Will strike a chord with people having mid-life love crises. Maybe for them, this film will stand as a sign that love is out there and it will prevail. As any other type of audience goes, I don’t think they’ll find that this love works.

The only reason to watch Step Up 2 the Streets, and I mean the only reason, is Briana Evigan.

This very conventional PBS style videodoc should not be viewed before operating heavy machinery. However, there's plenty to fascinate devotees of the dance.

With its simplistic, didactic approach, the presence of a top-flight ensemble is the only thing separating John Q from your average TV movie of the week.

Isn't nearly as fresh, suspenseful or witty as it's inaugural bloodfest, but it does offer enough blood and breasts to keep Craven and Williamson in business for a few more arterial sprays.

Vice, written and directed by Adam McKay, plays straight to the cable-news generation of political enthusiasts. It’s depthless, has the attention span of a gopher, and is more concerned with appearances than getting to the root of anything.

A passive film, playing it quiet and safe, hoping that the viewer will extend some good will towards it.

A well-intended but hopelessly ill-focused documentary which wants to be the "That's Entertainment!" for the New York theater but seems like a hodgepodge of anecdotes, factoids and moldy memories.

This sounds an awful lot like "Memento." But unlike that movie, the French-Swiss-Spanish-Italian co-production Novo opts for a Eurotrash sex comedy approach instead.

As much as you'd like the characters to become better people and beat Jigsaw's game, there is also a strong desire simply to watch violent spectacle. And somehow, there just isn't enough of the latter.

Alas, the big screen also magnifies the problems with Once Upon a Time in the West. Specifically, Leone’s insistence on style trumped the need for substance. The film is basically a B-Western stretched an agonizing 165 minutes.

It may have the melody, visage and basics of a Bollywood biggie, but truth be told, The Guru, despite it’s zest and lure, gives the far-off genus a bad wrap.

If you have nothing more stimulating to do on a Friday night, Underclassman could provide the entertainment--not enlightenment--you seek.

When a film is more conducive to a scholarly dissection than a consumerist examination, the film is incredibly clever, pragmatic, or pretentious. In the case of Domino, it's all of the above.

It's funnier than "Wild Hogs," which is about as ringing an endorsement as I'm capable of these days.

With this cast, the film should have been a knockout. Instead, it feels bogged down, heavy, and way too concerned with making statements instead of just being entertaining.

Itsy Bitsy has some fantastic human moments inside its bland monster facade and is the only real reason I can recommend the film – however, for some it won’t be enough to redeem the played-out and wonky elements.

Given how much Yellen does right, it's all the more shameful that she so spectacularly sinks her film in the foot with one hugely questionable "creative" decision: adding a pair of ghosts into the mix.

Hooter babes and the ubiquitous Steve Buscemi is a riot as the mercurial bum on the street.

As with "Napoleon Dynamite," Hess' sense of humor is an acquired taste, where all the characters speak in peculiar cadences and are afflicted with a terminal case of the "quirkies." What’s unfortunately missing from Nacho Libre is much in the way of humor.

Wolfgang Petersen's popcorn epic doesn't fail exactly. It just takes on too much. Modern man is at something of a disadvantage-even aided by his trusty muse, the computer-when presuming to bring the stuff of gods, myths and timeless sacred texts to the big screen.

3 Days with Dad touches upon subjects like familial differences, living up to your parents’ expectations, sibling rivalry, and generational differences. Too bad it’s all been done before, and better. Its flaccid visual approach and meandering, morose plot may make you pull the plug on your TV set.

On the whole this is pretty standard shoot-‘em-up fare. Bang, crash, boom -- yawn.

Rife with predictability and lacking any originality whatsoever, the lackluster Laurel Canyon demonstrates about as much depth as one of Ian's pop songs.

If only there had been more Salma Hayek.

Ultimately, when Love Actually pulls out all the stops, which it does at least three times during the final smorgasbord of climaxes, it can be well nigh irresistible.

Summer Night has an easy, breezy presence about it, but there’s not much going on beneath the surface.

A tedious, snail-paced mess.

At almost 100 minutes, Lieber’s ode to surfing and overcoming obstacles stretches itself thin. Like the wildest waves Bethany seeks, Unstoppable needed to be more unpredictable, dangerous and, well, gnarly, dude.

Land falls well short of the greatness of Romero’s previous zombie efforts.

Kills itself with unrestrained negativism, but almost resuscitates itself with some great comedy.

Lester takes all the wrong approaches.

I adore Plaza as a unique and magnetic actor, but she wasn’t given enough to work with here. Likewise, for the usual affable yet conflicted characters that Brie is so good at portraying, there’s not enough meat on the bones of the role here for her to sink her teeth into. Spin Me Round is like going out to dinner and expecting an authentic Italian restaurant but instead ending up at the Olive Garden.

What is lacking in the script is made up in the action sequences and scene compositions thanks to Fleischer’s vision. Though the main cast struggles to overcome the limitations of the screenplay, their banter and playfulness are enough to make me willing to sit through another installment of this potential franchise.

After a strong takeoff, the film lands on dead grounds.

As promising as the premise sounds, it cannot rise from the mundane.

The novelty of watching vintage lesbian footage just for the sake of watching eventually wears off. This underscores the idea that there is such a concept as too much of a good thing.

With more daring in the direction and more inspiration in the writing, the movie could have been entertaining, even if it was something done many times before. Instead, it is utterly derivative and routine in every aspect. It is a picture that attempts nothing and achieves nothing.

Mangold attempts to send Indy on one last adventure but never recaptures the glory days of searching for the lost ark.

If you manage to sit through the whole film, don’t leave before the humorous tag in the credits.

Even in the final battle over life and death, the only injury she suffers is a slight scratch on the face. It’s too much like a video game.

Exactly the kind of thing most of us have in mind when we think "popcorn movie." It's largely brainless, pretty to look at, and produced solely as a lead-in to another moneymaking sequel for Disney.

Although Byrne always brings a great performance in whatever she’s cast in, I would almost say just go watch her in Platonic. There she, too, plays a mom who deals with the issues of being married and life’s trials and tribulations.

The confused tone and largely inert script render this adaptation more beast than beauty.

The benchmark for any horror movie, of course, is how well it frightens you, and The Grudge is pretty satisfactory in that regard.

Fluff. The cinematic equivalent of too much cotton candy Tetsuya Nanashima's Kamikaze Girls is a hyperkinetic fun house ride that is about forty five minutes too long.

Gratuitously brutal, chronically preposterous, abysmally unoriginal, pretty much pointless and virtually 100% free of credible characters, Derailed represents career lows for its stars while marking an unpromising English language debut for its director.

The Collector’s destructive behavior enters the realm of the ridiculous before it ever touches the land of evil-badassness.

Has some nice touches. Cheadle is capable as always, and Paula Newsome kills as his acerbic receptionist.

Every so often you catch glimpses of a better movie behind the simplistic structure and formulaic plot.

The Flood nearly sinks under the weight of its contrivances, but is barely kept afloat by its two central performances.

Achieves the impossible by taking one of the most compelling and harrowing stories imaginable and channeling it into one of the most ordinary movies of the year.

As austere as the unflappable Mr. Redford, The Clearing is an enterprising but ultimately unsatisfying exercise that promises quite a lot, but delivers very little.

About as flat as a five day old soda.

While this movie comes nowhere near being as good as the original, it’s much better than Part 2. In the end, though, it’s really just another generic slasher flick with nothing beyond the Leatherface connection to recommend it to discerning fans.

It’s a fascinating look at a really weird guy who, whether you know it or not, made a profound impact on all of our lives (because who doesn’t spend hours a day on YouTube?).

The story is such a cut-rate kid's sci-fi fairy tale that at one point Evil actually calls Gary Oldman on the phone (and it isn't played for laughs).

As palpable as the atmosphere is, had the film boasted a clearer, more memorable story and performances that were a step above adequate, the creepiness wouldn't have simply lingered with the viewer, it would have gotten under their skin.

Not enough to hold the audience's interest, especially with such shallow simpletons as these two women in the leads.

If you're over the age of 11, there's obviously not much reason to see this.

Fracture may be smarter than the majority of movies out there, but it's not half as clever as it thinks it is.

Unfolds as a thrilling piece of entertainment, but it has a third act and ending that don’t work and shouldn’t ever work.

If you’re looking for a compelling horror flick, don’t waste your time with Darkness Falls.

The primary problem with The Assassination of Richard Nixon comes in its attempts to make drama out of a minor man's minor stab at infamy.

Hot Damn! A full-on gory (relatively) unpretensious horror movie!... Far better than it has any right to be.

Grim and frequently depressing, and despite the artistry of its framing it nonetheless is a very difficult movie to endure.

Dead Envy seldom rises above its stock story plots and underdeveloped characters.

Fortunately for Redford, Lions for Lambs is a less ham-handed effort than Sayles’ “Silver City,” but it’s a near thing.

Provides mostly entertaining spectacle.

Spends too much time straddling the line between exuberant carnage and serious plotline when it should've gleefully backflipped into the former. Grudgingly recommended, but only if you've put your cerebral cortex in neutral for the evening.

It’s mostly eighty-four minutes of puns, double entendres, and Freudian slips.

Unfortunately, despite a couple of creepy scenes here and there, director John Hancock doesn't inspire enough interest for us to want to follow Tom on his near two-hour Hardy Boys mystery. More groans than gasps for this one.

Falls apart with the slightest nudge -- of thought, that is.

It's hard to remain interested in everyone when they're continually shuffled around. Half-baked storylines abound.

Doesn't necessarily make Murder by Numbers an awful film; it's certainly watchable, but it never escapes its paint-by-numbers design.

Unlike the films it aspires to – Heathers, Election, American Psycho or even The Voices – Lowi’s feature’s all sizzle, no steak.

I wanted to like Superman Returns, but Singer and company are so concerned about doing justice to Superman’s past, they fail to generate much interest in what, if any, future the franchise might have.

It’s all been-there, done-that stuff, diluted further by forgettable characters, plot holes, and a desire by the studio to “get back on track” that transcends earnestness and becomes borderline-insufferable.

Performances alone cannot save an uninspired script. The story is not bad per se, but it’s not original or inspired and therefore Making Babies wallows in mediocrity, when it needed to make a choice between going for real laughs or have something profound to say about having children to make the journey worth taking.

Sometimes, the seemingly smallest fracture that separates the sublime from the maudlin is actually, well, a great divide.

The movie doesn't stink. The performances are good, potentially great, especially Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.

There’s a great story buried somewhere deep within the desert that is Head Count – about a brotherly bond, about jealousies that assume anthropomorphic shapes, about a demon that literally reflects our insecurities. Ellen Callahan hints at those stories but ends up telling the most basic version.

The truth is About Schmidt offers only the sporadic laugh, the less frequent original cultural insight and, at best, a craftsmanlike performance from its aging headliner. The truth is there are long stretches in the picture that are unequivocally dull.

Diggers isn't a bad film, but the underlying premise - the longing one feels to escape from a dead-end, small town life - has been so beaten to death in the movies that no amount of accurate 70s design or subtlety in the performances can hide the fact.

Seriously, someone needs to stage an intervention, sit Scott down, and tell him that repeated jump cuts, slow-motion shots, and fiddling around with the exposure don’t enhance the viewing experience.

"The Beginning" is a better movie than the 2003 remake, even if the plot is understandably similar. There are only so many ways hapless teens can get brutally slaughtered, after all, but Liebesman and company keep things appropriately creepy, right down to aping the look of the 1974 original.

It ain't art, and it's dumber than I'd like, but I don't imagine you were expecting Kieslowski.

A Quiet Place: Day One failed to capture what we loved about the original films and instead decided to focus too much of its time on a rollercoaster ride of an alien invasion. Fun is fun, but without proper character development, Day One is more fast food than a hardy meal.

Formulaic and creaky as a Harrison Ford action sequence, but sufficiently gussied up with good actors and a decent director so that you don’t entirely mind.

My Name Is Bruce can be read as a man coming to terms with the career that he has been dealt, or it can be read as simply a trashy B-movie directed by the man who knows best.

Fatima has excellent production design. A lot of care went into getting the period details right. There’s some beautiful cinematography and decent performances all around. It’s just all so mushy and predictable. Faith vs. science, tragedy testing one’s faith – those themes have been explored before, more enticingly. Pontecorvo turns a fascinating bit of history into a by-the-numbers affair, and that may be Fatima’s greatest sin.

Occasionally funny, sometimes inspiring, often boring, the magic is minimal in The Mystic Masseur.

About the only thing that is lucid, in the malestrom of wham-bam effects, is the set-up for a sequel.

At times, hard to stomach. Full of relatively good people doing horrible things to each other, the film never lets up, leaving me with a pessimistic and hopeless view of humanity.

If horror flicks came in cans like fake spaghetti, this would be the kind of can-shaped wormy mess that would slowly ooze out when held upside down and shaken.

There’s a lot of talent up there on the screen, and some authentic laughs, but too much of it is comedy territory that was claimed long ago.

One of the more cheerfully dumb thrillers I've seen in a good long while.

Help! is basically five sight gags played over and over in unimaginative variations. Halfway through, the film literally runs out of steam and the second half of Help! (especially the dismally dull Bahamas scenes) can only be tolerated by the most rabid of Beatles addicts.