Fuqua tries to create the illusion of meaning by copycatting the style and techniques of better directors, but he can't save the naked emperor of the script.

A movie that makes little sense, is dumb when it's not being stupid and yet is still at times laugh-out-loud funny.

A lot of fun for horror fans, a nice little jaunt through paranoia and conspiracy theories.

It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached.

Polanski builds suspense slowly, exquisitely. It's not a matter of shocking the audience, although there are surprises, but of creating an ever-growing sense of dread.

The movie plays like a missed opportunity, with its by-the-numbers scares and a story that feels disjointed, hurried in some places, slow in others.

Percy Jackson isn't a great movie, but it's a good one, trotting out kernels of Greek mythology like so many Disney Channel references. For the most part, it works.

There's far too much going on in Valentine's Day, and far too little of it is worth the trouble.

Awash in mawkish sentimentality, Dear John still will move you deeply - if you're a 12-year-old girl.

Doesn't really know what it wants to be. Morel would have done better to remember the "to thine own self be true" bit, and stayed with the dunderheaded shoot-'em-up vibe, with Travolta having a blast, often literally.

Terribly Happy must surely be the greatest Danish Western ever made.

Both the film and television project were directed by Martin Campbell. He creates a nice level of tension throughout, and there are a couple of legitimate shocks (including one jaw-dropper).

Slow-moving and occasionally ponderous in tone, "Creation" nonetheless is an intriguing portrait of a man and a time that changed everything.

The overall feel is one of a generic, feel-good drama, albeit one with Harrison Ford stomping around most of the time as if someone kicked him in the shins. One suspects that this is a story that deserved better.

Focus. Tooth Fairy isn't as bad as you may have feared. It's not all that good, either, but at least it's possible to sit through it and hold down your popcorn.

Its over-the-top violence is cartoonish at times, menacing at others - which is a good thing. And truly, if one must wander a barren, post-apocalyptic landscape with somebody, who better to wander with than Denzel Washington?

Daybreakers isn't a great film, but it's a good one, and in a market oddly lousy with vampire tales, it's an original.

A by-the-numbers romantic comedy as predictable as it is cloying.

It does give Cera a chance to play at being a bad boy. But it's just that - playing at it.

A harmless little mess of a movie whose cast you've mostly heard of, including Tim Allen, who also directed.

Slow, stark and sometimes surreptitiously beautiful, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is as cold and clinical an examination of evil as you could imagine.

If you're game, "Parnassus" is a richly rewarding experience. If not, it comes off like pretentious nonsense.

It's a competently made movie - in Jackson's hands it could hardly be anything but - yet rarely a moving one.

It relies on a singularly brilliant performance by Colin Firth to make it one of the year's more satisfying films.

Never miss a chance to see Helen Mirren. You certainly could do worse as far as movie advice goes. Mirren may not be the only reason to see The Last Station, about the final year of Leo Tolstoy's long, eventful life, but she's the best reason.

There is a predictability to the story, but that's OK. The acting is superb, Holbrook in particular, making That Evening Sun an understated pleasure.

Writer and director Ti West accesses all the hot buttons for fans of the genre in a manner that doesn't make fun of it (and its followers) in a "Scary Movie" way, but instead treats it with the appropriate amount of respect. (Key word: appropriate.)

Trouble is, it all adds up to . . . not much.