Some movies need a suspension of disbelief. Simone requires a suspension bridge. And as fast as you try to build it, the movie keeps tearing it down.

Long, utterly predictable and always bland.

Demolition is a rarity: A film with a profound emotional truth at its heart that lies to us, scene by scene, from start to finish.

It's made with seriousness, intelligence and craft, and filmgoers who aren't put off by the slow pace of life in 1380 should see it.

A movie's in trouble when neither the hero nor the villain has charisma, and Clu is a dull dog.

Though the writing doesn't work, you have to give Burns credit for shrewd direction. He gets the best performances I've seen from Graham and Murphy.

Offers high-speed helicopter chases, fireballing explosions, deadly laser guns, futuristic technology gone amok, multiple car crashes, two Arnold Schwarzeneggers for the price of one - almost everything except a plot that makes sense.

The movie gives away its shifty-eyed villain almost immediately. What it doesn't give away is why he betrayed his trust, who wants the president dead or what they hope to gain by killing him.

The cast is drab and lifeless, the characterization non-existent, the ending simply impossible. Between our jumps of fright come lumps of time that take forever to pass.

Granted, it's great action. Terrific special effects. Pulse-pounding pacing. But it's a case of diminishing returns. Salvation so keeps its characters at arm's length that after a while it really doesn't matter what happens to them.

One of the rare action films that needed to be longer. Then changes in mood wouldn't be so abrupt, and director Peter Berg and writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan would've had more time to reveal things we want to know.

Four Brothers immediately joins the Good Idea, Bad Execution club. Hardly anyone seems to care about its believability - not director John Singleton, writers David Elliott and Paul Lovett or some lackadaisical actors.

A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly.

The opposite of memorable.

MacDowell gives an uneven performance, as she often does, but Strathairn is ideally cast as the conflicted husband.

Attaching Chris Rock to I Think I Love My Wife is like chaining a Kentucky Derby winner to the merry-go-round in a petting zoo. His humor is hobbled, his personality dulled, his energy depleted. Who's responsible for this lapse in judgment? Chris Rock.

On the positive side, the four Worm Guys haven't lost their squiggly charm, and Rip Torn is always welcome as MIB mastermind Zed. On the minus side, you get two Johnny Knoxvilles, one of them a tiny head that protrudes from the big one's shoulder.

Represents everything that over-budgeted Hollywood can possibly get wrong in a period piece: It feels both long and slow, it's unfocused and self-contradictory, its generic characters are played too broadly, it's anachronistic..

A safe same-sex movie the family can embrace. At heart, it's a Britcom: a British situation comedy with superficial characters, mildly naughty humor and a familiarity that may make even homophobes comfy.

“Blood” may carry us into the past, but the unhappy effects linger today, like pollution darkening a sky that never turned completely blue.

Few actors can match Carrey's ability to change his features and body language.

It seems perverse to say a musical is at its best when nobody is singing, but Nine is a perverse kind of musical.

The lack of attacks lets us concentrate on emotions rather than explosions.

Like the story, Kline builds in intensity: He has no flowery speeches that would be untrue to his character, but he leaves a clear impression of a man who values knowledge and the imparting of it above all else.

Salva's view of the universe is bleak, but he communicates it with scary sincerity.

When Allen revives his plodding "Manhattan Murder Mystery" as the even duller Scoop, I snore.

Visually compelling, relentlessly loud and so shallow you need just a fragment of your brain to follow it.

Hawn always appears to be acting with a vengeance, but Sarandon just breathes her part.

The script's hokiness flattens the performances.

The whole thing's as phony as a funeral oration from a pastor who never knew the deceased.

The shreds have vanished in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, which runs at that speed during its stunts but is utterly out of gas in every other way.

After the box-office failures of "The Emperor's New Groove" and "Treasure Planet," I wonder whether Brother Bear might not be the last traditional bit of Disney animation for a while.

McFarlane’s at his best when he breaks new ground.... Yet too many things get repeated from “Ted.”

Fuqua and his writers, Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo, have delivered not only the most satisfying and plausible action movie in months but one that's accidentally timely.

Logan's so carried away by computerized magic that he forgets to make sense.

For all the irrelevant silliness, though, the movie never loses sight of its romantic center, and the script doesn't cop out with phony miracles or sudden changes of direction.

For a while, it’s fun to watch Bardem camp around in his rose-tinted glasses and stuck-my-finger-in-a-socket hairdo.

Might have been funnier if it had been put together with more care.

Looks as if it were thrown together as carelessly as slum housing.

Vertical Limit is like riding a roller coaster for two hours. First it's frighteningly exciting. Then it's mind-numbing

The movie is as padded as Allen's jelly belly.

I've just seen The Core, and I have a piece of advice for Hilary Swank: Don't quit your night job.

Flat as a Moravian cookie, flat as a sailor's wallet after a month in port, flat as the average European's impression of the Earth in A.D. 800.

“Train” makes its strongest impact in Blunt’s hands. Her vulnerability brings pathos to every scene she enters, making you wish the whole film could have been told through Rachel’s bleary eyes – and set in England, where she belongs. But it’s a pleasure to see her anywhere.

Once, for no reason, Franklin whirled the camera around 360 degrees while two people were having an ordinary conversation. I suspect he must have been as bored by then as I was.

Who else in Hollywood would've met a non-actor with spina bifida (Rene Kirby), created a role for him, then shot him dancing and skiing on his hands to show how easily he fit into society?

Its crass good humor makes it an enjoyable, reasonably faithful but over-the-top successor to the original.

The two actors are at their best when Emma and Dexter get emotionally naked. It's mildly enjoyable to listen to the self-deprecating banter people use to conceal anxieties, but we connect to them most deeply when they bare their souls.

There are usually good reasons why a movie gets shelved for more than a year, however well-acted it may be and however well-meaning its message. Many are on view in Penelope.

Doris Day will be 89 in two weeks, which makes her exactly half a century too old to play the lead in Admission. That’s a pity, as perhaps only she could have done it justice – if it had been made in 1958.

A question: If you hire actresses from England, Kansas, Ireland and Michigan, shouldn't someone teach them all to do believable Southern accents -- and remind them to keep doing those accents as the film goes on?

And in the end, maybe the question of Dennis' origin is irrelevant. He tells David he's come to Earth to try to understand human beings, and that quest is worth a lifetime's effort -- whatever planet you call home.

Characterizations are rudimentary, performances dull.

This movie is made by and for people who don't care about good storytelling.

As a remake of "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Back to the Future," the movies it borrows from most heavily, the relive-your-senior-year comedy 17 Again falls a little short of the mark. But as a funny, sweet and smart star vehicle tailored for Zac "High School Musical" Efron, it's right on the money.

Can I admit XXX is as deep as a Petri dish and as well-characterized as a telephone book but still say it was a guilty pleasure? Because I have to confess, when special agent Xander Cage tossed two detonators onto a mountainside and outran the ensuing avalanche on a snowboard, I was digging the action.

This might all have been silly fun -- as it was in the 1999 version -- except for the carelessness of the whole picture.

By riffing off two iconic American narratives of the last 35 years, "The Godfather" and "The Sopranos," it has changed the template for animation, making a timely film that still deals with timeless children's themes.

Bertino directs at a funereal pace. Speedman remains comatose, though Tyler flickers fitfully to life. The mournful look on her face suggests she's remembering the days when she was given more psychologically complex scripts, such as "Armageddon."

Carrey rolls his eyes and waggles his arms, and Leoni keeps up with him while pushing less hard. He externalizes, she internalizes, and the balance works as it might in a good marriage.

Without Gibson, this soufflé would fall pancake-flat.

Campion has no clue how to sustain suspense and no actress of the caliber of Holly Hunter, Nicole Kidman or Kate Winslet (her recent leading ladies) in the main role.

Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe attempt light romantic comedy in A Good Year, and the results are as grindingly discordant as a punk band writing a suite of waltzes.

A sometimes clever, sometimes clumsy movie.

The Girl Next Door is to "Risky Business" what near-beer is to beer. If you're desperate for a mild buzz, you might make it do.

I think the movie intends to empower all of its female characters, but it ends up chaining them to stale, timeworn ideas.

Without a philosophical payoff, without characters whose relationships resonate in our hearts, without explanations for situations that beg for explanations, what are we left with? To quote another great writer of battle scenes: "a tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying -- nothing."

The conversion to 3-D has left the movie looking grim and dim. Almost every scene, whether indoors by candlelight or upon the open ocean, seems awkwardly dark; competent 3-D effects don’t compensate for this distraction. Equally drab are the performances, except for Gleeson and Whishaw.

The picture doesn't inspire or reward high expectations, but it raises smiles.

All true, but not new -- and not especially compelling.

If you're going to serve up a half-baked idea, you might as well have Sigourney Weaver do the cooking.

When Elle Woods watches "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" for inspiration in the middle of Legally Blonde 2, you have to admire the nerve of the people who made this comedy: "Smith" is to LB2 what jumbo jets are to ultralight gliders. But nerve is all they've got.

You cannot always judge movies by their titles, but you sometimes get good advice. The sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, supplies its own five-word review.

The film seems like a loose and uncredited updating of "The Great Man Votes," a more serious 1939 entry.

Your reaction will depend on your response to the title character, who's meant to be God or one of God's messengers.

The warm performances give the film momentum, but writer Audrey Wells and director Peter Chelsom (who chops dance sequences clumsily) often stumble.

The British actor, best known as Loki in the “Thor” and “Avengers” series, disappears into the character’s skinny body and twangy voice.

You must cast aside all rules of our space-time continuum to appreciate a fantasy like this one, though even then you might consider 130 minutes to be too much of a good thing.

Bits of welcome weirdness creep in, mainly through the too-brief character of Ghantt’s intense fiancée (Kate McKinnon). But Hess has little time for wit.

If the spate of action movies must continue, especially at Christmas, let more be like "Daylight." [6 Dec 1996, p.13E]

Man on Fire is as ludicrous as "John Q," "Virtuosity" and "Out of Time," yet substantially more violent, artificial, self-conscious and dull.

The acting is adequate, though Lohan looks more like someone who has just gotten out of high school than college.

The Giver has an unsavory reek of box-office calculation about it, from the overworked “teens-must-save-a-world-ruined-by-adults” plot to the casting of pop star Taylor Swift in a small and irrelevant role.

While it doesn’t recapture the black magic of the original, it delivers the requisite terror in the last half-hour after a slow and ambiguous start.

I didn't believe most of what I saw until the last 20 minutes, and whaddaya know? This thriller finally cast the spell it had been trying to achieve and lifted itself above the pack of late-summer, clean-out-the-studio-attic releases.

When Rock of Ages remembers it's supposed to be a cartoon, it's a noisy, sweaty, giddy ball of fun. When it suddenly develops a conscience or tries to process a thought deeper than "I love rock 'n' roll," it trips over its own feet.

We waited 10 years for a sequel to the movie version of "The X-Files" – and the best Chris Carter could do is The X-Files: I Want to Believe?

Lil' Bow Wow deserves a better-made film than this pleasant, sloppily assembled fairy tale.

Souza and Shelton throw in all kinds of ridiculous devices they learned in second-year screenwriting class.

As Disney-fied as "Pinocchio," barely challenging the images Americans have treasured for 150 years.

Just Will Ferrell doing the same man-boy shtick he usually does.

The main message of this drama is driven home with emotional hammer blows.

It's a drab jumble of meaningless action, dull characters and animation as flat and superficial as its story.

As a vegetarian, I'm grateful that Around the Bend -- an extended commercial for KFC passing itself off as a heartwarming family drama -- is a loser.

Melvin Van Peebles wrote and directed the biting "Don't Play Us Cheap" 30 years ago to complain about racial stereotyping in films. But Hollywood never listened. It kept playing African -Americans cheap in mainstream comedies, whether the directors were white or black. Deliver Us From Eva -- is one of the worst recent offenders.

Johansson, hair dyed brown to make her seem less glamorous, spices up this bland role.

He (Horn) gets so deeply into the whirling mind of Oskar Schell, dominating every scene he's in – which is almost every scene, period – that he lifts the movie out of the realm of "Forrest Gump"-like emotional manipulation.

It's hampered further by a piece of star miscasting unmatched in recent memory: Julia Roberts' archly evil queen remains as jaw-droppingly dull as her costumes are jaw-droppingly gaudy.