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.

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

In truth, despite more corn than Mel Gibson grows on his farm in "Signs" (another Shyamalan effort), After Earth is worth a look.

There is a lot of shield-your-eyes ickiness in District 9, a lot of violence and gore. What there is not a lot of, however, is humanity - even in the film's depiction of the inhumanity humans are capable of.

Snappily written and even more snappily directed.

Masterminds is filled with the sort of idiotic bathroom humor that has become standard in big-screen comedies, but it is enlivened by the surreal slapstick touches that made Napoleon Dynamite so good. Even though it isn't the sharpest comedy, it had me in stitches.

Despite all the stock characters and scenarios, Fox and company manage to bring things to life. And cut some hair.

A kind of mad coming-of-age yarn embellished with lightning bolts and monsters made of cadaverous flesh.

More about future potential than present achievement.

The choppy film is like a composition crowded with competing themes.

She (Hunt) is perfection even when her movie falls a little short.

A meditation on guilt, remorse and redemption -- is unrelentingly heavy.

While Nemo's story line is as clear as its pellucid blues, Wild's narrative is as muddy as its colors.

Restoration moves from farce to spiritual parable to melodrama with such inconsistency that it could be a case study in 17th-century multiple personality disorder. [02 Feb 1996, p.05]

Neither fish nor fowl (nor extraterrestrial), and that's a problem. Craig, handsomely craggy, plays it straight, and like Eastwood's Man With No Name, he doesn't have much to say.

It would have been better to nix the drama completely and keep Madea's Halloween outing strictly about the laughs.

Whimsically conjures the magic-realist imagery of the novel while pruning the book of its narrative undergrowth. What results is a striking piece of topiary shorn of its vital branches.

Tries - far too hard - to replicate the Alice effect and falls short.

When it's not making the argument that Surfing = Peace, Step Into Liquid can be diverting.

Moving within its wild and wacky and improbably true scenarios (some of them, anyway) are people you don't really want to know. Stop the presses: War makes people rich. Stop the movie: These people, who cares?

It's bleak business, and as it hurries toward its explosive, expository conclusion, the film becomes nonsensical, too.

Sandler nimbly steps into the role created by Cooper and makes it his nebbishy own, something that cannot be said for Ryder's attempt to rethink the Arthur part. Ryder is lovely, but perhaps too sincere an actress to play a wiseacre.

The performances are uniformly top-notch. It was a treat to see Ortiz, an actor known on screen mostly for his impressive cameos in movies like "El Cantante," in a leading part enabling him to express his considerable emotional range.

In Synecdoche, Kaufman the screenwriter is not well-served by Kaufman the filmmaker. As a director, his propensity for heavyosity leadens rather than leavens this affair.

Too much of the action in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit takes place on laptops, thumb drives, and video monitors.

Charged up with stormy melodrama.

Laced with a venomous wit, and turning progressively creepier as it unfolds, writer-director Jon Reiss' movie offers a black-humored study of suppressed rage, sexual gamesmanship, domination and subordination.

Some viewers will dismiss Autumn Blood as a pretentious Euro-art iteration of Straw Dogs. For those willing to be open to its experimentation and more charitable about its many faults, the film can provide a powerful experience and serve as an fascinating testament to the tenuous nature of the social contract.