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.