas and flashes of explosive action.

Unfortunately, after its fine start, this brainy slice of provocative speculative fiction slowly but surely loosens its grip on audience involvement rather than increasing it.

The homily-laden wrap-up, stressing the upside of bad days, is enough to make you hold your nose, but it only lasts a moment, which is suggestive of the way Arteta and the cast provide the energy and momentum to get the job done but not overstay their welcome.

The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre.

Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a nice try that falls somewhat short of the mark.

Antic and frantic, Spies is very much a one-joke affair, which is fine for a short but woefully insufficient for a 101-minute feature.

In his most effective full star turn in perhaps a decade, Kevin Costner dominates as the greenhorn general manager of the beleaguered Cleveland Browns.

Defiantly uncommunicative picture.

From a performance p.o.v., Aselton and Shepard hold the screen well and are most watchable, and Aselton does a fluid directing job within the limited challenge she set for herself production-wise.

Except for the fact that virtually every shot, chop or stab the good guys make hits its mark to make the bad guys quickly drop like toy soldiers, the climactic showdown delivers what it needs to action-wise, leading to a satisfactory wrap-up.

The perennially insecure world of two-bit character actors is humorously and knowingly explored in With Friends Like These.

Amiable but no more, Bee Movie puts a hiveful of potent talent at the service of a zig-zigging, back-of-an-envelope story that's short on surprise and originality.

Ending is on the conventional side, more so than anything else in the picture , but script by Ann Biderman and David Madsen keeps the tart surprises coming throughout most of the picture with only occasional lapses into red herrings and artificial manipulation.

An annoying example of self-therapy posing as art.

As originated by Grisham and adapted by Akiva Goldsman, this is a story of elemental emotional and legal issues splashed across a large canvas, and director Joel Schumacher has done a solid job of keeping the many components in focus and balance.

It’s a minor, but most edible, bloody bonbon.

For all its clever design, beguiling creatures and witty actors, the picture feels far more conventional than it should; it's a Disney film illustrated by Burton, rather than a Burton film that happens to be released by Disney.

Only the faintest glimmers of genuine, earned emotion pierce through the layers of intense calculation that encumber Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time.

The uniformly winning cast, led by Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson, and the ultra-accessible touch provided by director David Frankel provide for a constant steam of gentle mirth, if not huge laughs.

Director Sturla Gunnarsson seems aware of the savagery intrinsic to the story, but is unable to mine it deeply, proving too genteel in the end to make a genuinely creepy or disturbing film.

A potentially provocative idea is played out to diminishing returns.

Malick's most distinctive ambition here is his attempt to create an almost pointilistic portrait of a man by evoking acute moments of his past and present, and this sustains real interest for a while, as you wait to see how it all might come together. But as the film just keeps offering more of the same...it doesn't build or pay off with what it seems designed to do, which is to provide either a dramatic or philosophical apotheosis.

The massive jumble of standoffs, near-misses, tense confrontations, narrow escapes and slick victories, while momentarily exciting, can lack plausible motivation and credibility. More often than not, one wonders not so much what just happened but why, and what was at stake.

Robert De Niro and writer-director Paul Weitz find the most congenial material either of them has had in quite some time in Being Flynn.

Intermittently engaging but dramatically slack, this tale...is more interesting around the edges than it is at its core, thanks to the dull nature of the lead character played by Matt Damon.

An immediately involving yarn of an ace Marine sharpshooter set up to take the fall for an attempted presidential assassination, picture saddles itself with stereotypical villains, hokey contrivances and too-expedient crisis solutions.

By far the least ambitious, and certainly the least interesting, animated feature to come out of Disney in quite some time.

Cronenberg is a master of creating and sustaining a mood of insinuating cool and dark allure, but while the director remains firmly behind the wheel for the first hour or so, he cracks up toward the end with sequences that send the film and the audience into a ditch.

Nair's approach never entirely convinces, and the adaptation of the 900-plus-page book becomes increasingly episodic, making this Vanity Fair more a collection of intermittent pleasures than a satisfying emotional repast.

Benefits greatly from Kevin Kline's outstanding performance as the ultra-sophisticated songwriter whose resilient marriage anchored a complicated double life.

Although uneven and too deliberately obscure in meaning to be entirely satisfying, result remains sufficiently intriguing and startling to bring many of Lynch's old fans back on board for this careening ride.

Just as quirky and idiosyncratic as the Gotham-based writer-director's earlier efforts, this one pushes the spiky humor a bit more to the fore while unfolding a tale loaded with offbeat oppositions and odd character detailing.

After slipping badly with the second installment two years ago, the Narnia franchise does a full-on belly flop with this third.

The Hudsucker Proxy is no doubt one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be.

The film succeeds in that it provides a more vivid sense of this sort of 19th century childhood -- and Lincoln’s youth in particular -- than most people would have had before.

A compelling and little-known story of the Civil War period is studiously reduced to a dry and cautious history lesson in Free State of Jones.

A film that should but doesn't get under your skin and give you the creeps.

The film positively swills in its disreputability and all-around low-budgetness; sporting a healthy disregard for respectability, Schrader has just gone for it here with a highly focused recklessness that he turns to his creative advantage.

Although one would never have expected to find her in a film like this, Dawson, by dint of enthusiasm, is the only actor who rises above the material with her dignity intact.

It's hard to find the genuine heartfelt moments in The Lucky Ones.

Some mordant comic touches would have been welcome throughout the picture, which has a somber tone that suffers a bit from lack of modulation and nuance.

Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long.

A self-described abstinence comedy that is funny, sexy and silly in equal measure.

The film's inability to illuminate the finer points of the rigid form, to define what separates the great from the good, proves frustrating for the outsider.

There is a sense of bloat and where-do-we-go-from here aimlessness to this unconscionably protracted undertaking.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then “Point of No Return,” a soulless, efficiently slavish remake of “La Femme Nikita,” creates a whole new category of homage-paying.

This perky, episodic film is as broad and obvious as it could be, but delivers on its own terms thanks to sparky chemistry between its sunny blond stars, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and the unabashed emotion-milking of the final reel.

A creepy, well-acted story of contagious evil, Apt Pupil has more than enough chilling dramatic scenes to rivet the attention but suffers from some hokey contrivances and underlying insufficiencies of motivation.

Closeness, the original title of which, Tesnota, also apparently implies being walled-in or suffocated, is dramatically erratic, with tense and compelling sequences alternating with diffuse and/or flat interludes that don't advance the narrative or pay off in other ways.

As novel and absorbing as In Time is in several respects, however, Andrew Niccol's latest conception of an altered but still recognizable future feels undernourished in other ways that are not as salutary, preventing the film from fulfilling its strong inherent promise.

Director David Gordon Green’s latest unpredictable addition to his resume is offbeat and appealing on some levels but is neither as funny nor as trenchant as it might have been.

Simultaneously contrived and genuinely felt.

This entertaining confection possesses the substance of the TV show, the pacing of a Hong Kong actioner and the production values of a James Bond thriller.

While this John Singleton-directed sequel provides a breezy enough joyride, it lacks the unassuming freshness and appealing neighborhood feel of the economy-priced original.

There is plenty of bang-bang but very little kiss-kiss in Tomorrow Never Dies, a solid but somewhat by-the-numbers entry in the James Bond cycle.

Memories of dreary Sunday school classes come flooding back courtesy of The Nativity Story.

The antics here are strained, graceless and tiresomely crude, the sorts of things audiences feel they're supposed to laugh at rather than well-developed situations that generate genuine amusement.

Eastwood is in good, sly form, once again delighting in a character's splendid solitude and singular skill at what he does.

The Devil's Own is neither the best nor the worst $90 million-$100 million-area budgeted picture ever made, but it must be the one in which the cost is least evident on the screen.

It’s quite a story, which Berlinger moves along with unrelenting energy.

Chick agreeably captures the feel and flow of on-the-move young professionals in New York.

Mix Brigitte Bardot in "And God Created Woman" with Carroll Baker in "Baby Doll," sex it up times 10 and you have a notion of the effect of Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan.

Eastwood's main achievement here lies in trusting his hunch that the young men could handle playing themselves onscreen, with an acceptable naturalness and without self-consciousness. This they do, without a false note.

Although there’s talent on display in all aspects of this time-jumping, visually distinctive independent that rests its commercial hopes on the names of leads Justin Long and Emmy Rossum, Esmail strenuously overplays his hand with the torrent of obnoxious dialogue he asks his male lead to deliver, which is enough to make one want to run out several times for a breather.

A strange international odyssey that becomes more complicated and loony by the moment. Some viewers will undoubtedly tune out early, others will follow as far as they can -- and a privileged few might make it all the way.

Dramatically powerful, surprising in its strong narrative differences from previous cinematic tellings of "the greatest story" and bold in the extent to which it presents Jesus as a confrontational and threatening figure in the Judean context of the time.

Apart from not knowing to quit while it's ahead, Con Air provides quite an exciting flight prior to its crash and burn.

Saddled with a sentimentally "sincere" subject and lacking the stylistic and humorous cachet of the recent computer-animated smashes.

Although involving, this remake of a recent French film never reaches the anticipated heights of excitement and suspense.

Given the confined nature of the material as well as its period-specific aspects, this is a yarn that does not exactly invite radical reinterpretation. As such, its appeal is confined to the traditional niceties of being a clever tale well told, with colorful characters that are fun to watch being made to squirm by the inimitable Belgian detective.

LaBute has had middling success at best, having come up with a passably engaging time-jumping romantic melodrama that at least grapples seriously with one of the novel's most potent themes.

Will serve as an excellent gauge of any viewer's tolerance level for schmaltzy contrivance and manipulation.

Well-crafted but thoroughly unsuspenseful.

The picture is lacking in the uproarious humor that might well have ensued from the material, which instead inspires occasional laughs but, much more often, bemused fascination and wonderment at the bizarre imaginations and impressive skill of the filmmakers.

Ultimately a mess of diverse ingredients that sorely could have used a rigorous screening process to eliminate all the chaff.

Unfortunately, Barthes brings nothing new to the familiar story.

A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun.

Undeniably fascinating as a visit to a world you'd never have wanted to have come near in real life -- that of the Hussein family's inner sanctum -- the film falls crucially short by not providing a window into the mind of the man who was coerced into acting as his double.

The final installment of the immortal Bella/Edward romance will give its breathlessly awaiting international audience just what it wants.

Recycles familiar adventure and cartoon devices with minimal wit and flair, and the lack of imagination will seem all the more dramatic to audiences in comparison to the winningly sophisticated "Shrek."