The performances are so uniformly good that it's a shame the characters are stuck with such a listless plot.

Frears has a lot of fun with the bad tempers and high spirits of this crew of adrenaline junkies, and though the story falls a little flat, the script is sprinkled with dry wit.

Nuanced work by the great John Slattery ("Mad Men") as an emotionally distant dad isn't enough to sustain more than sporadic interest in Brian Savelson's underwritten, slow-moving indie, which plays distressingly like a photographed off-Broadway drama.

Half as long and twice as much fun as the self-important "Lincoln," Roger Michell's charming sex-and-politics comedy Hyde Park on Hudson is basically a frothy tabloid take on presidential history. And for my money, that's a good thing in a season filled with puffed-up prestige pictures.

What you get instead of soccer is almost two hours of late-stage syphilis.

There's nothing you haven't seen before - and better - in Deadfall, which would seem to appeal mostly to fans of snowmobile chases.

The movie is trying to do far too much and doesn't do anything well. "Ambitious" isn't the word here; "random" is more like it.

The plot is predictable, as complications line up like jets awaiting takeoff. Even the camera work is predictable: The attractive-girl's-scary-boyfriend-suddenly-pops-up shot; the morning-after, face-in-the-pillow shot.

A fantastically entertaining biography.

Somehow, mostly through the impassioned performances of its young actors, the film finds its footing in the third act, as the narration goes quiet and tragedy unfolds with precision, even elegance.

Carlyle gives a quietly engaging performance as a Golden State farmworker with a secret in the likable indie California Solo.

The extra money has bought a professional crew for scripted sequences, in which Jonathan and his mother too often mug for the camera.

An intensity of purpose and a patient, suspenseful directing style make the B-movie Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning superior to most of the big-budget action films I've seen lately.

It's never dull though, and the familiar characters and stock motivations are convincingly put across. And there's always Xu, who's turned to acupuncture to suppress his empathy, as you wait for the inevitable moment when suppressing it won't be enough.

Slicker than most attempts to document Monroe's successes and tragic trajectory, but even her own words don't provide much more of an insight into what made this troubled icon tick.

I might forgive the slow start if it weren't for the slow middle and slow end.

The filmmaker doesn't speculate about why these men are talking, but he leaves you with an excellent guess.

This infomercial for Helnwein's work as designer for an Israeli opera called "The Child Dreams" doesn't tell us a lot about how opera comes together, but it is accidentally revealing about its subject.

The visual effects are amazing, but they don't make up for acting that is restrained to an uninsightful fault.

I can't remember ever seeing such a spectacular implosion of a squad of all-stars as Rise of the Guardians. Well, not since Yankee Stadium in October.

The dull, predictable direction is the perfect match for a watery, nondescript cast.

Even at his best, Sharma doesn't have sufficient acting chops - or enough Hanks-like charisma - to hold the screen alone for more than 70 minutes with the CGI Richard Parker (as well as a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a rat who quickly become food for the ravenous tiger).

Ultimately fails to make its case that five teenagers were sent to jail for a crime they didn't commit solely because of institutional racism.

When Hopkins' Hitch directs the audience by waving his hands like a symphony conductor - it's a nice callback to a Hannibal Lecter highlight - it's one of the best scenes of the year: a delightfully personal way to show how the story of "Psycho" concluded.

Some of the film's flourishes are ill-judged.

The Law in These Parts more than accomplishes its goal of provoking a discussion about imposing laws on people who have no say in making them.

Picture "Raging Bull" with a sleazy prep from the Brooklyn hipsteropolis of Williamsburg, and you'll get the idea of The Comedy, a character study that tries to make the revolting compelling.

A hilarious Parker Posey provides her customary blast of brittle energy in Price Check, an engaging corporate comedy.