Since the revelation of Wall Street's culpability for the 2008 economic crisis, though, the arc of Changez's transformation feels almost clichéd, despite Ahmed's earnest, effective performance.

A kid-meets-curmudgeon comedy that transcends its formulaic skeleton thanks both to the veteran actor's charm and a smarter-than-average screenplay.

The film isn't so much a demanding character study as it is a lot of pretty parts pushed together.

The movie is beautifully shot, and some of the scenes have a real exuberance, but it's also a blatantly manipulative piece of smarm.

Instead of a unique directorial style and a memorable soundtrack, we get a movie that, visually and aurally, pretty much goes by the book.

Might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.

The characters are flat, too: Richard Gere plays your typical desperate, embittered war reporter; Terrence Howard is your typical cameraman/sidekick/narrator; and Jesse Eisenberg rounds out the standard-issue trio as your typical nervous rookie, in over his head.

Sometimes a movie can defy rational logic, yet still make sense emotionally in a way that pulls you through. Bee Season is one.

Even with nothing at stake emotionally, though, he conjures some real scares, and the finale is as much a head-scratcher as a heart-stopper -- in a good way.

The big battle in Thor: The Dark World is one of Marvel’s more genuinely rousing sequences. Once this movie gets warmed up, it’s warm through and through.

Buscemi shoots with a cloudy, melancholic air that suits the material and does nothing to prettify the setting. But you can't sense any of the surprising energy or subversive wit that characterizes his best performances.

Blumberg tries to split the difference and ends up with a movie that wants us to make us laugh and cry, but fails to do either.

Groove seems to be less about what it is chronicling than what its attempting to decipher.

At times an uneasy mix of cold-eyed neorealism and soft-headed sentimentality, but after its initial struggles it presents itself as a moving film, made with loving craft, a painterly eye and luscious language.

Among the things made vividly clear here is that Jeremy cannot act.

Don't go if "Star Wars" isn't your bag: You'll only resist and resent it. But if you're a fan, it's hard to see how you'd be disappointed. Me? I can't wait for May 2005. "Episode III": Hot diggity!

Once the quartet makes it big, things get predictable really fast. Eastwood seems to forget that audiences made The Jersey Boys a touring sensation because they love the songs, not because they want to see yet another "Behind the Music"-style tale of fame and fortune not being all they're cracked up to be.

The movie is slow, dreary, clumsily staged, and lacks a compelling lead.

The movie's a veritable Viggo-a-go-go.

Indeed, the film is altogether too much like Sayuri: trying to overwhelm with surface beauty and unspoken emotion, it never hits deeper than the skin.

A tiresome, didactic and, once the novelty of the graphics has worn off, charmless film.

Succeeds only in fits and starts.

Sorry. The sight of the 66-year-old Streep gyrating her way through "Wooly Bully" has a way of blocking out rational thought. It's frightening but temporary, like a bad dream. Or this movie.

Just when it seems like Axe Murderer is headed to the gas chamber reserved for bad comedies, something amazing happens: It gets funny. [30 July 1993, p.AE15]

Sometimes it's a delicate comedy-drama with Oscar-worthy performances and touches of "A Streetcar Named Desire." And sometimes it's a foul-mouthed "Candid Camera" full of poop jokes and starring Johnny Knoxville in old-man makeup.

It's breezy enough, though, as a romantic comedy. And the stakes at risk in it are more grown-up and weighty than those in most Hollywood fare. Like Allen himself, you could do worse.

Hilarious mixture of Greek tragedy and Aaron Spelling soap opera that spews nasty one-liners and winking '60 signifiers like a slot machine that's paying out.

Occasionally sloppy, with a finale so abrupt and incoherent that it feels like something is missing. But it's also pleasantly odd and truly funny, and it builds in strength as it goes along.