It doesn't surpass the performance he gave in "JCVD," but if you're a fan of "the muscles from Brussels," it's worth watching if only because it suggests that whether he's drop-kicking enemies or delivering emotional dialogue, the best is yet to come.

Some audience members will come out for What's Your Number? for Faris' appeal and likability, but they'll leave disappointed because this film is more interested in showing her physical assets than her comedic ones.

While it matches "Pygmalion" and "Educating Rita" in topic and pedigree, Queen to Play merely hints at plot points and character development, which leaves it to coasts on the reputations of its stars.

There is so much wrong with the political system at this point that gerrymandering, in which politicians shamelessly redraw electoral boundaries to rig the outcome of elections, seems almost quaint.

With high production values and a glossily enjoyable mise-en-scene, the film is watchable.

Sitting through The Winning Season you marvel at how it obsessively duplicates all such films that came before but still consistently thwarts your impulse to dismiss it out of hand.

Compact if not cohesive, this is an Age of Aquarius-meets-"Mamma Mia"! distillation of The Tempest.

It's pithy and funny in that continuous smile kind of way that you don't notice until you're half way through it.

Funnier, sharper and sweeter than expected.

This is a soap opera that stands at a distance from its characters (that distance being the length of a lawyer's briefcase) and, though handsome and capable, feels as inert as mannequins in a shop window.

An historical drama so swamped by its soap opera crescendos, no resonant story can survive the wet.

This movie believes that true love isn't supposed to be hard. A fine ideal, but it feels as flat as a pizza.

The price for an invite to Stu's (Ed Helms) Thai nuptials is fewer laughs and an air of menace and mystery that won't endear Part II to escapist-hungry audiences.

Where the actress succeeds, all but disappearing into the role of Thatcher, the rest of the film is a bizarre amalgamation of archival footage, half-baked montages, hallucinations that push the bounds of poetic license straight into the gray area of bad taste, and plain old tedium.

The doc has won a host of awards at film festivals and it is a policy wonk's dream of a movie, but it is dry, statistic-laden viewing that is unlikely to attract much attention beyond education circles.

This story of a hit man who wants out after performing this one last job is so threadbare, trite and predictable that not the star's formidable charisma nor the considerable talent of director Anton Corbijn can come close to erasing its deficiencies.

Easygoing effort at times feels over-baked and too full of Perry’s now-trademarked melodramatics, but nevertheless should hit squarely at the target audience of the older African-American women that can’t seem to get enough of what this director dishes out.

The movie was written and directed by Oscar winner Paul Haggis (Crash) and when stripped to its logline, it's pretty ridiculous.

The hijinx get deflating, yet the tension and genuine sense of investigation keep you involved.

There's no denying the film's refrain that legends are lessons, but Brave is sadly remedial.

Unfortunately, I Want Your Money amounts to little more than a Moore-style screed with a conservative bent and a less corpulent and sardonic host.

This movie is often hysterical, and sometime very sweet.

Though Hereafter has plenty to give you pause: its plot flatly insists there's an afterlife without really doing much with the matter, metaphorically or otherwise.

Isn't very funny or much fun at all.

Columbus knows his way around this kind of material even if some of the special effects look like they came from Deep Discount. The gods are well-rendered, but nothing special. Still for the Potter crowd, Percy provides a nice diversion until the real thing comes along.

Beautifully shot but more than a little sterile.

Surrogate fathers and family values are at the foreground, making the film a quick sell to parents - especially as it boasts the added value of literary roots.

The film, despite its promise to excavate an inner life, wilts into banality whenever Gould's thorny paranoia and control issues come up.

Although it’s formulaic in the extreme, The Back-up Plan is an easygoing romantic comedy treat for fans of Jennifer Lopez.

Never finds a satisfactory way of examining its subject aside from soapy melodrama.

Trash-action director Paul W.S. Anderson's (Alien vs. Predator) finds no cultural purpose for this rather literal adaptation of the Musketeers, but it's not so horrible it deserved to be protected from the cold eye of film critics.

A classic case of being too much of a not-very-good thing.

This doc contributes to the small collection of films on burlesque something more self-aware looks at the matter don't: an exposition of the messy history of a complex popular art that still leaves us with much to explore.

When all the pieces finally come together at the end, the effect is less impressive than it is reminiscent of "Wayne's World": multiple endings, no real impact or weight to either.

Though it slows down in the back half, the opening acts of Season are reasonably entertaining.

Waltz is the highlight of this glossy but plodding drama, a live wire in a movie that sorely needs a jolt.

Pierce delivers everything the role requires except serious menace, while the less-seasoned Crawford improves as his handsome face bares more of the evening's scars.

While most action films fall apart because they succumb to stupidity, Colombiana suffers most because it tries to be too smart.

Not quite the yuk-fest one was hoping for or as perversely alienating as "Observe and Report," Due Date shares the schizophrenic quality, though not the numbing length, of another Seth Rogen movie, "Funny People."

The film's biggest (and saddest) crime is malaise - it's not that John Carter doesn't care about what it's doing, it just can't make us care, even though the magnitude of every event, conflict and emotion is as melodramatic as its Victorian roots.

Not only is the film a slog, the main focus is on the band's arguably inferior last decade.

Even given narrative license, South African-born screenwriter Ann Peacock has trouble cobbling together a truly compelling plot that deals with Kenyan history, including tribalism, in a detailed way.

Though rife with clichés, Starry Starry Night has just enough nostalgic melancholy and quiet whimsy to make its coming-of-age narrative and elegy to childhood emotionally and visually compelling.

Much of the film is taken up with Wexler's musings about his own mortality and physical, shall we say, decomposition.

This PG-13 scare-fest is more psychological terror than blood and guts, and should satisfy-not repulse-young genre fans.

Appearances by Toni Collette and Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes should draw a few curious parents to what is, most of the time, a quirky and quite enjoyable coming of age saga.

Safe bangs along respectably enough, all thrown fists and cheeky comments, but it never feels like more than a second-tier video game brought to life.

The original Jonathan Ames novel from 1998 is a rich, funny and unusual work. The movie opts for the funny and unusual, leaving us with characters ill-equipped to rise above their shtick or engage our sympathy.

The surprises really do surprise but often because they're remarkably stupid and poorly explained.

Director Guy Ritchie is like a Heismann-winning football player cast in a ballet stage-perfectly talented, but wrong for the circumstance.

On the Road is rich with evocative period atmosphere and anchored by a trio of compellingly lived-in performances from Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, and Kristen Stewart. Nevertheless, it's another staid adaptation that misses the forest for the trees and confuses people into thinking that some novels truly are "unfilmmable."

Not sure if you'll enjoy Safety Not Guaranteed? Here's a quick litmus test: how do you feel about watching Mark Duplass, accompanying himself on zither (!), singing a heartfelt song about how "everyone in the big machine tries to break your heart?"

Don Hahn’s documentary is an animator’s attempt to invigorate what is otherwise a dry story.

Parents with restless, animal-loving children may as well throw it a bone.

Betrayals will occur and loyalties will be tested, but it's the audience that ends up ripped off.

It’d all be pretty ho-hum weren’t it for some decent chemistry between the leads and the effortless presence of Regina King and Forest Whitaker.

The result is an odd, very personal film that the pop star-turned-director has made with tender loving care, but the results of the final final film are mixed.

An industry that's lost 90% of its silent films and which has consistently demonstrated - montage lip-service aside - a staggering lack of interest in its own history can hardly be trusted to transfer films from format to format and keep them intact, let alone in good shape.

Essentially a sexually charged two-hander with blunt allegorical implications, Kôji Wakamatsu's one-note follow-up to United Red Army is a disappointing affair, visually indifferent and thematically simplistic.

Taken 2 is 91 minutes of "See Neeson kill-kill, Neeson kill!"

A black comedy lacking somewhat in both blackness and comedy-isn't a bad film, exactly, but it is undistinguished, in the sense that its ideas and emotional payloads are both safe and small.

Smarter than expected, even if it's too ragged to truly resonate.

The "Fab Four's" dramadies continue for the audiences who love them. Trouble is the surrounding story and its supposedly fun sojourns are as embarrassing as granny panties.

Hardwicke shows a strong grasp at epic fantasy with Red Riding Hood; her nemesis is not a man-eating wolf but an unsurprising script.

Void of subtlety and the gritty realism that's trademark for many Sundance dramas, Another Happy Day, from Mandalay Vision, may fail to win over many critics due to its histrionic storytelling.

Watching Driver peel rubber proves B grade action movies are a welcome diversion in the era of CGI blockbusters. If only Faster didn't fizzle each time Johnson put down his gun.

With a premise better suited to comedy than drama, The Freebie is more somber and less stimulating than expected.

Segal's film tries to straddle the line between darkly funny and just plain dark, but even with a game cast and an offbeat premise, Norman is a disquieting outing with little in the way of honest payoff.

The problems begin with Shyamalan's script, which is an orgy of exposition. The characters explain and explain and explain some more, points driven home with the subtlety of a jackhammer.

Stylistically dull, Crime After Crime proceeds from one talking-head interview to the next, sticking to sentiment.

Sappy melodrama, clumsy dialogue and heavy-handed proselytizing derail the inspirational story of teen surfer Bethany Hamilton.

The basic feeling you get out of this version is ‘been there-done that.’

Trapped inside the German film Vincent Wants to Sea there's an affecting father-son drama, an amusing road movie, a quirky romantic comedy and a non-patronizing take on mental illness. What we actually get - a homogenized movie-of-the-week set against the Alps and punctuated by anodyne English-language pop songs - brought out the cynic in me.

Typically, Carpenter thrives on modestly budgeted films like The Ward, but this one comes off as an amateurish misstep due to unoriginal storytelling from fledgling screenwriters Michael and Shawn Rasmussen.

Jovovich is on cruise control here and she fails to bring any kind of new life to a character that has been very good to her.

On the surface Monte Carlo is charming, oddly down-home wish-fulfillment, but it's riddled with unexplored class issues and generic filmmaking.

The glossy Manhattan footage, as hermetic as Woody Allen's rendition of New York, is engagingly expensive-looking at least, but the cast is barely given anything to work with.

A charmingly hardened Carla Gugino reprises her role as the titular porn star, still pregnant and now coping with retirement.

Before The Ledge descends into third act melodrama, there are enough intriguing moments to make the viewer sense the better film this one wanted to be. A real shame that one didn't make it to the screen.

Mr. Nice is hampered by tonal timidity and the inability to find a sufficiently entertaining through-line in Marks' life story.

As flat as the Carolina coastal region in which it’s set, Dear John features two gorgeous young actors playing denuded characters in search of more narrative garb.

Offers audiences a similar-but-not-the-same mix of effects, existentialism and creepy body horror while forgetting the things like character, humor and tension that made Carpenter's take on the same material so memorable past the initial fearsome fluid flesh sequences.

The Hobbit is just good enough to make you aware of how it could have been much, much better. If you take your kids-while shielding them from various nonhuman bad guys getting decapitated both repeatedly and, worse, bloodlessly-they'll have a good time. Bilbo Baggins' quest for adventure and Warner Bros' quest for cash will take him through three films. But your quest for epic, truly entertaining filmmaking will be more successful if you just stay home.

Perry's latest is crudely assembled and mostly emotionally unengaging.

Tedious and forgettable.

It's true epic filmmaking that's toppled over its tipping point: after the 20th explosion and 64th wall of shattering glass, its enormity undermines its impact.

Fans of the filmmaker should thrill at the prospect of a new project, but the film's lackadaisical pacing and preoccupation with pulling the rug out from under the audience.

The Rite might have been more affecting if the performances gave just a hint that its histrionics were more than just that.

Enter the Void was never going to be another "Avatar." It won't be another "Irreversible" either.

Garbus' over-reliance on interviews that state rather than dramatize Fischer's excellence makes this a portrait that too often seems more overheard than inhabited.

The film's strength isn't its shock tactics - it's the rapid-fire, party montage editing that finds a million natural ways to put mundane actions and moments up against each other for comic effect.

The film, released in both 2D and 3D, delivers lots of freshly minted CGI'd action (eventually) but none of it grabs you. There's just something too synthetic about the whole enterprise - it's fantasy tipped over into fakery.

Redemption could have come if the story had more kick.

The new film could have benefited from even a moment of genuine reflection. Being a mechanic seems like a thinking man's occupation. The Mechanic, though, barely has a thought in its head.

The Words is a movie for people who buy their novels at Starbucks, made by people who write their novels at Starbucks.

The second half, though, simply descends into chaotic banality as the sisters await their fate.

If so inclined for a breezy, violent time-waster audiences could do worse. Travolta sadly can do so much better.

This Arthur feels flat and lifeless, especially when compared to its highly successful predecessor.