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.