One Day in September does "being there" very well -- I just wish director Macdonald had spent a little more time explaining why we should want to be there in the first place.

Remind(s) us of the power of good old-fashioned character-driven movies.

Lacks dramatic tension and fails to bring this great music alive. It does not sing.

It's blatantly manipulative pairing of an adorable young boy and a selfish, honesty-challenged older woman [is] so calculating that I could never get emotionally involved.

The story, ultimately, is about the classic conflict between a desire to cherish and protect one's unique gifts from a brutal world and a more practical instinct to compromise beauty.

While it has its scary moments, and while its central conceit is refreshingly imaginative, there's ultimately not much there there.

Like the giallo films it pays tribute to, Berberian Sound Studio is more of a sensory experience than a dramatic one.

While there are some okay side stories (stuff with the daughters and daughters’ friends) it kinda feels like attending a dinner party and checking in on the first world problems of a friend you kinda like, but don’t like enough to ask any follow up questions.

What's unfortunate is that Toothless is starring in a toothless story.

A glimpse into how three different definitions of love can find themselves quietly at odds, the interactions between our three leads are always convincing if not always compelling.

A cool and rather detached movie...Heat generates lots of energy but gives off little light.

A difficult, ambiguous film.

It's sumptuous, archaic, and longer than a firehouse ladder.

Bulworth shoots along with great vigor, and its non-politically correct jabs are occasionally exhilarating.

The human interest story that occupies fully two-thirds of this three hour plus epic is so flat and unconvincing that, for once, you find yourself longing for the disaster footage to start.

Given the enormous praise, the film falls short.

Far from perfect, and at 122 minutes it's way too long, but after surviving an overly schematic and even hectoring first half, finally delivers the emotional goods.

Drags on far too long.

For those seeking even a little adventurousness in their filmgoing experiences, the movie will wear thin very quickly.

Like "American Beauty" without the fangs - or the magic.

When the writing is good, Go is good, and when the writing is flat, things fall apart.

If it weren't so pushy about selling itself, The Dish might have been a very special movie.

Perhaps you have to have lived through the 1960s to relate.

There is a point in the movie when this mayhem crosses the line from wildly imaginative to downright insufferable.

An exercise in outrageous style over substance.

I really wish a younger man than Clint Eastwood had directed it.

Prince Avalanche occupies a strange space between [Green's] broadly comedic fare and devoutly character-driven dramas, and while we’re happy to see him closer to the latter mode once more, let’s hope that he’ll be back in a bigger way the next time out.

It's not that this is lousy entertainment, it's just that it's a Serious Topic given unnecessary Celebrity Sheen.

Intelligent thriller--turns-- into an embarrassing gothic horror show.

Doesn't seem to have anything to say.

This is a pretty leaden cinematic experience.

Ross might have been better served by dismissing verisimilitude altogether and going for a real fable-fable to make what is essentially a very simple point about the dangers and rewards of accepting life's beautiful risks.

If only this movie were rich enough, strong enough to be worthy of this (Dafoe's) performance.

While the film's mood is dreamy, dark, and gentle, it's also very slow and seldom leads to much of a intellectual or emotional payoff.

Sunshine's historical reference-heavy narrative walks a fine line between novelistic tragedy and comically overstated melodrama, falling down on the job more than once.

Taylor’s film so egregiously picks and chooses from Brown’s life that the result is a holey and unsatisfying document that fails to give due respect to much of the singer’s life (especially the more unsavory stuff).

Hamlet, like its title character, is a mopey, dopey thing that you just want to scream at: Do something!

Too slow-moving and too understated in much of its humor.

But the movie is so confused about where it wants to go, it suffers from the same identity crisis as its protagonist.

Kusama understands her subject intimately, and it shows.

Gitai, a veteran documentary director, refuses to find an easy resolution to the story, and that will frustrate as many people as it pleases.

Unfailingly energetic, 10 Things is like a puppy that can't stop wagging its tail, begging for attention...Even more than "Cruel Intentions," this movie plays like an awkward high-school production of a classic.

The evidence Herzog serves up is impossible to dismiss.

This fantasy-tinged romance leaves a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

Its grimness is so unrelenting that I can only recommend it to filmgoers who need a movie to tell them that incest is bad.

It has its moments.

The Homesman certainly wins a few points for trying a different type of Western. There are no greedy land barons and no gunslingers drawin’ at high noon. But being unique isn’t enough if the story remains uneven and the characters don’t feel real.

Livingston is especially good at capturing Peter's passive rebelliousness, which suggests the suddenly uncooperative worker who defies employer logic in Herman Melville's "Bartleby."

As a primer on the arcana surrounding the profession of personal injury lawyer (more familiarly known as ambulance chaser), A Civil Action is deeply, and even passionately, informative. As a drama and character study, though, it mostly misses the mark.

Europa Report doesn’t entirely sell out to convention by the end, but the steps it takes to reach its noble conclusion reflect a lack of imagination and invention, especially for a film that initially seems to champion such qualities.

When it counts, this film is absolutely successful.

It has to be noted that the use of music in this film is the worse in recent memory: maudlin, syrupy, and overwrought.

A Mexican film that reaches for a very weird and risky tone, and, I think, fails.

The execution of that script – is so clumsy and over-written that nothing in it sticks. There’s a symphony of visuals here, and big strange ideas, but when it comes to the actual characters, we get automatons sleepwalking through clichés.

When the film is sexy, it's truly sexy, assuming that you believe sexiness has something to do with the exploration of a connection between people.

A good, though unremarkable, film.

The Sapphires may be your stock triumph-over-adversity show-biz story – but then, how is it that we never get tired of seeing that story?

This much-anticipated but terribly underwhelming black comedy represents a seriously squandered opportunity.

Disappointingly dumb.

This meeting of two giants of European cinema only briefly comes to life.

There's not a single moment when you forget it's Weaver; she always seems to be inhabiting this poor character's soul for her own purposes.

It isn’t just the bright colors and the costumes but every visual aspect of Byzantium that sings. Neil Jordan knows where to put the camera. It’s just a shame he wasn’t able to inject a little life inside that frame.

Doesn't know when to stop with the jokes about other horror movies and settle down to tell a coherent story.

If anything saves this movie, it's the acting.

Consistently runs the danger of substituting cool but ultra-hyper, modern special effects for boring old human sentiment.

It’s merely somewhat better than last year’s meandering dud — a slight improvement on a movie that should have been pretty easy to improve upon.

The movie gives us episodes from her life, and although some of them are charming and all of them well-played, I occasionally found myself wondering why I should want to be interested in this person.

If the current flood of pre-millennial tension movies teaches us nothing else, it demonstrates how desperate we've all become to see whether we could make our peace in the time provided, if forced to by circumstances beyond our control.

This is design work of the highest caliber and it is impossible to not enjoy simply watching these little buggers run around. It is unfortunate, however, that the creativity, originality and propulsive storytelling found in the original “Monsters Inc.” just didn’t matriculate with them.

Just because you can make a movie in a day doesn't necessarily mean moviegoers should take an hour and a half to watch it.

This could be the year's most pretentious Hollywood film.

A dark, dreary and dull “Mad Max in Neutral” from director David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) that tries to pass off its blunt narrative and repetitiveness as some sort of style.

Altman is just as nastily misogynistic as ever.

An occasionally powerful, always heartfelt drama.

(Herron) just doesn't make the case that this book was worth filming.

Thoroughly artificial and overly schematic, to the point of caricature even, but often lively and witty nonetheless.

A very odd cinematic creature.

As he explains the male-male relationships and the absence of stigma or judgment, the film soars.

Gibson's performance is robbed of his customary humor, and he flounders around in search of the character's core.

Out of the Furnace is no disaster, but it doesn’t achieve what it hopes to achieve, and it has no one to blame but itself.

Mostly this film skims by on the surface, its conflict and climax visible from the opening five minutes.

What makes the film ultimately successful, though, is the outstanding comic talents that inhabit it, especially Zahn and Macy.

A surprisingly adult exploration of religion refracted, as always, through (Smith's) insistently pop-culture kaleidoscope.

Entertaining as it often is, Outside Providence feels as if it were a collection of installments from an unusually raunchy television series.

The best thing about this new Godzilla is that it spares no expense or effort to deliver big, burly IMAX-ified action... The worst thing about this new Godzilla is how that’s the best thing about it.

Coy, cutesy, sentimental, and shamelessly manipulative.

Has a soundtrack crammed with infectious music gleaned from fairly surprising sources.

This director's (Winterbottom) reach is impressive, but this time it doesn't quite grasp.

All fleeting charm where it could have been one of the most memorable films of the decade.

Even Besson’s most bold choices – and this is a film that goes weird, and then just keeps getting weirder – don’t seem so revolutionary when packaged in such well-tread trappings and increasingly shoddy writing.

The Boxtrolls is a swing-and-miss for Laika; when you move forward with revolutionary techniques while standing still in terms of your themes, stories and settings, no amount of technical trickery or animation genius can bring the boring to vivid life.

Mildly amusing, both charming and diverting, it plays like a La La Land home movie.

Much like Brandy, “List” tries and tries and tries to get the job done, but frankly, the satisfaction only ever comes in spurts.

Worth a look, even if it doesn't quite find the internal logic it seems to be searching for.

The adherence to specific facts and actual events hampers the film, as it often does biographical movies.

It's darker, stranger and pushes more buttons.

While writer-director Frank Darabont often fails to make King's story plausible, that's no fault of the actors. The performances are the movie's strong suit.

More aggravating than endearing, although there’s an interesting idea buried beneath all the cutesy plot details.