Salt offers a sloppy concoction of story elements from '70s espionage classics - the sinister black ops of "Three Days of the Condor," the nuclear dread of "Fail-Safe," the political-assassination scenarios of "The Day of the Jackal."

It's the emotional equivalent of a big shrug.

If you strip away all the gunplay, Hitman: Agent 47 would be about 10 minutes long.

It lacks the resonances of Gilbert's book.

The moral of this softhearted tale is that family values can rehabilitate and tenderize even the toughest of birds. But you'll forgive me if I liked it less when Stuart smoothed Margalo's feathers than when Snowbell's fundamental cattiness made the fur fly.

An undeniable pleasure of National Treasure was watching a movie shot locally that wasn't haunted by a virus or by dead people.

The screenplay of Open Range, credited to one Craig Storper, is an awesome compendium of cowboy-movie cliches. It borders on parody, and often crosses the border, rustling up a drove of oater aphorisms.

Sex and the City 2 is a champagne cocktail on a runaway train -- fizzy, sparkly, giddy-making, and splashing all over the place.

Keener makes this sometimes inert but always intimate tale of love and ambition burst with dynamic energy. Keener doesn't just have attitude, she has maditude.

Most disappointing, Eastwood's decades-spanning portrait reveals little about the man himself.

Brody plays Chess as a slightly crooked but well-meaning musical cheerleader without fully emerging as a character.

It's a vivid way to contextualize Hypatia's astronomical musings, but it's kind of out there, too.

A bit of a one-joke wonder.

The fundamental problem with The Night Listener is the manner in which the boy, Pete, is depicted. Rory Culkin gets the tricky job of bringing the role to life, and he does it well, but it's still a trick. Or is it?

It's an engaging enough story, crisply told, and the lip-synced music scenes in the studio and on stage are brought off in high style.

If you’re looking for great, realistic action, it’s just the thing. Berg is a masterful action director, and his Patriots Day is every bit as engaging and exciting as "Lone Survivor" and "Deepwater Horizon."

The result is Woody Allen lite, with some deft observations about how the social media designed to bring singles together are actually coming between them.

It's a shame about Ray, because Foxx is trapped in a movie that takes the music icon's unique story and turns it into cheesy, sentimental American Dream cliches.

BMH2 is a harmless, genial outing, a comedy that is amusing without ever rising to the level of funny. You sit through the film with a smile on your face, waiting for the laughs that never come.

Rather prosy until its final third. Then it grabs you with unexpected force.

If you can accept Dennis Quaid as a post-Arthurian knight and a dragon who looks like Sean Connery as well as talking like him, there is a certain loopy charm to their adventures. But the rest of Dragonheart, with evil kings and distressed damsels, is such a warmed-over borrowing from better fantasies that it undermines the film's modest strength. [31 May 1996, p.05]

Mixing elements from documentaries, biopics, war flicks, and Hallmark romances, Ross' film is a living history tour, but with gory special effects and a smoldering smattering of sex appeal.

What's touching about Rocky Balboa, the sixth chapter in the saga of Philadelphia's lord of the ring, is the small-scale stuff. Not the spectacle of the has-been, now 60, connecting with a punch. But the sight of an actor connecting with a character.

Penn's over-the-top tirades and bullying threats are still there - it's a wild and woolly performance that isn't always as menacing as perhaps the actor intended it to be.

A very sweet, very slight family movie that scores smiles and tears of joy.

Christopher Walken has the best moments in the whole thing, portraying the wacked-out auteur of the Gwen-and-Eddie vehicle. Sadly, he's only in America's Sweethearts a few hilarious minutes.

Mulholland Falls deserves more a tip of the hat than an enthusiastic greeting. [26 Apr 1996, p.03]

Diaz gets her own voice-over monologue, as does Patric - the different points of view functioning like stanza refrains, born in shared familial anguish.

All manner of subplots weave their way through the film, which teems with "colorful" characters and saccharine cliches. But, like the first film, it's next to impossible not to find diversion in the company of such stalwarts as Dench and Nighy and Smith. And George Thorogood is, happily, never heard from again.

Despite Sigismondi's fresh eye, feminist perspective, and rapport with actors, The Runaways feels like a long-form music video, recycling every trope from the doomed-rocker handbook.

This gang of highly skilled dancers (with the guidance of debut director Scott Speer) delivers a sequence of spectacular group numbers that truly pop in 3-D.

Plot contrivances, including an ominous cowboy-hatted figure who stalks Bitsey and her tagalong intern (Gabriel Mann), undermine the story's serious political themes.

Succeeds as a do-it-yourself handbook of guerrilla filmmaking

You might be occasionally dumbfounded by The Messenger, but you won't be bored.

It's as exhilarating and moving a film opening as you're likely to experience. Sadly, the rest of Follow Me doesn't live up to this overture.

Fans of swooping helicopter shots, alleys filled with backlit geysers of steam, and jump-cut editing that makes MTV look like Ingmar Bergman will relish the intercontinental intrigue and huggermugger that is Spy Game.

Meta and messy, Seven Psychopaths does not hang together like "In Bruges."

This film that imagines the end of the world not as a whimper but as an implosion is a preposterously diverting, instantly forgettable, big-screen video game.

A stylish, painterly picture that evokes classic horror films from the 1930s.

One moment it's farcical comedy, the next it's gruesome melodrama. The movie never finds the right tone.

The obstacles are many, most notably Rookery, a local vampire hunter who looks like a rejected extra from "Mad Max."

English wrangles her talent like a virtuoso. Best is Murphy Brown herself, Candice Bergen.

An unsteady empowerment film for 'tweenage girls and their moms, Ice Princess boasts more spark than sparkle.

A testosterone-fueled road movie that displays the same Apatow-ian obsessions, and raunch, as "Pineapple Express," "Superbad," and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

The Grey, whose clipped title, grim swagger, and lost-in-the-outback themes conjure up visions of that Alec Baldwin/Anthony Hopkins classic, "The Edge," devolves into a predictable man-against-nature, and man-against-fellow man, affair.

Road Hard, partly funded through crowd-sourcing, is an enjoyable picture. It's sure to appeal to Man Show fans, though it withers when compared to another recent film about a has-been comic directed by its star, Chris Rock's remarkable Top Five.

In the odd, and oddly compelling, biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, Gretchen Mol is a delight as the saucy brunette.

Romance and Cigarettes is lewd and it's lurid and looks to be a lost pop opera, but it has more vitality than anything else out there.

Skin is both exasperatingly choppy and exceptionally moving.

Though a fine specimen of cultural anthropology, The Aristocrats is too shapeless to be satisfying as a film.

Krueger's comedy doesn't always spark, but its underlying intelligence - not to mention Graham's eyes - shines through.

Corny and blubbery as it is, still packs an emotional wallop.

Long and lugubrious.

Instead of the usual contrast of black and white, The Yards offers a vivid palette of grays, and it's a far more rewarding color scheme for a movie.

Not only eight minutes shorter than its forebear, it's at least eight minutes better - less twee, less chatty, more action, more Elvish.

Though Black Hat is not as tightly structured as Spinal Tap or as pointed as the blaxploitation-movie parody I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, in its rambling way it is the ultimate comic indictment of rap as a kind of equal- opportunity opportunism. Hats off to Cundieff. [15 Jun 1994, p.F02]

A raunchy comedy that's funnier to think about than to watch.

Taken for what it is - 'tweenage escapism - Stormbreaker is moderately fun.

Because Trance is principally about the thrill of the ride rather than the inner lives of the riders, it lacks that outlaw humanism specific to Boyle films such as "Trainspotting," "Slumdog Millionaire," and "Millions." In other words, it's an ingeniously built automaton, sexy as hell, and devoid of a heart.

For the most part, Michael Winterbottom's well-intended film, the true story of an idealistic journalist and his gallant wife disinvites emotion by focusing on process at the expense of passion.

Clunky and unsurprising.

The marching bands' duels are as fun as the cheerleader wars in "Bring It On."

Disconnect is an Eleanor Rigby movie. Look at all the lonely people. A "Crash" for the Internet age, Alex Henry Rubin's topical opus swoops down like an alien spaceship to investigate a disparate group of Earthlings living in close proximity in the suburbs of New York City.

As pleasant and rosy and optimistic as it is, Liberty Heights doesn't really soar, emotionally or otherwise.

Much scampering, yelling, quaking and crying is required of the actors, and they acquit themselves well enough, even with oozing fake wounds and prop rebars piercing their shoulder blades.

Loses itself in melodrama, caricature and narrative missteps.

While the plot may be too twisty for most kids (and adults) to follow, the art of Cars 2 is as imaginative as anything Pixar has ever done.

For all its brilliant touches, Dragon loses its fire midway, nearly flickering out by its perfunctory conclusion.

The premise of Village of the Damned remains wonderfully scary: that an alien life force has descended on a community, inseminated its women, and spawned a gaggle of evil brainiacs with platinum-blond hair who can read your mind and do funny things with their eyes. [28 Apr 1995, p.3]

Little White Lies wants to capture something momentous and meaningful in these people's lives. But ultimately it's hard to care.

Standouts are Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, Harry's sly father-surrogate, and Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge.

Burlesque is a preposterous and intermittently entertaining lesson in how to make a movie musical with a little brains and a lot of talent.

In rhythm, humor and performance, Morning Glory is, at best, sporadic.

The Twilight star's line-readings have become like Edward and his bloodsucking kin: They lack a pulse.

While the production values are top-notch, and the action artfully choreographed, in the end - and quite well before the end - a sense of tedium sets in.

By the end of the film, Leo is beginning to sound suspiciously like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Robotic, and more than a little peeved.

Though one wishes Graff's eye were as developed as his keen ear, he elicits rafter-raising musical performances from Latifah, Palmer, and Jordan that are irresistible fun.

It's hard to say with assurance whether the flaw is in Bloom's performance or in Monahan's politically correct conception of Balian, precociously secular for a Crusader.

It is an exploitation picture disguised as a hipster comedy.

She's So Lovely means to be a parable of the inextricability of mad love and madness, a longtime obsession of the elder Cassavetes. Only in Penn's performance does it begin to grasp its elusive goal. [29 Aug 1997, p.03]

Olyphant has a cool, amiable vibe, kind of postmodern Jimmy Stewart, while Mitchell brings intelligence and quietude to yet another role that doesn't deserve such consideration.

Frankly, the wow factor isn't that great.

Short, sweet-and-sour, and amusing rather than funny, Despicable Me can't help but be likable.

It's all very deep, but in a tricked-up, art-directed sort of way.

A light-as-powder family comedy.

Hill, Redford and Goldman reteamed for 1975's The Great Waldo Pepper, which is set in the barnstorming days of aviation, but never really takes off. [04 Jan 2003, p.C01]

Faces, torsos and other parts of the human anatomy go into gory meltdown in Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers. But his remake of of a sci-fi classic that already has been brilliantly remade leaves you wondering why he wasn't willing to go out on a limb. [18 Feb 1994, p.04]

Funnier than his criticism of egos on the rampage is Guest's rare talent for double-edged satire that tweaks one convention by means of another.

Harvey's a gifted physical mimic who demonstrates the comic waddle of the church usher with fallen arches, as well as the poor parishioner etiquette of grabbing too many communion wafers.

Even at just 90 minutes, Balls of Fury - with its caricatures of the Asian underworld, with its G-man malarkey and gay jokes (Feng keeps an all-boy bevy of sex slaves) - begins to outstay its welcome.

Whether it's the clothing, cars or furniture, everything is sleek and chrome-plated. That is, with the exception of Bening's alchemical performance, which turns brass to gold.

Like "Mr. Holland's Opus," only in French, with an all-boy cast in white shirts and short pants, The Chorus is the kind of sugary, crowd-pleasing fare that only the most curmudgeonly moviegoer can frown upon.

Stripped of its poetry, some of the devices of the tragedy of the Moor come off here as woefully contrived.

It's not a great film but it's pure pleasure.

It might not be good enough to make you laugh consistently, but Hollywood Ending looks good enough to eat.

It's a shameless don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful-and-impulsive performance (Diaz), and it throws the entire movie out of balance.

As it progresses, the film takes us to another borderland, that between reality and delusion. This is where Harlan's mind freely gallops.

None of these elements quite come together, and while the clothes and props look authentic, the acting doesn't.