Silent Night looks just a little too much like every other action movie to serve as a celebration of action auteurism.

This latest offering continues a trend toward increasingly mature moviemaking from the actor/writer/director.

Over the course of its bloated run time, this strange hodgepodge of a film clumsily shifts gears between a family/legal drama, a fish-out-of-water tale, a midlife romantic escapade, and something of a subdued vigilante thriller.

Truth itself is little more than a word in The Prestige, a film that both celebrates the wonder of being fooled and the foolishness of wanting just that.

Best just to say Macbeth is coming down hard and leave it at that.

A reasonably enjoyable, if utterly predictable, romp.

Pacino delivers his best work in a long time, but it’s contained within an utterly predictable redemption movie that only comes alive when Pacino plays one-on-one scenes with the other members of the cast.

Invincible is like a thick, sweaty slab of NFL comfort food.

Ultimately, the story becomes one of personalities, which seems inevitable but narrows the accomplishments and ambitions of its focus.

Provides lots of good information for newcomers to the cause.

Parents might appreciate a lighter hand with the barnyard whimsy and food fights, but overall the movie doesn't condescend about heavy matters (grief, healing, and blended families) and is pleasantly diverting.

While it can’t hold a candle to Wilder’s film, the updated Sabrina has its moments.

There are even times when both the subject and aesthetics of A Private War seem to align accordingly; unfortunately, the film is incapable of sustaining this poignancy for any extended period of time.

It feels like a veiled apology for Babs Johnson and other exercises in bad taste. In my book, the filthiest person alive will always win the prize.

The sensation that dogs Hope Gap is that they forgot to roll camera on the most dramatic parts. What’s left over isn’t bad, only underwhelming.

Ultimately never slices things as sharply as it attempts, but it’s definitely a cut above.

When the action shifts to Bill’s childhood home – an islet along the Thames, downriver from the legendary Shepperton Studios – some of the magic of that place rubs off on Boorman’s picture: It becomes lighter on its feet, moves with the breath of life and not just the strength of memory.

A sweet German movie by a first-time filmmaker, who, I would bet, is more than a little familiar with the early work of Jim Jarmusch or just about any Aki KaurismŠki film.

Here, watching Theron is just about the whole show, and to the film’s credit, this is usually a mesmerizing rather than crass experience.

The Peanut Butter Falcon may lack depth and subtlety, but you can always feel the beat of its heart.

Good Time demonstrates an admirable daring in its technique and willingness to go against the grain, but its payoff isn’t equal to its challenges.

If you (or your kids) loved Toy Story, you'll like Toy Story 2 as well. Just don't expect any big surprises.

Bra Boys isn't really a documentary at all but a piece of PR propaganda designed to counteract years of bad press. Beautiful, soaring, exhilarating propaganda, no doubt, but propaganda nonetheless.

The stripped-down title gets at what we're really here for: the cars. Are they fast? Check. Are they furious? Yep.

13 Minutes, which was released in Germany two years ago, is an earnest examination of personal conscience and the frequent necessity of the individual to monkey wrench the state. Or at least to try.

An end-of-summer burst of adrenaline, The Hitman’s Bodyguard promises nothing more and nothing less.

This is Jackman’s show entirely, and he’s as forceful and charismatic as ever as the walking, talking hurt that is Wolverine. If only he had something more interesting to do here.

This sincere but ultimately empty indie film plays like Australia’s answer to ensemble pieces like "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts."

Written by Mark Duplass and first-time feature director and veteran producer Mel Eslyn (Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off, The One I Love), there's no doubt that Biosphere is filled with ideas, and they're given easy life by Brown and Duplass.

Similar to Wan’s The Conjuring universe, Insidious has long overstayed its welcome, reaching the point where its spark has quelled and there’s nothing interesting buried within these characters anymore. We have reached the end of the Further.

Junior is passable entertainment, but it could hardly be called fully developed.

William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice may help in bringing some of the Bard's language to life, but this rendition is hardly a freshman course.

The Outwaters stumbles because it fails to clear the second hurdle of any found footage movie: not simply answering why would the camera stay on (that's the easy part), but why would anyone edit what's been recovered in this way?

Opens strongly and front-loads its best gags into the first third of the film. After that, the jokes begin to repeat themselves, and the plot becomes mired in unintelligible details of the white-collar crime.

There are momentary pleasures, to be sure – a corker of a kiss here, an Otis Redding-backed barroom slink there – but frankly, I'm a little weary of Wong wearing "that same old shaggy dress."

It all seems as if it was a riot to film, but the finished product is just a few bombastic jokes stitched together to create a mid riff.

As Tears Go By has some interesting ideas and is an adequate first film, but, ultimately, is only slightly more interesting than any number of similar pictures made in the wake of John Woo's seminal 1986 trendsetter A Better Tomorrow.

To call The Crazies the most original horror film in a long while only serves to point out just how lousy mainstream, studio-released horror has become. It's a solid thriller, sure, but there's precious little in it that hasn't been seen countless times before, and in the end it plays it safe … by not playing it safe.

This is a movie tailor-made for cheering on the not-so-little guy to find his self-esteem, dazzle the judges, and win the girl.

This kindly and spirited film doesn't exactly break the mold of the heartwarming, humanistic boarding-school dramedy.

The supposedly epic battle the entire film builds toward – the single action set-piece – is a ho-hummer. Fire and ice, turns out, was an oversell: Think tepid tap water instead.

Director Carr, who helmed the similarly predictable "Daddy Day Care," keeps things moving, both on and off the court, with the sort of light, sweet humor you're not likely to find in too many other summer movies.

Shoddy, brainless, pre-sold kids' entertainment.

Love is a maddeningly myopic film, mainly due to Murphy's squarely white-male heteronormative experience.

By the end of Bug, you may find yourself scratching yourself as well -- your head, that is -- wondering what the hell this is all about.

Insurgent exists primarily to either validate or defy the imagined depiction of events in the heads of countless teen fans.

Ultimately a shambling tale told with genial grace but little substance. It provides a pleasant buzz while it unfolds but vanishes quickly in a puff of smoke.

What Charlotte's Web has always had going for it, and what I imagine kids will always cling to (regardless of technological advances), is a sweet, simple, and timeless story about the power of friendship and the acceptance of loss, a story that's told faithfully here. And that ending is still a doozy.

Bombastic it may be, but it’s rarely boring, as was the first Tomb Raider. Keep your expectations in line with the source material and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Might be more engaging were it not for the melodrama heavily larded into the screenplay (cobbled together by numerous writers).

Maybe some grasp of the dynamics of the modern publishing industry would have added some grit, making it more than it is: a formulaic and forgettable pulpy beach read.

That's the ultimate cheat in this pleasant, but trifling affair: Allen has cheated himself out of an actress (Leoni) that could have been Diane Keaton's heir.

The Girl Who Played With Fire's chief frustration is in how removed Salander and Blomkvist are from each other.

I’m coming down harder than I meant to. If you’re a fan of the series – and I am – you’re still going to fan. (There’s no entry point for newcomers; it’s too in medias res.) The scenery is lush. There’s ever the pleasure in Steve and Rob’s company. I just wanted to feel by film’s end like I’d arrived somewhere new. Like the journey had been pulling me somewhere inevitable but still enlightening.

Both interesting and insufferable.

Strives to depict its love-hate relationship in emotionally neutral terms, but the sympathies are ultimately lopsided.

It's the opposite of "The Opposite of Sex," a meditation on multiple truths, and the lies that sometimes lie in between.

Wilson and Beckinsale, as the couple on the rocks, do their damnedest to go along for the creepfest, but nothing in Vacancy manages to come anywhere close to the quiet and steadily mounting dread of the real thing, much less the purview of Norman Bates or his beloved mother.

Ultimately the composition comes off as both overplayed and underdone.

Whatever magic Lightyear musters onscreen is undermined by the unfulfilled potential of the narrative.

It’s a shame that the narrative, with often astute and eloquent reflections on humanity, fails to cohere as a whole and gets bogged down by a common love triangle. Our Time is gorgeously filmed, but it is also vapid, and perhaps the languorous mind of this auteur needs to be shaken up.

It's not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, just one that grabs your attention and then lets it go, time and time again.

If it weren't so rivetingly realistic, it would be an easy film to dismiss. And if it weren't so easily dismissible, it would be an easy film to defend.

If overly familiar and uninspired, Home is nevertheless agreeable, especially for young viewers who haven’t been down this road countless times.

The film has little flash of life and energy.

It’s actually a pretty concise little premise as shark movies go, with almost all of the story happening underwater and a plot that has little on its mind other than survival. Still, a little bit of characterization would have been a nice addition.

This frothy little crime comedy isn't half bad, bubbling with caper-farce energy supplied by a game ensemble cast and a source novel by prolific pulp writer Donald E. Westlake.

Despite all its clichéd moralizing and blatant borrowings, the movie does offer a few clever twists on an old formula. "Hoosiers" may have been a better film, but Hackman never had to coach a team to victory after his star player quit to go have a baby.

I have to report that I, personally, just don't get it. I intellectually understand what occurs in the movie; I just can't make the leap into calling it a humanistic treasure about life's big questions. Slow and monotonous, the film moves at a deliberate pace and culminates in a meta-fictional moment that is either infuriatingly trite or enigmatic.

There's much to enjoy here as long as your expectations aren't too high.

The Help may be more interested in the moral at the end of the story than the story itself, but what saves the film from its meticulous one-dimensionality is that nuanced, deeply moving cast.

Manages to get by on wry smarts, barbed asides, and plenty of Barrymore's comic grace.

A Late Quartet overplays its bass line and loses sight of the melody, making for a movie that is heavy-handed and sluggish. It remains earthbound when it should soar.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least among Janeites, that we’ll spend long hours scouring every streaming service out there, hungering for a corseted drama to watch. In that respect at least, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is fresh meat, if a tough cut.

While it's sad the filmmakers didn't lavish more detail on the characters' faces and fluidity of their movement, the picture is still dynamic looking: moody, haunting, full of bold shapes and action, striking compositions, and clever quotes from the encyclopedia of noir. It has style to spare. And for any kid at heart whose breath catches at the sight of a caped figure swooping across the sky, it has moments when your lungs will be stopped by a Dark Knight to dream on.

If you weren't afraid of heights before, then Fall will give you the fear. Welcome to vertigo hell, mainly due to the work of cinematographer MacGregor.

Isaac and Olsen are both mesmerizing actors, and Lange and Felton also do very good work in supporting roles, but their collective gameness – all that acting their pants off (sometimes literally) – is underserved by the film’s script and direction.

Still, when The Yellow Handkerchief finally hooks into the meat of Hamill’s source story, the narrative tension puts enough wind in the film’s sails to arrive at its corny but sentimentally satisfying conclusion.

These characters are too remote, too pretty, and too unrealistic to move us in any lasting way.

What's missing is absolutely nothing. No joke is passed up or thrown away. There just might be a little too much.

A movie worth viewing. Besides, it's the only movie to boast NYC millionaire mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg as its executive producer.

The Coen brothers’ newest is an odd amalgam of tics and stutters that plays like something of a greatest-hits reel but never seems to jell into a real comedy.

The subject itself – the musicians, the music – and the spirit of the thing – one son’s obvious devotion – transcend the film’s technical shortcomings.

Still, you find yourself rooting for these women, even if their adventures aren’t always up to snuff.

The true wonder of this low-budget movie, however, is its acquisition of the rights to so much of the previously mentioned music. It's almost exclusively Dylan and the Dead, but damned if you won't be stopping for some Cherry Garcia ice cream on the way home.

Unfortunately, the film begins to fall apart when it leaves film parody and strays too close to reality. This film is so timely, it has the young pilots flying a bombing run on Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant. Either these filmmakers were lucky, or they made it last week. It almost seems as if the latter is true, because Hot Shots handling of Middle Eastern bad guys is just a little too heavy handed -- no, make that insulting and insensitive.

The familiar faces inject instant warmth, but I’m not sure it’s entirely earned. By the time Jay Kelly arrived at its last line – buffed to a bland sheen, as if the whole film was reverse-engineered to land there – I had cooled considerably.

This film is more a love story about the marriage between Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), rather than a historically accurate backstage look at the making of this important movie in the Hitchcock filmography and the American psyche.

As filmmaking debuts go, Panos Cosmatos' Beyond the Black Rainbow is as striking as it is nuts.

A consistently workmanlike helmer, Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle: Los Angeles) keeps the pace brisk and the overall tone closer to that of the recent G.I. Joe vehicles, infusing this glorified toy commercial with an almost aggressively knowing sense of humor and exactly one fun action sequence on New York’s most conveniently located mountaintop.

For fans, Oasis: Supersonic is a reminder of both the band’s musical strengths and of a simpler time for pop music in general, pre-internet and all that that implies.

To question that this movie is a visual feast would be an act of real cynicism. But as the old Chinese proverb goes, "Gold and jade on the outside, rot and decay on the inside."

Oppenheimer never quite embraces the absurdity and madness of his own proposition, and instead engages in a surprisingly flat tragicomedy of manners.

But 'neath its candy-coated shell lies several solid grains of truth -- not to mention some fab choreography, a solid-gold title, and a couple of pristine examples (in Swayze and Grey) of what is meant by the term "career-making performance."

The comedic success of this pair of dramatic archetypes, the radiant flibbertigibbet and the gray, lumpen elder spinster, in a lightweight bit of piffle such as this is a testament to both Adams' and McDormand's smarts. It's tough to play dumb when you're not and even more difficult to dial down your own innate brilliance.

It’s as immersive as it is insufferable. There’s greatness packed in there, but the most lasting impression is how much time is spent trying to convince you of it.

Ultimately, though, We Were Soldiers fails to bring as much to the table as it at first seems it might.

The film is sure to be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the beginnings of the California folk-rock scene. Crosby’s reflections are interesting, if not always illuminating. Crowe asks probing questions, yet the answers Crosby provides don’t dig very deep.