The combination of emotional anemia, predictable plotting and tepid language makes what might have been a crackerjack treat play like a soggy piece of popcorn.

Entertaining, disturbing, sad, outrageous and often hilarious.

County Clare holds little of interest, with a generic story line and a cast that's mostly just going through the motions.

Tense, bloody, funny and smart; lacks original's conscience, but it's still a surprisingly gritty remake.

This gritty take on Grimm's suffers from mannered supporting performances and an inconsistent level of realism.

It turns out bigger is not better. Bigger is louder, you bet your pounding eardrums it is, but it's not smarter. More teeth aren't sharper. They're dull, and so is Jurassic World.

Rubber is engaging, brisk and smart enough that the audience wins, too. It's grand, mindless fun that makes a thoughtful point.

The movie isn't uniformly taut, but it's funny, acid and clever, the work of a fine craftsman working in a comfortable metier.

Reggio, who is sufficiently eager for a large audience that he has allowed his film to be distributed by Miramax, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Co., surely one of the villains in his piece, is neither so honest nor so bold (as Moore's "Bowling for Columbine").

The first "Barbershop" was no classic but, as so often with sequels, if this were the first there would be no second.

Proyas does a jaw-dropping job, particularly in the opening scenes, of depicting Chicago in the year 2035.

Starts well, builds drama and then proceeds to fly sort of crazily off the rails.

Fox uses her earth-tone-clad, Ivy-League-schooled characters the way Jane Austen used hers: taking their privileged, rigid social structures and building a stage to explore deeper human problems.

There's a conflict between the film's need for some sort of closure and the messiness of the reality it depicts that leaves The Whistleblower even more unsatisfying than it was meant to be.

What makes Miss You Already work (when it does work, which is most of the time) is that it shows imperfect characters dealing imperfectly with situations ranging from the maritally frustrating to the existentially overwhelming.

Memphis Belle is an ambitious, lavishly produced, terrific-looking adventure about a B-17 crew and its 25th and last mission in May 1943 at a crucial point in the bomber war. Unfortunately, the film is at war with itself. [12 Oct 1990, p.R04]

Annaud shot in Vietnam, creating gorgeous, often exotic images. The compelling film is a journey to another world and time, seen from a unique and peculiar perspective. [23 Nov 1992, p.D05]

The flashback itself is a romantic dramedy that's far smarter than junk like "27 Dresses." Unfortunately, to enjoy that flashback, you have to ignore two gargantuan idiocies: No sane father would twist his daughter into knots by telling this story. It's full of booze, cigarettes, infidelity and sex with women who aren't Mom.

The film is a lively and absorbing document, filled with jaw-dropping materials, such as an actual audio recording of Kesey's first LSD trip in a Stanford University lab.

Tries to pretend that its premise isn't timeworn, and thanks to charming lead performances, it almost succeeds. But not quite.

An ascerbic swipe at family counseling, holiday dinners, small-town mores and baby-boomer marriages, ``The Ref'' is acted and written with such pleasure that its meanness becomes cleansing, a stripping-away of the sentimentality that suffocates most Hollywood films about families. [11 Mar 1994, p.AE15]

There are laughs to be found, as unfiltered improvisations on subjects such as Viagra, home electronics, pot cookies and the end of "Lost" come fast and furious.

The cast is almost uniformly spectacular -- particularly Angela Lansbury as a wicked aunt and Raphael Coleman as the sardonic, bespectacled child who delivers hilarious, verbose asides and somehow makes it look effortless.

A handsome, somewhat draggy and abrupt film that's more memorable in snippets than as a whole.

The only genuine laughs come from Peter's self-sabotaging inner monologue.

Alas, none of it, save Kristin Scott Thomas giving a peach of a performance as a political operative, smacks of real life or vitality. Even when it evinces spasms of life, this film is, more or less, a dead fish.

The film is filled with cool little scenes of fighting and shape-shifting, and gloomy atmosphere. Subtitles themselves have morphed into gimmicks -- sometimes they float, sometimes they dissolve, sometimes they appear in unexpected places in the frame. It's all darned nifty.

Time to retire OSS 117's license to kill before any more innocent people suffer.

It's a remarkably intimate look at the man and his thinking, and you wish for more history to flesh out the biographical aspects of his life.

It's a gorgeous picture and features three substantial performances, but the material is chatty, forced and excessively arch.

This is not a movie about actors. It's a movie about racing, chasing, chicks and adrenaline -- just what many theatergoers are dying for in a summer dominated by a sweet ogre and a dumbed-down historical tragedy.

Lyrical and gorgeous, it indulges in enough trademark Malickian touches to seem almost a parody of itself.

A surprisingly fatalistic, way-above-average ski documentary that lays out a 35-year history of the "extreme" end of the sport.

For all its flaws, Hitch largely comes off as a light romp.

The actual video footage of some of the incidents recreated in the film, which play with the end credits, makes it clear that sometimes reality can be as hokey as fiction.

August: Osage County goes to some heavy places, upturning long-buried resentments and secrets. It can be a lot to take at times, but Letts’ knack for dark humor, and Streep’s flawless delivery of the same, allows for levity when the tale is at its most bleak.

It's woeful as a documentary history -- a real missed opportunity.

In the parlance of the kids today, the movie totally goes there.

The result is typical Mendes: accomplished, calculated and uncommitted. Maybe it's because his talent comes to him too easily, but I've yet to sense his heart and soul in a film.

The journey on which he takes us may not satisfy in the ways we normally ask of movies, but if it did it wouldn't be a Cronenberg, would it?

It hardly needs to hang its head around the original, and it bolsters Brewer's standing as a talent of note.

Its smallness of scale, and undemonstrative nature, could make it a welcome change of pace from Hollywood bombast, especially for fans of the life aquatic.

Witless, tasteless, toothless, pointless, garish, repetitive, obvious, and painfully dull, Pirate Radio is that exceedingly rare film that never, but never puts a foot right.

An immaculately crafted, splendidly acted drama with a message at its core of forgiveness and humanity. It's also blatantly manipulative, and, upon reflection, rather banal. In other words, it's the epitome of Oscar bait and almost serves as a step-by-step guide to creating such a beast.

One of the greatest films about the civilian experience of war ever made anywhere.

Once Wentworth Miller's screenplay starts to provide answers for Charlie's mysterious menace, though, expectations are left unfulfilled.

The King feels like a morality play without any morals.

One of the most lifeless and predictable movies you're likely to see this year.

Despite the hot-button pedophilic story hook (I'm surprised Jeff and Hayley didn't meet on MySpace.com), Hard Candy ultimately beats with the heart of a stagier, more complicated psychological revenge picture along the lines of Roman Polanski's "Death and the Maiden."

Overall, the trip successfully embodies the spirit of the original Magic Bus man, Ken Kesey, whom these modern-day pranksters visit in a poignant scene filmed just months before his death.

Remarkable, unheralded story.

Ultimately, The Keeping Room feels more like a clumsy melding of "Unforgiven" and "12 Years a Slave" than a unique take on violence, race, and gender.

While these interviews are affecting, and the movie talks about suicide in a refreshingly straightforward manner, it's the images of these actual deaths that induce horrified gasps.

Shrek 4 is at its best when it's sadistically doing these character remixes; you can feel the filmmakers' glee at getting to shrug off story continuity and make a mess.

The movie never recovers from its cheesy center.

Yet another, albeit sparer, Iñárritu gloom-fest.

The Dictator has a few laughs along its bumpy path, but not enough of them to indicate that Cohen has found a means to escape the shadows of his early career and forge a second act for himself.

The least erotic, exotic, luxurious and sarcastic Bond film ever made. Its hero is haunted, obsessed, merciless, cold. There are no gadgets or flippant one-liners and there's almost no sex.

It's never more than an intro to a man who merits volumes.

A satisfying holiday treat for adults and children alike.

Although some of the secondary roles are awkwardly acted, the leads are impressive.

The dialogue is clipped and theatrical, and, aside from Harvey Keitel's German officer, accents are abandoned, which may distract viewers. For me it worked fine.

The script doesn't give Bigelow enough human stuff to balance the mechanical. For good or ill, like so many other submarine thrillers before it, K-19 is more about the machine than the men.

This may have been fertile grounds for satire in 1925, when Noel Coward's drawing-room melodrama Easy Virtue debuted on the stage, but by now this film version feels rather done.

There's a sense of self-satisfied naughtiness to the film that undercuts any claims it can make to being transgressive.

Maybe the real Ernie Davis really was this perfect, but the movie plays as if the filmmakers didn't want to offend his family.

The fun thing about Eclipse is watching Lautner emerge as the Han Solo of this series, getting all the laughs and calling Edward and Bella on their preciousness.

Significantly cleverer than its moniker, even though it picks for its satire one of the most inviting targets on record: the world of contemporary art.

Strictly texture, a romp over the surfaces of Andy Kaufman's life with not much insight into its core.

The film paints a by now familiar picture of suburbia as a pit of dysfunction, though some nice dark-humored moments and generally fine performances make up for a lot.

This is a movie where you can just sit back and revel in it, warts and all.

So did the world need another "Men in Black"? No, not at all. But if there had to be one, then it's certainly a relief that it should be one as agreeable as this.

Too well-made and well-acted to be entirely cute -- but the result is fairly tepid in comparison to the overheated highlights of Burton's career.

Wrong never feels dangerous or truly challenging, content generally to amuse rather than amaze.

The film's climax is a bit of a jumble, but by then Hillcoat has built his world so vibrantly that it hardly matters. And the hard-charging soundtrack -- featuring Cave, Warren Ellis, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson -- is an absolute blast.

For a ripped-from-reality film about love and death and family strife in the face of the war in Afghanistan, Brothers is awfully artificial.

The film seems thin, a set of vignettes about a fairly consistent set of characters. -- but only fairly consistent. [17 May 1989, p.B05]

All in all, Geronimo is a well-intentioned disappointment; the film chronicles the struggle not of the Apaches, but of the filmmakers. [13 Dec 1993, p.D05]

Unfortunately, this rich story about actual adults takes up maybe a third of Prime. The rest of the time, we're hanging with David and Rafi as they act out relationship cliches.

The Legend of 1900 is still fresh; like the dawning of a new age, it feels like an awakening.

Passingly engaging. But you emerge from the film knowing as much -- or, indeed, as little -- as when you went in, and that's not exactly what documentary filmmaking is all about.

Though stilted and emotionally vacant at times, it's still an entertaining and absorbing experience.

Miscast, constricted, loose in tone and meandering in intent, it has far fewer moments of inspiration than unintended laughter.

If you approach First Snow as a straight thriller, it's not terribly satisfying.

Mostly connects with a fairly tight story -- even if it feels less like a movie and more like a really good episode of a "Shrek" TV series.

Entertainment-wise, City of Ember is a good family deal: exciting and simple enough for anyone over 8 to follow yet mature and mildly satirical enough for parents.

It's professional, smart, quick-footed and snappy -- enviable traits in both a prizefighter and a nice little B-movie.

Distinct from others of its lowly stripe because of the credibly real-feeling performances by much of its youthful ensemble.

On paper, it sounds like the start of a good film. Too bad McKee made such a lackluster thing of it. Though the horror comes from an interesting place, it's frequently forced, negating much of the humor and pathos the film attempts to instill.

Is it style over substance? Absolutely. But as with "Ocean's Eleven," style wins -- only just barely this time around.

Freaknomics is breezy, but you can't help but think it belongs on TV, where the filmmakers would have gotten more time with their subjects and the tone mightn't seem so forced.

Storywise, Heartless is a bit of a jumble, especially in its last third. But it's got a distinct tone, contrasting romance and even outright sentimentality with urban dread and a few nasty visuals.

So lame and tasteless that it's hard to know what possessed Turturro to write it and anyone to finance it.

Heart and verve in surfeit makes the film rise above its flaws often enough to win you over.

It's very meta and only mildly interesting. The actors are attractive, the countryside moreso. The plot is silly and threadbare; when tragedy does strike, it has about as much impact as a summer shower.

A modestly charming family crowd-pleaser despite too-broad characterizations by many in the supporting cast.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this story is that it would have been lost to history had not American spelunker Chris Nicola happened across mundane relics -- buttons, shoes and the like -- while exploring the cave complex in the 1990s.

There's a daring to Everything Is Illuminated that commends it somewhat more than its achievement deserves.