It just signals a series that's plainly out of gas.

Stardust has lost a good amount of its magic in the transformation from page to screen. It's the cinematic equivalent of getting a punch in the mind's eye by a bunch of faeries wearing the coolest Doc Martens this side of Florin.

Despite cute kids, tough dads, and problems controlling bed-wetting and farts, Daddy Day Camp should just limp off to the nurse's tent and call it quits.

Greengrass and co. may have made one of the best action movies in recent memory.

The Ten offers a brand of comedy for very particularized tastes, though everyone should appreciate the in-joke of featuring Ryder in the skit about the Eighth Commandment. For those of you less versed in the Bible, that’s the one that says thou shall not steal.

In fictionalizing the story of Austen, the filmmakers didn’t go far enough. Becoming Jane attempts to please the purists and the dreamers, but only results in disappointing both.

Bratz is way too long.

Hot Rod is a stupid movie about stupid people doing stupid things.

The elements of the film don’t quite mesh: The villains are cartoony, but Du Chau aims for soggy family drama in his father-son story.

Unfortunately, there's little more than formula in Ichaso's El Cantante.

It's enough to make you weep.

A gruesome whodunit that's missing more than a few brain cells.

Playing comedy, Duris is as engaging as a bowl of porridge; playing tragedy, he’s the height of comic absurdity; in scenes romantic, he’s detached to the point of somnolence.

No Reservations succeeds as well as it does (kinda sorta) by virtue of Zeta-Jones' performance.

Homer's rendition of "spider pig" is comedy gold.

Somewhere between the pop jouissance of Guy Ritchie and the social realism of Ken Loach, this ballsy drama freeze-frames bleak Thatcherite Yorkshire and exposes its racist underbelly.

Must be counted as a forfeit.

Sometimes a little too pat, a little too cute.

The film’s approach suits an audience broader than the usual documentary crowd, though it’s worth mentioning that those pictures can really stay with you.

Though not nearly as perfect as Amadeus and The People vs. Larry Flynt (to cite two of Forman's previous semibiographical efforts), Goya's Ghosts uses the lives of artists and historical figures to show us the best and the worst of our human impulses.

If ever there were a happy summer movie, it’s Hairspray. But for all its bubbly musical numbers and effervescent good humor, this film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical feels oddly lacquered -- it’s John Waters by way of Disney.

A movie full of weak moments, contrived to the point of painful.

Problems arise in the film’s third act, however, with a profoundly implausible plot turn that sends the movie skidding into bogeyman horror. It cheapens the sentiment, and the film doesn’t recover.

Buscemi and Miller do their best with what they have, finding at least some small redemption in two dislikable characters written into an improbable situation, but emotional honesty in the service of nonsense is still nonsense, no matter how many scabs it manages to pick at.

If sex, gangsters, and killing Nazis are three of the most enlivening topics in the movies, then let us count friendship as one of the most tiresome, right up there with grooming horses and sharing for sheer thrills.

From James Brown to Sam Cooke, the songs set a mood that lingers for some time after.

Captivity is the kind of film that gives torture porn a bad name.

Timely metaphors abound in The Order of the Phoenix, but the story (of which there is much) stands on its own magical merits, dark and darker still though they may be.

It should be mandatory viewing for right-to-lifers and prospective parents as well as fans of creepy, crawly filmmaking.

As Tim – a character rich in contradictions and psychological possibilities – Chittenden may as well be a cardboard cutout for all the emotional complexity he’s able to muster.

Herzog outdoes himself with Rescue Dawn, making his most popularly accessible film yet and proving at the same time that he is among the most daring of all filmmakers and capable -- like his characters -- of almost anything.

Transformers is about as clever as an unplugged blender.

It goes without saying that this will be no everyday marriage class, not with a hyperactive Williams setting the curriculum.

Pixar's animation is simply flawless; colorful, deeply realized, and ably conveying both the chaos of the kitchen, and the sensual allure of food well prepared.

Though we will differ on the methods of improving the American health care system, Sicko's enduring contribution is the undeniable evidence that the system is broken. If the film brings the debate out into the open of our movie lobbies and living rooms, it can’t be long before the conversation trickles into the corridors of Congress.

Redgrave still manages to inspire awe, yet a poetically prosaic moment like the one in which she goes chasing after a butterfly is enough to throw a net over the whole thing.

Superior in every way to 1995's "Die Hard With a Vengeance," Live Free or Die Hard's goofy generation-gap gambit pays off decently and proves, again, that nattily dressed terrorists are no match for Willis, the once and future Patron Saint of Bang.

The movie appeals to an old-fashioned sense of horror.

Bland jokes and lazy contrivances.

The elliptical narrative also recalls Fernando Meirelles' somewhat similarly themed "The Constant Gardener," a film ultimately more heartfelt and accessible to mainstream audiences because its maker is unafraid of grief and explores it more deeply.

It's smart; it's silly; it's – kill me now – shear terror.

This movie belongs to Posey, and her nuanced performance makes Broken English a worthy adventure.

Lady Chatterley is the recipient of six César Awards, France's equivalent of the Oscar. Although the film is capable of sustaining our interest throughout, the viewer may find it lacking in some of the transcendence Lady Chatterley's lust is supposed to inspire.

Cuddlier and more charming, this alcoholic-hitman comedy isn’t your typical Dahl noir (The Last Seduction, Red Rock West), but it is offbeat, lovably deadpan, and just tart enough.

Baichwal is comfortable with those moral and aesthetic ambiguities as well, and, as a result, she’s created a visual poem of devastation that makes one question one’s entire relationship to the world.

A piece of garbage and the best argument for reading books since the first pop-up appeared.

Relentlessly dull and curiously bombastic.

It's not really a matter of Nancy's retro look and grounding in the fundamentals of sleuthing that separates the women from the girls but, rather, this film's lack of gaiety and surprise that makes it dud for old and new generations of the books' fans.

The film’s resolution is more implied than complete.

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

Kaurismäki’s spare style and economical storytelling are well-suited to this particular story about loneliness, as the director never muddies the frame with sentimental dross or lugubrious inclinations.

Three films in, and Soderbergh's Ocean's franchise has settled into a kind of hipster equanimity – happy to live in that loosely defined territory where art meets commerce and story blends seamlessly with cool.

Director Roth has accomplished the near impossible with Hostel: Part II: He's crafted a vastly superior sequel to a film already considered something of a classic by genre aficionados, one that supersedes its predecessor's sadistic entertainment quotient by orders of magnitude while also upstaging its own outrageous gore effects with a script that's smart, vicious, and occasionally, gleefully subversive.

There's nothing terribly wrong with Surf's Up, except maybe the part where one character calls another a "dirty trash can full of poop." But the movie isn't terribly robust, either.

How do you tell the true story of a mythical woman? In epic proportions, of course.

The opening and closing courtroom scenes, in which brother Sumner is granted legal guardianship, show a family in need of healing, mentally and spiritually.

While 12:08 East of Bucharest could take more than one viewing to truly appreciate, it's worth the commitment.

Like most of Apatow's work, Knocked Up walks a perilous line between sarcasm and sentimentality, and though it's extremely funny in bursts, the movie flirts once too often with schmaltz before toppling into melodrama in its third act. The fault lies as much with Apatow's casting as his writing.

There's a lot of angry prejudice toward women playing soccer in the film, and a semi-fun "Footloose"-esque scene in which Gracie petitions the school board for the freedom to play. But melodrama reigns supreme as the film disintegrates into movie-of-the-week predictability.

By the time the police come knocking at the front door, Mr. Brooks has exploded from its mild-mannered start into full guignol mode, and would take a defter filmmaker than Evans to steer the tonal shift.

The movie's quirk isn't forced; it sincerely ponders the nature of love and of human need, opening with a quote by Jacques Lacan and ending with a shrug.

Day Watch falls prey to the curse of most sequels in which "more" is often a thin concept stretched beyond its limits and misconstrued to mean "bigger and better."

The ultimate indie self-indulgence, I'm Reed Fish is so weighed down in its own angst as to practically deserve its own genre.

Ten Canoes is as much a work of anthropology as it is a narrative, and its true strength lies in its exploration of ancient aboriginal hunting practices, death rituals, and legal traditions.

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.

Like the Flying Dutchman, this third Pirates outing is an empty vessel haunted by the ghosts of its sabre-rattling betters.

A gorgeous-looking but ill-conceived mash note to the city of Paris that riffs on its better, wiser, glaringly obvious cinematic predecessors.

Despite the hardships depicted, Golden Door is a sweet film at heart, playing witness to the birth pangs of modern America with both due respect and the occasional comic grace note, but not, oddly, one single shot of the Statue of Liberty.

Schizophrenia never looked so good or so mesmerizing as it does here, and Paprika, while certainly not suitable for kids, manages to capture the childlike, helter-skelter chaos and curiosity of the human mind better than any other animated film.

There's a comment in here somewhere about leadership and authorship, and it's not that we're laughing too hard to fully comprehend it. In von Trier's world, the laugh is often ON the audience, not WITH the audience.

Shrek, DreamWorks' big green cash machine, has finally run dry, perhaps not of box office power, but most assuredly of the caustic, fractured fairy tale-isms and the wry, snarky wit that made the first film, and to a lesser degree, the first sequel, so winning.

Severance is a British horror-comedy that, from the get-go, has two distracting strikes against it.

There's no other woman acting today that even remotely resembles Parker Posey. For that matter, there's never been anyone quite like her that I can think of. She has the dynamite improvisational instincts of a born grifter who wandered too far from one con and ended up in another – acting – and her tricky-risky game of onscreen three-card monte is, again and again, a jewel in indie filmmaking's oft-tattered crown.

I hate to sound like a disappointed parent, but I expected more from Luke Wilson.

Ultimately, Once transcends even its own ambitions, becoming a complex meditation on relationships, Irish culture, and music.

While 28 Weeks Later ultimately falls shy of classic status (it's no Panic in Year Zero!), there are several hard-to-shake scenes -- nightmare visions, really -- that reveal the infected populace to be far less dangerous to the fabric of a civilized society than, perhaps, the very notion of civilization itself.

But is it funny? Not really.

Never rings true. It's a dramedy whose blend of melodrama and humor is awkward and incongruous, leaping between the two modes like a fat frog jumping lilypads.

Made by teachers for teachers, this local indie – which now sports the imprimatur of executive producer Morgan Spurlock – offers no easy answers to its statistic that 50% of teachers quit within their first three years on the job.

Still, The Ex is more appealing and less dumb than most movies that pass as comedy today, so any criticisms of its shortcomings need to account for that big-picture perspective. Indeed, there are worse ways to spend an hour-and-a-half.

What should have turned out as a terrific movie about the crime of spousal abuse has instead received the equivalent of a ham-handed molestation by director Mundhra.

Tsai’s drama is something like a mixture of Robert Bresson and R.W. Fassbinder, as God’s bedraggled souls struggle with the desires of the damned, and nobody wants to go into that good night alone.

A phantom of a movie whose beautiful flakes fall into the deep crevices of memory long after the seasons change.

In short, there are way too many storylines here, especially for a movie that turns stiff whenever it's on the ground. When cascading through the cityscape, Spider-Man 3 still makes us gasp with delight, but on Earth those gasps come solely in reaction to the cynical dreariness of the script.

Lucky You is redeemed slightly by the presence of Duvall as Huck's father, poker legend L.C. Cheever, who clearly spent more time being Huck's teacher than his dad. Their inevitable face-off at the final table of the World Poker Championship has just enough Oedipal overtones to give the movie a little heft.

Civic Duty stands out amid the new wave of terrorism-paranoia thrillers. It's a taut drama set primarily within the confines of two apartments in the same urban building complex and keeps the viewer guessing until the end regarding the reliability of its two central protagonists.

Eighteen short films by an international who's-who of filmmakers make up this omnibus celebrating the joys and sorrows of love and Paris, organized by neighborhood.

The movie doesn’t stand in judgment of its characters, which will probably disappoint audiences who think it ought to, but its breezy tone and ultimately affirming message should please comedy fans with an appreciation for the offbeat.

Never manages to get its relationships framed in as sharp focus as "Lantana" and goes down some unproductive side roads in its attempt to get to the point.

Wiper doesn't exploit the possibilities of his setting, so the only conflict is the fighting, the only suspense comes from waiting for the next character to pop out from behind a tree and do something possibly interesting.

This may be a remake of a Swedish film from 2002 (itself based on a novel), but unspooling in the cineplex it feels more akin to one of emo godhead Conor Oberst's more emotionally mopey musical diversions.

Kennedy’s humor comes from the broad, brainless, lowest-common-denominator school (in other words, he was born to play a grown man with the intelligence of an boy).

This pseudo-Phildickian actioner is chum for the bigger fish to come this summer; for Moore, it's a slummer.

Time and again, Devor sabotages his own attempt to bring "zoos," literally and figuratively, into the light.

The most originally funny movie to hit U.S. screens in a while.

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.

In the dark of the theatre Fracture keeps it together – mainly through the sheer will of Hopkins and Gosling.

Despite a title that makes this movie sound as though it might be the latest madcap offering from Pedro Almodóvar, In the Land of Women is a much more conventional affair – a tame yet appealing melodrama about finding one's self that is alternately formulaic and unique.