It's a parable as timely today as when it was written. But except for Paymer as the boss who ultimately expresses empathy for Bartleby's pain, the performances are so stylized as to be drained of human emotion.

The trouble with Alfie - apart from the film's existence, and the wrongheaded idea of remaking a minor classic - is that not a soul is likable.

The question is not whether Murphy can do anything. He can. The question is why he would want to make a movie as squirmingly unfunny as Norbit.

Feels thoroughly canned.

The script appears to have been designed, created and produced entirely in 1-D: a mishmash of kidcentric antics, follow-your-dream cliches, and innocuously icky humor.

Though there are chases galore and stampeding dinos aplenty, Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a nicely rendered travelogue without storytelling. There is little to bring an audience along for the ride.

Has a low-key tone that works in its favor for a time.

It works here and there. And then it doesn't.

Ultimately, the values and the CGI are good, but the acting is broad and the chipmunks aren't really differentiated. What happened to Alvin, the rodent counterpart of Dennis the Menace? Was he declawed in the translation to CGI?

Now that Nina has finally arrived in theaters, revealing itself to be a listless, oddly constructed tale that does a poor job of capturing Simone's star quality or indomitable racial pride, it makes you wonder: Was it really worth kicking up all that controversy for a movie that's this bad?

You'd think a movie about transplanting human consciousness would be smarter than this.

Shrek the Third isn't a movie, it's the extension of a brand.

The film is a ponderous, overwrought meditation on grief, loss, guilt, and memory that prods and probes its characters more like lab rats than living, breathing creations.

In Framing John DeLorean, Philadelphia-based documentarians Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce (The Art of the Steal) mix fact, drama, and speculation to draw an ambitious portrait of the fabled automaker, but within the frame, key questions remain unanswered.

Shot in Panama, with a cast of local Indians and B-tier Latino and Anglo actors, End of the Spear has neither the marquee heft nor the artistic gravitas of "The New World."

Not one of Sparks' best flicks (The Notebook is quite good) Safe Haven is marred by film cliches. It has an alarming number of throwaway montage sequences.

Chicken Little is entirely lacking in anything "Disneyesque."

Shortbus suffers from a vague, ad lib-y script and a cast that, while hardly shy, isn't exactly charismatic.

Somehow the star emerges from this mess smelling like pure testosterone. You can't stop the Rock.

What redeems the film...is that for every nonstop explosion, there's a hilarious burst of Reynolds' nonstop patter.

The trouble with The Last Kiss comes down to Paul Haggis' screenplay.

Muniz is quite winning as a plucky teen who is constantly being thrown into situations over his head. But the usually reliable Anthony Anderson e-mails in his performance as Cody's handler.

An alarmingly charmless attempt to evoke the elegant romance and jaunty, jet-setting intrigue of the aforementioned titles, The Tourist is notable for the total absence of movie-star heat that movie stars are paid unseemly sums to radiate.

Suffers from "Bridget Jones" Syndrome but without that movie's charms.

As in "An Education," Scherfig's settings are unshowy, imparting period flavor without overwhelming what is, ultimately, an underwhelming film.

Until Seven Days in Utopia sucker punches you with a surfeit of faith-based platitudes, its upbeat brand of golf mysticism isn't altogether unappealing.

The film never gives you a real sense of what drove Darin on, fighting a heart ailment (from childhood rheumatic fever) and fighting an industry and press that wanted to pigeonhole him.

Less the blistering satire it imagines itself than a blustering, bloody, blundering melodrama about bottom feeders nibbling each other.