Director-cowriter Nathan Adloff displays real sensitivity toward the central characters, yet he hasn't crafted a story in which his observations might carry any weight.

Dull and lifeless.

There is something disturbing in the way the film elevates cynicism and detachment into heroic attitudes.

No sense of complicity between filmmaker and spectator, no depth, no ambiguity, no production value spared, plenty of running time and pomposity, and a desperate sense of trying to do everything and please everybody.

DeVito's low-key midlife crisis is consistently moving, but Spacey, saddled with the role of provocateur, is demonically boring.

Jayasundara dispenses with conventional story pacing to alternate long, static scenes with moments of revelatory lust or violence; as a press release states, the movie is "composed of uncanny set pieces portraying sex, death, and waiting," though its aesthetic achievement may lie in making all three feel like the same thing.

Adapted from a Stephen King story, this trite but watchable chiller plays like a scaled-down version of "The Shining," with Cusack driven over the edge by hallucinations of his abusive father and dead daughter.

I'd recommend this, but only if you liked "The English Patient."

Diary of the Dead features some of the most hilariously gross images since "Dawn of the Dead." In one online video the filmmakers find, a father playfully pulls off a birthday clown’s red rubber nose and the guy’s real nose comes off with it.

This talking-heads documentary by Stefan Forbes doesn't waste much time delving into Atwater's misshapen character; instead it focuses on his South Carolina roots and his instinctive grasp of the southern strategy that's been the GOP's key to the White House for the past 40 years.

A novel twist in the second half succeeds in distinguishing this from the pack but also wrenches it away from the meager characters.

The after-school-special moralizing is mitigated by the project's sincerity and textured locale.

Machiavelli epigrams and 70s soul classics embellish this slice of thug life, which succumbs to the usual hypocrisy of condemning Barnes while grooving on his cars, clothes, and jewels.

There's something to be said for letting a comic book adaptation operate at the level of a comic book--i.e., with cheap laughs and ice-cold sadism.

Stiller plays a monster, and when Gerwig goes for him, declaring that she sees his tender side, the development seems like a fond indulgence on the part of writer-director Noah Baumbach.

Real-life partners Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau wrote and directed this frothy sex farce, incorporating musical numbers that recall Jacques Demy; the results are middling, but the actors' verve compensates for the clumsy choreography and lackadaisical camerawork.

Kevin Jordan (Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire), a protege of Martin Scorsese, wrote and directed this dull 2005 autobiographical feature; it feels real, but solid performances fail to enliven the characters.

It's a bitter story played for humor, in which a callous character is never quite allowed to see herself as such.

The feminist veneer is the most deeply disturbing part of this callow thriller, whose fetishizing of a dead woman's body (and a live woman's sexual behavior) is far more questionable than anything even "The Silence of the Lambs" has been accused of.

Antonio Banderas signs up for charisma lessons from Anthony Hopkins -- but they just don't take.

Either you like this movie a lot or you run screaming for the exit; I find it rough going.

Director Jim Field Smith lifts his best beats from Judd Apatow, and his worst from "American Pie."

This harmless comedy by Steven Mallorca comments wryly on America's weird hybrid culture, but the characters are too broadly drawn and the story drags in the last third, just when it should be hitting comic warp speed.

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.

For my money, what keeps it bearable is mainly the mugging of the older folks -- not just Jack Black, who steals the show in a part seemingly inspired by John Belushi, but Catherine O'Hara, John Lithgow, and cameos by Chevy Chase, Lily Tomlin, and Kevin Kline.

Robin Shou frequently cuts to scenes from one of his recent movies, adding to the impression that this is a vanity reel.

More witty than laugh-out-loud funny.

A hodgepodge of half-baked characters and story ideas, stoked by a frantic climax and a blue-chip playlist of 1966 rock classics.

Proof that you can buy an Academy Award, with David Niven, Cantinflas, and 44 stars in cameo roles spending a lot of Michael Todd’s money as they tour the world in Jules Verne’s balloon.

There's something wrong with a suspense film when the sets are more interesting than the characters.

The makers of this eclectically animated adventure, a follow-up to "The Rugrats Movie," know their audience, though all the "Godfather" references will be thoroughly puzzling to at least half of it.

What makes Outrage a bankable indie film is the promise of personal embarrassment--everyone loves a good outing. Except for the person at the center of it.

As in many nature films, the ostensible subjects are less captivating than their scenic backdrops.

Bennett is also self-indulgent, giving us few clues as to what's behind this destructively hedonist behavior; instead we get shortcut insights as she and the men confess into the camera.

Not very believable, even in relation to its own premises, but if you were charmed by "Somewhere in Time" and/or Jack Finney's novel "Time and Again," this might charm you as well.

This underdog comedy and its title character have considerable charm.

There is some exquisite Technicolor photography by Leon Shamroy, but director Henry King never moves the action beyond respectful superficiality.

Miller and coscreenwriter Julien Boivent have a gift for aphoristic, if glib, dialogue, and Nicole Garcia and Ludivine Sagnier do their best to flesh out hopelessly one-dimensional characters.

Playing a variation on John Wayne's character from "Red River," Harrison Ford gives an understandably bewildered performance, often appearing uncertain if he should take his lines seriously.

With its one-liners and welter of double-crosses, it should settle on the video shelf between "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Mr & Mrs. Smith."

The snow and haze that Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) keeps pumping into the street scenes seem to have drifted into the script as well.

The mechanical possibilities are worked out with precision and relish, but [the director] is careful not to allow the comedy to linger too long in the realm of real feelings. A platitudinous ending restores a safe and sane emotional order.”

If you've seen any of these, you know that the hero is always killed for her trouble, a final stroke of mordant wit.

As in the directors' earlier work, the humor is rooted in humiliation, but the execution here is tepid and indecisive, possibly because the big-name stars need to seem charming no matter how loathsome or idiotic their behavior.

In essence this is a celebrity revenge fantasy, something few of us can relate to, but director Paul Abascal has the sense to keep the homilies short and the pacing fast.

Tends toward the generic, and Jim Caviezel is hopelessly bland in the lead. Among the bright spots are Mary McCormack as the hero's wife and Bruce Dern as the wise old motorboat guru.

There's a lot of self-conscious talk about the importance of timing, but the tony sense of entitlement tends to dampen any laughs. The movie functions best as a middle-class Euro-postcard along the lines of "Chocolat" or "Under the Tuscan Sun."

Baseball fans might find this marginally absorbing; for anyone else it's as conscientious and stylistically pedestrian as director John Sayles's other films, and a mite overlong to boot.

I'm not sure how much has been gained in the updating.

On the one hand, the action stuff is surprisingly imaginative and well filmed; on the other, the characters are the usual bunch of self-parodic dodoes that the post-Spielberg action cinema has accustomed us to, so it's impossible to believe in the situations anyway.

It's ultimately hamstrung by storytelling that seems both underdeveloped and overdetermined.

The script for this action vehicle is like something you'd find under the cushions of Steven Seagal's couch, but Diesel, to his credit, digs into his role as if it were Hamlet.

This sprawling and ambitious three-part Canadian film traces the spread of AIDS on three continents, but it gets off to a confusing start… By the time the movie returned to Africa, it had lost me despite its talented cast and its noble intentions.

The physical stunts by Maggie Q as a lethal martial arts expert and Cyril Raffaelli as a Eurotrash sniper who rappels buildings are more thrilling than the over-the-top chase sequences, so contrived as to verge on self-parody.

This takes place in the same sort of pathologically sports-obsessed hamlet as "Friday Night Lights," though in contrast to that movie's grim honesty there's enough heartland schmaltz here to embarrass John Mellencamp. Remarkably, the movie rights itself once the actual season begins, focusing on game strategy more than the usual heart-stopping pep talks.

Arch yet earnest.

It did give me plenty of jolts and surprises.

The direction is lively and often overinventive, as was frequently the case during the early, experimental phase of his career.

Director Shawn Levy delivers his usual middle-of-the-road product.

The audience is subjected to a series of emotional contortions, encouraged to experience them voyeuristically, and then scolded for doing so. The bathetic music Kim favors is profoundly at odds with his chilly attitude toward the characters.

Despite the fascinating topic, director Yan-ting Yuen offers relatively little history or criticism of the works themselves, squandering screen time on such gimmicks as mock voice-over and scenes of young people performing hard-rock and hip-hop versions of vintage songs. It's enough to make you pine for the good old days when irony was illegal.

The Spielbergian attempt at sweetness--heralded by references in Danny Elfman's score to the Nutcracker Suite--never fully convinces.

Fails to replicate Carpenter's blue-collar humor or carefully modulated suspense.

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.

Hampered by the kind of overacting that the cast seems to enjoy more than the audience.

While competent, it's too routine to generate much interest. Leigh is effective as always, but has little to chew on; Patric has even less.

Never recovers from a jarring and improbable act of ritualized violence that occurs halfway through the film.

Of some interest for promoting rapprochement between India and China, this is still awfully silly.

This historical drama is lovely to look at, with elegant Victorian fashions and verdant tropical scenery, but its story plays like a Hawaiian heritage lesson filtered through the melodramatic artifice of an old Hollywood costume drama.

A series of stunts with bears and lots of stage fighting involving characters who are unambiguously good or evil.

The movie plays like a slightly degraded version of the original: the dialogue is a little lamer, the acting a little poorer.

If you can abide booming orchestral punches during verbal confrontations and ubiquitous Adidas product placement, you'll be rewarded by exciting soccer sequences and the joy of watching a likable character triumph on a global stage.

This highly uneven comedy by writer-director Adam Brooks might be easier to take if it were less infatuated with its own cuteness.

Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin won an Oscar for "Ghost" (1990), a pleasant, moderately thoughtful weepie that this movie closely resembles.

Robert Wise’s direction is no more accomplished here than in The Sound of Music or any of his later big-budget projects, but Boris Karloff in the title role is surprisingly subtle—at times.

In a novel twist, the movie's dumbest element--joke commercials for racist consumer products--turns out to be the most provocative when end titles reveal the products were all real.

Unlike the campy excess of Jackson's earlier Dead Alive, this kind of deliberate overkill—which extends to the broad caricatures of the girls' families as well as the girls' feverish fantasy life—ultimately points toward a dearth of ideas rather than a surfeit, though the story remains sufficiently interesting and troubling to hold one's attention.

Sam Wood, the El Supremo of Hollywood hackdom, squired this one to glory.

The families' hopes for a tasteful, upscale wedding are sabotaged by warring egos and low-rent, walking-stereotype relatives.

This is hysterically funny in parts, but most of the laughs are raunchy or scatological--always a sure bet when puppets are involved.

Miriam Hopkins, of the original cast, is around to lend a sense of continuity to the remake, but Wyler still seems unable to confront the material. This is Mature, Adult drama, and hence something of a bore.

Drew Barrymore is that rare movie starlet who can handle the comedy end of romantic comedy, but she coasts through her underwritten role as a goofy plant sitter recruited by Grant to write his lyrics.

An irrefutable triumph of engineering, and it entertained and intrigued me through two separate viewings...though as a view of the human condition it's astonishingly and depressingly meager.

The dopey premise only takes to a gross extreme the "Full Monty" formula that the Brits have been milking for more than a decade.

The movie's only unmitigated pleasure is a too-brief fight scene between Connor and a naked combatant made up to look precisely like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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.

Another disposable family entertainment.

Offers the same dramatic visual style and cruel plot twists, but the mechanical retribution is even more boring.

The movie does have a certain amount of star power and occasional bursts of inventive mise en scene, which do a good job of diverting us so we don't realize that not much else is going on.

Ridiculous but occasionally fun.

Apted's tedious, literal-minded approach doesn't come close to solving the problems of a knotty, best-seller plot—the characters are reduced to telling each other what happened. Some action-movie slam-bang would have been more satisfying, if ultimately no more coherent.

You can see what an impact sound must have had in 1927, because it certainly wasn't the movie that made this production a phenomenon...It's ragged and dull until the magical moment when Jolson turns to the camera to announce, “You ain't heard nothin' yet”—a line so loaded with unconscious irony that it still raises a few goose bumps.

Rick Rosenthal's action comedy is positively dripping with good intentions, and although it has its moments of charm, this hands-across-the-waters gesture rarely gets beyond formula Disney material (how far can you get with humanism when the humans are made out of cardboard?).

The talented Gleeson, who had a breakthrough role in Boorman's "The General," returns the favor here, carrying the whole movie on his broad shoulders.

One keeps waiting for the title characters' lives to intersect, but when they finally do--with a reporter asking Powell to comment on Child's disparaging remarks about her--Ephron scurries away from the moment and its implications.

Soggy stuff from French director Cedric Klapisch (When the Cat’s Away), set in the title city and collecting the routine travails of various urbanites.

Hopelessly inadequate as a reading of Dreiser's great novel, and as usual Stevens seems too preoccupied with the story's monumentality to have much curiosity about its characters.

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.