It's easy to pick holes in movies like this, to find the inconsistencies and the oversights and say the movie's no good because we're smarter than it is. But maybe that's exactly the point. Maybe the actual pleasure comes from the fun of being frustrated and full of free advice while the character marches to her doom.

A movie with an impenetrable plot that nevertheless has its moments.

Fletch needed an actor more interested in playing the character than in playing himself.

The real objective of all the "M:I" movies is to provide a clothesline for sensational action scenes. Nothing else matters, and explanatory dialogue would only slow things down. This formula worked satisfactorily in "M:I," directed by Brian De Palma, and "M:I II," directed by John Woo, and I suppose it works up to a point in M:I III, directed by J.J. Abrams, if what you want is endless, nonstop high-tech action.

A curiously unfocused Prohibition-era gangster epic with some well-choreographed action scenes, a few provocative plot threads — but an increasingly meandering main story line that goes from intriguing to confounding to preachy to what exactly are we even watching here?

It offers wonderful things, but they aren't what's important. It's as if Burton directed at arm's length, unwilling to find juice in the story.

The part that needs work didn't cost money. It's the screenplay. Having created the characters and fashioned the outline, Tarantino doesn't do much with his characters except to let them talk too much, especially when they should be unconscious from shock and loss of blood.

One of the irritations of Ghost is that the Moore character is such a slow study.

This good movie is buried beneath millions of dollars that were spent on "production values" that wreck the show.

To give the movie credit, it's as bored with the underlying plot as we are. Even the prom queen election is only a backdrop for more interesting material, as She's All That explores differences in class and style, and peppers its screenplay with very funny little moments.

There’s no denying that Torres (a former writer on “Saturday Night Live” and the co-creator of the HBO series “Los Espookys”) is a unique talent; it’s just that his first feature film, while featuring some clever ideas, has a repetitive nature that grows more irksome as we go along, and the humor dissipates into heavy-handed social commentary.

The best performance, because it's more nuanced, is by Liev Schreiber. His Zus Bielski is more concerned with the big picture, more ideological, more driven by tactics.

The production design deserves Academy recognition. But at the most fundamental level, Toys is a film not quite sure what it's about.

There's not much original about the film, but it's played with high spirits and good cheer, there are lots of musical interludes, and it's pitched straight at families.

Act of Valor is gift-wrapped in patriotism. It was once intended as a recruitment film, and that's how it plays.

A step or two above the usual Clint Eastwood Western.

O Brother contains sequences that are wonderful in themselves--lovely short films--but the movie never really shapes itself into a whole.

It's skillfully mounted and fitfully intriguing, but weaves such a tangled web that at the end I defy anyone in the audience to explain the exact loyalties and motives of the leading characters.

Tequila Sunrise is an intriguing movie with interesting characters, but it might have worked better if it had found a cleaner narrative line from beginning to end. It's hard to surrender yourself to a film that seems to be toying with you.

She (Taymor) doesn't capture Shakespeare's tone (or his meaning, I believe), but she certainly has boldness in her reinvention.

The movie does have charm and moments of humor, but what it doesn't have is romance.

This is an OK movie about a serious subject and an important milestone in the road to gay freedom and equality. It’s just a shame it didn’t accomplish the kind of cinematic punch as did the Oscar-winning “Milk.”

Freeheld is a classic example of a well-made, well-acted film with the best of intentions — but a disappointingly heavy-handed method of delivering its message.

A sweet, innocent family movie about stray dogs that seem as well-trained as Olympic champions. Friday, the Jack Russell terrier who's the leader of the pack, does more acting than most of the humans, and doesn't even get billing.

The movie is the latest horror show from Stuart Gordon, whose Re-Animator was one of the great trash pictures of 1985. From Beyond doesn't quite measure up - it's not trashy enough and it doesn't have the insane tunnel vision of the first movie - but in its own way, this is quite a job.

The weakness of the film is the weakness of the leading role. That's not a criticism of Mark Wahlberg, who has a quite capable range, but of how he and Russell see the character.

We can enjoy the suspense of the opening scenes, and some of the drama. The performances are in keeping with the material. But toward the end, when we realize that the entire reality of the film is problematical, there is a certain impatience. It's as if our chain is being yanked.

While it’s great to see a Latino hero from the DC Universe get center stage in the form of Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle, and the dynamic among the loving and fiercely protective extended Reyes family is the highlight of the film, this is a mostly by-the-numbers origin story with underwhelming VFX, a disappointingly cartoonish villain and a final battle sequence and epilogue that follow the pattern of a dozen or more previous superhero origin stories.