Spending more time with Downey's character would have benefited this movie no end.

This movie doesn't have a mean bone in its body; the problem is, it doesn't have any bone in its body.

The Counterfeiters is in its own smart, trim fashion "The Bridge on the River Kwai" of concentration-camp sagas. Also based (like Kwai) on a real-life story, this movie starts small but becomes a miniature epic of overreach and moral drift.

The Duchess of Langeais is a romantic dance of death.

An overly gimmicky and fatally repetitive terrorist thriller that quickly wears out its welcome.

With Diary of the Dead, Romero goes back to the beginning, only this time the amateurish look is calculated and the resulting film far less effective - if only because a handful of filmmakers have beaten him to the punch.

Generally, this writer-director is too sensitive for his own good. He never lets his boy-hero lose himself fully in his new world - or relinquish hope that his parents will return.

All three actresses are appealing, but Fisher, proving her scene-stealing turn in Wedding Crashers was no fluke, shines brightest.

There's enough kinetic energy in Jumper to light a thousand houses. Unfortunately, there's no one home in any of them.

Scores some serious points for its dance moves but does a lousy job of remembering there's a lot more to this big old world than moving your feet.

This movie has a tone, look and mood all its own - it's a joyously bittersweet piece of visual music about isolation, melancholy and everyone's yearning for transcendence, through love, art or both.

Engaging though flimsy, lively though occasionally tone-deaf, it's a movie that thrives on the strength of its affable co-stars and a sense of adventure that provides just enough brio to get audiences through some energy-sapping rough spots.

Tightly scripted and intricately plotted, the buddy film manages the neat two-step of being simultaneously profane and engaging.

Imagine a Three Stooges short with a feel-good ending, and you get the idea.

A hopeless pastiche of timeworn plotlines, hackneyed dialogue and stultifying direction; to call it amateurish is a slap in the face to amateurs everywhere.

There's tremendous energy in How She Move, so much that the audience can't help but be swept up.

Lane gives the film her best shot; she's pretty much the only reason to see it. There's an intelligence mixed with ferocity that makes her performance compelling, far-more-so than anything else in the film.

Without a single gunshot (and just one flick of a switchblade), it turns into an existential suspense film with the highest stakes imaginable: the survival of the human spirit.

As the film opens with, predictably, "Vertigo" and its "Hello, Hello" refrain, it's his steady presence and unforced charisma that anchors each performance, allowing Bono to emote for all he's worth.

Allen's latest, his 42nd effort as a director, is the work of an artist devoid of ideas and energy. Perfunctorily staged and lazily written, it comes to life in only the briefest of spurts, usually when the ever-reliable Tom Wilkinson is on-screen.

Long on style and technique, short on substance and plot.

The pleasures of this slight caper film are strictly small-screen, as three talented actresses walk through quaint roles before they hurry on to the next project.

Predictable but utterly engaging, 27 Dresses will likely be remembered as the film that made Katherine Heigl an A-list star.

It is, at once, among the most riveting and hard-to-watch documentaries of recent years.

The movie is so confused about itself that it comes across as toneless, a bunch of characters wandering around in a story no one is controlling.

As Laura, Rueda hits sublime notes of confusion, grief and wrath. She's sympathetic enough to make you root for her and complex enough to get you arguing afterward about whether Laura did anything to deserve all this.

Anderson and Day-Lewis strip themselves of their natural talents for invention and poetry, as if any hint of romance, nobility or fun would soften the film.

The movie has its moments, and some are undeniably affecting. But even those seem artificial, relying far too much on our familiarity with and fondness for the film's stars.