Unfortunately, Impostor doesn't do much with its template, despite a remarkably strong cast.

The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

Wiig and Adebimpe give appealing, naturalistic performances — it’s Silva’s character who grate.

Italian director Carlo Carlei has a background in TV movies, and this film, plodding and earnest, seems meant for the small screen, too.

A by-the-numbers follow-up to the highly successful 2005 feature that was no great shakes to begin with.

There's nothing especially new or interesting about the guests, the party or the movie. One bright note is Nicol Zanzarella as the elegant Susan, a freelance TV editor and co-host.

A messy, woefully uneven chick flick.

Despite Mulligan bringing her A-game, the film falls short of its potential.

It makes not just the "Thief of Baghdad" and the junky Ray Harryhausen movies of the '60s and '70s but even Disney's recent "Aladdin" seem positively multicultural by comparison.

Even in support of the noblest of causes, manipulation is manipulation.

A mediocre music documentary about veteran country rocker and activist Steve Earle, who created a furor with a song sympathetic to American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

Fleck fails to provide any personal charisma, although the music is infectious.

To enjoy this film, it helps to check your brain at the box office.

Not a definitive portrait of the designer, nor does it pretend to be. But it should be of interest to viewers even if there's not a single YSL label in their wardrobes.

A movie needs more than a smart idea and an impressively visualized concept of the future to run smoothly. Two-thirds of the way through, “The Pod Generation’s” battery is already at 1%.

So slow the movie itself seems to be suffering from a hardening of the arteries.

The result is entertaining but hardly memorable.

Adults will sniff out a general air of phoniness - the period detail isn't particularly convincing, and the Scottish factor is overcooked to the point where the script starts to resemble the national cuisine.

The emotional honesty of [Lane's] performance provides a foundation that supports this shaky and often unbelievable Italian-set hybrid of "Shirley Valentine" and "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House."

That's all laudable - but Perry, a longtime filmmaker, should have given the doc more urgency and punch.

There’s so much anguish, we eventually become numb to it over the nearly three-hour film. We come to know her only as a victim, not a fleshed-out person. Is that take enlightening? Meh. Entertaining? Not really. Long? Extremely.

Well-acted but a bit creaky.

Without a real story to go with the notion of Farm Belt "wiggas," the humor wears thinner and thinner until it disappears.

Lizzie McGuire's "Movie" doesn't try to be anything more than a superficial escapist fantasy for fans of the show.

It's unfortunate that director Whitney Sudler-Smith seems to have spent more time on his own hair than his interview prep.

Seventh Son is not a good movie, but it’s also not a pretentious one, and I call that a fair trade.

Rip Torn's recent real-life misadven tures are slightly echoed in Happy Tears, a moderately diverting black comedy in which he plays (what else?) a crazy old coot, to perfection.

I suppose you have to give credit to the movie for coming up with some badass killer mermaids.

As for Gooding, he's sadly gone to the dogs -- Snow Dogs has got to be his most humiliating role since "Lightning Jack."

Lenny this is not. Still, it's nice to know that the son of a lawyer and a microbiologist can get into Harvard and make something of himself.

A Southeast Asian thriller that positively reeks of atmosphere - but is woefully lacking in narrative credibility or character development.

Using autism as a plot device walks a fine line between empathetic and exploitative, and The Night Clerk is wobbly in that respect.

So serious-minded it occasionally teeters on the brink of absurdity.

Campy and clichéd.

This is a fine idea for a PSA TV commercial, but (a) they already did it back in the ’70s and (b) it goes on well past the 30-second mark.

The plot swerves around just enough to make you think something more complex is going on. Ultimately, it really isn’t — certainly not enough to make up for the clichés and sexist tropes that litter Lucas’ path toward a confrontation with the bad guys.

As a work of historical documentation, The Source suffers from Workman's wholly celebratory take on the movement.

Looks great, and the performances are solid, but the disparate elements in this oddity - which created a minor stir at the Sundance Film Festival last year - never entirely coalesce.

No light leavens the ashen wash of writer-director Tim Blake Nelson's relentlessly downbeat Holocaust drama The Grey Zone. None.

Gibson sure knows how to shoot a sequence, but he also doesn't know when to stop with the blood, gore and maiming.

As actor pairings go, you couldn’t hope for better than Oscar winner Sam Rockwell and nominee Taraji P. Henson. So why is The Best of Enemies such a slog?

Slick but painfully precious, it strains to be darkly romantic but is bereft of genuine feeling.

Earnest and predictable.

A pretentious left-wing monster movie with about 15 minutes of alarming creatures and a whole lot of bickering, is a pre-9/11 story which Stephen King wrote eons ago. It operates in the post-9/11 era about as well as a Studebaker at the Daytona 500.

At some two hours, the film is 30 minutes too long. Cutting out the melodrama and sticking with the daring-do is the answer.

It’s too busy with feel-good slogans like “Si Se Puede.” The slogan may be nice, but it’s meaningless. So is the movie.

An ultra-stylized, empty mess.

Quirky and sometimes hilarious Canadian comedy.

The non-linear plot makes for confusion and, except for the inspired final shootout, the action sequences are mediocre.

The screen comes alive only at the end, when a frightening tornado destroys the seaside village.

Director Mark L. Mann seems to be searching for the meaning in aimlessness, and in lowered expectations. But too often the narrative left me feeling the titular “um.”

Nobody does the rebellious-elder thing as well as Duvall, and whenever he’s center stage in A Night in Old Mexico, this scrappy film from Spanish director Emilio Aragon is entertaining enough.

Laughter and enjoyment is stifled by the constant question of whether we’re allowed to laugh or enjoy anything at all.

Borba keeps referring to himself as "a hero," but the directors, Burt Sun and André Costantini, never delve into his psyche. On the plus side is Costantini's luscious cinematography.

Pity that the direction and narrative lack passion. If there's anything a story of interracial adultery needs, it's passion.

Ultimately Unicorn Store shows little appeal beyond, perhaps, a young-adult audience with a very high tolerance for glitter.

As cute and energetic as it is, The Lego Movie is more exhausting than fun, too unsure of itself to stick with any story thread for too long. The action scenes are enthusiastic, colorful but uninvolving, like an 8-year-old emptying a bucket of plastic blocks.

The many silences in Hide Your Smiling Faces don’t speak quite loudly enough, and the film ultimately gets bogged down by its own ponderousness.

Only in the heartfelt closing minutes does the film cut any deeper than a tired episode of a sitcom about children of immigrants complaining about their hopelessly old-fashioned parents.

Earnest but not terribly original.

These people are so selfish and self-absorbed you may not want to spent even 72 minutes with them.

For all of its in-your-face, full-frontal sex scenes and threesomes (one involving a transsexual), this autobiographical story is almost sweet.

Here's the thing: Found footage is scary when - because - it leaves you to fill in a lot of the blanks yourself. But actually watching whole families have terrible things done to them - well, hard-core horror fans may dig it, I guess. I'd call it forced voyeurism of the worst sort.

The script’s by Robert Ben Garant, also behind last year’s scary-movie spoof “Hell Baby,” and this one teeters right on the edge of laughable, with its V.C. Andrews-like series of goth twists.

The documentary Darfur Now proves that - no matter how im portant the subject matter - following various people around with a camera doesn't necessarily make a film.

Love is the weak link in this clumsily titled rom-com, which plays a bit like a hipster infomercial for Austin, Texas.

Essentially a more awkward Afghan version of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

The disappointing The Company You Keep consistently stretches credulity way past the breaking point in its depiction of journalism, police procedure and political activism.

If anyone in the store’s history ever had a bad experience there, you won’t find it in this movie.

A thumping soundtrack, including David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" and Pink Floyd's "Us and Them," fuels this high-energy look at a pack of underdogs who sowed the seeds for today's extreme sports craze.

The picture is smothered by solemn right-mindedness, and hobbled by scripter David McKenna's simplistic, knee-jerk liberal take on suburban white racism.

Needs less talk, more music.

In fact, for long stretches, especially during the first hour, it's as soporific as watching a bank of security cameras.

If you find hedge funds hard to wrap your head around, the movie Human Capital won’t do much to ease the confusion.

Director Gaby Dellal gets respectable performances all around, especially from Dekker as the hapless, grief-stricken father, but they can't elevate Angels Crest, beyond its one obvious and depressing note: It is very sad when a small child dies.

On the plus side, Derek McKane's moody camerawork makes Gotham look grand. Too bad it's wasted on The Last New Yorker.

Temple and Angarano, entertaining enough, never quite sell the idea that this goodhearted couple would be so easily transformed by greed.

Aimed squarely at the under-6 crowd, is basically the pilot for a Nickelodeon series with an already heavily merchandised character.

With The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, directors Ethan and Joel Coen venture to the frontier once more, after “True Grit” and “No Country for Old Men.” But this time, there’s only a little grit in this very slow country.

Beautifully shot and well-meant -- but fairly snoozy.

If you think you've seen Imaginary Heroes before, you're right -- only it was called "The Ice Storm," or maybe "Ordinary People."

Some fine performances shine through in Joe Maggio's pretentious, credulity-straining dramedy.

Sensory gluttony is reason enough to see a movie, and few epics overstuff the eyes like this one.

Rendering the life of young Abraham Lincoln as a tone poem, The Better Angels sags under the weight of its own resolute earnestness.

When the massacre starts, the movie gets better. But the methods of murder are, like everything else, awfully self-serious and limited to mostly just plain old guns and knives.

A throwback to the kind of '80s action flicks that had titles like "Adrenaline Force," is enlivened by a raft of celebrity cameos, including a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Gibson.

Grows ever more manipulative and predictable.

Overall, The Last September is a real snooze.

Has a sexy cast and is gorgeous to watch -- but it takes more than that to make a movie worth seeking out.

The story never quite gets into the groove.

A beautiful but empty-headed documentary.

The tone is good-natured enough to make a simple movie semi-watchable.

Green's odd little movie is clever -- too clever, as it turns out.

LaBruce devotees will be tickled pink; others will be perplexed and/or disgusted.

It's rather sweet and life-affirming, although the transformation from sophisticate to peasant happens too conveniently and quickly.

Amusing and informative (and hyperbolic) as it is, All In: The Poker Movie is a documentary whose intended audience is unclear.

Coming down too hard on this load of schmaltz — as I said when reviewing my first Sparks adaptation back in 2002 — feels like taking a baseball bat to a sack full of newborn kittens.

A skin-deep examination of a shallow lifestyle that draws a conclusion so logical it's almost superfluous.