Acher makes some astute observations about the contemporary dating scene, but this airless vehicle ultimately feels more like a stage piece than a feature proposition.

The new Vacation turns out to be a mostly bumpy, unpleasant trip.

Cage's loop-di-loop performance, the movie's surviving asset, at least hints at the themes of institutional illness and mortal decline that must have fascinated Schrader.

Once tragedy strikes, the clichés in Bram and Toni Hoover's screenplay win out, and Baker never stirs up enough energy to make it feel any different from a thousand other tales of underdog triumph.

The mood is somber, as cued by the contemplative voice-over narration. Sights of rubble, tent cities and an orphanage are devastating. But these seem to be mere backdrop for a very different movie.

Though the actor ably creates two distinct people, neither part is entirely convincing in this stuck-in-neutral feature, which combines a vague commentary on Italian politics with a vague portrayal of middle-aged awakening.

Keaton’s performance — sly, affectionately cranky, subtly reverberant — is certainly one of The Flash’s highlights. But it also reveals, with depressing clarity, the imaginative poverty of the movie’s design.

Because it's all shot to look like a South Korean noir, with umpteen slo-mo shots and stylistic noodlings to affect a kind of grimy urban anti-hero chic, Christensen effectively leeches the emotion from the central story.

Between lots of uneven acting, some embarrassingly bad dialogue ("How do you move forward when your soul is torn apart?!") and too many unconvincing, warmed-over moments, the movie, like its charisma-free characters, is a tough one to embrace.

Director Sanjay Rawal also allows the likes of Eva Longoria (an executive producer of the film, as is "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser) and members of the Kennedy dynasty to hijack the farmworkers' story. It's a reductive strategy that ultimately insults viewers' intelligence.

Ultimately the documentary falls short of explaining why Vreeland not only made his choice but maintained it.

With a 21/2 -hour running time, Work Weather Wife does not lack ambition. But for a film deliberately channeling Bollywood, its scope seems rather Lilliputian.

Although first-time feature writer-director Julius Avery may aspire to become a sort of Aussie Michael Mann — and perhaps lays an apt foundation here to do so — he has a ways to go in developing the kind of characters and world we can solidly invest in.

Ostensibly exploring a monumental what-if in a musician's life — a late-career reckoning that aims to make up for lost time — the movie is itself a missed opportunity, especially given that it stars Al Pacino.

The basic story's narrative and psychological simplicity — characters stating their beliefs over and over again — becomes an increasing burden.

Although the film has little of the smarts and the sizzle of the best of Goldman, it does have a splash of the writer's sense of irony.

[Minn] runs around with a microphone in hand like an if-it-bleeds-it-leads ambulance chaser, playing out that local news reporter stereotype often spoofed in mockumentaries.

This first feature by Jabbar Raisani is played out with considerable conviction on the part of its director and the tough-guy cast (led by Rick Ravanello), but the alien element is less convincing because of corny costumes and static-y special effects.

The Greatest Showman, for all its celebratory razzle-dazzle, in the end feels curiously lacking in conviction. Its pleasures, namely those Pasek-Paul songs, could be removed and repurposed for another story entirely, with no discernible loss in enjoyment or meaning...Its failures are rooted in something deeper: a dispiriting lack of faith in the audience’s intelligence, and a dawning awareness of its own aesthetic hypocrisy. You’ve rarely seen a more straight-laced musical about the joys of letting your freak flag fly.

The movie isn't fantastical enough to sustain itself outside the bounds of reality, yet every time something real creeps in, the movie stumbles and cowers.

The sense of place is as strong as the narrative is wobbly. The strongest character is the Louisiana.

Unfortunately, by the end, thanks to a misguided use of a few offensive slurs against gays and African Americans, the whole thing turns needlessly ugly, undermining the goodwill Cross had mustered.

As a sizzle reel, Manny feeds off the hype but leaves this man with fascinatingly renaissance tastes and ambitions still naggingly unexplored by the end.

Despite its true-events pedigree, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is woefully captive to B-movie crime saga tropes.

Although the storytelling technique may feel innovative, the story itself is not.

The film takes a long time to get going because of all the prolonged, glib chit-chat that loses whatever satirical edge it might have initially possessed.

With "Whiplash" setting the new bar for depicting the rigorous discipline and competitiveness in a music academy, the stale, one-note narrative seen in Boychoir sounds even more out of tune.

The results are decidedly more mind-numbing than bone-chilling.