Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick's Hindenberg.

One of those potentially interesting movies that takes its sweet time getting to the point - by which time many audience members will likely have bailed out or dozed off.

You gotta give credit to any first-time direc tor who attempts an homage to classic screwball comedies on a shoestring budget, even if Kettle of Fish ends up not exactly being the catch of the week.

Vincent D'Onofrio does capture Hoffman's charisma and nuttiness - and he's the only reason to resist the temptation to skip this exasperating movie.

You'll have to look elsewhere than this love letter to the Great White Way to explain why "Wicked" and "Avenue Q" became huge hits, and why "Caroline, or Change" joined "Taboo" as a costly flop.

Startlingly immature.

This is a single story that feels like a handful of sketches in need of more connection.

Dividing its loyalties between documentary and fictional narrative, it lacks the advantages of belonging to either side.

Boasts special effects that are really spectacular - too bad it lacks flesh-and-blood characters.

The performances are solid, but as a screenwriter, Guttenberg can't make the situation seem like more than a theatrical construct in a contemporary setting.

Performances are up to par, but the story unfolds conventionally - it lacks the fragmented fury of its predecessor. You might call it "City of God Lite."

This frigid and inaccessible period piece wears its glumness like a shroud.

Whatever message Brooks was trying to put across with Spanglish, it clearly got lost in translaaaaaaaaaaation.

Does not offer much in the way of exciting boxing footage.

Based on a memoir by Nigel Slater, a British celebrity chef who makes a cameo appearance, Toast also charts the budding chef's growing interest in hunky, scantily clad guys. Be warned: Some of the regional British accents would benefit from subtitles.

It’s somehow both too drawn-out and abrupt — but it’s got creepiness galore.

Uncompromisingly mediocre comedy.

There might be a great movie to be made out of the financial crisis, but 99 Homes, which is like being shouted at by a man with bad breath while he grips your collar with both hands, isn’t it.

The single theme is “Isn’t this cool?” And if your response is, “Well, it’s certainly loud,” then On Any Sunday probably isn’t for you.

It's a touching story that deserves to be told. Unfortunately, Slesin's presentation is conventional and uninspired (lots of boring talking heads). These heroes deserve better.

A well worn trope that’s tough to elevate beyond eye-roll level.

It says a lot about the sequel that the funniest moment belongs to none of the big stars, but to Owen Wilson.

The upper-crust British characters in The Little Stranger, the new horror film from “Room” director Lenny Abrahamson, are so rigid they make the Crawleys of “Downton Abbey” look like the Osbournes. The effect is occasionally spooky, but more often snoozy.

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.

The film achieves near-poignancy in its final act, when we finally meet one of the two elderly tipplers, plus a friend who occasionally stayed at their apartment and endured their shouting matches.

A crock - a pandering epic that's as phony as it is condescending.

The first conservative documentary to join the bumper crop of liberal political films riding Michael Moore's coattails into theaters.

Though it contains some very funny, cleverly written comic sketches, Human Traffic shares with other drug movies the problem that watching other people on drugs is not interesting.

It would have been funnier at half that length.

A cheesy affair with no big winners. Especially the audience.

Merely a watery, poorly directed update of "Clueless."

The film is conventional in style and is likely to mean more to the sadly forgotten musician's fans than to others.

Science fiction movies don't come much more ponderous than the beautifully filmed Never Let Me Go, which reduces the debate over genetic engineering to a mild, moist romantic soap opera.

Doreen's scenes are meant to highlight the cost to the people surrounding Eddie. But the many efforts to link his psyche to his war experiences never gel, and Eddie remains a wraith, his real emotions as pallid as the film's colors.

Stage Fright starts out as a funny musical mashup — “Glee” meets“Friday the 13th” — but winds up indulging slasher-flick clichés instead of spoofing them.

Pretty but tedious Euro-pap at its most self-indulgent.

The real thrills consist of one monologue brilliantly delivered by Manuel Tadros as a bar owner, and most of Gabriel Yared’s old-school orchestral score.

Kids should see Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. It'll help prepare them for a lifetime of mediocre entertainment ahead.

The feel-bad movie of the holiday season, Spike Lee’s often-repellent Americanized reimagining of Korean director Chan-Wook Park’s twisty 2004 revenge thriller Oldboy is relentlessly gruesome, self-consciously shocking and pretty much pointless.

Armie Hammer has given several of the worst performances in recent years — see, or rather don’t, “Mirror Mirror” and “J. Edgar.” The big surprise in The Man from U.N.C.L.E is that Henry Cavill is even worse.

A dismal, low-energy affair.

There are some bright one-liners in the beginning, but the comedy/drama mix is an uneasy one, especially considering the shabby way the film treats McKenna, as a tart who’s just there to improve some yuppie sex lives.

A movie steeped in sin that squats awkwardly in a cinematic purgatory between tawdry and talky.

Next, which makes "National Treasure" look like a model of narrative logic, is almost beyond criticism.

Jeremy Piven's infamous "sushi defense" for skipping out on a Broadway role is easier to swallow than his performance as a scuzzy auto liquidator who sees the light in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.

Can that achingly abstract thing called love be captured in a beaker or dissected like a frog splayed on a slab? That's the belabored premise of this dorky, clinically structured romance cooked up in the Sundance Institute's screenwriter and filmmaker labs.

It's the audience that gets punk'd in this crass and sloppy comic recycling.

Hoot peaks during its wordless opening credits sequence, which swoops delightfully around Florida scenery. That, the cute owls and the easygoing songs by Jimmy Buffett, who also plays one of Roy's teachers, are the only things worth your trouble.

There is hardly a moment during this overlong, stunningly smug exercise in moral self-satisfaction when you actually care about a character, real or invented.

The year's most beautiful movie -- and surely one of the dullest.

It's not much fun to watch people go to raves. And it's even less fun to listen to people talk about how much fun it is to go to raves.

The shallow, derivative and contrived British heist thriller Wasteland lives down to its unfortunate name.

Bel Ami is handsome enough, although the directorial skill runs mostly to careful framing of magnificent bosoms, Pattinson's included.

The movie’s strength is, surprisingly, the narration, spoken with gentle gravity by Moni Moshonov.

Sir, no, sir.

Lucky “Day Shift” has an Oscar winner in Foxx, who’s appealingly heroic, and gags about a burning sensation on characters’ privates.

Most of this film is humorless and with not so much of a score as a subwoofer.

If you go to the movies to ogle topless young women, Simon is definitely for you. If, on the other hand, you want something more cerebral with your $10 ticket and overpriced snacks, stay clear of this Dutch melodrama.

A dull, dumb and derivative horror film.

Boring movie.

Aloft is less like a story than a dream, populated with gorgeous people and symbolism you can interpret any way you like.

A test of endurance, and not just because you need a rather stronger word than "explicit" to describe this long-unreleased, self-consciously provocative film.

Despite some genuinely funny scenes, American Desi turns out to be inferior to the as yet unreleased "ABCD" and even last year's "Chutney Popcorn."

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.

This relentlessly mediocre romantic comedy is basically a pretty arthritic third-generation Xerox of "Annie Hall," with Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci in the old Allen and Keaton parts in a probably quixotic attempt to court the youth market.

"The Waterboy" was funny because Sandler doesn't look like a football player. When he swaggers around The Longest Yard starting fights and taking beatings without flinching, he only reminds us how little Steve McQueen and how much Woody Allen there is in him.

As misconceived as it is corny and predictable.

The demands of formula eventually stifle anything that even looks like inspiration or honesty.

The only darkness here — besides the dingy-looking images dimmed by 3-D glasses — is the murky plot, which is as silly as it is arbitrary.

There are a few chuckles here and there, and there are odd wisps of cleverness in the script by Steve Adams, but for the most part, Envy is a film that doesn't know where it's going.

Has little to offer beyond titillation and pretty landscapes.

Devil, make a better movie.

Adams and the school's students and teachers deserve an A-plus, although the film rates a much lower grade. It unfolds lifelessly, as Binzer parades a contingent of talking heads before the camera in what could pass for an infomercial.

By far, the highlight of Minions is hearing The Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life” over the closing credits — the first time I think I’ve ever heard it used in a movie. Otherwise, the prequel to “Despicable Me” is like trying to form a rock band out of three Ringos.

This Sundance dud is a turgid gay soap opera with a limp twist, showcasing Robin Williams at his maudlin worst.

Its script isn't worth the papyrus it's inscribed on.

Self/less is a celluloid smoothie blended from dozens of familiar elements, but it’s neither tasty nor nutritious.

The dramatic history of the Soviet space program deserves a far more competent documentary than this amateurish Dutch production.

Any one episode of "The Sopranos" would send this ill-conceived folly to sleep with the fishes.

A forgettable — and occasionally borderline offensive — animated tale of turkeys trying to take back Thanksgiving.

With its starkly contrasted visuals (fierce blacks, Clorox whites, a dash of unholy crimson), The Spirit may resemble a comic book more than any live-action film yet made, but it makes "Max Payne" look like a gleaming jewel of storytelling by comparison.

Consistently stale but not altogether unpleasant.

The sometimes painfully sincere and slow-moving For Greater Glory clearly aspires to be inspirational, but history won't cooperate. The Cristeros triumphed not because of their faith, but because the United States exerted diplomatic pressure to protect its oil interests in Mexico.

It's easy to spot a failed tearjerker, though: All the characters are sobbing all over each other while the people in the audience check their watches.

This is the time of the year movie studios traditionally dump their mistakes into theaters -- and boy, did Disney make a whopper with The Count of Monte Cristo.

A movie more interested in shocking than in entertaining.

Ryan spends much of the grubby-looking boxing drama Against the Ropes with her face screwed up in distaste, as if a dirty sock is being waved under her nose. Perhaps it's because the movie she's in stinks.

A shame that this indie's willingness to trade in stereotype leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

The Lost Kingdom isn’t well done, but it isn’t miserable either.

Sort of "The Da Vinci Code for Dummies."

So tedious it's almost worth watching to see just how bad acting, inadequate direction and most important, a criminally crass and unimaginative screenplay can make so little out of a proven idea.

One of those "Lifetime"-esque horror stories of evil husbands in the suburbs.

Schmaltzy and contrived.

Good-natured but mostly unfunny.

Bidding to be the “Terms of Endearment” of zombie movies, Maggie sucks all the life out of an idea that just won’t die.

It's no funnier than your average grade-school biology lesson and less pedagogically useful than your typical Farrelly brothers comedy.

Some solid performances and pretty scenery don't do much to conceal that there's a whole heap of nothing at the core of this slight coming-of-age/coming-out tale.

Large chunks of the film seem like a record played at the wrong speed: The tempo of the dialogue as delivered doesn't match the lines as written, and the filmmakers are too lazy or too inept to make their convoluted premise jibe with any recognizable idea of human nature.