Even at his worst - and Robert does some awful things - the actor almost makes you root for him, hoping he'll get away with it.

The film is also less bloated than "Bridesmaids" - a comedy is always more nimble at 90 minutes than two hours - and it's less maudlin, too. It's the aberrant, foul-mouthed child of "Superbad" and "Young Adult."

There are several cameos in For a Good Time, Call… by famous actors portraying the girls' phone-sex clients, including Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen, but they've been clearly been left to improvise, and they don't put much effort into their routines.

Even the story-within-a-story structure doesn't pay off. This material needed more substance and ideas - and less flash and sumptuous production values.

You end up feeling sorry for all the actors forced to humiliate themselves, except for McConaughey, whose portrayal of sadistic, manipulative evil is mesmerizing, in part because it was so unexpected. He continues to surprise. Friedkin, sadly, continues to coast.

You don't believe Celeste for a minute when she tells a new guy that she needs to be alone for awhile. You know he's coming back in short order to provide the happy ending. Here's hoping she doesn't want him to get a job, too.

Cosmopolis may be a cerebral mood piece, but it is loaded with strong performances that connect on an emotional level.

The best moments in director David Koepp's slight, dull movie are the scenes in which bike messenger Wilee pauses at busy intersections to figure out the path of least obstruction.

Everyone in Hit and Run is clearly having a good time. It's the audience that gets left out of the fun.

The film's earnestness makes up for its high corn factor.

The best artists - the ones whose work endures and matters and changes the world - are often troublemakers who challenge the status quo. Out of their defiance comes art. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, director Alison Klayman's riveting documentary of the esteemed Chinese sculptor/painter/iconoclast, is practically a handbook on social rebellion.

None of this is all that engaging. But the art design of the movie makes up for the slack story.

Chuck Norris is also in this movie, although you should know that he gets roughly five minutes of screen time, half of those devoted to his telling of a Chuck Norris joke. That is as funny as the movie's self-aware humor gets.

The best stuff comes early in Ruby Sparks, which was written by Kazan (granddaughter of Elia) and directed by the husband and wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine).

There's a streak of compassion in Dark Horse, a sincere empathy for a thoroughly detestable man, that is as surprising as anything in Solondz's earlier, more transgressive work.

The movie is oddly impersonal - you remember the concept more than the story - and feels like something that was made simply for the opportunity to pair Streep and Jones for the first time.

Still, though it's crude and juvenile in ways that makes you vaguely ashamed at laughing so much, The Campaign is versatile enough to sneak in a good shot or two at the American political system.

It looks fantastic, but it's also hard to sit through, because by that point The Bourne Legacy has repeatedly proven there are no surprises to be had here, no more fresh stories to be mined from this well. The stunts look exhausting, though. No wonder Damon bailed.

This is ultimately a movie about highly intelligent people in pursuit of trivial nonsense: At least Mulder and Scully caught a real monster every once in a while.

By the end, the movie has pulled off a small miracle: You become absorbed in the lives of these people for who they are and not what they own.

The new Total Recall fails on the most basic levels: Its characters are dull, and its action is duller.

As it winds down to its quiet, haunting finale, Oslo, August 31st illustrates how all of us, even the most damaged and broken people, have a purpose to fulfill.

It's really just a dance movie, interrupted sporadically for PG-13 romance, bad acting, ridiculous dialogue and earnest "let's put on a show to save our homes!" spirit.

The body part joke to alien joke ratio seems slightly skewed in favor of the former, which makes the humor more than a little repetitive. How many different ways can one film say: "Men are idiots"?

It's a beautiful, strange tone poem about childhood and innocence, set in a strange but still recognizable world where the polar ice caps are melting, crayfish shacks float down rivers and enormous aurochs, an extinct breed of bison, are sloughing their way toward our tiny, adorable narrator.

This is not the sort of movie you can just leave behind in the theater. And like any true finale to a trilogy, the picture doesn't work nearly as well if you haven't seen the previous two installments: It's not designed to stand alone, and it pays off all that has come before with an exuberant, thrilling high.

To Rome with Love is so inviting, and most of its gaggle of characters so diverse and likable, it's doubly disappointing that Allen, who wrote and directed the movie, can't think of what to do with them.

Aggressively, defiantly stupid.