For a movie that consists almost entirely of real sex and real rock 'n' roll, 9 Songs feels remarkably conventional.

If you're happy to watch a thriller about a tenth as good as Alfred Hitchcock's, director D.J. Caruso and screenwriters Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth hold up their end of the deal, at least until the proceedings devolve into standard horror-movie effects and minimal motivations.

The comic scenes can be arch or shrill, but director Marcos Siega (Pretty Persuasion) does better when the story turns somber and the emotions feel genuine.

The film embraces proletarian chic but still gets its laughs by abusing waitresses.

Flat and unconvincing.

The filmmakers seem to think they can also manipulate us by combining the erotic with the disgusting. And they can--it's a foolproof tactic.

The current burlesque revival is a throwback to ostensibly more innocent times, and writer-director Steven Antin finds something redemptive in each character.

Writer-director James Mottern has a reasonably good feel for the textures of blue-collar life, but he pounds home the life lessons, underscoring them with poignant country-western songs.

First-time director James Gartner observes all the rituals--the coach busting chops, the team sneaking out to party--but the players are indifferently characterized and the civil rights story has a fake Black History Month feel.

The gags are slighted in favor of John Denver-style homilies, mouthed by John Denver, while the film collapses under the weight of missed narrative connections, the apparent victim of excessive recutting.

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

Director Paul Greengrass has applied his jumpy, tumbling visual style to action blockbusters with Matt Damon and serious dramatizations of political events. This Iraq war drama makes a game attempt to meld the two, though manufacturing thrills takes precedence over any kind of journalistic insight.

All I got was this lousy movie. OK, it's not that bad, though in contrast to "Ocean's Eleven," which gave its megastars a neat little heist story, this sequel is both contrived and convoluted.

The force of the social criticism is diminished by contrivance and the inclusion of peripheral material.

The silly story is basically just an excuse for some thrills and goofy one-liners, but even if the more likable characters tended to get killed off too early for my taste, I wasn't bored.

The opening and closing passages of this 1954 adaptation of Lerner and Loewe rank with Vincente Minnelli’s finest, most purely cinematic work—magnificent orchestrations of textures, colors, and movements. What comes between is soggy: a stiff and literal interpretation of the book, filmed on obvious sound stages with a “natural splendor” you could put your fist through.

The movie's suggestiveness gives way to a certain thinness and lassitude.

Rather wan in its anything-goes spirit of invention, the movie has a surprisingly low number of laughs; some of the initial premises are good, but there's very little energy in the follow-through, and this time Murray's listlessness seems more anemic than comic.

Samberg can't carry this, though director Akiva Schaffer supplies some hilarious, "Jackass"-style wipeouts and there are nice supporting turns from Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers) as Rod's love interest and Bill Hader as one of his goofball friends.

Only the engaging lightness of the two lead performances prevents the film from falling into utter treacliness.

The special effects, for once, are witty rather than overblown, and director Nora Ephron, writing with her sister Delia, handles the material with some grace and confidence.

It's odd that a movie featuring a great classical director is notable for some extremely contemporary acting.

His story demands to be heard, though Tucker and Epperlein lack the material for a full feature and pad this out to 73 minutes with some incongruously playful elements (spy music, comic-book illustrations, scenes of Abbas frolicking at a beach).

While the film's premise is shamelessly hokey and Joe Nussbaum's direction is at best pedestrian, props are due the young cast, especially Bynes, whose can-do optimism seems genuine if ultimately overdone.

Watchable, if at times familiar.

Pine, who expertly approximated William Shatner in the Star Trek reboot, seems to have picked up some of the actor's air of self-serious buffoonery, and it suits him well; as Witherspoon's best pal, late-night TV comedian Chelsea Handler holds down what might be called the Nora Ephron part, dispensing an endless stream of bawdy man jokes.

The scenes between husband and wife are spectacularly awkward and arresting, though the movie grows more dubious the nearer the guys get to their shooting session in a local hotel room.

Dumb but harmless live-action comedy for kids.