There are so many interesting components of Umma that never click, wasting a completely original idea on banality.

The misfits, as ever, must take a back seat to the morality, and the result – while in no way migraine-inducing – traffics in rote truisms.

The actors are all good, although not much rapport is conveyed, despite one hot sex scene.

The Croods: A New Age takes wacky, weird turns, and yet somehow still manages to be dull and lifeless.

Any film in which grande dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench share the screen is one worth seeing, if only to marvel at their deft skills in the art of acting.

It all adds up to a peculiar whole; fun I suppose, but not what you'd call a picnic.

Highly recommended for graduate psychology students in aberrant sexuality, but others can probably skip sans regret.

Either way, Beatty has taken an object of enduring fascination and made him … not so much.

Sure, Double Team is a mind-numbingly silly outing, full of gratuitous violence, testosterone-fueled goonishness, and acting turns that make TV's Van Patten family look positively Emmy-bound, but lest we forget, it's also pulse-pounding, often hilarious fun.

Though there is plenty of razzle-dazzle onscreen, Nine is unlikely to ignite many sparks among viewers.

It’s so amiably predictable that you end up wanting to throw some Motörhead at it, just to see what happens.

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.

Australian actor Courtney does the honors as the younger McClane, skillfully matching Willis in action sequences, one-liners, and more extended repartee.

All in all, though, this Brazilian import is a small curiosity, intriguing more for its failures than its accomplishments.

Nicole Kidman, as good as she is, is given little to do in a one-note role, but fares better than Julianna Margulies who appears merely in a one-scene role. Kevin Hart’s huge number of fans may push this film to early box-office success but eventually they are likely to toss it into the untouchable pile.

The trouble with retooling fairy tales to jibe with our more enlightened times is that too often the fun gets stripped along with the offensive parts.

If only Fight or Flight knew that what it does best is hectic mayhem then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bumpy ride.

Max Reload isn't for everyone, but it's not trying to be. It's a pizza-and-soda Saturday night gamer film for serious gamers - not the kind that just grind through bug releases, but can name a developer other than Hideo Kojima.

I’m afraid there’s more than 2% evaporation going on in Loach’s latest.

The film's "never grow up" refrain plays like a broken record, until, in an abrupt (but not unexpected) turnaround at film's end, it fixes itself.

Feels like the little animated adventure nobody loved.

Never breaks out of its dullsville rut.

There's nothing terribly wrong with Kate & Leopold -- it's just an awfully conventional upmarket romantic comedy.

The film's voice talent is good, as are the characterizations. However, the film's computer animation leaves much to be desired.

If you loved "Wedding Crashers," then, for all intents and purposes, you've already seen Fired Up – because this new movie borrows from the 2005 Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson hit with such utter shamelessness, you have to wonder if royalty checks are already in the mail.

Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey and Outrage argue that the closet suffocates decency and happiness, and the film ends with a freeze-frame of the now-popular folk hero Harvey Milk. However, were we to give up our right to self-denial, I contend that America would cease to be a land of freedom.

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.

Colorful and a passable drama, one that highlights the difficulties of cross-cultural love affairs and the exoticism of the Third World.

Heavy-handed and stuffed with cardboard characters, everything about Twisters save for Powell feels like a pale imitation of what made the original such an unexpected smash of a disaster movie. Lightning definitely does not strike twice.

I've short-sheeted beds and belted out camp songs with the best of them. Indian Summer made me long to be back in one of those gloriously rickety, mildewed cabins in a lush, rural forest. Provided, that is, I wouldn't have to bunk with any of the stupefyingly self-involved, gee-how-can-I-be-happy-with-all-my-wealth-and-beauty morons that Camp Tamakwa apparently produces. Despite tantalizing ingredients like the beguiling cast and spectacular scenery (the film is shot on location at the real Camp Tamakwa in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park), writer/director Mike Binder serves up an unappetizing concoction of Big Chill and Ernest Goes to Camp stew.

The performance are uniformly wonderful, making Sommersby solidly entertaining though never engrossing.

It’s redemption through sentimentality, salvation through schmaltz.

For the most part, The Loft struggles to engage even on the level of tawdry potboiler, joining the forgettable ranks of 2005’s "Derailed" and 2008’s "Deception" as yet another underwhelming one-night stand.

Despite employing every cliché in the sports-movie handbook, Goal! The Dream Begins tells a reasonably engaging story.

Terrific performances can't save this preposterous film from itself, but they do make it more bearable to watch.

For better or worse, the film plays like an extended TV episode, jumping from each character’s story arc to the next, rarely lingering longer than the time it takes to land a few low-bro love jabs before moving on to the next scene.

Despite the weak performances and the scattershot screenplay, the film is visually terrific.

Friedkin, to his credit, gives us a nicely compelling car chase through the near-vertical hills of San Francisco, but it's only five minutes long, and this is a 105-minute film. What to do with the other 100 minutes? No one seems to know.

The melodramatic film has numerous light and comical touches, and the performances are uniformly good. The film's pace, however, has the consistency of molasses, and there's hardly a scene that wouldn't be improved by judicial trimming.

Perhaps the most vexing flaws in this movie are its irresolute plot structure and tone.

There's a nice little story here about the intermingling of cultures, but it rarely gets beyond the obvious clichés.

Stupid, yes, but fun nonetheless.

Racing junkies would be better off browsing the myriad of online drifting videos where the camera doesn't cut and the people don't speak.

The whole film suffers from a serious case of overplotting, perhaps inevitable when trying to cram two largish novels into one smallish film.

Kings is a confusing and far-fetched story in which good intentions outweigh good storytelling.

This documentary is as soothing and edifying as watching a video loop of the Yuletide log.

Quarantine is a one-note nightmare, nicely pitched to the high-C howls of the bitten and the biters but offering considerably less froth than last year's "The Signal," which mined similar nightmares with far more fulsome results.

Green's relationship with reclusive bibliophile Edmund Brundish (Nighy) is the most effective component, even if it does owe such a glaring debt to the superior "84 Charing Cross Road" (sorry, "You've Got Mail," but still the ne plus ultra of bookstore movies).

Sister of the Groom is an almost-delightful rom-com, but it never commits to the bit.

There’s an important message in here, especially when it comes to the financial inequality between men and women in sports. But rather than using the 17-year-old Shields’ pugnacious attitude to really explore how she landed body blows on the sexist establishment, The Fire Inside just ends up shadow boxing.

Too self-referential for its own good by half.

Filth seeks to eventually gain your sympathies, tricking you to care about a character who’s just dragged you through the gutter of human depravity for the last 90 minutes, only to offer up an absolution that, while attempting to be dark and edgy, is just flat and unconvincing.

There are moments of great beauty throughout (the film was lensed by Wong Kar-Wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle), and Shyamalan's heart is nowhere if not on his sleeve, but even these moments cannot steer Lady in the Water clear of its director's zealously over-earnest pretensions.

The charm of the film is that's it's so clever a play, but that cleverness wears thin quickly.

It’s hard to ask for juicier, or more timely, subject matter than high-pressure academic ambition turning violent, but to map the descent of a genius into madness isn’t a task to be taken lightly.

Everything that was sharp in the original text has been rounded and buffed.

It's certainly one of the most beautiful costume-drama/historical-romance naps you'll ever have, but this effortlessly evocative, endlessly ennui-inducing paean to Hawaii's final princess is, ultimately, a dull, "Upstairs Downstairs" affair.

Young kids will likely enjoy watching all the hubbub the gutsy protagonist stirs up and identify with his plight, but most anyone over the age of 14 will find the film alternately too cute for its own good and too blind to quit while it's ahead.

Ruffalo, actually, who was so perfect in the little-seen "You Can Count On Me," is the only real reason to sit through The Last Castle.

Insert Coin doesn’t tell gamers anything they didn’t already know, and non-gamers won’t care – so unless you're a hardcore fan, maybe just save your quarters.

Still, the revelations of evildoers clogging the corridors of power pack very little punch; we're all too aware that such malfeasance and malignity have become the status quo in the real world.

The Tango Lesson is ponderously scripted and stiffly acted, and though the narrative causes the characters to skip continents and languages (the story bounces from Paris to Buenos Aires to London and back) little of the passion that drives this story is conveyed.

So does Rio measure up to the insanely great standard set by Pixar? Visually, yes.

Watts is in nearly every frame of the movie, so if you're a fan (and you should be) that's the reason to see this.

Unfortunately, what should have naturalistic depth seems oddly superficial, and an attempt to dispose of traditional structure becomes episodic. As with many failed experiments, there are still, at least, some interesting takeaways.

If you go into 65 expecting Star Wars meets Jurassic Park, lower your expectations. While there’s not enough outer space to call it an intergalactic odyssey and barely enough dino havoc, 65 has just the right amount of vigor to survive its relatively short runtime.

Feels sterile and chilly; the humor -- Yiddish and otherwise -- falls flat, and sadly so does the film.

Count it as one of the great Hollywood mysteries – right up there with the death of Natalie Wood and the career of Vin Diesel – that we've had to wait this long for a movie starring a talking milkshake, a floating box of french fries, and a ball of ground beef.

Bruce Almighty attempts to blend both sides of the actor – comedic and dramatic – and while Carrey achieved that balance quite wonderfully in "The Truman Show," Bruce Almighty doesn't so much straddle the fence as impale itself on it.

Looks mostly like the same-old, same-old.

Law Abiding Citizen, ultimately and inappropriately, tips the scales in favor of the Man over mankind. Somebody call Charles Bronson.

They’re not all hideous, the men who sit for interviews with a graduate student (Nicholson) and unload their dirty laundry. Sometimes they’re just feckless, or crass; some are even pitiable.

Writer/director Emmanuel Finkiel tries very hard to adapt Duras’ modernist storytelling tactics to Memoir of War and, at times, even succeeds in translating the author’s opaque blurring of the objective and the subjective.

A film that feels far too familiar for the likes of Wahlberg to juice up, hallucinatory valkyries or no.

Maybe Halloween Kills will make more sense when the finale of the trilogy, Halloween Ends, gives those themes some context. But as a sequel to the deliciously absurd 2018 resurrection, it’s a ponderous bore, far-too-intermittently broken up by spurts of the franchise’s signature gore.

Whatever points The Little Things scores for a morally ambiguous ending are washed away in the hours it takes to get there.

I like the declarative clarity, the strength of conviction in the title. I wish the movie itself bore the same certainty, or sturdiness.

Viewers approaching Tim and Eric's comedy for the first time will probably be baffled by their popularity and success. Their Billion Dollar Movie will not win new converts, and their stretched-out routines demonstrate the old saw about less sometimes being more.

Merry witticisms collide with empty clichés, leaving these characters with little trace of realism.

If you’re looking for "Inglourious Basterds" redux, then this bloodless historical drama isn’t for you. Despite a pair of steely performances from Kingsley (as Eichmann) and Isaac (playing a roguish Shin Bet agent who eventually turns out to be the key to unlocking Eichmann’s stubborn ego), Operation Finale has the too-slow-burn of "Argo"-lite.

The Five Senses, despite its good performances, is like looking through a filmmaker's sketchbook: strong outlines but little substance.

A dodgy, hit-or-miss affair that never quiet seems to gel: too many lumpy bits, and not enough crème.

The movie is utterly ineffectual as a techno-thriller.

Knoxville, in his first dramatic role, does what he can with script and direction that aggressively eschew any insight into Kaufman's grief.

It’s the sort of movie that defines the term “summer doldrums” in a way few others have.

With his new film (which he also wrote), Rudolph seems content to slap a flimsy film-noir plot on an unending stream of malapropisms and word games and call it a "screwball noir."

Woo's mainstreaming his vision here, and though Windtalkers has its moments of precious, awful clarity, it can't hold a candle to the man's earlier blood-soaked balletics.

The Big Year's biggest disappointment is its inadequacy in elucidating the passion of the birder. What ardency, and what an exceptional, impenetrable world they move in. I for one wanted a better look at it.

Something of a snooze.

Often too slick and too posh for its own good, there’s nothing really enjoyable about The Invitation. It’s technically fine, but fine is not want you want from your lusty vampire genre. There’s no glitz or glamour to set it apart from the pack, and that’s ultimately its demise.

There's really nothing new here (as if anyone expected there would be), but it's a decent enough entry into the Karate Kid series, if you don't mind having seen it all done before, and better.

A well-told tale that uses minimal dialogue, striking imagery, and vivid violence to weave a depressing portrait of obsessive love and a no-win battle of wills.

Reeks of a filmmaker who latched on to sure-fire subject matter, but then became lost once his character morphed into a person.

Ultimately, Elysium ends up with explosions, running gun battles, and summer non-blockbuster tedium. The outcome is never in question, and while Blomkamp has proven himself to be a master of sci-fi social commentary in the past, this dull wheel in the sky just lands with a resounding thud.

The opening montage is a jazzy, grabby thing, artfully layering the kids’ auditions to mimic the frenzied pace of the day. But that freneticism never really goes away, nor does the staccato timing.

Basically a meaner French version of schmaltzy Matthew McConaughey romcom "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" (itself one of the worst adaptations of A Christmas Carol) mixed with a French bedroom farce, On a Magical Night shackles itself, as if with Marley's chains, to a thoroughly unlikable protagonist.

Too strange for its own good, Careful is less interesting as a film than it is as a Canadian cinematic anomaly.

Scatologically speaking, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is best described as one of those summer movie turds: It passes easily and then disappears with a single flush. It’s crap any way you look at it, though there are less pleasant ways to spend your time on a day marked by triple-digit temperatures.