A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is so low-key, so sweet and offhand and slight, there are times when it hardly even seems happy to be a movie.

Eddie and the Cruisers is all buildup and no payoff.

It all comes down to the difference between a "concert film" and a documentary. Let’s Spend The Night Together is essentially a concert film recording an "ideal" Rolling Stones concert, put together out of footage shot at several outdoor and indoor Stones concerts. If that's what you want, enjoy this movie. I wanted more.

There’s hardly a moment in this film that doesn’t feature at least one great actor in top form.

Contraband is based on an Icelandic thriller named "Reykjavik-Rotterdam," which leads you to suspect that neither New Orleans nor Panama City is particularly essential to the plot. That film starred Baltasar Kormakur, who is the director of this one, perhaps as a demonstration that many stars believe they could direct this crap themselves if they ever had the chance.

Breathe is an inspirational story well told, but it’s essentially a paint-by-numbers biopic of a very deserving subject, with only a few bursts of stylistic flair and a couple of minor surprises at best.

A work of limitless invention, but it is invention without pattern, chasing itself around the screen without finding a plot.

Writer-director Paul Solet serves up some intricately choreographed and creative action sequences and some gruesomely realistic violence.... Mostly, though, Bullet Head is about the characters and the crackling dialogue, and the first-rate actors giving just the right spin to their lines.

It’s Pena’s quietly powerful interpretation of Cesar Chavez the man that makes this movie work so well.

On the basis of this film, Monty Lapica, at 24, has a career ahead of him as a director, an actor or both. He also has a life ahead of him, which the film does a great deal to make clear.

Benton has made better movies, but this one has no organic reality.

The movie is forgiving. But the search for happiness is doomed by definition: You must be happy with what you have, not with what you desire, because the cost of the quest is too high.

An Almodovar film is always an exercise in style, but High Heels also generates narrative energy and mystery, and provides what was, for me, a genuine surprise at the end.

So the movie probably contains enough laughs to satisfy the weekend audience. Where it falls short is in the characters and relationships.

It’s one of the most endearing romantic comedies in recent memory, with some laugh-out-loud dialogue, gorgeous photography and uniformly charming performances from the entire cast.

The story, having failed to provide itself with character conflicts that can be resolved with drama, turns to melodrama instead.

This stuff is so concocted I had no business caring about it. But I did, because of Bullock.

It's the kind of movie that provides diversion for the idle channel-surfer but isn't worth a trip to the theater. A lot of it seems cobbled together out of spare parts.

The problem with The Baxter is right there at the center of the movie, and maybe it is unavoidable: Showalter makes too good of a baxter. He deserves to be dumped.

First-time director D’Onofrio has as an admirable visual style, whether we get medium-long-shot takes or intimate close-ups. This is a good-looking period piece film, percolating with top-tier performances.

An artfully shot and occasionally provocative but ultimately underwhelming and self-indulgent film.

Mighty Joe Young is not meek and harmless; it's a full-blooded action picture, all right, but with a certain warmth and humor instead of a scorched-earth approach. You feel good at the end, instead of merely relieved.

A rousing, original and thoroughly entertaining adventure.

I laughed all the way through, in fact. This is the best comedy since "The Hangover," and although it's almost a scene-by-scene remake of a 2007 British movie with the same title, it's funnier than the original.

Sure, the pricey special effects are impressive to behold (though, as usually the case, the 3D is nothing to text home about). And yes, at times “Valerian” creates a strange and beautiful universe. Which ultimately means nothing, because the plot is paper-thin.

The performances are strong, even if the characters aren’t given much depth.

Live From New York! is a solid, pleasant 82-minute walk down memory lane. But given that we’ve just been through the 40th anniversary celebration, cresting with that marathon of a TV special, it just doesn’t feel particularly necessary.

The movie tries for poetry and elegy in its closing scenes, and we can see where it's headed, although it doesn't get there.