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.

If you're in the mood for a clichéd gangland B-movie, though, you could do worse.

Literate and engrossing, with excellent performances.

Though deadly serious, Christopher Smith's European-made bubonic- plague melodrama provides good value with lots of blood and guts, as well as a solid cast.

Aside from a relatively brief appearance by Joan Cusack's avatar as the kidnapped mother, there are no involving characters or situations.

This silly extraterrestrial-invasion epic somehow manages the feat of making the destruction of La La Land seem tedious.

After 160 years, this is a story that still grips the heart and the mind.

I have no idea how to blow up a two-page fairy tale into 100 minutes of blockbuster, but frankly I was hoping for more backstory about the titular cape in Red Riding Hood. Thread count? Machine washability?

An enjoyable mix of tragedy and comedy.

You won't soon forget it -- if you have the guts to see it.

Perplexing but pleasing.

Isn't quite insipid, although if it were a little better, it could be.

A tediously unfunny comedy.

More than lives up to its name with ultra-campy performances, high-glucose direction, laughable dialogue, cheesy effects and a back-lot simulation of a Manhattan street that wouldn't pass muster on an after-school special.

The misleading trailers for the supremely goofy The Adjustment Bureau promise action-packed sci-fi. What you actually get is a love-struck Matt Damon running for the US Senate as he's stalked by fedora-wearing angels.

By the end I was getting a bit antsy from the rambling script and direction.

It's an interesting story, but the presentation is more like a home movie than something you'd pay to see in a theater.

It's also sugary and has a silly tear-jerker ending. But I found myself laughing at the film's gentle humor, anyway.

With its poky pacing, thin characters, obvious message and predictable plot, the movie amounts to a cinematic sermon that, like many of those given in houses of worship, has a good-hearted message that will be difficult to deliver to a snoozing audience.

An example of style over substance. There's lots of slo-mo and jittery hand-held camera work, and references to the French New Wave (especially François Truffaut), but little depth.

If there's an awkward moment, it's the scene in which the monks take part in a sort of Last Supper, drinking wine while Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" plays in the background. You keep waiting for Natalie Portman to twirl into the room.

If you go, be sure to stick around through the closing credits. By far the funniest part of the movie is a blackly humorous fantasy sequence starring Merchant.

The dialogue is banal and the acting, especially Wortham's, is unconvincing. Even the sex and nudity, of which there is a lot, grows tiresome after a while.

The Chaperone squanders nice locations and an expert comic performance by Yeardley Smith (the voice of Lisa Simpson) as the teacher trying to supervise the trip.

A deeply felt evocation of a place and a people by writer-director Matt Porterfield, who set this largely improvised film in his own lower-class Baltimore neighborhood.

A labored romantic farce whose only asset is Carlos Leon, best known as the father of Madonna's daughter Lourdes.

The film achieves a mild uptick in the final act, with a surprise change of heart and a race to save a little girl, but up till then it's thickly earnest -- a conquista-bore.

Morbidly funny art-house horror tale.