It just signals a series that's plainly out of gas.

Stardust has lost a good amount of its magic in the transformation from page to screen. It's the cinematic equivalent of getting a punch in the mind's eye by a bunch of faeries wearing the coolest Doc Martens this side of Florin.

Despite cute kids, tough dads, and problems controlling bed-wetting and farts, Daddy Day Camp should just limp off to the nurse's tent and call it quits.

Greengrass and co. may have made one of the best action movies in recent memory.

The Ten offers a brand of comedy for very particularized tastes, though everyone should appreciate the in-joke of featuring Ryder in the skit about the Eighth Commandment. For those of you less versed in the Bible, that’s the one that says thou shall not steal.

In fictionalizing the story of Austen, the filmmakers didn’t go far enough. Becoming Jane attempts to please the purists and the dreamers, but only results in disappointing both.

Bratz is way too long.

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

The elements of the film don’t quite mesh: The villains are cartoony, but Du Chau aims for soggy family drama in his father-son story.

Unfortunately, there's little more than formula in Ichaso's El Cantante.

It's enough to make you weep.

A gruesome whodunit that's missing more than a few brain cells.

Playing comedy, Duris is as engaging as a bowl of porridge; playing tragedy, he’s the height of comic absurdity; in scenes romantic, he’s detached to the point of somnolence.

No Reservations succeeds as well as it does (kinda sorta) by virtue of Zeta-Jones' performance.

Homer's rendition of "spider pig" is comedy gold.

Somewhere between the pop jouissance of Guy Ritchie and the social realism of Ken Loach, this ballsy drama freeze-frames bleak Thatcherite Yorkshire and exposes its racist underbelly.

Must be counted as a forfeit.

Sometimes a little too pat, a little too cute.

The film’s approach suits an audience broader than the usual documentary crowd, though it’s worth mentioning that those pictures can really stay with you.

Though not nearly as perfect as Amadeus and The People vs. Larry Flynt (to cite two of Forman's previous semibiographical efforts), Goya's Ghosts uses the lives of artists and historical figures to show us the best and the worst of our human impulses.

If ever there were a happy summer movie, it’s Hairspray. But for all its bubbly musical numbers and effervescent good humor, this film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical feels oddly lacquered -- it’s John Waters by way of Disney.

A movie full of weak moments, contrived to the point of painful.

Problems arise in the film’s third act, however, with a profoundly implausible plot turn that sends the movie skidding into bogeyman horror. It cheapens the sentiment, and the film doesn’t recover.

Buscemi and Miller do their best with what they have, finding at least some small redemption in two dislikable characters written into an improbable situation, but emotional honesty in the service of nonsense is still nonsense, no matter how many scabs it manages to pick at.

If sex, gangsters, and killing Nazis are three of the most enlivening topics in the movies, then let us count friendship as one of the most tiresome, right up there with grooming horses and sharing for sheer thrills.

From James Brown to Sam Cooke, the songs set a mood that lingers for some time after.

Captivity is the kind of film that gives torture porn a bad name.

Timely metaphors abound in The Order of the Phoenix, but the story (of which there is much) stands on its own magical merits, dark and darker still though they may be.