Flashes of inspiration illuminate stretches of routine sitcom material; it's the kind of movie where the audience laughs loudly and then falls silent for the next five minutes.

This might have worked as a short film or a 30-minute TV episode, but as a feature film, it grows increasingly cloying as the minutes tick on.

When a movie begins to present one implausible or unwise decision after another, when its world plays too easily into the hands of its story, when the taste for symbolism creates impossible scenes, we grow restless.

Everyone involved is far too talented to mess this up too badly, but it soon becomes clear that Curtis intends to reduce us to quivering sobs mixed with heartfelt gratitude for every blessed day of life.

Charles Bronson, who has recently started to enjoy a long-delayed superstar status, is very good and slit-eyed as the mechanic, and the movie's premise is a nice one with a lot of neat twists toward the end.

“Axel F” is the very definition of passable, comfort-viewing, nostalgia-tinged entertainment. It’s a good-looking film, and it’s wonderful to see Eddie Murphy returning to one of his signature roles and pumping it back to life after he sleep-walked through “Cop III.” It’s just a shame they got the band together after three decades, only to have them perform by-the-book renditions of the same old songs.

The story is so-so, in other words, but the pummeling is primo.

Though colorful and sweet-natured and occasionally capable of producing the mild chuckle, this is a safe, predictable, edge-free, nearly bland effort from a studio that rarely hedges its bets.

It’s an ambitious reach, and the talented cast of mostly familiar names is game for the challenge, but Crisis goes over the top with too many key plot developments. The end result is a serious case of Messaging Exhaustion.

A pleasant, inoffensive 3-D animated farce about a team of superspy gophers.

Lansky loses steam every time the focus is on somewhere other than Lansky.

What is good about this film is very good, but there are too many side trips, in both the plot and the emotions, for the film to draw us in fully.

Sometimes in an imperfect movie there is consolation simply in regarding the actors.

First-time feature director Dante Ariola (working from a script by Becky Johnson) has a good feel for these characters and keeps things moving along at a brisk pace.

Thanks in large part to Costner’s robust, earnest, growling, deadpan voice work as a dog who can be brilliant one moment and fantastically clueless the next, “The Art of Racing In the Rain” still comes close to winning us over … Until the final scene, which was so shameless and manipulative, I wanted a refund on every lump in the throat and teary-eyed moment I had experienced to that point.

It’s the MMA version of Million Dollar Baby meets Rocky in Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised, a well-acted and occasionally involving but overly long, cliché-stuffed sports film that hits all the usual notes and piles on the subplot drama to the point where we’re nearly exhausted by the viewing experience.

It’s a romantic comedy with all sorts of possibilities that instead relies on heavy-handed sight gags and over-the-top performances.

There are some wonderful special effects, but, alas, the movie bogs down with shooting, car chases and plot twists that make it a bit tiresome. Still, it's some fun, especially watching Jagger, Hopkins and the supporting cast tangle with a future in which fried rats seem delicious. [21 Jan 1992, p.27]

The fancy stuff and foolery impedes the story and its emotions; the underlying story was strong enough that maybe a traditional narrative would have been best, after all.

I like Miley Cyrus. I like her in spite of the fact that she's been packaged within an inch of her life. I look forward to the day when she squirms loose from her handlers and records an album of classic songs, performed with the same sincerity as her godmother, Dolly Parton. I think it'll be a long, long time until she plays a movie character like the free-standing, engaging heroines of Ashley Judd, but I can wait.

Annette Bening plays Julia in a performance that has great verve and energy, and just as well, because the basic material is wheezy melodrama.

It is not a bad movie, mind you; it's clever and shows great control of craft, but it doesn't care, and so it's hard for us to care about. To see it once is to plumb to the bottom of its mysteries, and beyond.

It’s a great-looking ride with a few legitimate jump-scares and some suitably chilling imagery, but the finale leaves us frustrated and let down, wondering: Is that all there is?

There will be better movies playing in the same theater, even if it is a duplex, but on the other hand there is something to be said for goofiness without apology by broken lizards who just wanna have fun.

Director Seth Gordon (“Four Christmases,” “Horrible Bosses”) knows how to film fast-moving comedies with star appeal, and Diaz (who hasn’t lost an ounce of onscreen charisma) and Foxx are terrific together, but wouldn’t it have been lovely if they had tackled more creative and challenging material?

Wahlberg has grown so much as an actor we can pretty much buy him as a college professor/author. There’s just not enough depth to the character of Jim, and not much of a story arc.

Despite the stylish direction from the duo of Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and winning performances by Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, “Novocaine” sputters to the finish line.

Look at the performances. They're surprisingly good, and I especially admired the work of Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn as the parents of one of two girls who go walking in the woods.