An uplifting story to be sure, but director-producer David Swajeski doesn't do it justice.

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

The script is morose and unfocused - not to mention hard to believe and insulting to women.

“Grandpa” is, at least, not as moronic as much of De Niro’s recent résumé. But that’s a low, low bar.

As Lydia Lunch of Teenage Jesus & the Jerks puts it, "They seem so desperate to be liked, desperate to have their music used in the next car commercial."

More watchable for secular audiences than the handful of earlier films released under the Fox Faith label, this one actually has a sense of humor, a politically progressive point of view and a solid cast including the ever-reliable James Garner.

So off-the-wall that it may well ultimately acquire the cult status of Resnick's earlier Chris Elliot vehicle, "Cabin Boy."

Prieto does what he can to keep things roaring along, but the overall effect is not a lot more stimulating than your average diet cola.

Proudly airheaded, incoherent, endlessly pandering - yet fitfully entertaining.

Director-writer Seth Grossman provides a lazy narrative, with stereotypical characters and plot.

Turns out to be a dour, shouty atheist manifesto. With a change of scenery it could have been called "Godless in Seattle."

Scene for scene, it's like a gorgeous painting come to life, magically illuminated with a warm, orange glow. Unfortunately, those very sets and costumes take priority over a plot that - at best - is glacially paced. [06 Oct 1998, p.070]

It's because of a superior cast that this version of "Death at a Funeral" is the rare comedy remake that's funnier than the original, however slightly. Personally, though, I'm not sure it was worth the effort.

Often, the movie feels like sitting through a college lecture class.

With heavy emphasis on cliché and stereotype, has at least four false endings -- and drags on for nearly two hours -- before it finally contrives to reunite its sitcomish pals for a last drink together.

Good acting and some very good scenes don't quite add up to a good film.

Director Ben Hickernell soft-pedals the material into a blandly feel-good dramedy. As Abigail's spirited young trainees, Alexandra Metz and Meredith Apfelbaum give Backwards their all, but can't row their way clear of its clichés.

A typically well-acted, if ultimately minor, effort by John Sayles, the socially conscious indie icon who's unafraid to take on unfashionable subjects.

Dan Schechter's no-budget comedy about the romantic and professional travails of a pair of financially struggling film editors offers a few laughs, all served up on eyeball-gougingly ugly digital video.

Like the prototypical "Shine," this is a film that romanticizes mental illness.

This Cinderella is all dressed up with nowhere very interesting to go.

Two things make this film slightly more interesting than its American B-movie equivalents. There's the artless way it shows the French state exercising its power and the charisma of French stars.

It’s never a good sign when the real people behind a movie’s story appear in the end credits and you’re stumped as to who’s who.

Danny Huston looks and sounds like his celebrated father, John, more and more each year, so I enjoyed watching him play a flamboyant and womanizing legendary director not unlike his old man in Bernard Rose’s modest little comedy.

What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, but lose his hairline? Matthew McConaughey considers the question in Gold, which is in essence a vanity project about a vanity project.

As a history lesson, Oswald's Ghost is valuable, but don't go expecting any new revelations.

Indeed, Clancy has written 20 books featuring John Clark. But, even with a star as charismatic and physically formidable as Jordan, audiences won’t be hungry for a single sequel.

An earnest undertaking that unfortunately plays like a trite Lifetime movie.

There's a story here, but the film doesn't tell it.

Black loses control of Virginia as it lurches from political satire to unintended black comedy to mom-and-son melodrama. But the performances and the movie's sheer crazy audacity make it watchable.

An interesting - but very slow paced - thriller.

Fortunately, Chicken With Plums does have its pleasures, including Isabella Rossellini as the silkily jaded mother.

The Hitcher is the Jessica Simpson of psycho killer flicks - cheerfully in touch with its own brainlessness.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, and too many directors spoil the anthology film Paris Je T'aime.

Caramel, by the way, gets its name from a blend of sugar, lemon juice and water that is boiled until it turns into a paste used to remove unwanted hair in the Middle East.

Vogt-Roberts never develops the characters enough to make us care whether anyone lives or dies and never whips up even a flirtation between Hiddleston and Larson.

The film keeps its focus small, but the trouble is, the characters' emotions stay that way, too.

Overripe dialogue and a fevered score fail to inject any real tension, and the accentless English spoken throughout a film set entirely in France is ludicrous and jarring.

An extremely awkward cross between "Ocean's Eleven" and "Rain Man."

This second installment of Lucas Belvaux's acclaimed "Trilogy" is decidedly inferior to the first: a farce that simply isn't funny.

Director Michelle Esrick, who followed Wavy around for 10 years, journeys from Manhattan to Woodstock to Nepal to the hills of California to tell Wavy's story. The journey is entertaining, whether you witnessed the 1960s firsthand or heard about it from your grandparents.

Good intentions aside, it fails to resonate, though there is a certain voyeuristic intrigue to attempting to figure out how much of this toxic stuff is drawn from the real Reiners.

Patsy Cline. Loretta Lynn. Gwyneth Paltrow. If you buy that progression, you'll buy Country Strong, an unintentionally campy drama.

Lopez, appearing in her first rom-com since “Monster-in-Law” five years ago, is still a likable screen presence who throws herself into the movie’s slapstick sequences with unwarranted enthusiasm.

Though the performances are uniformly good -- Adams is a standout -- the movie plays like one long, meandering sketch inspired by the works of John Waters and Todd Solondz, rather than a fully developed story.

Acquires a little vigor and some fun from Tracy Morgan as a friendly drug dealer who lives with his mom.

The fights, taken on their own, are occasionally OK, but not enough to lift this joke-and-fun-free slog.

Suspenseful though it is, the movie is quiet to the point of being sleepy, and Worthington is simply not working out as a screen star.

Beat by beat, it’s exactly what you’d expect, right down to the camera’s prurient interest in the dewy flesh of Stefanie Scott as the 17-year-old daughter.

Silence comes to us billed as 30 years in the making. Unfortunately, it plays like 30 years in the watching.

But a happy reunion can’t re-create the original’s spark, innocence and masterful comedy.

Those People also suffers, perhaps, from a lack of timing; Kuhn’s group of one-percenter millennials harkens back to early Whit Stillman or, more recently, “Gossip Girl.”

An overlong melodrama-by-numbers.

A sporadically amusing curiosity that falls short of effectively satirizing the public's fixation with the minutiae of celebrity lives.

The pleasant but forgettable Adult Beginners strains a bit too hard for a happy ending, and tends to lay on the schmaltz and metaphors (like the swim class that gives the film its title) with a trowel.

Beautiful camerawork, some interesting scenes, but extraordinarily slow.

A substandard attempt to outfit a World War II submarine with every haunted-house cliché known to man and filmmakers.

Would be solid family entertainment if it weren't for the funereal pacing, which may kill its appeal among young audiences.

My All American would have done better to dig deeper in its portrayal of a man who set such a high bar for the intrinsic character of a football player. Because he’s actually the kind of example the sport could really use right now.

Michael Moore makes many of the same points, with far more impact, in "Bowling for Columbine."

If Schwarzberg had chosen to concentrate on eccentrics, rural artists or people like his New York bike messenger, female aerobatic champion and California cliff dancer, "Heart and Soul" would have been a much more interesting film.

Pollak obviously had fun, but you get the feeling the best bits never made it in.

You can't fault the film's elegant look. But you have to wonder why Shakhnazarov, one of Russian's most experienced filmmakers, didn't take more care with the script.

There's not enough good material to fill the film's overlong 105 minutes. Is there an editor in the house?

The film quickly ceases to be of interest to anyone but dedicated fans. The novelty of the deliberate ugliness wears off after a song or two.

The superficial script doesn’t go nearly deep enough to begin explaining Lovelace.

To kill 80 minutes, the movie has to pad itself with several dull speeches and stagy moments. The worst? How about when the five men, who have ample reason to fear each other and are facing a life-or-death reckoning, whistle "Ode to Joy" together like a bunch of Whiffenpoofs?

The Entourage formula feels warmed-over, played-out, spent.

Genially preposterous, with stunt players outnumbering actors by something like a 3-to-1 ratio, the action thriller Crank is surprisingly watchable.

Billed as a comedy about a single dad with three girls, the movie is essentially another sudser about the plight of upscale black women in Atlanta.

Just in time for Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday comes this gloriously colorful animated musical, which almost (but not quite) makes up in visuals what it lacks in snappy dialogue.

Excellent performances by a good cast and a fairly authentic look at working-class struggles go only so far.

The film works best when we see N'Dour onstage. He has a great set of pipes and is nothing if not charismatic.

This windy courtroom drama is punctuated by cheesy flashbacks.

Redmon makes a valid argument, but he belabors the point. Mardi Gras: Made in China would play better if it were more focused and less repetitive.

Beyond the cliched diaper-changing scenes and the oh-so-predictable romantic complications, the film inadvertently insults its presumed target audience.

Crystal, for what it’s worth, stays genuine through the increasingly viscous plot. He still has that warmth beneath his zingers that you don’t find in the frigid comedians of today. Nonetheless, we resent his movie’s aggressive efforts to force us into crying with strained, untruthful moments by the bucketful.

Little more than a supersized version of the popular PBS animated series that's stopping briefly in theaters en route to its natural habitat -- video.

Routine stuff, but things move quickly, with several offhand funny moments. Mos Def is hilarious in a cameo as another delivery guy.

A superficial documentary based on a best-selling book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons -- which is being released just before the ex-president's memoir hits the bookstores.

Resolves the romantic dilemma in the most artificial and unsatisfying way. A blaring swing score and some obvious dubbing do little to ease the pain.

Most of the laughs are collected by Lucy Punch as chirpy, borderline-psychotic teacher named Squirrel.

OK premise quickly deteriorates into a silly, badly acted slasher movie -- minus the slasher.

Fay Grim is like watching stoners playing Risk and Clue at the same time.

An '80s coming-of-age comedy with more energy than ideas.

Haywire is a wannabe, or rather a wanna-B, and that B is for "Bourne." As each imitator comes and (rapidly) goes, my appreciation for the best superspy franchise deepens. Even top directors - in this case Steven Soderbergh - can't figure out the trick.

A loony con-job that comes up short on being convincing.

The horror flick 13 Sins is passable enough when it comes to dialing up the suspense, but the “Saw” formula of a mysterious voice guiding our hero through a series of depravities has gone a bit stale.

While recollections of the participants in the rescue are often riveting, the subject of Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot's film remains elusively out of grasp.

Disappointing.

Cage is amusing though, and exemplifies the old stage wisdom “if you’re having fun, they’re having fun.” However, that’s the biggest problem for Renfield: Whenever Cage leaves the frame, which is often, we immediately stop having fun — as if Dracula commanded us to.

Directors Potelle and Rankin lack the skill to integrate the sometimes drastic shifts between comedy and drama - and the serious portions ultimately get short shrift, apparently at the behest of Miramax's marketing executives.

The documentary is much too conventional -- lots of boring talking heads, etc. -- to do the subject matter justice.

Yes, we remember one of the best movies of the 1990s, but the sequel is like the moment at the party when someone raises the shades and you realize that it’s blinding broad daylight, well past time to go home.

Fitfully amusing.

The cinematic equivalent of enduring a cross-country airplane flight trapped in a seat next to a manic depressive.

Entertainingly gruesome in parts, and not without a certain anarchic wit, it’s the kind of movie you pause to watch when it’s on TV, but after half an hour, you’ll click over to something else.

It feels like the brainchild of middle-aged guys (James Ponsoldt directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Eggers) who still think of Facebook as cutting edge.