Todd Robinson’s Phantom gives us a couple of things we haven’t seen in a while: the great Ed Harris and a Cold War submarine thriller. It’s not something you want to plunk down $12 for, but just diverting enough to check out when it arrives on Netflix Instant.

What the Charles Darwin biopic Creation mainly creates is a do-over for Paul Bettany: This time he gets to have a beautiful mind.

Feels much more like a very, very long, music video, albeit one made for an audience that gets off on high-tech firepower rather than nearly-naked babes.

More than a few will agree with the penguins, who netted the film a PG rating with the utterance, "Well, this sucks."

It’s a compelling story, and Minac has told it before, notably in 2002’s “The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton.” This new documentary seems aimed at a classroom audience.

Neil Jordan's Ondine has a split personality. It starts promisingly as a fantasy but ends disappointingly as a thriller.

This overlong drama is the first (mostly) English-language film from the talented Swedish filmmaker Moodysson (“Lilya 4-Ever”). Any semblance of subtlety was unfortunately lost in translation.

A very average, ordinary film that goes haywire.

Awfully poky, even for an art film.

As apocalypse scenarios go, this one feels both retro and commendably topical: Nuclear bombs, remember those? (Also: Edward Furlong, remember him?)

A couple of heavyweight actors — Tim Roth and Cillian Murphy — get top billing, but this British drama belongs to young Eloise Laurence, memorable as Skunk, the diabetic daughter of Roth’s kindly solicitor.

It's moody and atmospheric. But with the exception of a few cool moments that remind you of Ferrara at his best, it's dull and written with little attention paid to basic storytelling.

Unfortunately, the film turns out to be not quite as twisty as promised: it’s less a pretzel than it is a Cheez Curl. And I do mean cheez: The resolution, when it comes, is wholly lacking in nutritional value.

Thereare moving moments in this over-hyped satire by the Israeli-Arab writer-director-actor Elia Suleiman, and it's fascinating to get a picture of daily life in prosperous Palestinian neighborhoods.

Much of the action is strident and cartoonish -- but the romance at the core remains tender and true.

Worthwhile mainly because of "Inside Out," a 28-minute autobiographical film written, directed and starring Jason Gould, who not-so-incidentally is Barbra Streisand's son.

Claiming that from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq, the US government has misled the public - and the media - on the reasons for going to war.

Mongol really isn't worth leaving your yurt for.

Agonizingly slow-moving and talky, it consists primarily of conversations between two men in a truck.

The quality of the acting, Cave's hellfire score and the heavy atmospherics of the directing merely dress up a cliché: Violence leads to more violence.

Nowhere near as funny as you’d expect with its stellar cast.

The cast, so packed with talent that Jean Reno and Cherry Jones barely register, is stuck with stagey dialogue. Juliet Rylance, in the Nina part, has a particularly hard time. But there are good points, including Janney’s obvious pleasure in her part.

A genially scattershot mockumentary.

The movie begins to wear out its welcome even before a conclusion of breathtaking corniness.

Chism’s characters are pleasingly odd, and though she can’t string much of a narrative together — there is a stop-and-start quality to the picture that grows tiresome — a few of the set pieces are funny.

The movie was largely improvised, which lends itself more to scenes than a feature-length film.

A Walk in the Woods is broad as a barn door, with two stars who have minimal chemistry — and there’s not much in the way of reflection about mortality.

Stevens has a keen sense of the absurd, but the whole thing is too forced - and his use of "rotomation" (last used in Richard Linklater's "Waking Life") to give a Timothy Leary-swirl to key dramatic moments winds up looking incongruous.

Farahani determinedly underplays her character, and is often very touching. But while there is a satisfying final scene, The Patience Stone is essentially a monologue, and Atiq Rahimi (directing the adaptation of his own novel) doesn’t have what it takes to make the story more dynamic.

The photographs on view are dazzling; the way they are shown here is somewhat less so.

Tried to turn this into a replay of its 2000 military-rescue hitBlack Hawk Down -- though, in the end, it's almost totally lacking in the serious hardware and viscerally paced action that propelled Ridley Scott's movie to the top of the box office.

Like the artificially sweetened junk food it is, this all goes down pretty easily.

A good edit would have allowed the film's worthy, obviously heartfelt, message to shine.

Late August, Early September is less a living, breathing movie than a dry exercise in theory. [07 Jul 1999, p.048]

Rebecca Hall is wasted as Sandvig's sister and the film's voice of reason.

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.

The actors can't escape the confines of the warmed-over, coming-of-age-in-suburbia script by Mills, from a novel by Walter Kirn.

Suffers from a lack of focus and a sitcom script.

This Disney sequel to 2013’s “Planes” is a lot like flying coach: serviceable, but not trying that hard.

Perhaps faithful to the spirit of the man, but frustrating if you’re actually curious about the facts.

Despite a sympathetic lead performance from Steve Carell, the fictionalized version bogs down in extensive animated doll sequences, so similar they grow increasingly tiresome.

It puts a conservative twist on Michael Moore-ism, with campy stock footage, deadpan humor, mocking musical cues and less-than-ingenuous questions.

Sadly, with the Soviet Union gone, the art faces a new enemy: Islamic extremists.

Basically a feature-length rock video from Germany with appealing performers, decently written characters, a killer score, and an interesting premise.

Hardly a deep examination of gender relations or character, but in its unsentimental way it's a tender and charming story of friendship and tolerance.

An extraordinary woman like Eva Kor deserves a less ordinary biography.

Every episode of "Law & Order" I've ever seen has a more complicated and plausible plot, punchier dialogue and more New York authenticity, all in less than half the time consumed by this poky would-be finance thriller.

Stewart’s restrained performance is affecting, the film seems well-researched about what it’s like to try to deal with Gitmo detainees who throw their own feces, and it isn’t as tendentious as the average Hollywood take on the subject.

While Greenwood and Posey turn on enough charm to make this a fairly painless experience, Zack Bernbaum’s And Now a Word From Our Sponsor is a mild, toothless satire — a “Being There’’ where there’s barely any there there.

Earnest and predictable, it's the cinematic equivalent of a pop hit by star Selena Gomez's boyfriend, Justin Bieber.

A surprisingly tone-deaf combination of two wildly different stories that simply don’t work in concert.

The tiny stage can barely contain Reno's gale-force personality, as she paces and rants a stream-of-conscious monologue.

The posthumous campaign to polish Michael Jackson's tarnished reputation continues apace with this Spike Lee infomercial, commissioned by Sony and the money-grubbing Jackson estate to promote the 25th anniversary of his 1987 album "Bad.''

Here, Ginsburg is just an idea, a symbol — a meme.

A slick, shallow and thoroughly generic caper flick.

Deeply mediocre and ultra-predictable.

Ultimately, Birthday Girl disintegrates into a fairly routine -- and brutal -- caper movie.

An intermittently interesting drama.

The Manzanar Fishing Club has enough interesting footage for perhaps a 15-minute segment of a TV news magazine. Beyond that, my eyes started to glaze over with endless talk about rods, reels and bait.

What is Inland Empire - which Lynch is understandably distributing himself - about? What is it trying to say? If you figure that out, let me know.

The visual effects are amazing, but they don't make up for acting that is restrained to an uninsightful fault.

Some gut-busting moments, but for the most part the thrill is gone.

One of those films that takes up a potentially fascinating subject only to fumble it.

There have been worse horror flicks, but although this one offers a few scares, it doesn't have a lot of imagination.

An instant candidate for the so-bad-it’s-sort-of-great hall of fame, Jupiter Ascending is totally bonkers, a sort of black-velvet-Elvis mash-up of “Star Wars’’ and every other sci-fi/fantasy movie of the past half-century right up to “The Hunger Games.”

Mostly a second-rate action picture that's content to use apartheid as a colorful background.

Pleasing to the eye, with lavish sets, ravishing costumes and two great-looking stars. Unfortunately, there is little else to recommend this overwrought, melodramatic bodice-ripper.

Beyond the Ocean, which at its best is reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger in Paradise," doesn't integrate its two story lines in a particularly satisfying manner and the ending is somewhat abrupt.

Unoriginal but effective raunchy drag comedy.

I adore Frances McDor mand, but she's seriously miscast in a title role Emma Thompson could play in her sleep.

Unless the director was aiming for a Victorian "Black Christmas," though, he overshot his mark

Annabelle Comes Home is so low stakes it’s barely a movie — more like a very special “Brady Bunch” episode in hell.

Writer-director Julian Henriquez does a great job staging the lively musical numbers.

It's a film pregnant with comic possibility that ought to be much funnier than it is.

Stage performance is good training for life, claims this documentary about a high school Shakespeare competition.

Little more than an infomercial for the candidate.

Too bad “Ballerina” drops the ball. Despite being led by an actress who once took on the role of Marilyn Monroe, it’s a much less attractive movie — downright ugly sometimes.

For all the drama's canonization of a runner who valued guts over everything else, Without Limits takes no risks. It's just not all that it could be. [11 Sep 1998, p.069]

Too-convenient coincidences hurt the movie's credibility. A melodramatic script best left to cable TV doesn't help, either.

Tendency to pretentiousness.

Even smut can be dull.

Beck expressed dismay that “Pimp” was taken as a glamorization of his life, and not a warning. By omitting the experiences of the women who worked for him, the filmmakers risk the same thing.

Overall, though, the stakes are pretty low for this likable, tipsy crowd. Maybe I'm just too steeped in the underdog lore of "Freaks and Geeks" and "Awkward," but is there anything less narratively interesting than a high school reunion that focuses exclusively on the beautiful and popular crowd?

Another big, dumb action movie in the vein of "XXX," The Transporter is riddled with plot holes big enough for its titular hero to drive his sleek black BMW through.

All the elements are in place for an entertaining murder mystery, but as Bigelow meanders aimlessly back and forth through time, the plot becomes increasingly water-logged.

The fractured timeline covers five decades, which Miller weaves together, with the past shot in color and the present in black and white. Still, the soapy climax is unnecessary.

In the last half-hour, themes start to gel. The final scenes are so good, even moving, that they make the earlier stuff look better. But a film concerned with the nature of emotion needs human engagement throughout.

The subject is worth exploring - unfortunately, de Seve does so in a cut-and-dried manner that never explains why these two couples were able to stay together for so long.

It's not a total shipwreck, but abandon hope all ye seeking a coherent, much less satisfying, narrative. Expect instead a reported $300 million worth of eye candy, delivered with enormous technical skill.

You have to wonder just how true to life the melodramatic depiction of these events is, especially since the film was made in partnership with TV's "Masterpiece Theater."

Patton Oswalt makes an amusing cameo as a Klingon-speaking cop, and Toni Collette is her usual graceful self as Wendy’s harried counselor, but in all this is a half-baked effort at humanizing autism — at its best when Wendy’s at her computer channeling the Vulcan voice of Mr. Spock, that intergalactic hero who was always so puzzled by human emotions.

As things pick up in the second half, the splendid photography and tempestuous John Adams score cannot quite conceal that the film is uncomfortably close to being an extravagantly elongated, Fendi-clad episode of "Dynasty."

Fatally mild, slow and factory-made, Million Dollar Arm belongs somewhere less competitive than the multiplex. Like the ABC Family Channel — the entertainment industry minor leagues.

One of those exercises in romantic whimsy that misses its mark: It's alternately sappy and uncomfortably harsh.

To be fair, Ferrell is almost always at least mildly funny, even when doing something as lame as skateboarding into a power line, but Wahlberg’s cowboy shtick just seems half-hearted.

Strictly for the 8-and-under crowd.

A likable trio of actors struggles valiantly but ultimately fails to keep this dopey buddy comedy afloat.

Among cutesy pop musical trios aimed at nondiscerning audiences, I'll take Alvin and Co. over the Jonas Brothers any day.