Maybe Hackford, and his screenwriter Mark Jacobson, were attempting to convey the dullness of vice. If so, they vastly overcorrected. But what about the dullness of the performances?

A movie that at best is irrelevant and at worst is unwatchable.

Because the war in Afghanistan is so much in the news now – it should always have been so – a movie like Restrepo is both a bracing document and, in a larger sense, a disappointment.

With all the money expended on this movie, couldn’t anybody come up with a few good lines in between all the kabooms?

Toy Story 3, has more emotional power than either of its predecessors. Come to think of it, it also has more emotional power than most of the live-action movies out there.

Actually, it's hard to have any thoughts while watching Jonah Hex – the cranium-crushing soundtrack takes care of that.

There's an original comic temperament at work here, and that's rare.

The Karate Kid will probably work best for young audiences unaware of its predecessor – or of much of anything else for that matter.

It probably won't matter to its core audience that The A-Team doesn't make a lick of sense.

The well-staged opening sequence, which depicts the riot at the 1913 Paris première of "Le Sacre du Printemps," is, alas, the film's high point.

Granik filmed in actual locations and enlisted many locals as actors. They blend unobtrusively with the professionals in the cast.

The film's biggest unexplored question: Why is someone with a reputation for laying bare the truth so addicted to plastic surgery?

This movie is a one-of-a-kind experience – blarney carried to rhapsodic heights.

Brand can seem simultaneously randy and strung-out and is often very funny. Hill is surprisingly touching.

Something is going on all the time, even if that something is oftentimes clumsy, nonsensical, or flat. But the sheer whoosh of the story line keeps you watching anyway.

The best part is that, amid all the hubbub, Jeunet, improbably and inevitably, draws out a love story between Bazil and Elastic Girl. Without it, Micmacs would have imploded. The romance, which is funny and sexy at the same time, anchors the shenanigans.

Altogether fascinating.

The Muslim women in “SATC2” are props in the froth. Come to think of it, so are Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda.

It has a sweetness all its own.

His drug-smuggling underworld, specifically the Amsterdam-New York connection, is likewise drably depicted. Is this because director Kevin Asch and screenwriter Antonio Macia deliberately played it down, or are they just incompetent? I’ll be charitable and vote for the former, but sometimes sensationalism is preferable to being altogether unsensational.

Thanks to Tukur, what we get here is still something: a stunning portrait of a good man caught in a widening inferno.

For the literal-minded, there’s an added bonus: Johnny Cash singing Solitary Man over the opening credits.

I much prefer Mel Brooks’s “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” to all this doomy somberness. Why take the legend so seriously?

A movie that has more sap than a pine forest.

As the doomed princess, Q’orianka Kilcher, who costarred as Pocahontas in Terence Malick’s “The New World,” has imperially striking features but limited acting skills. If her performances should ever rise to the level of her looks, she’ll be great.

What Looking For Eric demonstrates is that drama, not comedy, is how Loach makes sense of things. On the other hand, I often find his dramas unremittingly bleak. I guess what I'm really saying is that I'm not a big fan of Ken Loach.

The Japanese love affair with insects takes many forms, but most of them are, by Western standards, exotic. To Oreck's credit, she doesn't attempt to play down the exoticism by pretending to go native.

Aside from these two actors (Downey/Rourke), Iron Man 2 isn’t much of a whoop-de-do.

A celebration of the gloriously mundane.

Ultimately, the blight is so overwhelming that the film collapses from corruption overload.

All this is mighty silly, but there's something to be said for watching a French movie that, for a change, isn't about l'amour, existential angst, or madness. It's oddly reassuring to know that Hollywood isn't the only place where dithery, disposable spy spoofs are manufactured.

As Lucas’s girlfriend April, Isild Le Besco brings a sprig of sunshine into the film’s fetid hollows.

Caine acts dignified throughout, but there's no way to dignify dreck.

Only Rebecca Hall comes through with a genuineness that rises above Holofcener’s doodlings. Her scenes with Guilbert resonate because, in the end, Rebecca is the only character in the movie who seems to care about anything other than his or her own – take your pick – bank account, complexion, weight, guilt. In this company, she’s practically a saint.

The best commentator is Alda, whose rueful memories of being raised as a boy in burlesque are the film's highlight. "It was a form of abuse," he says of those days, but without rancor. It was, after all, the only childhood he knew.

Was Paper Man worth making? Captain Excellent and I would probably differ on that one.

Critics who come out against Kick-Ass are leaving themselves open to that worst of contemporary accusations: a failure to be cool. But pretending that Kick-Ass is just another good-time comic book blowout is the greater failure.

Although it’s refreshing to see a movie that stands up for charter schools and takes on teachers unions for their hammerlock on educational oversight, Bowdon overcorrects. His home state of New Jersey may not be an isolated case but neither, with its high level of corruption, should it be seen as altogether representative of all countrywide educational ills.

Whatever it is, Exit Through the Gift Shop is an original.

Notable only for being a catalog of just about every kid-pic cliché ever committed to film.

Why are Steve Carell and Tina Fey wasting their time, and ours, by appearing in the miserable comedy Date Night?

Like all good noirs, it has an almost comic appreciation for how the best-laid plans can go horribly wrong. No matter how bad things get, they can always get worse. I watched the film in a state of rapt enjoyment.

As Leonard, Nivola isn’t bad, which is good, since the entire movie revolves around him.

Not a sterling example of how to make a high-toned weepie, let alone a serious examination of trauma.

Medusa, at least, is fun to watch, and, as a bonus, we in the audience don’t have to worry about turning to stone (although, watching this film, your eyelids do get awfully heavy).

Has there been a more upfront title since “Snakes on a Plane”?

The film somehow manages to be both a turn-on and a turnoff.

The energy slacks off in the final third. It’s a bit like “The Sixth Sense” – but without any of the mystery.

While almost entirely family-friendly, the film deserves its PG rating: One plot point near the very end would have totally freaked my tender childhood sensibilities.

Objectivity is impossible under the best circumstances, and perhaps Hahn comes as close to "fair and balanced" as possible. But unavoidably there's a sense of untold stories and elided details lurking right beneath the surface.

At points, the film sinks below the level of competent.

Whitaker and Schreiber, both of whom are capable of brilliance, are stuck in one-dimensional roles. It’s not only the characters who have mechanical organs; the film itself is equally lifeless and cold.

The key to the film’s effectiveness is the casting of Rapace, who, while not mapping quite exactly to the book’s physical descriptions, is riveting.

Even if you sympathize with his troubles, it’s hard to actually like the guy. At best, he’s uncomfortable to be around; at worst, he’s irritating and even reprehensible.

Much of The Runaways plays out in the key of dreary. But there's a flinty integrity in this movie's look at the rock grind, and Stewart and Fanning are intensely watchable.

An amazing, galvanic experience. It's about the hushed-up story of Benito Mussolini's first wife and child, but no one will ever mistake this movie for a standard biopic. It's too raw, too primal.

Bong's style is comically tart even in the film's most noirish moments.

Green Zone wraps up with a wish-fulfillment fantasy that is about as believable as watching reinforcements riding in to save Custer.

Overwritten and overcooked, Remember Me still manages a few explosive sequences between Pattinson and Pierce Brosnan.

The movie is a decidedly mixed bag, in part, because of the equally pronounced disparities between Burton and Carroll – and between Burton and Disney, for that matter.

Brooklyn’s Finest does indeed provide a new genre twist. This must be the only cop movie ever made where a character is driven off the deep end by mold.

The viciously anti-Semitic 1940 German movie “Jew Süss” is one of the most notorious films ever made...Today it is one of the few Nazi-era films that still cannot legally be shown.

There are a few hilarious bits, but even those are drowned out by constant gunfire and Morgan’s motormouthing. Willis is going through the motions; Scott is funny, if irritating; Morgan is irritating and not so funny.

While it loses the charm of Romero’s low-budget clunkiness, it is in all other regards superior. Unfortunately, it’s not better than “28 Days Later...,” which is close enough to count as an unofficial remake.

I can agree that the power brokers in this scenario, who effectively broke Barnes's will, have far more interest in tourism than in masterpieces. But casting this story as a battle between the elites and the philistines mischaracterizes the situation.

A sensitive, nicely made character drama.

It comes on strong, but in its bloody heart of hearts it’s no more resonant than one of those old Vincent Price-Edgar Allan Poe contraptions – and less entertaining, too.

The Ghost Writer is minor Polanski but it’s one of the rare thrillers these days that plays up to you instead of down.

This is the kind of movie where life lessons are posted every quarter-hour. (I timed it.)

The Wolfman isn’t scary. In fact, it isn’t much of anything.

The whole thing is piffle, but it moves fast enough to stay entertaining.

Halfway through the movie, I decided a better title for this weepie contraption would be “The Hurt Letter.”

It’s easy to call this film a video action game starring real people, but that “real” part means a lot.

Amid all the mayhem, there is Paris in all its faded-light glory. Is the movie worth seeing as a travelogue? Only if you are (a) a masochist, (b) a terrorist, or (c) desperate.

Genz and Erling have constructed a story so clever that the pleasure of following its twists is enough in itself.

The film is never less than intelligent and never more than accomplished.

There’s something off-putting about this film’s optimism: After all, how many people can afford to do what Crowley did?

Téchiné's movies are always worth seeing, and The Girl on the Train, for all its faults, has moments that resonate

Washington doesn’t look as if he’s having much fun, and who can blame him? Perhaps he agrees with me: Apocalypse movies, like apocalypse heroes, need some laughs, too.

Amy Adams is such a likable actress that she makes the romantic comedy Leap Year worth watching even though we’ve seen it all before.

Just sweet enough to avoid being negligible.

When Kandel revisits his childhood neighborhoods in Vienna and Brooklyn and ruminates in his sprightly way on the past, the full measure of his humanity comes through.

This documentary about the evangelical belief in biblical prophecy is both overly ambitious and skimpy.

This is a half-baked movie about a half-baked person, but it has a fine, melancholic afterglow.

It’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a PhD. Or maybe an MA.

If you are not already familiar with Williams’s best plays and film adaptations, this musty magnolia of a movie won’t encourage you to seek them out.

This is certainly the grubbiest Holmes in movie history.

Both actors are a lot better than this material requires – or deserves.

The best moments in “Parnassus” are not otherwordly but worldly. It’s a movie about a dying magician and the death of magic. This is a subject that obviously means a lot to Gilliam, and he makes us feel it in our bones.

This intermittently terrific cerebral thriller does, indeed, hinge on the proper use of dictionary definitions, but the film is really about the oppressive blahness of small-town, postcommunist Romania. In such surroundings, parsing definitions can almost stand for high drama.

If I never felt entirely transported by Avatar, it's probably because the story thudded just as often as the imagery soared. But Pandora is still a good place to park yourself for three hours.

Deft and fast-moving, but shouldn’t a musical have at least a few songs you can hum on your way home?

Blunt and Friend strike a few flinty sparks, and Julian Fellowes’s script has its share of dry-as-dust witticisms. Most of the time, though, it’s a stiff pageant.

It's a sophisticated fantasia that adults should enjoy equally. (In other words, it's the perfect family entertainment.)

Bridges draws us deeply inside Blake’s moment-to-moment heartbreaks. He makes us root for him as we would root for a dear friend. Ultimately, his triumphs become our own.

As the murderer, Stanley Tucci is intensely creepy but, like almost everybody else in this movie, he’s more gothic figment than flesh and blood.

Invictus has an understated grace, but too often it comes across as hero-worshipy.

It’s a dirgelike odyssey sparked by Julianne Moore’s overheated turn as George’s best friend – a welcome respite from Firth’s clenched emoting.