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.