As a heartwarming tribute to the courage of firefighters, Ladder 49 delivers.

Has a haunting afterglow, one that neither satisfies nor illuminates, but at least keeps the flame alive.

The transitions from performance to song and to reality are strained and awkward.

While this is hardly "Breaker Morant," it's nowhere near as mawkish or cloying as it could have been.

A terrific cast, intelligent direction, state-of-the-art special effects, a strong story, and skilled narrative construction all end up being much ado about not very much.

Graceland is terrific entertainment, but I can’t decide if it’s a cautionary tale, an exercise in moral relativism, or an exploitation film. There’s the final conundrum.

Infused with enough infectious charm to make us forget how dopey the plot is and become swept up in its breezy countenance.

The best ingredient is the way Ray relates to his son. Those moments – sometimes quiet, but often volatile – lift the film up from being a turgid episode of "Fargo" or "Justified."

This is meat-and-potatoes (and bullets) action filmmaking, although, really, that title's got to go.

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

Simply put, it’s too much of a good thing, this unreined tumult of chaos.

Regrettably, The Postman is just one more reminder of what a nonfactor sincerity often is in terms of artistic merit.

The makers of Guess Who appear to have given more thought to targeting an audience than building a believable movie.

If Slingshot leaned into that character study, rather than roughly gaffer-taping it to a deep space thriller, maybe it wouldn’t stall out on the launch pad so badly.

Vromen does make some efforts at re-creating the period. But what links 1992 to the era is that it feels like part of that wave of low-budget late-Nineties Heat knockoffs, all featuring a cast that can do better but hey, a paycheck is a paycheck. 1992 is just Hard Rain with the riots standing in for a storm.

The ideas are there, hints of genius, but no one ignites them. Add Osmosis Jones to that list of universal enigmas, and, more specifically, how the Farrelly Brothers could have done so little with so much.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that just because we CAN use computer technology to give dogs goofy faces, that doesn’t mean we SHOULD.

With plot holes so large you could drive a HumVee through them, this debut film from director Shapiro is little more than a lousy hybrid, one part Fatal Attraction to two parts Lolita, only this time Humbert Humbert writes for trendy Pique! magazine and lives in Seattle (but doesn't everybody these days?).

The familiar narrative gambits of Finding Your Feet aren’t the problem here as much as their heavy-handed execution.

There are a number of cheeky winks from the filmmakers specifically aimed at Harryhausen fans; in the end, though, Leterrier's Clash of the Titans is nearly as messy an assemblage of mythic odds and ends as the original.

It works extremely well as a drunken, date-night midnighter or film-fest entry, all madcap bloodletting and surrealist non sequiturs.

I Served the King of England, like its hero, is surrounded by and infused with the potential for meaning but feels like a lark: a bit of nothing whistling past the graveyard of 20th century European history without a thing to do but indulge itself.

High Life is a meandering mess of symbolism, half-thoughts, ponderous exchanges, and emotional dead ends, one that confuses ambiguity for an unengaging air of vagueness.

It seems that no matter how many times pop chews up and regurgitates itself, it ain’t dead yet.

Ultimately, it's a very boring ride.

Sorvino and Kudrow, for whatever inscrutable reasons, seem to be having a blast with their ridiculous characters, and both shine in the loopy set-pieces and dream sequences that pepper the story.

It feels like Glander was hoping to create something that all the former kids that grew up on Cartoon Network’s wild, weird era will gravitate towards. But the reality is that it’s not as bizarre, creative, transgressive, or even just plain entertaining as the average episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, and that was about a 12-year-old cat boy and his fish friend.

From its marketing-impaired title on down, Event Horizon is a steadily churning debacle that promises much more than it can deliver and ends up drowning in a crimson sea of gore and maddeningly out-of-place steals from other, better genre shockers.

Malum has enough budget to be too glossy to be gutter fun, and adds little visually much beyond some very mediocre practical effects, often feeling that – yet again – its ambitions outstripped its grasp.

But absurdity alone won’t get the train into the depot, and no amount of quirky characters floating in their chairs or fish changing colors at random can make up for the film’s lack of real humor or meaning. Which is to say, if you’re going to make a comedy about suicide, you’d better make sure the jokes land. There are people out there who could use a laugh.

Barcelona does have brief flashes of brilliance.... For the most part, however, Barcelona offers nothing much interesting beyond some beautiful scenery and generally annoying characters.

There’s a distinct Eighties vibe that appeals to the intended demographic, especially in the bumbling school administrator Dean Bronson (Zissis, more stooge than villain), the sexual politics between the characters (they are in college after all), and the delicious bitchiness of mean girl Danielle (Matthews). Yet for all its ambition with loopy timelines and dubious scientific explanations, convenient logic only justified in pushing the plot along, the actual world-building falls flat.

A predictable affair that nonetheless ingratiates itself into your good fortunes by sheer virtue of its amiable nuttiness. It's mindless fun while it lasts.

The casting is the only part of the movie that feels genuine, with Hudson channeling the Dreamgirls emotive performance that earned her an early career Oscar.

With M3GAN out of her recognizable body for most of the film, it becomes clear how much of the success of both films comes down to Davis’ delivery.

In the end, it’s hard to rule out any Johnson movie entirely, but Skyscraper is more disappointment than summer sleeper.

Too bad their characters are comprised of nothing but the most hackneyed clichés and that it apparently never occurred to anyone to add even sketches of believable character development.

The questions being probed here about how to be vulnerable, what it takes to connect – y’know, the big stuff – aren’t exclusive to romance, after all. And I so admired the movie for having the daring and openheartedness to try to tackle the big stuff. I just wish I liked it more.

To its credit, the film rockets toward its conclusion with scant downtime. It's come and gone before you even know it, and, like death, that's a good thing.

A welcome antidote to most of the crap that for passes today for horror and other supernaturally themed movies.

More than acting, the real culprit in Malice is the script by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men) and Scott Frank (Dead Again) which favors florid dramatics over plausible theatrics.

The metaphoric title about the danger in beautiful things sounds like something from Byron or Keats, but this compressed film adaptation of an Oprah-endorsed bestseller plays like the Dickens.

Midway through, there’s a truly riotous set-piece involving Bruiser’s gay love affair with a Great Dane, but not even a Chihuahua in leather bondage gear can zest up a franchise that has degraded from sleeper to snoozer.

A classic sophomore slump, all bark and very little bite.

Antwan "Big Boi" Patton appears in an entertaining role as Atlanta’s weaselly mayor. Atlanta may have dibs on Youngblood Priest this time, but even though the character is still fly in this reboot, it would be a stretch to regard him as truly superfly.

As far as pronoun horrors go, They can't hold a candle to Them or It, but as an anti-tourism ad for Seattle, it's right up there with The Ring in terms of overcast, glistening panache.

We may live in a golden era of action steamers and stunt choreographers-turned-filmmakers, but Expend4bles never learns to embrace its own limitations. It strains for spectacle and only intermittently delivers on its actual strengths.

There are gestures toward a deeper interiority to Alexis’ character – and perhaps a different, genuinely thorny film about great art via dubious methods – but it never quite investigates that far.

The heist itself is a charm with the kids zipping about in go-karts and eluding klutzy security guards, but the film seems trapped in a strange Twilight Zone somewhere between comedy and drama.

Deep Impact takes the high road and offers up more tearful reunions than actual fireballs and more egregious, sappy dialogue than you can shake a tsunami at.

The real engine that keeps the movie moving isn’t the cliched script or the spectacular race footage. It’s Pitt.

In all his misguided enthusiasm, Parker has mustered enough bluster to fill up a zeppelin, blowing harder and harder, for something more and more fanciful. But with so much hot air, the bubble is bound to burst, and so it does in Parker's blundering adaptation.

Often silly but almost never funny -- no matter how often it practices the same jokes.

Expect lots of Slasher Movie 101.

Luhrmann has always had a knack with the fever of passion, but here he only catches high fever’s empty gibberish.

A decent enough spot of silliness.

The fight scenes are splendidly choreographed...but they're shot in that grating, thoroughly American flashcut style that leaves you wondering just who the hell is hitting who.

Sumptuous to behold, although one will not leave the theatre with a much deeper knowledge and understanding of this great Spanish painter's career.

Though Bush’s aims are admirable and his ability to slip into the cracks of an ancient culture impressive, one can’t shake the feeling that the tale of Tibet’s struggles against communist injustice deserves the attentions of a truly great documentarian, not merely a sympathetic one.

There’s definitely a certain fascination hovering about The Singing Detective, but after seeing the movie, that fascination turns to perverse dread.

With a surprising lack of verve, humor, and narrative tension, Shyamalan's live-action foundation film is unlikely to woo new fans to the tale.

Fraser often brings a warmth to Charlie that the film desperately needs, but his positivity is only an ember in a fire dying in the pouring rain.

The strangest part is that half the movie’s arc is missing, but the credits promise its arrival in 2009 as Milarepa Part II: Path to Liberation.

Kit Kittredge is a dutiful bore. Still, I couldn't help but wonder if, in the face of all-out market collapse, it might serve a dual purpose as primer for kiddies on economic depression – because food stamps always taste better with a side order of spunk. Or is it pluck?

Who knew reincarnation could be such a lovely snooze?

Arthur Newman is overwhelmed with arty ambitions and a heavy-handed acting style. Ultimately, all the weight prevents the film from taking off and soaring.

Just as you begin settling into these science-fiction parameters and start pondering the wisdom of humanity’s vain quest for immortality, Self/less switches gears, much to its detriment, and becomes a frenzied chase thriller and shoot-‘em-up.

The abundance of talent gathered for Meet the Fockers is sadly shortchanged by the unimaginative script and directorial laissez faire. It’s more like the audience has been snookered rather than Fockered.

The ensemble cast is uniformly first-rate, but Sachs' moribund movie is a slog – all those scenes of Frankie’s friends and family wandering through the woods made my feet hurt.

Widen gets an “A” for ambition here, but by the end of the whole shebang, you really couldn't care less.

Exuding direct-to-Redbox energy, Fuze has enough plot twists to make it watchable. You’re just not liable to remember much of it afterwards.

Saving Christmas will hold little interest for anyone not already a believer. It’s too single-minded in its instructional purpose, too averse to multidimensional characters, too youth-pastor-like in its dorky humor.

We all know how it ends, and that foreknowledge dooms Singer's hotly anticipated and much troubled account of the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life.

Devil's Advocate is such a bloated, gargantuan, and ultimately tasteless juggernaut of a film that it manages to achieve a righteously cheesy splendor.

Uneasy blend of the extreme visuals of director Ken Russell and the bloated dramaturgy of writer Paddy Chayefsky (who disowned this adaptation of his novel).

Any adult attending this film with a pre-K offspring may need to reassure the child afterward that little Tigger back home won’t devour him in his sleep. No kidding. They’re that scary. The Wild Life is an ailurophobe’s nightmare.

In the end, we know Andie and Ben will kiss and make up -– how could too alliteratively aligned pretty people not? -– but first we must wade through the protracted and wholly unwarranted period in which both huffs about the other’s deceptions.

Sylvia also makes it seem as though, even at her happiest, she never received much pleasure from life. This makes for a long, slow procession to the oven door -– so dark, somber, and lifeless is this well-intentioned biography.

With its jellyfish direction, A Good Woman throws its actors overboard to see if they can swim.

It’s a fun and mostly effective ride while it lasts, part Slenderman creepypasta weird and part full-on, nerve-jangling horror, but it’s ultimately, perhaps unavoidably, unsatisfying.

The man whom the FBI described as "extremely eloquent, therefore extremely dangerous" here seems about as threatening as Mother Teresa.

Don't try to figure out a time-travel movie, it will make your head hurt. And if the movie stars Keanu Reeves, all the more reason to just stop, slowly put common sense on the ground, and back away from your capacity for rational thought.

Smith is excellent as the potty Grace, with both Atkinson and Thomas equally fine in their roles. But the fact is plainly seen: The Ealing of yore is gone.

It's nobody’s idea of a classic comedy, but in its own inoffensive and eager-to-please way it's a pleasant enough way to spend 90 minutes ogling the lustrous Ms. Union and Mr. Foxx's equally and endlessly fascinating volcanic coif.

My be a gearhead's delight, but its appeal to middle-of-the-roaders will be stop-and-go.

Graham maintains a casual charm throughout it all, but she lacks the kind of emotional depth that might have pulled this hodge-podge together.

The music so wholly engulfs the second half of the film, there’s no room left to expand on characters that feel less than lived-in or on the film’s more ambitious ideas.

What's disappointing, especially considering Swati's background in dance, is how static the film feels, and how lumpen the story becomes.

Honestly, at this point in time there's no legitimate reason to confuse “bad ass” filmmaking with just plain bad. Nice GTO, though.

Where else are you going to get a chance to see the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy drift down the side of a mile-high tsunami and take out the White House? Big. Dumb. Fun.

This isn’t Nicole Kidman’s first dalliance with witchcraft, and it is one of Bewitched’s unfortunate achievements that it actually makes one pine for Kidman’s 1998 dud, "Practical Magic." That witch at least had some sass; this cardigan-clad witch, alas, is an altogether more benign being, and by "benign" I mean boring.

In its inclusive attempt to be all things to all people, Samba ends up inadvertently trivializing the topics it’s trying to stand up for.

There’s a naivete about the film that only a teen at heart could love.

On the whole, there are precious few life lessons in Is Anybody There? that haven't been noted before.

Mary Queen of Scots catches the outline but misses all the details.

Step Brothers has comic fuel to burn, some of it unashamedly non sequitur and stupid-brilliant, but it still feels like a post-"Talladega" flameout.

Alienoid is so big in its ambition that it rarely coheres, and sequences in each time period go on for so long that the other era, and all its characters, fall away. But the characters are overwhelmingly entertaining, most especially Jo and Yum as the hapless monster hunters who are promised much bigger things if Part 2 ever happens.

The actors are all game, but the job’s beneath them – Hemsworth, a pro, and a real champ at faking enthusiasm for this dud; Theron, still doing camp but this time with no tempering complexity or empathy; Blunt, stuck playing a frost-bitten Mommie Dearest.