This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren’t for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall.

The film is so single-mindedly determined to be light and comfortable, to not raise a sweat, that it forgoes even the mildest surprises. The only things that get heavy here are the viewer's eyelids.

The archetypal names are pure Walter Hill, the single-minded grudge mission borrowed from Donald Westlake's Hunter books - fine antecedents, though director George Tillman Jr.'s style is anything but terse, indulging rote slo-mo swagger set to secondhand musical cues.

On a storytelling level, Robots is in dire need of an upgrade.

Its 104 minutes of lukewarm-’n’-fuzzy comfort food will no doubt satisfy some, but those looking for deeper insight into our nation’s peculiar mating rituals will feel left out.

Intriguing yet muddled thriller.

Intermittently fun, but mostly just efficiently passable.

Ultimately, Jolie's efforts to establish a character are dashed against the film's increasingly inane dialogue.

The buildup is so compelling in this "Chinese Western" by He Ping (Swordsman in Double Flag Town) that its thunderous anticlimax of an ending can almost be forgiven. Almost.

She is known as one of the great muses, yet director Bruce Beresford, Wynter and screenwriter Marilyn Levy are never clear if this is by design or chance.

The film, which is directed by Matteo Garrone (The Embalmer), could do with a bit more plot: It doesn't resolve so much as collapse in utter desolation.

In its well-mannered way, this genteel film delicately keeps its platonic May-December love story from turning creepy. But without the sexual undertones and macabre humor of Hal Ashby's classic, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is merely a soft, slightly patronizing movie about the poignancy of aging.

Director David Kerr engineers Atkinson’s intricate routines with clockwork precision. That said, his first feature film has little to offer anyone not already attuned to modestly absurdist British comedy.

Beyond that surface grit, Intermission is still a fairly saccharine collage of self-redemptive gestures and happy endings that, true to its title, only fitfully compels.

It'll give fans exactly what they expect while passing unseen by anyone else.

While the entertainment value of Cloverfield is highly negotiable, it's clear that Abrams has consciously aligned himself with those filmmakers who have used the template of a grade-B monster/invasion movie -- Don Siegel, George Romero, Steven Spielberg -- as a stealth vessel for social commentary.

Ultimately this is a radio drama made into a movie with a single set.

Several potentially compelling narratives jockey for breathing room in this disappointing documentary about the unsolved 1990 heist of 13 paintings (valued at $500 million) from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Serviceable, wholly uninspired.

The clash between a winning cast, a witty script and Lansdown's technical weaknesses produces a pleasant, if not memorable, film blanc.

Stevenson manages to deliver a few poignant moments of nostalgia for the pleasures of youth against the stunning backdrop of the Maltese coastline.

Set against a production design seemingly inspired by the American flag, director Kenny Ortega's choreography is industrial and efficient, if haplessly stranded somewhere between Michael Jackson and the Village People.

There isn't a moment in the film that isn't overhyped.

Action and ideas -- they get in each other's way, pal. And director Ron Howard didn't want to choose between 'em. Good impulse, not such a good result.

By herself, Bullock isn't enough to hold up this enervating movie, which lumbers along ponderously until, at the end, it takes a giant leap into the suspension of disbelief that lost me altogether.

In the sense that everyone is interesting once their lives are sufficiently unpacked, Burt and Linda's story is not boring -- but beyond its tabloid sensationalism, it's not especially significant either.

A curious mixture of banality and revelation.

The dialogue and voice-over narration (by Gordon) are homily-heavy, and the staging sometimes awkward. The prison extras in particular are often left to stare blankly at the gut-wrenching action before them, with many, including Sutherland, looking awfully fit for men who've been starving for years.

There's not much more to this adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel than charm -- effortless, pleasurable, featherweight charm.

It's no great surprise that the best part of The Anniversary Party is the acting, even if Leigh and Cumming don't always direct themselves as well as they do some of their co-stars.

By highlighting the human costs of slavery to everyone BUT the enslaved -- here, relations between African-American domestics and their owners are cordial, even respectful, on both sides -- Maxwell risks being pilloried as an apologist for that institution.

Shooting Fish wants to hang with the hip crowd--witness the vibrant colors, the flashy camera work and the stream of catchy pop songs--but its heart just isn't wild enough.

Stuck with flat material and a star more adept at responding to humor than generating it, director Stephen Herek, in a vain attempt to generate laughs, enlists Cedric the Entertainer, as a convict-turned-preacher.

A maddeningly uneven triptych.

Gerber has a sharp cast at hand -- All work furiously, yet the director, with his fake backdrops and stately pacing, never settles on a consistent tone. Surely the novel had more bite.

On a Clear Day is in most respects "The Full Monty," only with swimming, not stripping, and no bursts into song or dance - only the usual canny sequencing of tears and laughter, interspersed here with fetching underwater photography and father-son issues up the wazoo.

In Griggs's eyes, they're all fools. Only old Ronnie, dearly departed though he may be, is worthy of reverence.

Its schmaltzy manipulations are pure 1940s Hollywood. Still, if you can get past the corn, the story exerts a not-unsatisfying emotional pull thanks to Yun's soulful gravity and a tenderness that Chen hasn't shown quite so openly since his 1984 debut, "Yellow Earth."

If as much thought had been expended on character and consequences as was lavished on bell-bottom diameters, collar widths and soundtrack selection, Blow might have been a richer, more intelligent experience, and much more Demme's movie than a carbon copy of other people's.

Far too complex and provoking.

The film is exhaustive -- and ultimately exhausting.

A half-baked classic.

Silly and pretentious would-be romance.

In Fitzgerald's hands, freestyling is an all-good means of personal expression and communal identification. The dark side of rap he treats only superficially, shortchanging a well-rounded discussion in favor of wholehearted celebration.

Part dewey-eyed paperback romance, part acid-trip planetarium show, this extravagantly silly movie comes on like the second coming of "2001."

The film gives good action (amid more tired spy business) but comes riddled with contradictions.

The kickoff is good -- the finale effectively literalizes the expression “broken home” -- but director Nelson McCormick doesn’t keep things “taut” in between. Rather than do scenes right the first time, he tends to déjà vu them (this usually involves Amber Heard, wearing not-too-much).

This remake seems to exist only to zap the original of its minor pleasures.

Joan Cusack and Kim Cattrall bring some nice ambiguity to their thankless roles as the mothers, while pintsize Kirsten Olson and punked-out Julianna Cannarozzo, both professional skaters, leaven this Disney sugarplum with much-needed wit.

Ultimately, however, a too-earnest script that pins the future of this community on a school-district singing contest, undercuts the film's natural performances and its sedate, contemplative pacing.

The film should also wow fans of Herbert Wise's "I, Claudius" and Franco Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" alike.

If you're a Cole Porter fan you might like the songs in De-Lovely, but as a portrait of an unusual marriage it's de-lumbering, de-liberate and de-cidedly flat.

As producer, writer and star of his first movie, Ray Jahangard gets points for confidence and nerve, but at the end of the day, it must be said that not everyone is meant to work in the movies.

The problem with Fahrenheit 11/9 is that it’s Trump’s Fahrenheit 9/11 rather than Trump’s Roger & Me.

The Lives of Others wants us to see that the Stasi -- at least some of them -- were, like their Gestapo brethren, “just following orders." You can call that naive optimism on Donnersmarck's part, or historical revisionism of the sort duly lambasted by the current film version of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys." I, for one, tremble at the thought of what this young director does for an encore.

For a movie with a lesbian theme, My Mother Likes Women is absurdly coy about gay sex. It may be the most heterosexually minded film about lesbians ever made.

Has no stylistic flair and little forward momentum, yet nearly every scene contains an amusing bit of business, much of it off to the side of the main action.

Stephen Frears has had more downs than ups of late, but I would never have thought the man responsible for "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "The Grifters" capable of stooping to pap as pappy as this unbearably chipper take on the real-life story of Laura Henderson.

Withdrawal From Gaza lacks both the nuance and the muscle of Yoav Shamir's excellent 2005 "5 Days," which probes far deeper into the relationship between settlers and the soldiers who came, on the orders of supersettler Ariel Sharon, to remove them.

It's all fitfully amusing, thanks in large part to Bouchard's richly comic performance, but the movie is never very involving, and it overstays its welcome by a good, long while.

Surprisingly wan film.

Put simply, this second feature by the young Austrian director Hans Weingartner is a put-on -- a glib anti-capitalist rant in which the rhetoric rarely rises above the you-too-can-save-a-child-for-less-than-the-price-of-coffee level.

The best thing about Committed, though, is Krueger, a filmmaker who's not only willing to lead us into the well-traveled terrain of romantic comedy, but able to show us something new there.

It ends up sagging into a pleasantly undistinguished pudding. The big news is that Matt Lauer, playing himself, can act. A little. Hardly at all, really. But he’s a jolly good sport, and quite handy with a fire extinguisher.

It's a soulless and dull bit of showmanship, but it sure sounds profound.

A lot here is genially entertaining, but it doesn't make for interesting or vital filmmaking, because while Levinson might honestly prefer rye, he makes movies the way Wonder Bread bakes.

The Chorus is sham art and questionable entertainment, but at the very least it sends you whistling out of the theater.

If Novocaine fulfilled the promise of its premise and cast, it could be great. As it is, the film is sabotaged by writer-director David Atkins' failure to set a consistent tone and follow through.

Yu’s filmography includes dozens of pictures between 1965 and 1994, but with its nonstop flurry of fighting, ersatz bloodletting and incidental hilarity, this remains his signature work.

A capable, soulful thriller with a love story as steamy as is possible when its lead characters are Orthodox Jews.

Too lazy (and, it seems, cynical) to give his audiences any more than he thinks they want, Perry appears to have given up on making a coherent movie altogether.

Chopped down to 40 minutes, this could be a wickedly cool short; as is, it’s a passable slasher that’s still nowhere near the interspecies smackdown we geeks have long imagined.

With little in the way of story or spectacle to offer nonbelievers, the film itself just preaches to the choir.

There's not a single surprise or moment of dramatic tension in Uncle Nino, which has already proved itself a hit as a self-distributed film in the Midwest.

Garner is no more than serviceable as the tightly wound Gray.

At times the picture feels like an affectionate parody of recent Iranian films.

A debut film that's more well-intentioned than funny.

Excusez-moi, but I'd rather see Omar Sharif punching out croupiers in a casino than dispensing comfort and joy in this sugared-up tale.

Pablo Berger's subtle satire Torremolinos 73 is almost there. Almost.

Though the story hardly lacks for event as it traces Khayyam's ascension from the peasantry to the royal court, the period costumes and sets look to be on loan from Medieval Times, as do most of the actors, and the boxy, harshly lit compositions make everything feel even more cardboard.

The final meet felt eternal to me, but little girls may love it all, and even if they don't, they're almost sure to practice their handstands when they get home.

Lunacy feels programmatic, the repetitive working through of an idea that had me checking my watch.

The Favor ultimately takes itself too seriously and ends up stranded in an unconvincing no man's land of cute bleakness.

The vaporous Wonderland never moves beyond its grungily romanticized view of the past.

In the new film, it's personal tragedy that provokes the journey, not social upheaval or even scientific curiosity -- which, predictably, makes for a story that's at once more familiar and less interesting.

While the film throws a solid pop punch, you could still swear you've seen it all before.

Bettauer means for Arthur and Joe's adventures to be a fable about empathy and hope, but her tone shifts awkwardly between silly and ponderous.

Loses focus and sags into a how-we-got-through-it family procedural.

The gorgeous Crudup is talented, but this charming asshole (more asshole than charming) is old hat for him, little more than another of the blank-eyed-loser-on-a-spiritual-quest roles in which he's been trafficking lately.

There is too much rambling contemporary footage here and not enough juicy historical material.

What the movie lacks is a point.

Blades does capture the obvious eccentricities of the skating world, and is funny up to a point, but by now Ferrell & Co. have the formula for a mild comedy down pat. What they need is a little soul.

Humdrum but marketable comedy.

If the contrast between Marine life and blue-blood luxury sometimes pulls the film in awkward directions, Anselmo's perceptive fondness for all his characters -- parents, children, grunts, even drill sergeants -- more than compensates.

Can't match an ounce of the suspense generated by contestants frantically buying airline tickets on Bruckheimer's own TV money quest, "The Amazing Race." This movie is a fortune wasted.

On viewing, the cuts seem negligible, but what is new and clearly improved is the sound, which now booms with each door slam and gunshot.

The plot frequently resets/realigns itself in the fashion of "Lost" or "Alias," as good guys become bad guys, friends become enemies, and combatants become lovers. To portray confusion and uncertainty is one thing; to make a film this unsure of itself, wracked by its own faulty footing and reticence, is quite another.

Each new superfluous Jennifer Aniston rom-com is already met with low expectations, but add some overcooked, middlebrow Indiewood quirk and you've got cinema's purest shade of beige.