The camera goes limp during the climactic emotional blowout--unimaginative and static compositions leave the characters yelling at each other in a vacuum.

Grandstanding 1961 courtroom drama about the Nazi war trials, courtesy of producer-director Stanley Kramer, breast-beating screenwriter Abby Mann, and an all-star cast—watchable enough on its own terms, but insufferably glib next to something like Shoah.

It's neither sexy enough to qualify as good trash nor serious enough to pass for history.

The aerial dogfights are thrilling, but the script seems to have been written by Snoopy.

Ultimately just another Dirty Harry opus.

The ethereal private moments and inspired passages are beautifully shot by Jean-Marie Dreujou, but Dai never quite organizes the material dramatically, and the tone is too often jagged and disruptive.

Some of the film's situations and motivations seem convenient or underdeveloped, but Ascaride and Darroussin are riveting, and Guediguian's frankness and empathy illuminate this kaleidoscope of lonely lives.

Purports to give us the lowdown on Manhattan celebrity life, yet it depends so consistently on plot contrivances and other movies (The King of Comedy, Midnight Cowboy, even All About Eve) that it often comes across as wannabe muckraking.

Forget about a stake through the heart: sheriff Josh Hartnett discovers that decapitation is the best way to stop the bloodsuckers, who suggest feral, steroid-crazed gymnasts as they scale buildings and leap onto moving vehicles.

This 1948 effort is probably the last of their watchable films, though it’s a long way from their best.

Though a bunch of the jokes are milked too thin, there are some absurdly goofy sight gags--like a hacky sack game enlisting a family pet--and a lineup of fun, silly cameos by guests from Chris Rock to Mariah Carey.

A stiff in spite of an interesting cast.

May persuade you to identify not with race-car drivers but with race cars.

Director Nicolas Klotz paces his mystery plot so luxuriously that it feels like a ride in a company limo, though his ultimate thesis, that corporate culture is inherently fascist, hardly seems worth the trip. The saving grace is Amalric, who looks so sharp in a tailored suit that he can't sense himself rotting from within.

This precious story line, adapted from a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, keeps shriveling up against the backdrop of a traumatized city; only gaunt Max von Sydow, as a mute old man who accompanies the young hero on his rounds, supplies the grave authority the premise demands.

Eventually the kids figure out that parents and other authority figures (among them Rebecca De Mornay, Anthony Edwards, Penelope Miller, and Aidan Quinn) don't always have it together. Was this trip necessary?

The film is cut at such a frenzied pitch that it's often possible to believe (mistakenly) that something significant is going on.

I was worn down by the excess: Depp's fruity impersonation of Keith Richards (or William F. Buckley) as pirate Jack Sparrow; too many bottomless chasms on an island with too many jungle savages (after the fashion of Peter Jackson's King Kong); Bill Nighy playing too squishy a villain with a beard of too many crawling octopus tentacles; too much violence, pop nihilism, and sick humor.

Produced by MTV Films, this step-dancing drama is mired in cliche, but with its dingy ghetto settings and hardened, despondent young characters, it's marginally more interesting than "Stomp the Yard," the 2007 movie that inaugurated the subgenre.

The movie's mix of erotic Latin dance and vaguely liberal politics should have young girls swooning in the aisles.

Too dry to be very funny and too contrived to be outrageous, this movie has a tone so unusual it almost seems to have none at all.

So little care has gone into the characterizations, the structure, and the situations that the film merely feints at significant comedy.

Its numerous ancillary characters are so closely observed that even those without speaking parts register as people, in a manner than blurs the line between strangeness and intimacy.

Well-intentioned tripe, directed with made-for-TV solemnity by John Korty.

For a film ostensibly dedicated to physical grace, Ross's images are unforgivably clumsy. MacLaine and Bancroft, though, work up some sparks in the last two reels.

There is still some life in the characterizations, though the animation is turning stiff and flat.

At its best it's a free-form fantasy with glitzy, well-executed effects and assorted metaphysical conceits but little feeling for any of the characters apart from derision (with a few touches of racism here and there).

This brash shocker by John Sayles—who wrote, directed, and edited—is bound to annoy as many people as it intrigues.