Walter Addiego

Earnest and kid-friendly -- also simplistic and dramatically creaky.

As an indulgence in creative verbal abuse, the film offers some nasty fun.

The film has its flaws, but after watching its catalog of shifty hedge fund types, Kardashians, plastic surgery addicts, bling-laden rappers and children of Hollywood royalty, you can’t help but agree.

Cher is an inspired bit of casting, while the talented Dench is underused. Smith seems to be going through the motions as the fatuous and deluded aristocrat, while Tomlin has a ball as Georgie. But what really stays with you is the work by Plowright - she is a beacon of good sense (both as actor and character) and plucky as you please.

The Phantom is a spiritless affair likely to vanish quickly from first-run screens.

There’s plenty here to tickle the kids, and that’s what counts.

Tonal inconsistency is the iceberg that sinks The Pretty One. The film is a mashup of wacky comedy, romance and sorrowful elements that would tax a more seasoned filmmaker than first-time writer-director Jenée LaMarque.

Too raw for kids and too simplistic for adults.

Metroland is a provocative rumination on how relationships are warped by two people's inability to be truthful with each other.

This love letter to man's best friend will make dog fanciers roll over and do tricks. It's so warmhearted, you'll want to run out and hug the nearest big, sloppy mutt. And while you're watching it, have your handkerchief ready.

Although this leisurely tale of an aged French sculptor offers a few other small pleasures, in the end it lacks heft.

A modestly entertaining martial arts melodrama with impressively staged fight sequences that help compensate for a stale plot and some less-than-stellar acting.

This is an unabashedly pro-democracy message movie. Judged strictly as drama, it's pretty routine.

My Old Lady is affecting, even if many of the revelations and high-voltage speeches occur at predictable moments. But if you can look past this formulaic side, it's a movie worth seeing.

See Love Is Strange for its sensitivity and understated jokes, but mainly for Lithgow and Molina's expertly modulated work, which pulls the movie back when it threatens to stray into melodrama or heavy-handedness.

Nicholson squeezes every wretched drop of buffoonery from this character, and it's distressing to watch him play an easy role for easy laughs.

The movie is anything but flawless. There are flourishes that seem plucked from Errol Morris' work but aren't as good, and some re-creations of past events are hokey. It's the film's content that packs a punch.

Ineptly written and shot like a fashion mag, rings hollow throughout. It's a long, long way from "Jules and Jim."

This new picture is mainly in the spirit of fun, a loose, generally good-natured comedy with screwball overtones.

Far too precious and eager to please to really deserve its self-description as a fairy tale.

You can get away with almost anything in a farce except failing to be funny, and that's what kills Death at a Funeral.

The film may work best as a supplement to the underwhelming three-hour-plus extravaganza broadcast in February to celebrate “SNL’s” 40th anniversary.

This is compelling stuff, but Lilien is less successful in trying to link Pale Male's story to his own.

Don't fault Thirlby, who does as much as she can with the material. Krasinski is pretty good, and DeWitt and Ennenga are outstanding. The direction is decent, and the film is handsome. But it's finally frustrating, enigmatic in a way that suggests emptiness more than mystery.

Ari Gold’s The Song of Sway Lake is saturated with a kind of melancholy nostalgia, and viewers who can accept that will find other virtues as well in this flawed film. It’s a story of familial unhappiness passing down through generations, impressive before it begins to lose focus.

The entertaining work by Spacey and Pepper is a good thing because the film has problems, including an utter lack of subtlety.

An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.

It's no great shakes as a film, but its combination of mild comedy, slapstick, pathos, many photogenic canines and a positive message will make it irresistible to families.

An intriguing portrait of an insular community, but its recounting of the seduction of a bright young man by the surrounding culture is heavy-handed.

An austere rural landscape, festering hatred, class tensions, terse dialogue - these are common currency in indie movies these days. Shotgun Stories uses them all, but manages to stand out from the crowd.

Most of the time the audience is two steps ahead of the characters.

Wilson is basically playing an even more feckless version of his "Office" character, Dwight, another intense and self-deluded doofus. It's a character that works better in smaller doses.

It’s always fun to watch the charismatic Bernal.

In the end, all the bitterness seems like window-dressing to disguise a trite story.

A remarkable cast for a small, non-mainstream effort.

The film doesn't see any contradictions between the man and his work, which is folkloric, mostly upbeat, often humorous. Both art and artist are outsized and entertaining, and that's about all that Bel Borba Aqui has to say.

The new film pokes heavyhanded fun at extreme conservatives and has a "power to the people" sub-theme, but it's full of ultra-violence and is dragged down by standard scare tactics, thin characters and the absurdities of the premise.

There’s nothing wrong with stretching audience credibility, but, to quote another movie that dabbles in the highly improbable, these things must be done delicately.

Modestly better than last year's awful "End of Days," though it falls well short of Arnold's "Terminator" peak period.

The picture seems to have been intended as a political satire, but only a Hollywood executive could mistake it for the real thing.

While the film adopts a sometimes jaunty tone, the fact is that gerrymandering is bad news, assuming you believe that elections should mean something.

A misfire.

A frantic, epic-sized blowout of campy, "Indiana Jones" -style derring-do mixed with lots of computer-generated gee-whizzes.

The veteran Baker anchors the proceedings, and you would like to see more of her character.

This ambitious and sometimes entertaining Brazilian feature tries to pull off a tricky maneuver but doesn't quite get it done.

The ending is a disappointment, a perfunctory upbeat gesture.

The best of the longer segments is "Steve," a piece of Pinter light starring Firth as a passive-aggressive neighbor from hell who repeatedly turns up at the door of a bickering couple (Knightley and Tom Mison) to register a series of baseless complaints.

A relentlessly quirky British comedy-drama that demonstrates why more is not always more.

As a grab bag of reminiscences by veteran funny people, bolstered with richly entertaining performance footage, it's boffo.

While there's a certain staid feeling to the production, it does deliver a solid working-over to the era's gentry.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength is the performance by Kwanten, who appears in HBO's "True Blood" and may be familiar from his lead role in the big-screen Aussie thriller "Red Hill." Dermody also does well.

There's more than a touch of whimsy in A Touch of Spice, a sentimental Greek offering that's been immensely popular in its home country but doesn't translate well.

Has more in common with a horror movie than with a genuine political work.

The glory of the picture is the eye-popping, surreal backgrounds that blast the conventional characters off the screen.

It's an intriguing portrait, but it makes no pretense at objectivity, erring on the side of hero worship.

Demon Knight may be a good career move by director Ernest Dickerson ( "Juice" ), proving that he can work with a reasonably large budget on a genre film. But the picture breaks no ground, and in terms of his own development, it's hardly a step forward.

Amenta was deeply moved by Rita's story, but his prosaic direction can't do it justice.

It seems like another misstep - the story just doesn't hold up to Ritchie's treatment.

Surprisingly pedestrian.

Overall, it's pretty elementary stuff, along the lines of a Disney Channel TV movie. It's uplifting, and it's in a good cause.

This film is mainly for “Night at the Museum” diehards.

The film was clearly a labor of love, for good or ill. At one point, Galinsky jokingly refers to the production as “semi-unprofessional.” This is unusual and welcome frankness from a moviemaker.

The film is morbid and mawkish, and packed with enough forced whimsy to make you scream.

Besides some fine dogfight sequences, it often feels threadbare, just an exercise in recycling.

Despite highly enjoyable moments and the welcome presence of Kate Winslet, even sympathetic viewers will be put off by the movie’s bewildering variety of genres and tones.

Lust on the Grand Prix circuit. [30 Sep 2007, p.N34]

The handsome and appealing Max, by the way, is played by five dogs. For the record, he is a Belgian Malinois, a breed that in real life is often used in police and military work.

If only it wasn't such bloody nonsense.

Excess Baggage aims to broaden her appeal beyond her established, youthful audience. It won't, because it's a messy mixture of so-so comedy and unmoving drama; its inconsistent tone suggests a production where no one was fully in charge.

Speaking of bangs, the special effects include one of the better mega-blasts in recent memory: vast fireballs tear through the busy tunnel at dizzying speed and with devastating results. This is the money shot, what the Stallone audience is paying for. It remains to be seen if they'll buy a Stallone who's been downsized and reformulated - about a teaspoon's worth of added complexity.

Its examination of identity and loneliness begins to feel like a soap opera season boiled down into one very long episode with too much happening.

William H. Macy is fine as the detective Arbogast, wearing a hat he could have borrowed from Martin Balsam in the original role.

Lacks the finesse of other puzzle films.

It's an interesting spectacle, but not enough to carry a movie.

The talented Murphy is appealing here, performing with sincerity and restraint - a wise choice, since his co-stars are a menagerie of wisecracking animals.

So it's hard to know who gets the blame for Payback. I say we cut Mel some slack and put the hex on Helgeland.

Affecting at times, but finally feels overblown and heavy-handed.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice boils down to "The Karate Kid" meets "Harry Potter," with maybe a dash of "Ghostbusters" to keep it interesting.

His good-natured slob routine compensates for a lot of the film's dead spots, and the picture winds up a modest cut above the usual vehicle tailored for a would-be film star.

About as close to pure mall fodder as you'll see.

Grumpier Old Men certainly isn't relying on its mawkish and hokey story to put warm bodies in the seats. There's no reason to see the picture - a sequel to their 1993 hit, “Grumpy Old Men" - other than to relish the talents of these two veterans, plus Sophia Loren, a newcomer to the series.

Moretz is an appealing young woman whose star is rising. She'll probably have an exceptional career, but If I Stay won't be a highlight.

The effort is undermined with crass humor, mugging and slapstick.

Somehow, the funny stuff gets sucked into a kind of black hole in the center of the satire, along with all the comic debris. What should have been a surreal flight to the planet Lucas crumbles into a harmless collection of cosmic dustballs. [24 Jun 1987, p.52]

It's funny in spots if you can tune out the Farrellys' ultra-crass jokes - along with any memory of the first movie.

Will wring some laughs out of anyone but the most humor-impaired.

Hoodwinked is a computer-animated, "Shrek"-style satire of "Little Red Riding Hood" that offers a few laughs but overall is pretty tired.

Campbell's admirers will probably enjoy the documentary, but I don't think it will do much for anyone else.

A mediocre college comedy that blends bits of "Revenge of the Nerds," "Mean Girls" and "Legally Blonde" and doesn't have much to show for it.

Hawke has created a standard-issue, Sundance-friendly indie film that's full of the predictable angst suffered by Manhattan artistic types, but unfortunately the lead characters are both so callow that you finally don't care much about them.

The sum here is less than the parts, which have problems of their own.