Ty Burr

All the pieces are in place for an incisive tale of Brit-pop ego and madness, but filmmaker Stephen Woolley -- a celebrated UK producer ("The Crying Game") making his directing debut -- lets the story get away from him.

Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die may not be a gifted filmmaker’s worst movie, but it’s certainly his most cynical — a unique cinematic worldview reduced to schtick.

Even a fan, however, might prefer the excellent, recently released concert DVD "Pixies: Live at the Paradise in Boston" to this tepid behind-the-scenes experience.

Behind the familiar hits, Jersey Boys is a story about the pressures and rewards of professionalism. Far too little of that has made it into this biopic. It’s just too mediocre to be true.

As B-level suspensers go, though, The Return isn't actively awful -- just slow and cursed with a lead who acts with her t-shirt.

Aggressive visual invention is rarely its own reward, and this movie does nothing to better the odds.

All the good intentions in the world can't save White Irish Drinkers from playing like the baldest of retreads.

It's another one of those loud, penis-obsessed bro farces, lazily written (by actor Seth Rogen, among others) and haphazardly directed.

Meant to be an insider's tale, but it feels like it comes from the cinema of hangers-on.

Generic teen dice-and-slice with interior design by way of ''Saw." The movie's tight and reasonably well shot, though, and there are flashes of nasty invention between the ritual guttings.

Sydney White makes "Mean Girls" look like Shakespeare.

Wilde is stuck with the harder job of simultaneously playing sexy, innocent, conniving, and heartsore, and the effort appears to give her a headache. "This is kind of like an old movie," Liza says to Jay in one scene. Lady, don't you wish.

There are rich issues at play here, about the nature of attraction and whether individual will is or isn't pinned to the wheel of physiology. But Decena hasn't dramatized them; he's used them as talking points set to an indie-film guitar strum, and the result is both earnest and passionless.

A dunderheaded comic melodrama with clothes to die for and dialogue to shrink from. It’s downright depressing.

I say kill off everybody else and bring back Farrell for the sequel.

The results are -- there’s no other word for it -- a disaster.

As history it's bunk; as inappropriate historical fiction, it's awfully close to comedy.

Despite a frisky soundtrack that starts off with James Brown’s “Sex Machine” — trust me, it’s downhill from there — this is the visual equivalent of Muzak. You don’t have to see it to have seen it.

JUST worth your children's time, and hardly worth yours.

The feel-bad movie of the summer.

There's a great movie somewhere in The Good German, but it's buried under three tons of run-amok formalism.

She's like Bob Hope with fake breasts and a wig. Now, that's scary.

Bewitched presents a phony and cynical look at how Hollywood might make or remake a television show. It's as grating, laughless, and narcissistic (though, to its credit, not as cruel) as that new Lisa Kudrow show-within-a-show-within-a-show, "The Comeback."

And So It Goes looks like it was shot on outdated video equipment and has a forced, jokey script by Mark Andrus (”As Good As It Gets,” “Georgia Rule”).

I could pile on the cooking metaphors until you cried "uncle," but the fact remains that there's a very good movie in here that its makers have failed to bring off.

The movie's cleverest idea is to give the Octopus identical clone henchmen with names like Phobos, Logos, and Huevos, all played by Louis Lombardi with a marvelous fat-boy idiot grin.

Sure, go ahead and take the kids. But, for pity's sake, read them the book first.

In the Heart of the Sea plays as if the joke was real and everyone on the production had caved in. The result, as a movie, is a joke.