It’s a tedious watch, inferior in every way to David Fincher’s slick, grinningly grim "Gone Girl." Any chance for lightning striking twice is going, going, gone.

The only thrill here comes from the adrenaline kick of the chase. Alas, it's an empty, Pavlovian kick at best.

It has that bygone style, in which impossibly innocent ingenues suddenly break into blissfully tuneful song.

Franklin injects life into a flat format and has in the process done something nearly unheard of in Hollywood as of late: He's brought class back to the genre film.

When a human joke like Tony Robbins is the only one who comes away from your movie smelling like a rose, there's a real problem in Farrellyland.

Like everything else Parker puts his mind to -- is equally outlandish, part skewed morality play, part sophomoric slapstick, and wholly ridiculous.

Even the requisite gore is sub-par, so it's not even neat when some poor sap explodes and his entrails whiz by. Perhaps Gordon should go back to mining H.P. Lovecraft's territory.

If you’re ready for 90-odd minutes of relentless desert scenes with Efron struggling to survive, then this movie is for you.

Consistently entertaining, athletically brutal, and, more often than not, well-acted.

This is an impressively realized (and, yes, occasionally, unavoidably humorous) valentine to Hollywood's sci-fi glory days – all heart, no snark, and one big eye.

Sturgess, saddled with a caddish character, is less compelling, but he does provide the film's only spot of unloosed, raw emotion. Everything else feels too precisely and too compactly assembled for much impact.

With a small cast and a handful of locations – the only other character of note is Rachel (Seimetz), Thomas’ unsuspecting wife – The Secrets We Keep blends the best of B-movie thrillers and black box theatre.

The performances are wonderful, especially Hoult and Collins, who exude a charming chemistry, and fans of both the books and the films will find pleasure in this look at the early life of the man whose work still influences artists to this day.

The film’s one saving grace is Bateman, the only actor on set who seems unwilling to give himself over to Magorium’s philosophy that the key to a fulfilling life can only be found in pathological regression. Maybe he just needs more whimsy in his life.

This could be a pilot for the WB. Hollywood choreographer Fletcher makes the jump behind the camera but displays a greater aplomb for staging than drama, and the movie is as fleeting as the last weekend of summer.

It’s as if Caveny had so many ideas that she simply couldn’t bear to leave any of them crumpled up on her office floor.

Never finding its right tone, Admission uncomfortably founders between the story’s comic and dramatic aspects and leaves behind a lumpy residue that tars its likable leads.

Except for a potent scene in which Freud rages against Christianity’s conceptual embrace of “God’s plan” to explain why a supreme being would allow terrible things to happen, it’s a relatively bloodless tit-for-tat conversation that shoots sparks that rarely catch fire.

Ultimately, Paradise Road is one of those well-intended films that doesn't completely succeed because it shortsightedly believes that its eloquent subject matter is enough, in and of itself, to create a memorable moviegoing experience.

Pulls out every stop to fool the eye.

For those enamored with Wells' books, however, this film version will likely meet their expectations, and it undoubtedly will spawn more Ya-Ya chapters throughout the country.

Quantumania goes big, but it never forgets that Ant-Man is our guy.

The story, serviceable though it is, still shatters like eggshells under even the lightest scrutiny, and the dialogue is often stale beyond belief.

More than any other filmmaker making movies about the new “kids” generation, it seems to me that Araki -- with both Doom and Totally F***ked Up -- has his finger tuned most acutely to the human pulse and not just the lens shutter.

At least the heroic Buck remains the focal point here, unlike in other less faithful screen incarnations that mainly trade on the familiar title.

Quite likely the most original dance film you'll see this year, The FP is awash in silliness that probably took ages to script, but the film's goofy heart and soul (yes, it has one) is what sticks with you in the end and makes this crazed film into a potential cult-movie masterpiece.

A swing and a miss is too timid a dismissal. It’s a sumptuously dressed table that ends in a wet fart.

Only in Hollywood can a movie about alien children be boring. Even if the kid isn’t really an alien (no spoilers), there’s still opportunity galore for the wild and the weird.

The well-chosen voice cast helps make this a fairly engaging tale, even though the film is riddled with a wealth of head-scratching anachronistic errors.

What ultimately disappoints here, however, is the conventionality of the movie’s narrative arc, its mushy characterizations (as the cosmetic company heiress who befriends Renee, a squeaky-voiced Williams is utterly dispensable), and a rushed conclusion that ties up the loose ends with a sloppy bow that diminishes the movie’s message.

The annoyingly coy title of this non-epic about two people trying to survive a private plane crash in the high Rockies while a passive sort of romance develops during the descent pretty much says it all while simultaneously offering nothing of any great interest, much like the entire movie.

As befits a comedy monolith based around a loose series of old Saturday Night Live skits, Blues Brothers 2000 is essentially a series of flamboyant comedy and musical set-pieces, some of which soar and some of which merely twitch, but all of which are infused with a ceaseless beat-your-head-in comic sturm und drang; if one gag doesn't do it for you, surely the next one will.

Like the infamous Japanese water tortures of WWII, Dahl’s film is a steadily mounting series of pesky nonevents paced with all the frenetic, action-packed verve of a wounded lawn sprinkler.

By the time the chorus of churchgoers end the film with a spirited rendition of Stevie Wonder’s rousing “As” following a demonstration of the healing power of forgiveness, you’re ready for a closing number. Hallelujah.

Watching Williams as Teddy Roosevelt ogle through binoculars Sacajawea (Mizuo Peck) while she stalks around a glassed-in display like some hippie chick in a buffalo-skin straitjacket after a bad trip at Woodstock ’94 makes me sad and uncomfortable.

Though remaining sweet and tasty, Efron, in his first non-singing and dancing feature film proves he has an agreeable and kinetic screen presence, although his ability to convince us he's truly a 37-year-old encased in a 17-year-old's body is dramatically dubious.

It's the most honest, refreshing comedy about love – gay, straight, or both – I've seen in many moons, and at the end everyone's problems are solved by a country-western dance battle with drag doyenne Jackie Beat on the mic.

Valiantly tries to recapture the spit and polish indie feel of the original, and comes up looking more like something Franklin might have directed on a Bad Day.

Although the plot is thin, Rock Dog nevertheless charms with its engaging central characters and unencumbered storyline.

As kids' comedies go, this one's fairly topical and, better yet, amusing.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fun movie; so much better than it has to be and so much better than you expect it to be. Buffy is to vampire movies what Valley Girl is to Romeo and Juliet stories: a fresh reworking of an old formula staged by up-to-the-second California teens.

Fletcher demonstrates, as with her second film, "27 Dresses," that she can put together a funny, able romantic comedy that is a cut above, but no more. Still, those leads are awfully likable, the Massachusetts-for-Alaska landscape rather picturesque, and if The Proposal doesn't reinvent the wheel, merrily we roll along nonetheless.

The handful of redeeming moments in Jayne Mansfield’s Car belong to Duvall in the role of a septuagenarian who finds himself more and more at odds with a changing world.

Åkerlund's style, and his quietly sensitive handling of the bloody details, will still bang the head that does not bang.

There is no character development or psychology manifested in any aspect of The Strangers.

Book of Secrets isn’t so much a romp as a long trudge through American history factoids and conspiracy-theory gobbledygook. Cool car chase, though.

The primary problem with Blue Like Jazz is that there is no believable character development.

Much of the film’s fun is overrun by a combination of overlong exposition, ham-fisted dialogue, and some genuinely confusing editing. You’re never quite sure at any given point where, exactly, the human characters are, what exactly they’re doing, or what the f**k that sudden, off-putting plot twist that just happened means.

When the boys are tossing balls around and bopping in time to Notorious B.I.G., they -- and the film -- are right-on.

So gleefully abandons any semblance of sanity that it's virtually impossible not to enjoy the sheer breadth of nonsensical fun taking place on screen.

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

The film's biggest shortcoming is that its caricatured strokes aren't broad enough; it lacks the slam-bang energy of the comically grotesque.

There’s a surprising lack of surprises in DreamWorks’ answer to Disney/Pixar’s runaway smash "Finding Nemo."

The entire plot exists for the sole purpose of the yawning revelation in the film’s last five minutes.

Cornpone caricatures abound (witness "Hoedown Throwdown," in which Miley sunnily urges us to "pop it, lock it, polka dot it"), but so do worthy messages about responsibility – to family, community, even Mother Earth.

Younger viewers who've cut their teeth on the instant horrors of modern "torture porn" may find The Stranger's pace and psychological upsets more slow-going than they might like. Yet a film like this may be just the bracing corrective the modern horror film needs.

As scripted by Craig Titley, this first in a presumptive franchise is a dull, scattershot affair that owes much to both "X-Men" and Greek mythology, but which never seems to slow down enough to make any sense whatsoever.

The experience is a little like being stuck in a Doom Buggy on a day when the ride is very stop-start. The flow of the attraction collapses, becoming individual cool designs but not a story.

But being Charlie – what’s going on inside this angry kid’s head, what made him turn to drugs, and finally turn away – that is more elusive. And that is the film’s great disappointment: that something so clearly conceived in earnestness and from real-life, first-person experience ends up feeling, well, kinda fake.

Pink Flamingos is, in its own unique way, the quintessential American Family Film. Not my family, certainly, and probably not yours, but a family nonetheless. So here's to family values. And shock values, too.

It's all well and good to run a scroll of corporate evil-doers at the end of the film as in Dick and Jane, but if these robber barons were skewered properly along the way, such heavy-handed, last-minute tactics wouldn't be necessary.

Bella is, indeed, a beautiful film. The bustling, cab-crowded thoroughfares of New York City have rarely looked as inviting and the coastline as momentously beachy as they do in this film.

All things considered, Sgt. Bilko is little more than a lengthy episode of the original show. Only less creepy.

Its ultimate message is as French as they come: The family that lays together, stays together. What the hell, it's more fun than a riot.

It's an obvious nod to "Rock 'n' Roll High School" that mostly serves as a grim reminder of how far comedies about the education system have fallen.

As an extended metaphor on the perils of imperialism and the colonization of both land and heart, Before the Rains works just fine, but as a love story run afoul of the times, it's a soggy affair.

It's a silly, goofball romp, sure, but this newfangled Josie rocks far harder than her predecessor.

It's like 90 minutes of teasing foreplay, and then, just when it's about to get really good, your partner rolls over and goes to sleep.

Miike's graphically violent Japanese actioners are not everyone's cup of sake. But if you can handle the bloodshed, Miike's films will open your eyes to the number of ways it can spurt, splat, and drizzle out of a whole variety of natural human orifices and man-made bullet holes.

There’s not a whole lot of heft to von Scherler Mayer’s romantic comedy with ethnic Indian entanglements; it’s like overdone naan, too flaky and ephemeral for its own good, but still somehow appetizing.

Little more than a constant and occasionally pretty imaginative sex show.

It's rougher stuff than most would expect, though not unrewarding in its own horrific way.

This film wanders and dallies and much of it is fun to watch, but you really know about as much about Chaplin when you leave the theatre as when you enter, and what's missing is the magic.

Benjamin Bratt ably depicts both sides of this character and creates a memorable portrait in the process.

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

Almost everything about Sonic the Hedgehog comes together as a surprising success. Marsden may not be a household name, but he gives the kind of performance that would make Brendan Fraser proud.

Some of the gags seem a bit too labored, and by the time the rather charming ending unfolds, these weaker moments in Hotel de Love may force some viewers to check out early.

The Parts You Lose captures the wintry isolation of North Dakota well, and the actors involved ensure that it’s never unwatchable. Yet this is the worst kind of bad movie: a film with absolutely nothing to say.

The lazy writing is what makes this film such a frustrating experience. With a little more craft, the film could be as fantastic as the title. Maybe the next two films (gah) will be more successful.

It's a hodgepodge of wildly divergent narrative styles, from the mystical to the grisly and into the ridiculous.

Ford, as usual, is a delight to watch; his portrayals of both Henry the Ruthless Lawyer and Henry the Reborn are dead-on, unerring in their accuracy. Bening is likewise excellent.

If nothing else, this adaptation of Peter Mayle's umpteenth ode to livin' la vie en Provence will make you wonder about Ridley Scott and the directorial aging process.

It's a mess and it might cost him some career freedom, but at least Kelly hasn't cashed in his trademark narrative complexity for Hollywood pap.

It’s all supremely silly stuff, and amusingly so, as long as you don’t stop to think about all those blameless officers and agents cut down in the line of mindless entertainment.

No matter your standard of measurement, this production falls short.

Deschanel, as the token oddball of the gang, runs off with the movie.

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.

Until Hollywood stops being a boys club, and America graduates beyond short pants and its embarrassingly pubescent attitudes toward sex, I suppose one can only hope that all male adolescent fantasies will play as goofily sweet as this one.

Surprisingly well-crafted for something as aggressively dumb as this, the real surprise is the cast.

There's some funny stuff here that doesn't involve degrading its female protagonists, and the cast, by and large, is appealing.

It’s an impressive closing to the cycle, and, frankly, one that arrives not a moment too soon.

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.

Director Howard, his actors, and indeed the entire salty sweep of the film are all aided tremendously by visual-effects supervisor Jody Johnson and his team’s spectacular combination of live action and flawless, awe-inspiring CGI creations, chief among them the great, white whale.

An attempt to infuse some girl power into their mash-up of cheeky horror films and teen-angst movies. The result is more mash than smash as Jennifer’s Body squanders its initial good will by failing to deliver the goods on either score.

The Tunnel may be shrouded in blistering embers and fumes, but it never loses sight of the victims and helpers, of whom there are many. Just as it's an ensemble drama, so it's the community that saves what it can of the day, and gives a feel-good ending with a tinge of sadness.

Director Rebekah McKendry follows up her deliciously disgusting Lovecraftian rest stop comedy Glorious with a feature that doesn't have quite the same twisted ingenuity. Instead, she focuses on good, old-fashioned scares.

It IS consistently funny. Its trash-can humor is tasteless, no doubt, but hey, that doesn't make it unpalatable.

Despite its flaws, which become more evident as time elapses, Lions for Lambs is worth seeing for no other reason that you’ve never seen anything like it before.