Cliched narrative, which isn't funny as often as seems intended.

Rodriguez has a sure sense of scale and pacing as well as an artisan's relaxed control of the material.

Tedious mockumentary.

A box office phenomenon in France, this crowd-pleasing drama is based on a true story but sticks closely to the template for a Hollywood buddy movie.

This is eminently missable, though the mosaic design of Asgard, Thor's mythical realm, is pretty cool.

Like Scott's last picture, "American Gangster," this is a little too slick and commanding for its own good; despite Crowe and DiCaprio's best efforts, their characters keep getting flattened by the steamroller narrative.

As a director Ball amplifies the flaws in his own writing; his supporting characters are too broadly pitched to take seriously, and he tends to smack you in the face with the point of every scene.

Simpler and cruder than Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of story and technique, this is still a great deal of fun, confirming that Jordan is every bit as mythological a creature as Daffy Duck or Yosemite Sam.

Given the talent on board, there's an undeniable flair and effectiveness in certain scenes (such as Pacino dancing the tango with a stranger in a posh restaurant), but the meretricious calculation finally sticks in one's throat.

Episodic and patchy, but well acted and heartfelt.

Harold Pinter's cold and gnomic script seems partly to blame, as well as interfering producer Sam Spiegel; but if you forget that you're supposed to be seeing something meaningful or important, this is pretty watchable.

If Bertolucci had restricted himself to Siddhartha’s story he would have remained on solid ground, at least as a storyteller, for the interpolated religious tale is far and away the best thing in the movie, full of enchantment and wonder.

The sensibility is Southern California Witless, and the jokey intertitles that periodically take up half the 'Scope frames ("This is a comedy. Sort of.") are even more smarmy than the characters.

In some ways this 1978 Cheech and Chong effort, their first feature, is the perfect doper movie—no one's straight enough to remember the punch lines. Director Lou Adler (the record producer) finds a few chuckles, but mostly it's amateur night.

The story is both slow moving and hard to follow, but the locations and period details offer plenty to ponder.

The coincidences that bring some characters together and keep others apart in this romantic comedy are plotted with musical grace.

The filmmakers have created a pretentious extended "Twilight Zone" episode with obscenely high production values.

Retreads a well-worn premise (Freaky Friday, Big) but the formula works, thanks in large part to star Jennifer Garner, who's so radiant theaters should be stocking sunblock.

There are no big surprises, but Mac and director Charles Stone III (Drumline) hit all the right dramatic notes.

A substantial performance from Clive Owen rescues what might otherwise have been a fairly gooey fatherhood drama.

A muddled, talky affair, part soap opera, part undercover police procedural.

Neatly scripted by Tim Firth and Geoff Deane, this sticks to the "Full Monty" formula of starchy working-class types learning to loosen up about sex, but Julian Jarrold's sincere, low-key direction erases any sense of artifice.

Wexler emerges from all this with the commonplace wisdom that laughter and a positive outlook both prolong life and make it worth living, though his vocal concern with his own aging keeps the film from growing pat.

Poirer and director Noam Murro have trouble bringing this to a satisfying climax, but the characters are credible and sharply observed and all four actors go to town.

Zappa's most ambitious compositions (performed by the London Philharmonic) share screen time with nostalgic freak humor. [26 Dec 2013, p.30]

A story that's reminiscent of the seminal "Panic in Needle Park."

However gritty this indie comedy may look (cinematographer Steve Calitri seems to be aping William Eggleston's photographs of the American south), it isn't all that different from an Adam Sandler vehicle: writer-director Robbie Pickering spends much of the movie mocking his characters' stupidity, then pulls an about-face with a sentimental conclusion that feels unearned.

Frankenheimer handles it tersely and professionally, and coaxes an exceptionally good performance out of Harry Dean Stanton as an American general.

Not to be hyperbolic, but Richard Linklater's first big-budget movie may be the Jules and Jim of bank-robber movies, thanks to its astonishing handling of period detail and its gentleness of spirit, both buoyed by a gliding lightness of touch.

Wellman’s splendid direction animates an otherwise static script, deftly blending comedic moments with surprisingly dark undertones. This 1931 drama may lack the punch of Wellman’s The Public Enemy, released the same year, but it’s still a fine display of his talents.

Pairing Jackie Chan and Jet Li would seem like a slam dunk, but this big-budget martial arts drama, which borrows liberally from "The Wizard of Oz," is something of a disappointment.

Though Istvan Szabo (Being Julia) was slated to direct at one point, the assignment ultimately went to Rodrigo Garcia, who's known for his female ensemble dramas (Nine Lives, Mother and Child) but demonstrates no particular affinity for this material.

This concept comedy-drama would be even better if the intercutting among households had been timed to add dramatic content rather than simply advance the subplots.

Director Robert Benton allows the cast... to shine, but I was left wondering why such a very literary construction as this needed to be made into a movie.

Thanks to Gina Prince-Blythewood's treacly screenplay and plodding direction, the movie quickly congeals into a mess of sentimental cliches.

The twee romance was too much for me, though the movie's first half follows in fascinating detail the innovations Warne introduced to popularize illustrated picture books for children.

This 1983 feature was Carpenter's best film since Halloween but still couldn't recapture the perfect balance of visceral shock and narrative integrity that defined his first success.

The whole thing feels throwaway, but some of the gags are funny.

Nobody ever shuts up in this schmaltzy, mannered drama.

A sparing use of exterior shots during the mesmerizing buildup to the match heightens their impact, while invasively tight close-ups put the actors to the test.

Even the most shocking elements of the story are made bland by childish overkill.

This is very much the work of a cinephile, calling to mind such middle-period Orson Welles jumbles as "The Lady From Shanghai" and "Mr. Arkadin" as well as dozens of other movies I only half remember, a familiarity that's essential to its charm.

An absorbing and compelling account of a historical episode that should be better known.

Stylistic excess, comedy, and romance often help make extremes of cruelty and horror function as cathartic metaphor, and all three figure, not always successfully, in this sequel.

A magnificent performance by Sarah Polley illuminates every frame of this relatively upbeat melodrama.

The period details are more accurate than in many Hollywood features, and Boebel, a native of Wisconsin, understands his midwestern characters, especially their resourcefulness and stoic resolve.

This film sounds better than it plays; there are too many echoes of "Alphaville" and of the dreamy drift of "Blade Runner." But the style of the opening and closing credits is pretty spiffy.

Those craving more visceral kicks will be gratified by the endless crash sequences, but despite the perverse thrill of seeing guys fly off their motorcycles at 150 miles per hour, the crack-ups wear thin after the first hour.

While not particularly cohesive, this 2002 film has some nice moments of comedy and father-son poignancy.

The jokes all revolve around weed, stereotypes, and Neil Patrick Harris; the stereotype stuff is by far the funniest.

The first third is terrific...After that the movie settles into a series of ho-hum conflicts and complications, and the requisite slam-bang ending is perfunctory at best.

The execution of the script is perfect, as always, but it's the laziest script Brooks has ever directed.

A rare dud from Pixar.

Eric Brevig, making his feature directing debut after a long career as a visual effects supervisor, lurches from one CG set piece to the next, though he's helped along by Fraser's easy comic touch.

Sentimental, obvious, but well-nigh irresistible, this jubilant comedy equates England's bland cuisine with its sexual inhibition and suggests we could all use something a little more tasty (at dinnertime, that is).

This doomsday scenario takes up the first third of the movie, after which the tension dissipates badly and the husband and wife, now separated by plastic sheeting, wait for help to arrive.

What sinks this one is the utter lack of the childhood insight and sympathy that really give the Disney films their staying power.

Smirky, gum-in-your-hair humor dominates this dreadful 2005 feature.

Adapted from a story by Joe R. Lansdale, this might have squeaked by as a half-hour "Twilight Zone" episode, albeit with jokes about toilets and erections in old age.

Half self-parody, half deadly serious, The Killer Elite is an intriguingly enigmatic movie from one of our most committed and most maligned film artists.

The CGI effects are so slick that they undercut the movie's shock value, and the action moves too quickly to instill a real sense of fear, but this is still visually impressive, with spectacular make-up, costumes, and cinematography.

Once again, violence (more than 30 on-screen deaths) makes a poor substitute for suspense, while sloppy, rear projection work drains most of the excitement from the climax.

In the end I couldn't be sure whether its morality was complex or just confused. Like its young athletes, it earns a gentleman's C.

Joffe, a British screenwriter (The American, 28 Weeks Later) debuting as director, hits some of these notes in his adaptation of Brighton Rock, but the movie's religious flourishes seem more rhetorical than heartfelt.

Tries way too hard to be clever and shrewd.

Just when I'm ready to write off the mockumentary as an exhausted form, along comes this delightful and hilarious improv comedy from the UK in which a bridal magazine sets up a promotional contest for the best offbeat wedding.

The limiting factor, despite serious performances by the two leads, is that neither character is entirely believable.

McAdams is typically effervescent here, but she can't rescue this weak comedy from a wooden Ford, whose stick-up-the-ass character is unimaginatively goosed by screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.

The subject's nice - a clan of Irish con artists operating in the rural south - but the movie breaks down into separate pieces, some fresher than others, without much cumulative force.

Screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) has turned the Italian romantic comedy "L'Ultimo Bacio" (2001) into something smarter, funnier, and more penetrating.

The plot is more convenient than intriguing, the characters more cartoonish than iconic--especially the heroine, who grapples with feminism in a way that should have been fascinating.

The cast--including Julianna Margulies, Olivia Williams, James Coburn, and Anjelica Huston--keeps this pretty watchable, and casting Mick Jagger as director of the escort service was inspired.

Appealing restaurant comedy.

Lately, most of Dustin Hoffman's roles have been grinning crackpots or talking animals, so accepting the 71-year-old actor as a romantic lead who could fetch the likes of Emma Thompson requires some suspension of disbelief.

The story is so packed with over-the-top characters (including a hit man and hustler played by Jamie Foxx) that no one gets a chance to breathe.

Novelist Douglas Coupland (Generation X) brings his millennial irony and middle-class angst to the big screen with this offbeat Canadian comedy about the lure of easy money.

If you're curious about the whole-foods movement, try Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food," which addresses the subject from a wider variety of perspectives and does so in a far less insulting manner than this extended infomercial, with its muzak score, entire sequences lifted from network TV news, and bar graphs illustrating every other scene.

It's a pleasant commercial undertaking, though everything about this $30-million production seems a bit overscaled: the stars are too big for their parts, the mystery subplot is too complicated to take a comfortable backseat to the romantic comedy, the special effects (which include two spectacular fires) are too big for the action, and even the wide-screen image is too big for the intimate, offhanded humor.

Unlike Michael Jordan, this 45-minute large-format movie demonstrates mostly unrealized potential.

There's something self-defeating about approaching an unconventional artist so conventionally, and the story becomes touching only insofar as it overrides much of what made Duras special.

Suffers from clumsy acting (mainly Hispanic amateurs), an obvious screenplay by Paul Laverty, and a simplistic view of the characters.

Eleven years on, someone in Hollywood has finally worked up the nerve to address the LA riots--but only on the slickest terms imaginable.

Fedja van Huet gives a fascinating performance as two very different twin brothers.

Jay Craven's stilted adaptation of a novel by Howard Frank Mosher lacks the urgency, the poetry, or the feeling for period that might have brought the material to life, while the cast seems to be largely squandered.

The cast is excellent--especially Kinnear, who's perfected his wounded everyman persona--and Marc Abraham's direction is elegant and understated. But their work is seriously undermined by the skeletal script.

With its black-and-white flashbacks and relentlessly earnest tone, this sometimes threatens to become a PBS documentary, yet its script is exceptionally fluid, tracing the tributaries of art, race, and sexuality that feed one's sense of self.

The comedy approaches true hilarity only when Meyers resorts to the surefire gimmick of having the oldsters get massively stoned at a party, though Streep's dilemma is handled well enough for the movie to accumulate some gravitas as it nears the two-hour mark.

The problem with all the time-travel high jinks, involving multiple versions of the major characters (a gimmick that Robert Heinlein handled much better in stories like “By His Bootstraps” and “All You Zombies—”), is that in order to make the plot even semiintelligible, writer Bob Gale and director-cowriter Robert Zemeckis have to turn all these characters into strident geeks and make the frenetic action strictly formulaic.

One of the best of a bad genre, Franklin J. Schaffner’s Sweeping Historical Romance manages some moderately intelligent historical observations amid its lavishly re-created period decor and the puppy-dog pathos of the two central characters (Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman).

Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat) directs a sparking screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi; it starts as a frothy boudoir comedy but evolves into a masquerade by turns sweetly meditative and sharply satirical.

The very idea of handing him over to professional lad Guy Ritchie (who directed Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), to be played as a punch-throwing quipster by Robert Downey Jr., is so profoundly stupid one can only step back in dismay.

A throwaway comedy that really delivers.

Funnier than "Pecker" but a far cry from the best of Waters's Divine movies.

Greene delivers a wrenching performance, and like "Smoke Signals," the film ends with a cathartic, triumphant flourish.

Provides glorious escapism without asking you to turn your brain off.

The whole thing is rather forced and antiseptically cheerful.