The movie was always going to be a record of another unique New York institution, making way for another glass box.

As plodding and pretentious as it is ambitious.

All I wanted to do was escape from this aggressively ugly world and its equally unattractive characters. It's not that the movie is in bad taste or cheesy (though it is) but that all of its hyperviolence adds up to nothing: This thing is dedd.

As we learn, delightfully so, in Jeffrey Fox Jacobs' documentary A Sidewalk Astronomer, the Peking-born Dobson promotes the building and use of small, inexpensive telescopes to study the wonders of the sky.

The misleading trailers for the supremely goofy The Adjustment Bureau promise action-packed sci-fi. What you actually get is a love-struck Matt Damon running for the US Senate as he's stalked by fedora-wearing angels.

Should a serial killer blood-bath be so comfy and nostalgic for an audience? Not if it wants to maintain our interest. Over two hours, Cinco de Scream-o lumbers along with routine kills and few surprises even when it makes lame attempts at shocking us.

Following his triumphs in "The Constant Gardener" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Fiennes is superb as Todd.

The movie is one of the better pieces of family entertainment released so far this year.

Offers interesting views of ordinary life in Baghdad that Americans won't find on TV news. But the impact is lessened by the director's failure to let those who think the war is justified have their say.

This is a raunch-com that goes for — and gets — stunned laughs.

A stinging and frightening indictment of mainland China.

Much closer to Scorsese than "Scarface," Notorious gives a heartfelt yet clear-eyed sendoff to the late Brooklyn rapper Christopher Wallace.

Norton does a humanizing job of explaining Lionel’s unusual brain (he’s got a near-perfect memory) and defusing his outbursts with self-deprecation and humor.

Fraser, so good, takes what could be a joke, a flat tragedy, or even a lecture about weight and imbues it with gorgeous humanity.

An honorable, sober but completely unnecessary take on the Dickens novel, Great Expectations serves as a fine introduction to the story but won’t excite those familiar with previous versions.

The leads are likeable enough, but the script reanimates "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" tactics - a monster story supposedly made hilarious by being told by a savvy high schooler. These lines aren't even jokes, though, they're just collisions of the brutal and the banal.

The ideal date movie for the Passover-Easter season and beyond, guaranteed to keep audiences rolling in the pews.

Something high schoolers might yawn through in history class, but they have no choice. You do.

Director Niki Caro, whose 2005 film “North Country” gave creative life to another true story, doesn’t allow this one enough narrative twists; it starts off at point A and heads straight for point B, much like one of its many racing scenes.

The kind of lush, epic romantic weepie that Hollywood used to deliver on a regular basis for packed matinees at Radio City Music Hall.

The fine cast, the elegant settings and the swoony title song somehow draw you in.

What director Tom McCarthy’s intriguing film — which is a tad overlong — deftly explores are the cultural barriers that prevent us from achieving basic goals, such as solving a murder, and connecting with people unlike ourselves. The story is a lot more nuanced than France vs. America.

The ironically titled A Perfect Day isn’t entirely successful, but Del Toro is wonderful and there are many well-judged moments, some involving a 9-year-old (Eldar Residovic) whose return to his home underlines the tragedies of this particular conflict.

You don't have to be stoned to watch Mr. Nice, but it might help to be in the same state of mind as its real-life anti-hero, drug kingpin Howard Marks.

Make a movie about depressed people, and what do you get? A depressing movie.

Proceeds along familiar genre lines. But the denouement comes as a surprise, the five women are great screamers, and the cinematography and music add to the general feeling of menace.

The Concert is an art-house trap, the cinematic equivalent of one of those salads that turns out to have more calories than a Big Mac. And for the same reason: gobs of thick, sweet dressing.

The first film was set during the happiest time in human history: World War I. A tormented Wonder Woman took to the trenches and endured a solid hour of smoke and soot. Squint and you could maybe spot the main character. Wonder Woman 1984, by contrast, is visually dazzling with kaleidoscopic color and buoyant action sequences. The plot, thank Ares, is no longer so self-serious, even if it is a bit knotty.

Reyadas' radical rejection of filmmaking conventions is at first off-putting, but he's able to elicit remarkable performances from the cast of non-professionals while building tension that will hold viewers' attention. Love it or loathe it, you won't soon forget Battle in Heaven.

Lazy, shallow and repetitive, Phil Donahue's Body of War is one of the most incompetent documentaries to emerge from the Iraq war.

The Heat, which provides enough opportunity for wholesale mayhem as well as laughs, is pretty much a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

The script falls victim to the stereotypes and clichés so often found in movies about Asian-American families. Still, Lee shows talent, although it might take a feature or two before she finds her own voice.

Any movie that finds a plausible reason to give Lindsay Lohan a nun's habit and a machine gun is worth your attention.

What they’ve chopped up is a cacophony of half-baked characters and rushed ideas that leave you puzzled and unsatisfied. A better title would be “The Chore.”

Marred by sappy fantasy sequences and a sentimental finale that's out of step with most of the rest of the movie.

Like a thick slice of ham - tasty, elegantly prepared and served - that aspires to be gourmet fare but in the end turns out to be only half-baked.

You have to sit through 90 minutes that feel like three hours.

Cameron Diaz redeems her reputation somewhat in In Her Shoes, Curtis Hanson's schmaltzy, but reasonably entertaining dramedy about mismatched sisters.

The film never adds up to the sum of its parts, effectively a two-hour trailer for a movie I’d still be interested in seeing.

Sudeikis, often cast as genial everyman, is quite good in a more prickly role, and Hall brings her characteristic nuance to a smart but lost character.

Love Is All You Need is entirely predictable, and that’s OK in a film as lovingly made, well acted and enjoyable as this.

Gordon and Abel (who delivers one of the longest yawns in screen history) are howls as husband and wife. Their long, lean buddies seem custom-made for slapstick humor. Keaton would approve.

There are so many echoes of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” that it starts to feel like a barely disguised sequel. But those reminders, and the rather trite journey-of-self plot, are just decoration. This tender film works to remind us of how much we still love Deneuve, and succeeds in scene after scene.

Be advised: The film opens with a warning about “flashing lights and hallucinatory images,” and, while effectively unsettling, these do eventually get a little hard on the eyes.

Would have benefited from a tighter focus. There are too many interviews with crazies - and Levin's failed attempt to get Jewish entertainers to discuss "The Passion of the Christ" should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

It’s an impressively realistic touch from a studio that’s neither Disney nor DreamWorks.

None of this is particularly innovative, although Garcia and the elder Farmiga develop a nice spark and a gentle humor in their characters’ stolen day together.

This is a handsome movie, rich in period detail, but the stately pace slows to a crawl in the second half.

Though both Tierney and Bomer’s characters also veer into stereotype — her uptight disapproval, his sassiness — writer-director Timothy McNeil still crafts a fairly moving tribute to the notion, as Lin-Manuel Miranda once put it, that “love is love is love.”

An affable comedy that, unfortunately, has too many characters and subplots for its own good. The film also could do without the stereotypical character of a gay wedding planner who is supposed to be funny -- but is just embarrassing and clichéd.

Provides a different take on its subject than many of us are accustomed to: Nelson Mandela is no Martin Luther King Jr., and he was far more radical than even Malcolm X. If you’re under the impression that his ideas got him imprisoned for 25 years, think again: It was his bombs.

This documentary, which begins at a low key, gradually becomes intense and psychologically complicated.

This carefully observed slice of life is dragged down by the dreary and distracting hand-held camerawork.

Red has more snappy joy in store than practically all of last summer's busted blockbusters.

What everyone will remember about Goosebumps is . . . nothing. Except that it was kinda like “Gremlins.”

This is Beatty’s first film in 15 years, a project he’s been working on for 40 years, and it’s immensely pleasing to see him in such fine form. Or, as his obsessive-compulsive subject would say, such fine form. Such fine form.

Earnest and predictable.

Few of the increasingly far-fetched events that first-time writer-director Neil Burger follows up with are terribly convincing, which is a pity, considering Barry's terrific performance.

This is an overlong film interesting chiefly for its performances.

See it only for Paul Bettany's performance.

Unfortunately, the mind and motivation of Otomo -- remain a mystery.

Starts out promisingly, but quickly sinks under the weight of its own plot twists, ponderous pacing and Val Kilmer's monotonous performance as a ruthless special-ops agent.

Basinger appears to be literally phoning in from another movie in the highly improbable, maniacally action-packed thriller-cum-comedy Cellular.

Since they seem like real people we want them to work out their differences. In the second half, their story is nearly lost in favor of lots of documentary footage of the actual protests. This stuff was pretty ho-hum to look at two years ago, and it hasn't gotten more interesting with age.

This rousing, fact-based Norwegian movie covers an unusual subject -- the resistance movement in that country during World War II, whose best-known depiction came in "Edge of Darkness," a 1943 Hollywood adventure movie starring Errol Flynn as a stalwart fisherman outwitting the Nazi occupiers.

Gandhi is talented enough, and compassionate enough, that his tour of the human need to believe in something becomes not just mocking, but touching.

So why isn’t They Came Together more uniformly hilarious? Perhaps it’s that elusive problem of trying to explain why a thing is funny in the first place: Spelling it out deflates the joke.

Unpretentious and unexpectedly moving.

The movie is hysterical, and at just under 90 minutes, the gag never wears thin.

It's frightening enough, to be sure, but too often it feels like a well-executed but rote exercise.

This bizarre little movie is all over the place as drama - but genuinely compelling as a one-of-a-kind piece of public self-flagellation.

It proves once again that it doesn't matter if the camera is dancing a jig on the ceiling if the storytelling is no good.

Excellent performances redeem Jordan Melamed's gritty teenage version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

May be boomer-baiting formula, but this ingratiating, big-hearted holiday treat is as British as plum pudding - and the closest thing on the market to the famous Ealing comedies.

There's a winning emotional truth in the father-son scenes in this Spokane-shot sleeper, directed with skill and sensitivity by Jonathan Segal.

The Spandau Ballet documentary Soul Boys of the Western World has all the kooky clothes, zippy songs and ’80s optimism you could ask for in a film about a group that had only one big US hit (but several in the UK). Why do I find it hard to write the next line? The band wasn’t that great.

The overall effect tends to be as chilly and monotonous as Shannon’s demeanor as Kuklinski — a real disappointment.

For a film that takes place largely in a basket, Harper manages an epic mood. Nonetheless, you can’t help but feel swindled by Hollywood’s hot air.

The audio design of Little Joe is meant to be unsettling, but it may be for naught if audiences can hardly bear to sit through it.

The script is blaring and obvious at all times, and in his second directorial effort, David Schwimmer doesn't have a clue how dull it is for the audience to endure scene after scene of anguish, crying and screaming matches

Almereyda's muddled Happy Here and Now should have stayed on the shelf - where it's been gathering dust for several years.

The Rock is funny and charismatic in “Hobbs & Shaw,” and his bro chemistry with co-star Jason Statham is a joy. The pair slinging vicious insults at each other is almost vaudevillian — it would make a decent live tour. And then there’s the rest of the movie.

This is an exhausting, eyeball-gougingly ugly 90-minute assault of non-stop action, with an all-star voice cast shouting witless lines and a wide variety of objects lobbed at the audience in the crudest 3-D fashion.

Tabatabai delivers a strong performance and the script, although not always plausible, touches on important issues like bias against gays and Muslims.

Go for Zucker was a smash back home, where it was hailed as the first German comedy about Jews since World War II. But it will take more than that to make American audiences laugh.

How the feds inadvertently resurrected the performing career of stoner comic Tommy Chong by busting him is the ironic subtext of Josh Gilbert's one-sided documentary a/k/a Tommy Chong.

There hasn’t been this bizarre mixture of hooah and death since John Wayne hung up his combat boots.

Good value for the money, a funny, character-driven action comedy with three disparate stars -- who have great chemistry together.

The animation is also a hybrid: almost quaint-looking, traditionally animated characters plopped into elaborate, sometimes quite stunning computer-animated backgrounds.

The abysmal “Gucci” would get a better grade, perhaps, if it was a term paper titled “How to Make the Assassination of a Famous Person Boring.”

Luke Wilson, who has appeared in a long run of bad movies, seizes on his juiciest role since "The Royal Tenenbaums" here.

I’ve always had my reservations about Sorkin as a director. His scripts tend to be better than his final products. Those druthers started to fade with the moving “Trial of the Chicago 7” and are now completely gone after “Being the Ricardos.” His vision of ‘50s TV production is spot-on — nostalgic, quick, boozy, but without the glamor of Hollywood movie-making.

Bad Moms is like “Sex and the City: The Sneakers-and-Minivan Years,” a good-natured girl-power comedy that balances a bland sitcom structure with some weird and hilarious moments.

In a nice change from Seyfried’s 2008 turn as the ingénue, we want to befriend James’ Donna, not mute her. She’s as gorgeous as she is committed, as funny as she is emotionally true. A big talent.

Schechter’s soul-scored film is impeccably styled for the time period, and its easy pacing reminds me of the gold standard for Leonard adaptations, “Out of Sight.” It’s not that good, but it’s within striking distance.

The cheesehead noir Thin Ice presents Greg Kinnear in a role that's almost too easy for him: He's a morally flexible Wisconsin insurance salesman for whom honesty is the least-likely policy.

Too much of the film is given over to the soap opera of Elmer's life.

It may have the faintest relationship to any kind of reality, but Jones' tart performance cuts through the saccharine.