George Stevens, a tireless moralizer and part-time embalmer of American myths (Shane), directed this melodramatic adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and what does not seem facile in it seems overwrought.

Jonathan Winters voices Santa with no edge whatsover, while Ben Stein deadpans a droll tour guide.

Part of what keeps this from working is that Modine's character is almost as obnoxious as Keaton's—Griffith proves to be the pluckiest member of the trio—and matters are not improved by a lot of gratuitous camera movement and an especially lousy dream sequence.

Director Taylor Hackford shapes some engaging performances (the surly, withdrawn Baryshnikov of the early scenes is an intriguing figure) but never extricates himself from the plot machinery; this 1985 feature takes off only in the brief but well-filmed dance sequences.

The liberal pieties underlying the script become so simplistic and predominant that they ultimately deprive the characters and the story of the density and edge they might have had.

It's more like a feature-length music video, with grainy images illustrating songs from (Youngs) recent album of the same title and actors lip-synching to his reedy vocals.

This dyspeptic 2003 coming-of-age story from Italy often seems on the verge of nervous collapse, veering from giddy adolescent romps to adult shenanigans and shrill political discord.

John Cromwell, an excellent filmmaker in other circumstances (The Fountain, Since You Went Away), doesn’t have the taste for extremes that film noir requires; he softens the emotions and dims the motivations.

This is Middle-aged Sherlock Holmes in schoolboy drag, and the audience is expected to chuckle appreciatively as the old material is trotted out.

Rudolph Mate directed, and Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, and John Hoyt all make a game try at sounding like real people—which is not always easy, given Sidney Boehm’s script.

Woody Allen at his most inconsequential and insubstantial; don't expect to remember this black-and-white throwaway of comic sketches five minutes after it's over.

It might have looked good on paper, but the results are mixed at best; despite a few early chuckles, the whole thing gets tired after 20 minutes.

Despite the high spirits, most of the comedy is feeble and forced; Steve's career as a therapist seems especially far-fetched.

The tear-jerking is so determined and persistent that your ducts feel as if they'd been worked over with a catheter. But despite its great length, the film never makes sense of its central relationship, between Jon Voight's washed-up prizefighter and Faye Dunaway's chichi fashion designer.

Packs a punch in its first act with a passionate lead performance by Cyndi Williams and a painfully concrete sense of modern life closing in. But gradually it slips into the indie paradigm of an alienated soul rushing into darkness, climaxing with a semiabstract montage sequence that's more rhetorical than dramatic.

A better disaster movie than it is a thriller.

Beneath all the forced hilarity lies an awful fear of aging--and Sandler is only 43! This is gonna be rough.

Playing a competitive schemer not unlike her "Desperate Housewives" character, Parker doesn't generate much heat, while Rudd is squandered in a bland role.

An exceptionally glib satire about reality TV, by writer-director Daniel Minahan, that puts most of its effort into looking as much as is possible like a real TV show.

The usual valorizing of guns and vigilante justice and tedious action sequences to begin and end the picture.

This 1998 romantic comedy mostly bores with its cumbersome exposition and close-ups of trivial objects scattered throughout lackluster montage sequences.

Romantic comedy is set mainly in NYC, where the plight of its ambivalent lovers seems particularly trivial.

The situation—a mother and daughter switch personalities for a day—is rife with possibilities, but since this 1977 comedy is a Disney film, said possibilities are scrupulously squandered...Not so bad as Disney goes, but it's better left to the kiddies and other forgiving types.

At least it has Bill Murray.

This UK drama by Stephen Woolley, a longtime producer for Neil Jordan making his directing debut, presents a fairly convincing version of what might have happened.

How can a romantic drama tailor-made for Julia Roberts from Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir about self-actualization--shot against alluring locales in Italy, India, and Bali, and directed by the acclaimed Ryan Murphy (TV's Nip/Tuck and Glee)--go so ass-numbingly wrong?

The usual mawkishness is made slightly more palatable by the two leads and by Perry himself.

Succeeds at least in being offbeat, but its inanities and glib pretensions are so thick that it mainly comes across as tacky and contrived.