At least an hour of Man of Steel's excessive running time is devoted to the sort of crash-and-burn, slamming-into-skyscrapers CG fight scenes that we've already seen in "The Avengers" and "Dark Knight," "Iron Man," and "Spider-Man." Man of Steel is just the same old same old.

The main distinction of this particular raunchfest, about the economic opportunities available to women in the phone-sex industry, is that it does not reconcile its slim narrative conflict with a big, fat wedding.

Visually immersive but emotionally uninvolving.

I mean no disrespect to Rosenthal when I say I laughed louder during the movie than during any episode of his hit TV show.

Potter explores midlife ennui, (middle-)East-West tension, theology, biology and the irrational nature of romance in this ambitious, if ultimately sketchy, drama.

With so many good Austen adaptations out there (the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice, the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, Emma Thompson and Ang Lee's splendid Sense and Sensibility), Becoming Jane seems a bit flimsy by comparison.

So profoundly does The Third Miracle live up to its title that Agnieszka Holland's exceptional meditation upon a priest's crisis of faith might win the endorsement of archdiocese and agnostic alike.

A silly melodrama.

Lee distills the flavor of this transforming event and hints at how it transformed some who were there. His movie is a contact high.

Though not deep, the movie is diverting.

Rian Johnson's film is a scam wrapped in a sham.

Cloud Atlas is pop spiritualism, comic-book grandiosity, Zen for dummies. I can't say I didn't enjoy it on some level, but it's not the level of universal wisdom the Wachowskis and Tykwer would have us be on.

Jessica Biel is Vera Miles, the star who had the nerve to get pregnant when Hitchcock wanted her for "Vertigo." He feels betrayed, and she feels relieved, consigned to a supporting role in Psycho as Marion's sister. And Toni Collette, in glasses and a dark wig, is Hitchcock's long-suffering secretary, Peggy. Both Biel and Collette are very good, engaging.

Struggles to get off the ropes and never quite establishes its rhythm. The film takes place in eternal moral twilight, dark enough to make faces look photogenically poignant, light enough to see the white lies.

Murray and Linney are terrific together (and apart), their notes pitch perfect, and the supporting cast is good all around.

Pinpointing the era - lovingly - is very much what Dark Shadows' has on its mind. While there's a tangle of romance and vengeance and all sorts of family matters to deal with, Burton's film is really about hippies in bell-bottoms, stoned out in their VW micro-buses.

A Kiwi nerd love story and loopy portrait of Down Under underachievers, Eagle vs. Shark offers a deadpan take on family, friendship, obsession and self-delusion.

Washington offers another of his rock-steady performances, playing a career civil servant with a couple of secrets of his own, but confident, diligent, ready to go the distance for the city he loves.

The film's title is a double entendre, meant to be taken straight as a noun (as in summer camp) and bent as a verb (as in "to camp," an action self-consciously exaggerated or theatrical).

Smart and gripping - at least until the third act.

The Purge: Election Year tries to show that what counts isn't firepower but compassion, not egoism but community. But frankly, it can't help but shoot itself in the foot: The violence is too tantalizing, too stylized, too fetishistic - the film features killers dressed in fanciful Halloween costumes who dance and sing as they dismember people.

An inconsistent and endearing sports inspirational that aims to be "Chariots of Fire" for golf.

If Fleming had played everything as a black comedy with a satirical send-up of high school life - like Heathers - he might have had something. But The Craft has no consistency and certainly no art as it drifts into an unprepossessing display of special-effects magic. [03 May 1996, p.08]

A double shot of Saturday-night lowdown chased by a cheery chug of Sunday-morning uplift.

In key ways, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is like Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth": a child, caught in the waking nightmare of one of history's ugliest times, confronting the horrors of a grown-up world, and dealing with them as best he, or she, can.

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

A cheesily entertaining effort that recalls the irreverent '50s comedies of Jerry Lewis. [12 Apr 1996, p.03]

With border crossings and familiar buddy-cop movie tropes (think Lethal Weapon, think 48 HRS, think The Heat), the Wahlberg-Washington express hits lots of comfortably familiar notes. And more than a few viciously uncomfortable ones, too.

T Bone Burnett's soundtrack has the appropriate twang to give Wenders' Hopperesque tableaux a nice, filmic poetry. But as arresting as the images are, Shepard's clunky, soap-opera banter brings most everything, and everyone, crashing down to earth.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith kicks off with panache and star power - and quickly wears out its welcome.

This based-on-real-life tale of artistic aspirations and international politics is packed with more corn than an Iowa silo.

Isn't the whole handheld "real-video" thing kind of old by now? Isn't the Shyamalanian-twist thing kind of old by now, too?

Breslin, so memorable in "Little Miss Sunshine," suffers the most. Skilled and reactive with humans, she doesn't quite muster the same engagement with her finned and flippered costars here.

It would be curmudgeonly to count all the ways in which The Hundred-Foot Journey is unsurprising, unrealistic, unnecessary.

Baked and half-baked, Tenacious D does manage to give the term potty humor a new meaning. That's some kind of genius, right?

At times soppy, sentimental and shamelessly romantic, at other moments bursting with clever barbs -- and now and then zooming in on something telling and poignant -- Love Actually is just about impossible to dislike.

If Mark Wahlberg's new pic, The Gambler, feels like a stale rehash of existential tropes, that's because it is.

Unlike most Sayles movies, the filmmaker no sooner introduces his memorable characters and deeply resonant themes than his From Here to Maternity melodrama abruptly ends.

The second-best film parody (after The Brady Bunch Movie) of a '70s TV phenom that unaccountably looks better the further you get from it.

Beloved spans 45 years, shifting from Paris to Prague to London to Montreal, and it boasts an especially strong performance by Paul Schneider.

Promised Land is a frustrating film to watch. It should be better than this, smarter than this.

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

The movie is well-edited and lean, a fast-paced, action-filled bit of froth that manages to be diverting and surprisingly fun.

Overstocked farce.

Despite a winning performance by Anna Faris, the cutest thing in platform shoes since Goldie Hawn, the film falls on its keister so many times that before long the perky pinkness turns bruising black-and-blue.

One reason to see Rendition is for Naor's stunning performance as the torturer who is the one character aware of the political and moral contradictions of what he's doing. Every time he was on screen, he commanded it.

Despite the competent animation, the great tunes, and funny voice work by costars Russell Brand and John Cleese, Trolls is a lackluster entry. The story is clichéd and predictable. Overall, the film has no real magic.

A solid double rather than a grand slam, The Sandlot remains a refreshing antidote to the daily round of contract squabbles on the sports page.

Perfect Sense is a very conventional love story wrapped into a slightly more quirky, apocalyptic yarn and lightly dusted with a touch of true originality.

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

There's no adroitness, no grace in the handling of the pitching emotions - funny, sad, icky - that such a story presents.

Jaw-droppingly corny. [22 Jan 1999, p.03]

At one point, Dulaine takes the students to his studio and they look up at the mirrored disco ball glittering above the dance floor. "Corny, but cool," says one of the sweathogs. My feelings about the film precisely.

There are big, jaunty gusts of music, and there are big, jaunty gusts of acting: the Heath Ledger-esque Alexander Fehling pumps up his Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with brash, boyish verve and stormy emoting.

Offers a worshipful but insightful portrait of the group - centered, of course, on its charismatic front man.

The film is uniquely spirited, radiating the exuberance and sexual heat of an Elvis musical, a characteristic shared by its songs and dances.

Even though the soap employed is Irish Spring, this is still a soap opera.

Three things make the film worthwhile: Shatner's performance; the sequence involving Data getting his "emotion chip" implant; and John Alonzo's crystalline cinematography, which makes Generations the most beautiful Trek ever. [18 Nov. 1994, p.03]

This provocative account of a war-weary administration that denied Surratt her right to a fair trial starts slow but builds momentum in the scenes with Wright and Evan Rachel Wood as Surratt's flinty daughter, Anna.

The new King is competent, reasonably entertaining, faithful to the original, wholesome, sometimes even enjoyable.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but a strong, heady brew.

As stories go, The Astronaut Farmer is engaging, even if it serves up a kind of Plains State brand of Rocky-esque hooey.

Gritty and compelling up to a point, but cheaply exploitive as well.

The troupe deserves every bit of its worldwide renown, and it makes this Imax trip one well worth taking.

Lacks an essential sense of purpose.

Doesn't overdo it on the 1950s period charm -- lots of tweed, old cars and bikes, great woolly sweaters and painted rowhouses -- and the performances never get out of hand, even when the plot does.

Invincible works, simply but provocatively, as a parable about the oppressed and the oppressors, victimhood and fanaticism.

A film with many redeeming qualities. Its heart is certainly in the right place, but its head makes some misjudgments.

Since the main reason I go to movies is to engage with characters, I prefer "The Pledge," the film opening today by Madonna's first husband, Sean Penn, rather than this stylish fluff by her second spouse.

Facing Windows is rich stuff. Maybe too rich. But thanks to fine performances and a grounded script, the pieces of this intriguing little puzzle all manage to fit.

Just misses being great. The dark shaman mysticism doesn't entirely mesh with the earthbound quest across the wild and glorious Southwest. And the ending, with its shoot-outs and sacrifices, has a choppy, unneccessarily complicated feel.

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.

It's not just Hollywood convention that gets in the way of the story, it's the lack of depth, heft and heart at its core.

Best when skewering New Age entrepreneurs for what might be called Compassionate Capitalism. Steve Martin is sublime as Kate's boss, Barry, purveyor of organic food and Zen koans.

The film is too formulaic and far too prone to melodrama, with outsize emotions as ridiculous as its comic-book villains.

5 Flights Up is a sweet film with a few nicely turned lines, some good jokes, and some very lovely dialogue. But it's not much more than fluff and air.

The irony of Anesthesia is that, while it uses interconnectivity as a storytelling mechanism, the characters do not really connect.

A satisfyingly screwy New York story.

If only the screenplay had more going for it than hackneyed homilies and living-in-the-ghetto stereotypes. If only first-time director Sunu Gonera had a surer hand, a knack for something bolder, wilder, goofier.

More about future potential than present achievement.

Anyone with a sizable role in Dodgeball gets mired in the script's dissipated tone. Two of the climactic jokes involve "Happy Days" references. How tenuous is that?

Not as consistently or uproariously funny as "American Pie," but it does have a Zen zaniness that gives it center as well as edge.

An overobvious and underwhelming satire about American consumerism run amok.

Idle it is not. Wild it is most assuredly. Set in Prohibition-era Georgia, Idlewild boasts yesterday's style, today's music, and the Harlem Renaissance's romanticism.

There are so many things wrong with Luhrmann's Great Gatsby - the filmmaker's attention-deficit-disorder approach, the anachronistic convergence of hip-hop and swing, the choppy elision of Fitzgerald's plot, the jarring collision of Jazz Age cool and Millennial cluelessness. But at the crux of things, the problem is that it's impossible to care.

Clare Lewins' dizzyingly disjointed documentary, I Am Ali, has one thing going for it: its subject, boxing immortal Muhammad Ali.

Old School has all the ingredients of an uproarious campus comedy, but it lacks a boisterous short-order cook who could whip up a food fight or three.

Has a glorious good time satirizing the extravagant lengths to which the military and intelligence establishments will go if they think there's a payoff at the other end.

A movie so dumb it raises serious questions about our place on the evolutionary ladder. [12 Jan 1996, p.12]

For all its visual delights, Magic in the Moonlight, the 44th feature written and directed by the admirably industrious Woody Allen, has to be one of his bigger duds.

A heady stew of psychological disorders and classic tragedies, borrowing from Shakespeare, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the Greeks.

Despite the charismatic efforts of the British actor Ahmed, The Reluctant Fundamentalist gets bogged down in proselytizing and plot.

Oh so slight and forgettable.

No one should be expected to endure 115 minutes of this nonsense.

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

While Imagine That falls short of its feel-good aim, its feel-nice vibe is a good Father's Day diversion for Dads and their spawn.

The momentum Stiller has built up - his character's globe-trotting derring-do, the care and consideration on display in his directing - carries the movie a long way. Falling short of fantastic, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is still a fantasy to enjoy.

With its rebellious themes and pharmaceutical props - Ritalin, Prozac, Xanax all get doled out - Charlie Bartlett isn't going to win any awards from parent-teacher groups. But the underlying message of the film, with its nods to "Catcher in the Rye" and - '70s throwback here - "Harold and Maude," is a good one.