Crowe's undeniable gifts -- his well-crafted individual scenes and his love for his characters -- are more evident here than his flaws.

As ambitious in scope as it is interpretively timid, The Situation delivers the requisite incendiary climax, but collapses in on itself with daft speeches about the elusiveness of truth in something called "the fourth dimension of time."

There’s a lot to like in writer-director Ray Yeung’s low-key romantic comedy, once you get past its overly enunciated identity issues, which were, according to Yeung, the film’s raison d’être.

All of the riffs are twice and thrice removed, but the effect is lively rather than tiresome, largely on the strength of game performances, Sean Lennon's atmospheric score and writer/director Jordan Galland's clear affection for his sources.

You can be sure that his victims die shirtless, and are as dumb as the hetero dimwits who fell prey to Jason or Freddy, but what you might not expect is that this queer-slanted slasher flick is actually pretty good.

It’s amusing, but it also eventually becomes tedious, like a comedy sketch that milks a good joke just a little too long.

The movie remains fragmented, elliptical and overplotted to the point of being hard to track. Still, it's worth hanging in for the finish, a birthday party for Gus (David Duchovny), the producer of the film and the one person they're all linked to. Then Soderbergh pulls off a delicious trick, a gesture of pure, tender, unabashed movie love that makes up for everything.

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.

This sort of nostalgia-drenched, sexual-coming-of-age saga has been done to death.

A baffling subplot involving smuggling drugs inside Danish cows falls flat, and if you're going to alter the Bard's ending, you’d better have a good alternative. Boyd does not.

It sure comes through on the belly-laugh front, from its animated in-flight, safety-manual credits through to the very last blooper ('ooligan Vinnie Jones' breathtaking, obscenity-filled rant against the "fahkin' Eye-ties").

Sadly for dramatic purposes, Jones' achievements seemed effortless, and the movie could really use the odd Ty Cobb wig-out.

My own little critic-in-training laughed her head off. Lacks taste, must try harder.

Madea's a riot, but what makes this richer, more textured follow-up to "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" so fascinating is the way Perry - a first-time director adapting his own hit play - shifts on a dime from a silly fart joke scene to one of intense, Sirkian melodrama.

It does, however, fairly bubble with speed-freak energy and a dry, laddish wit that keeps the jokes coming.

An exhaustingly melodramatic yarn...a sorely misguided attempt at tender, heartfelt realism, given a WB-glossy sheen and saddled with a script in which every line is the single most hackneyed thing the character could possibly say.

It's when adults with whitewashed notions of childhood get hold of a camera that kiddie fare - like this uninspired effort from writer-director Eric Hendershoot - goes limp.

Even without the usual monster mano-a-mano, Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo does not lack for action, offering plenty of animated eye candy in the form of the usual big ships, impossibly futuristic technology and a pleasing, purple-heavy color palette. [23 Jan 2014]

Country Strong is sillier - and more tone-deaf - than Paltrow's advice website, GOOP.

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

Heartfelt yet overly schematic debut feature.

Serviceable, wholly uninspired.

Directed by Donald Petrie ("Miss Congeniality") with about as much substance and style as a ham sandwich. It's a heavy hand that damps down such airy creatures as Hudson and McConaughey.

The sort of movie that you'd see on Lifetime if that channel actually respected its viewers' taste and intelligence, Jacques Thelemaque's feature directorial debut has been kicking around the festival circuit for five years, and now finally comes to theaters in a leaner cut that jettisons an extraneous subplot to get to the core of its human story.

Worth it, though, for the conviction and ramrod-erect bearing that pros Jackson and Jones bring to their roles.

Those who can forgive the director's pretensions will discover some fine filmmaking.

The editing looks like it was done in a blender, and the images of death and grief are so genre-primal that the Pangs hardly bother with dialogue.

Director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") keeps the computer effects to a minimum, emphasizing instead the essential ingredients of a Saturday-afternoon serial, namely, venom-tipped arrows, pissed-off cobras and a buxom babe.