The Death Cure doesn’t work on every level. The movie has, for the most part, jettisoned many of the story’s previous science fiction elements to focus more on action. In so doing, it relies on a lot of repeat devices to earn its thrills — namely perfectly-timed, life-saving rescues, often from the sky. Sometimes, you just want to hear some scientists talk shop for a minute.

"Happy Feet" was one of the greatest and most original animated films, but the sequel can't even decide what it's about for the first 40 minutes.

It’s a shame that George Michael’s final major artistic contribution to the world is the crummy movie Last Christmas. In its shoddy attempt to make a splash in the British romantic-comedy genre, it amounts to nothing more than a careless whisper.

Crowe makes the most of his own quiet presence, and this ode to the world’s never-recovered soldiers and their families is a fitting meditation on the insanity of war.

Final Destination 5, which, despite its lowbrow story, turns out to be one of the fastest-moving films of the year, is a suspenseful and macabre exercise in dread for the absurdly cosseted.

In order: bland, annoying and misused.

The movie quickly sinks into a terminal case of the cutes and extreme predictability - amid the usual surfeit of wacky supporting characters.

The girl you see stabbing and shooting prisoners and fellow trainees makes the killer from "La Femme Nikita" look like a wuss.

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.

Rebecca Hall is wasted as Sandvig's sister and the film's voice of reason.

A credulity-straining thriller featuring a few good paranoid moments — and, perhaps most important, Rebecca Hall running in high heels.

A contrived comedy that could have made an especially weak episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

"Precious" worked partly because it did not wrap its sordid tale in Christian uplift and dime-store psychology -- elements that have made Tyler Perry a rich filmmaker but have turned For Colored Girls shrill and manipulative.

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field they're not, but you could do worse for mindless late-summer entertainment than Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell in Hit & Run.

It’s a disappointment as a movie, though Shannon is especially fine in a rare sympathetic role.

A very shallow, very glossy 2½-hour travelogue starring a miscast Julia Roberts as a spoiled, self-centered divorcée who decides to get away from it all.

Vincent Bal's film should appeal to kids, cat lovers and felines. I give it two stars, and my cat, Audrey, gives it three meows.

The movie, a sequel to 2009's much more sprightly and amusing indie "Women in Trouble," seems to be reaching for Robert Altman territory. Instead of offering many intriguing stories, though, it can't come up with even one.

The marvelous Burtonic gothic/nightmare production design -- scenery, weaponry, costumes, etc. constantly pleases the eye without ever distracting you from the plot.

Shaft is what summer action flicks should be... thanks to superior writing, acting and direction.

Looks and feels like a bad imitation of "Trainspotting" without any of that film's wit or charm.

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."

A great-looking but torturously slow and often hokey cross between "The Exorcist" and "Dirty Harry."

The once-great franchise is hardly reborn from the amber this time. It’s slammed by an asteroid yet again.

There simply aren’t enough synonyms for “loathsome” to do the new movie The Hunt justice. Perhaps if we expand into other languages. C’est détestable! È ripugnante!

France's friendship dramedy Little White Lies is such a blatant rip-off of a far better American movie that it could have been called "Le Big Chill."

A soufflé of a romantic and family comedy that stubbornly refuses to rise.

The result is entertaining but hardly memorable.