Earthwork is best left to TV.

Winter hits his stride detailing how the music bigwigs hung Napster out to dry, but couldn’t do a thing about their industry’s permanently altered business model. This exercise in recent nostalgia (the original Napster went bust in 2002) might have been better if the tart cynicism of that section had shown up earlier.

An overwrought Taiwanese soaper.

Black, who all but stole "High Fidelity," is disappointingly bland and one-note in his first starring role.

There’s a nice candor and sweetness about the players, especially Butterfield and Sally Hawkins as his mother.

Think you're depressed now? Wait till you see Aurora Borealis, which spends almost two hours watching Ronald Shorter, a suicidal old man, die.

Great fun for the first 20 minutes - which include Kubrickian tracking shots and music from "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" - but seems long at 86.

Most of the best gags are in the early going and the film seems ever more stretched and thin as it goes on. It would have made a brilliant eight-minute sketch, though.

It would have been nice to learn as much about Sar the man as about Sar the dancer.

This long and overly genteel adaptation of Peter Cameron's 2002 novel never quite comes to a boil.

Has a secret weapon in Winger, whose part is small but crucial. Looking a bit older and with redder hair than previously, she brings an earthiness to a movie that could use a lot more of that quality.

The funniest and arguably most envelope-pushing episode stars Winona Ryder as a newlywed who falls in love on her honeymoon - and steals the object of her lust: a ventriloquist's dummy.

Basically Jaws, but, you know, on land. With a bear. [29 Jun 2014, p.20]

Good-natured, lightweight fun, although clichéd and more suited to DVD and cable than the big screen.

There’s little sense of urgency, or — oddly, given the film’s title — of scale. You never really think that the 47 are truly outnumbered, and the large action scenes are often just incomprehensible.

I only wish the Little laughs were bigger.

The two leads spend a lot of their time doing static interviews, in a format familiar from TV shows like “The Office.” This glorified narration gets old, fast.

The Sentinel is so bland that it wants only to be as good as TV. Not as good as good TV, like "24." It merely aspires to be the Regis Philbin of D.C. thrillers. It isn't trying to dazzle you with style, complexity or intelligence.

Since they seem like real people we want them to work out their differences. In the second half, their story is nearly lost in favor of lots of documentary footage of the actual protests. This stuff was pretty ho-hum to look at two years ago, and it hasn't gotten more interesting with age.

It’s well-executed but familiar territory, with a dearth of jarring moments. Those of us who aren’t friends and family of the crew could use a little wake-up shove here and there.

Director Tom Harper (“War Book”) defaults too often to gotcha scares, which is disappointing.

The Rock deserves better than The Rundown, a brisk, good- hearted but predictable and uninspired - not to mention bone-crunchingly violent - action comedy.

Isn't boring, but it is sanctimonious, relentlessly predictable and willfully ignorant of the period it's set in.

Most of the dialogue is in English, almost all of the story takes place in the U.S., and there is none of the kitschy fun that gives Bollywood flicks their charm.

Filled with nostalgia for old Chinese movies, respectable performances and lively kung-fu slapstick.

The movie, told from the killer’s point of view, is genuinely unsettling and propelled by a terrific, buzzing synth soundtrack straight out of the early ’80s. But the only suspense is in which woman will be the next victim.

May be the steamiest lesbian romp in recent memory.

Johnny can't read, but he sure can rumba - and that's just fine with Take the Lead.