Hardcore genre fans will likely be quite disappointed to find a film that trades vision and originality for something best described as bland and inoffensive.

It's easy to get depressed by much of the behavior depicted in Phillip the Fossil, yet the talents behind the picture are a cause for optimism. The last thing they appear to be is hypocritical.

Benicio Del Toro looks even more like Lon Chaney Sr. than Chaney Jr. did, and he’s a far better actor than the previous Wolf Man.

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.

Stolidly maudlin, this enervating sub-middlebrow pic is doomed to well-deserved commercial obscurity.

Tyler Perry has finally achieved an odd kind of equality that heretofore eluded him: he's now just as mediocre and middle of the road as any other reliable hitmaker in Hollywood.

The exploitation title may not do it any favors, but this biopic based on the incredible life journey of Sam Childers is gripping, inspirational and well told.

(Holmes) fails to deliver requisite laughs to keep the comedy afloat.

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

In a brief supporting role Meg Ryan is also fine along with Brian F. O’Byrne and Will Patton. Shannon Kane is memorable as the prostitute Gere hooks up with.

This elegant weepie offers plenty for fans of melodrama, character-driven stories and period pieces.

There's plenty of atmosphere and awe, even if it's in the service of a story that starts rote and finds its sea legs only when half the divers have sunk their bones to Davy Jones.

Won't Back Down makes grand drama of bureaucracy, positioning Gyllenhaal as the knight slaying 400 pages of government paperwork in order to wrest control of her daughter's elementary school. It's rousing - if not thrilling - stuff.

Casting is almost uniformly first rate with Cox, Purefoy and the always brilliant Giamatti providing noteworthy standouts.

If this film is nothing else (and it may be nothing else) it's funny and (ironically) fundamentally true. What certainly isn't true is what it purports to be, which is a legitimate course of study that analyzes the historic, international, socio-cultural, economic and psychological relationships between individuals, governments and corporations through the prism of physics and what has been loosely called metaphysics.

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

This movie is often hysterical, and sometime very sweet.

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.

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

Really a perfect family movie.

It's not nearly as snappy or campy as it should be-though its self-seriousness is its own kind of entertainment.

It's only sporadically amusing and it's certainly not original.

So it's apropos that Forby's biggest misstep is his thin and careful script that can't carry us away on the same winds of fate that would put a sovereign republic's future in the hands of such a young woman.

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.

This charmer about late middle-aged renaissance is pertinent for these times and a perfect summer comedy for grown-ups looking to escape robots and superheroes.

What to expect from What to Expect When You're Expecting: laughs, heart and a terrific ensemble of actors doing what they do best.

Its endless parade of explosions, battles and general mayhem makes Michael Bay seem like Ingmar Bergman in comparison with Battleship director Peter Berg.

An uncomfortably honest portrait of a slow mental breakdown in self-consciously bohemian, twentysomething Brooklyn, Ry Russo-Young's You Wont Miss Me is so earnest the title's missing an apostrophe.