A twangy soundtrack, a dying protagonist, spelled-out themes of family reconciliation and facing death… Look, if that’s your thing, you may as well add a point or two to my review and enjoy the hell out of Here Awhile.

It isn't going to set the world on fire, but it's perfectly acceptable for what it is.

As it stands, despite an impressive cast and gorgeous cinematography, there isn’t much to hold the viewer’s attention.

Race can satisfy with a steady pace.

There is an interesting set-up here for something great but Battle In Heaven never lives up to the expectations.

The first half of Luis (Angel Eyes) Mandoki's new thriller is as whiteknuckle, nerve-wracking as they come. The second is such a mishmash of overblown action and gaping plotholes, it's hard to believe it's the work of the same director.

Individual parts are actually quite funny, and the music, the most marketable element, is quite good. It's just that most of us cringe at photos of ourselves taken while we're really loaded. Too often, Hey, Happy! feels as if that embarrassment was taken to the next level.

There’s something missing in this concoction: self-aware humor, a courage of its convictions, a driving force that propels the plot forward . . . Perhaps it was all just too steep a hill to climb.

The tempo of the film does well to cure the unlikely romance with just the right amount of anxiety and the leads — especially Cook, who is wonderfully promising here — create an earnestly heartfelt chemistry.

Boasting an astounding cast — Nicolas Cage, Laurence Fishburne, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Leslie Bibb, and Clifton Collins Jr. — it’s even more disheartening that Running with the Devil is a garbled crime expedition that never follows through on its various subplots.

You keep waiting for the pot to boil over, but it never does. Instead, Barker lets the steam vent out all too easily and the film falls flat in the end as a result.

Although sincere and well-crafted, the repetitive lethargy of A Still Small Voice would perform much better in a short art film, not a full-length feature.

Obviously the director has her point of view on the subject and the film is thusly slanted, but this bias, while good for the cause, may not be best suited for thorough documentary filmmaking.

When the film goes into its second half, the initial fascination has almost worn off. You still want to see how the puzzle is put together, but you want to see it rather sooner than later.

It's a bit of a shaky first screenwriting effort for Coupland, but not without its charms.

Watching this movie is like sitting on your couch for two hours to catch a little network prime time: you may be mildly entertained, but damned if you’ll remember any of it five minutes later. On the plus side, you probably won’t care.

While elements of the film may be a little cliché, I found it highly relatable. It would be dishonest to say I didn’t enjoy myself.

Give Harsh Times an "E" for effort, but not much else.

The plot is romantic comedy boilerplate from start to finish and, with the story's outcome a foregone conclusion, the least the director could have done is throw in a bit of cultural enlightenment to keep the audience occupied while he connects the dots.

It'll appeal to that segment of the population that goes to movies like this on Valentine's Day, but other than that, Something New feels pretty worn.

All in all, Johnny English isn’t a bad effort. Rowan Atkinson is much more of a comedian than Mike Myers is, but unfortunately Myers had the spy spoof down pat.

The Last Thing He Wanted is trying to be too many things at once. It goes off on several tangents that don’t ever conclude.

So, just know that A Complete Unknown comes off as really boring throughout. None of this will stop Chalamet from shining out with the ultimate movie Dylan. It is a tousled hair masterwork of a performance, completely adapting the essence of Dylan to a folk music Batman.

You People chooses to bounce along from one awkward situation to the next, with little time to let the characters feel like actual people.

The performances are understated and quiet, presented in dark cinematography, where most of the action happens in shadow. There are too many characters to keep track of, which dilutes the story, and it’s not always clear what is happening, but in the finale, it all comes down to one key idea about not breaking the rules.

To me, the film is boring, lifeless, too dreary for its own good, and has really annoying quirks and habits that just irritate me.

For a movie like this, good is not good enough; it has to be well above average for a recommendation. Unfortunately, I found myself bored through most of Mortal Kombat II.

House Party puts out quite the spread and has put effort into its lights and music. But nothing that happens will give us any inspiration to accept an invite to future festivities.

It carries a smattering of scares and a helping of lore, rendering this underground romp an enjoyable one.

It’s rarely clever enough to be funny nor frightening enough to be suspenseful; leaving it to sag like Sandler’s cargo shorts.

Washes away whatever unique filmmaking personality Franklin has.

The Postman isn't as atrocious as the inane trailers and media hype have indicated, but like "Waterworld" a lot of the prerelease scrutiny is well warranted.

While Trudell has a few interesting and emotional moments in its second half, from the start it is badly hobbled by its worshipful tone.

The big screen has a very difficult time capturing the talent of James Van Der Beek - literally. The aspect ratio of projected film simply cannot accommodate the full breadth of his enormous melon head.

Imagine if the team that made "The English Patient" tried to make the same kind of movie, with even more brave-lads-fighting-the-Jerries porn and this time with Extra Added English country manor porn, and without really good actors, and this movie is what you’d have.

The Longest Yard lives or dies with its physical humor, a form of recent comedy I like to call slapstick sadism.

On the whole, The Brothers Grimm is a mess; a formerly daring director’s attempt to cash in on big studio backing even after the rug has been pulled out from under him.

Not a good film. In fact, it's a rather bad example of that already barrel-bottom-scraping genre, the teenybopper romantic comedy.

A hope for pleasure is almost as enjoyable as the pleasure itself,” a character quotes Shakespeare at one point. I didn’t derive any pleasure in hoping for pleasure while watching Esau – and man, did I hope.

Every now and then, a line or a subtle moment in someone’s performance has some truth in it, but little is sustained in Bullitt County.

A dull film, inspired by a true story.

Clearly a love letter to Paltrow, offering her plenty of moments to show off, but her acting is often flat and the self-adoration of the movie is almost too much to handle.

One of the drawbacks to rushing your sequel to theaters is that there's not a lot of time to hone dialogue and performances.

Everything here is broad and very silly, but the offbeat foreign vibe keeps us intrigued, mostly because the film's sense of humor is so unusual and unexpected.

I didn't hate this film. I didn't find it to be a waste of time or brain waves. Given the reasons I saw the film, I suppose I'm 50% disappointed.

It is a shame the film doesn't cast a wider net into deeper political waters – the outrage is barely scratched in this production.

There's a lot of goofy spy game crap going on, peppered with lesser quality action sequences. Ugh. I'm just so depressed and disappointed right now. I need a shoulder to cry on.

Watanabe's charismatic performance and a couple of colorful minor characters aside, The Last Samurai has little to recommend it.

Should have billed itself as a fairy tale, as that’s the only possible way to swallow what Prince-Bythewood and Kidd are feeding us.

The film is just too much exposition, too long, too convoluted, too many characters and ultimately a huge disappointment.

Scenes involving Anne Hathaway in particular land with a painful thud. In an attempt to flesh out the “adoring, supporting wife” role, Haynes shoots himself in the foot, bringing much attention to an underdeveloped character, who, despite all the pseudo-feminist speeches, amounts to, yes, the “adoring, supporting wife.”

About as bland, predictable, and self-important as you’d expect.

The stars have zero chemistry and the movie is none too thrilling.

The film doesn't have anything but bad news for Spacey fans anxious for the actor to break a stinky streak.

Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou has created so many memorable films (most recently the wuxia double-play "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers") that one can easily excuse his new clinker Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles.

Captures the building of the freeway as well as the lives of the people working on it. The problem is, the lives of the people aren't all that interesting and the freeway being built isn't either.

Everything is immersed in murky browns and washed-out grays; the film is so devoid of color that it’s almost black-and-white. The by-the-numbers script by Matthew Rogers careens along, every so-called twist and turn predictable. No flair or creativity seems to have been applied to any of it.

This shameless excuse for children’s entertainment would be a blemish on any hack’s resume.

Handsomely produced but emotionally inert offering.

Beautifully produced but emotionally vacant drama.

Who is this film for? It’s for the Christian followers who haven’t really read their scripture.

The soundtrack deserves mention, mostly because its relatively high quality makes the film itself that much more irritating.

I just don't understand why certain filmmakers rely on cliché plots and stereotypical characters when they make their debut. Nothing seems fresh or daring.

Besides the main character, we see a bunch of loners attempting to fill a bit more of the unfocused main plot with distracting sub-plots that feel more ludicrous than fulfilling. Even with promising pouches of intrigue and an interesting, atypical character, we don’t get a full delivery of that promise.

Perhaps this movie would have been better off if it starred Steven Seagal and Tom Arnold.

The result is a great-looking bore.

Maybe someday an enterprising filmmaker will make a film about this forgotten chapter in Muslim-Jewish relations. It would be a lot more compelling and memorable than the nonsense in Monsieur Ibrahim.

The film is a bore.

On all accounts, filmmaker John Swab’s gratuitous and grave Run with the Hunted fails to live up to the promise of its premise. Instead, it comes off as a lunkheaded exercise in self-aggrandizing mental masturbation.

Certainly, modern interpretations should add their own spin to an ancient tale, but in the hands of director Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf becomes... silly.

Not only did those so-called "demons" take the form of animals, but they actually talked!

The movie's original moments drown in its overall derivation.

For the most part, Gerry is a lot of self-indulgent baloney.

Sadly, Naqoyqatsi quickly degenerates into a monotonous skein of banal images which strangely reinforces the message that we're living in a damn dull society.

In the end, the whole shebang comes off like a bunch of snotty, rich white kids screwing each other and screwing each other over.

Serves as more proof, as if any were needed, that Allen desperately needs to devote more time to polishing his scripts, and less to heedlessly banging out one film a year, year in and year out.

A stale and poorly researched documentary.

Attack the Block this is not. Shortcut is too violent and foul-mouthed for kids, yet too tame and juvenile for adults, bound to leave horror aficionados indifferent. You’ll be better off watching Jeepers Creepers 2 instead, and that’s really saying something.

Regardless, what probably made the show so tolerable and popular was the fact that each episode was under a half an hour long. This movie is about 84 minutes long and gets tiresome after the first 20 minutes or so.

The film is depressingly wholesome. In that respect, it accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to distract the children of America from the horror of their eventual futures for a couple more hours.

You've seen it in "Carrie", you've seen it in "Prom Night 2", and you've seen it in "Urban Legends 2: Bloody Mary". Oh, you haven't seen that one? Well, join the club. Tamara is a hybrid of all three films.

Sometimes Duck Season is amusing. More often, though, it is boring and icky.

I find nearly every film about mentally challenged characters excruciating to watch...None of these movies ever come close to accurately depicting what it’s like to live with mental challenges.

Goes south early and its director never comes close to turning things around.

One thing that works well is Catalina Saavedra’s performance as the tormented Olga. The actress finds truth in an underwritten character. She reminds us that cinema needs more well-acted, nuanced films about those who are still inexplicably shunned. Sadly, Marylin brings little to that table. It purports to say a lot with a little but ends up saying very little with, well, a little.

Might not have been a bad film if its characters never said anything and some obnoxious visual metaphors were removed.

Despite the cast's capable portrayals, it's difficult to connect with or care about any of these characters as, one by one, each stabs another in the back.

It’s not that Euphoria lacks good intentions or comes off as superficial in its treatment of death and dying. It’s just that there’s so much potential for grace or humor or despair or horror inherent in its premise. It’s sad to see so much of that thematic territory go so thoroughly, if politely, unexplored.

Fairly mundane and frequently boring.

While decent in capable directorial hands – or as a supporting character – based on the evidence on display here, Carano doesn’t seem quite capable of carrying a film yet, let alone pull a dreary feature like Daughter of the Wolf out of the murk.

Fails as a sequel because we’re not in the 90s anymore. Gone are the days when characters could answer questions with questions and hypothetical situations and still sound clever and cool.

The Parish does not even attempt to avoid sentimentality or predictability. Tony Tibbet’s awkward editing reveals a man doing his best to mask budgetary, directorial, and auditory blunders.

Another rah rah girl power film, is your formula sports film.

While The Break-Up fancies itself the heir apparent to other vindictive failed relationship movies like "Modern Romance" and "War of the Roses," its lead actors lack the comparable appeal to hold our interest

For a film that purports to endorses equality and female empowerment, its female characters are so uniformly idealistic they’re borderline interchangeable.

Won't make anybody’s "best of" lists a year from now, but it's nowhere near as offensive as some other examples of this moldy genre.

The film presents the Rwandans in the worst possible way: venal, corrupt, vicious, stupid, barbaric and completely incapable of governing themselves. Honestly, I've seen more intelligent and sympathetic depictions of Africans in Tarzan movies.

Monotonous. For while it offers a few precious laughs, Talladega Nights simply apes the look and feel of most recent Ferrell movies.