Flags of our Fathers really loses its way in the final half-hour, when the point-of-view abruptly shifts to James Bradley (played here by Tom McCarthy), who takes on the role of narrator, informing us of what happened to each of these men after the war ended and their names became yesterday's news. It's a jarring switch.

At the very least, Cyrus forces one of these man-children to face a younger version of himself, and find a grown-up compromise.

What’s missing here is the amnesiac hook that made "The Bourne Identity" such a sleeper hit.

The Proposition can be appreciated as a strong technical exercise, but it fails to resonate on any deeper level.

Director Shortland frames the story against the apt grey, off-season ski town, but her attempt to match it with deliberate pacing just makes the film feel chilly and too long, just like Heidi's depressing routine.

Ramshackle one minute, pointlessly deliberate the next.

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

I wonder if there was a point in the making of this film at which Hickenlooper might have realized he picked the wrong subject. [May 2004, p. 18]

Too-laborious meditation on life and death.

Those expecting a return to the depravity and menace of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 notorious original will be disappointed.

Directed with little flair, a one-sided perspective and a questionable sense of moral responsibility by Dan Klores (his negligent lack of an editorial voice in the couple's lunacy reeks of train-wreck exploitation), Crazy Love is a disturbingly captivating tabloid horror, but that's not Klores' doing.

From the beginning, something doesn't feel quite right about their latest romp. The characters are sketchier, the situations more contrived and the laughs are fewer and far between.

The movie becomes less fizzy once DeCillo decides to make A Statement (a rather incoherent one at that).

There are popcorn pictures and there are microwave popcorn pictures. The Italian Job is best saved for the living room.

Those who have never seen the series should either swim rapidly in the other direction or be willing to dive right in and suspend disbelief about the multitude of things that just don't make sense.

A moderate success, if a bit clunky. Somewhere beneath the syrupy melodrama and the scenes that should have expired long ago, there is an intelligent, thoughtful western in waiting.

As a fan, it's upsetting to admit that Dumont's ideas and insights have narrowed with this picture, his relaxed pacing now lethargic, his physically and mentally thick characters too familiar, and his ice-water shocks a bit predictable. It would seem self-parodic if it weren't so damn tragic.

The movie has some pleasures, but can be heartily recommended only to those who like their entertainments equally inoffensive and inconsequential.

This tale has been told so often (in fact, its roots can be traced back to Fellini's 1953 coming-of-age classic "I Vitelloni") the only way to keep it remotely fresh is to keep changing the time period and the professions of the principal characters.

It's too bad that the movie induces eyeball-rolling almost as much as it does armrest-clutching.

So if you like Ferrell or Cohen, go ahead buy some popcorn, check your brain at the door, and you will laugh.

In my cut of the film, it ends after Jones opens the parcel from his son that's been sitting on his kitchen table since shortly after he left. I recommend viewers leave the theater at that point. You won't be sorry that you did.

It's clear the creators wanted to bring our hero back but were uncertain where to put him. Sadly, Indiana Jones is not relevant amidst the atomic blasts and disillusionment of the Soviet era, and he's not even recognizable in the pixilated universe of recent cinema. To quote the great Dr. Jones, "It belongs in a museum!"

Earnest, respectful and thoroughly dull.

Part of the Clerks charm was that Kevin Smith made it for $27,000, and a bigger budget doesn't really help this kind of tale's authenticity.

The tension's palpable and the deaths are gruesomely inventive (and jarringly abrupt), but the clincher is so far-fetched you may end up wishing you'd opted for the relative reality of a week in Cancun instead.

The result is more bawdy diversion than historical fable.

The image of Gwyneth Paltrow looking anguish-stricken has become such a cinematic meme that it hardly bodes well for Proof that it opens with this sight.

The arc of the story mirrors "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," but the writing isn't nearly as strong, nor the characters as believable -- or likable.

Constructing the narrative (made up mostly of dramatic reenactments, although given the static nature of many of the scenes, the word "dramatic" is pushing it) obliquely, Devor and co-writer Charles Mudede weave in the thread concerning the individual referred to as "Mr. Hands" into the film almost casually.

Although McDormand's performance is consistently focused -- one would expect no less from the actress -- the movie itself can't settle on whether Miss Pettigrew is Mary Poppins minus the sugar spoonful or just plain Carrie Nation.

The film falters in the moments where it can't decide if it's an entertainment about a likable criminal, or a serious commentary on the exploitation of the Third World.

So stupendously funny at times that she (Streep) nearly salvages the whole thing.

Irritatingly, Fleder's flair for broadcasting plot twists treats the audience with the same patronizing indulgence as Hackman does his potential jurors.

Meet the Robinsons is a mess -- a sometimes fun but mostly frustrating mess.

The idea for the film is engaging and interesting, but the result is bland.

Their movie is cold, and I mean that not as a weather pun, but in the sense that it's impossible to warm up to a character who sees the awful things happening around him strictly in terms of how they affect him.

Ultimately, The Jane Austen Book Club amounts to little more than a lukewarm collection of half-realized rom-com scenarios not fleshy enough to warrant their own movie.

One of those outrageous stalker thrillers in which so much trouble could have been avoided if the characters had only thought to call the police.

Wants to be at any given moment--wrenching, thought-provoking, surprising, heartbreaking--all it ever is is tastefully lifeless. It’s been beaten into a coma by its own scruples.

Ma, who portrayed the stone-faced General in the Coen brothers' comedy "The Lady Killers," once again plays his role largely silent. As the despondent Ed, Ma says more with a few facial expressions & twitches than most performers could hope to with a three-page monologue.

Machete is exactly what you expect. There's ridiculously over-the-top violence, plenty of nudity, and lots of grisly humor. It's mostly enjoyable, but isn't likely to be anyone's top 5 anything.

Everyone involved figured that sentiment trumps sloppiness. Original Soundtrack

I like a good flying, fire-breathing dragon as much as the next fellow. Beowulf's excesses, though, are such that the film ought to carry the subtitle …But This Is Ridiculous.

Cocaine Cowboys might work better as a miniseries for television; as it is, the two-hour running time is fatiguing and some of the later material gets lost in the onslaught.

The sequel to 2003's unexpected and rousing hit offers a lot of the same elements that made the original so enjoyable, but the humor doesn't have the same freshness.

If you subtracted from the story and style components recycled from landmark sci-fi films of Hollywood past, you’d be left with Will Smith wisecracking over a box of unformatted floppies. I, Unimpressed.

The music is catchy. The actors are likeable. It's all pleasant enough to watch but ultimately it's about as substantial as a pop song. Though it's unlikely to stay with you quite so long.

As the phrase turns, it's better when things come off WITHOUT a hitch.

That Jarhead is an impressive technical achievement is a given, but ultimately this picture is the last thing any war movie should be: innocuous.

Farrell and Hayek are two beautiful people with absolutely no chemistry. Even when they're lying in bed together, they're so far apart that they might as well be in different movies.

Even if its premise weren't so achingly familiar, the film's bland humor and oddly conservative depiction of its central character, a flamboyant drag queen named Lola, would still make it seem like a museum piece.

Ledger turns in another stellar performance and Cornish is heartbreakingly good also in this well-crafted film. But once that first plunger is pushed, the surprises are few.

One-dimensional fluff piece.

Jason Statham is back as the fast-driving, fast-kicking Frank Martin, but this sequel fails to deliver the charm of its predecessor.

The lack of insightful commentary keeps the spotlight focused on Maher. That's not restraint; it's a missed opportunity.

Lords of Dogtown may pop for the skateboarding crowd. It fizzles for the rest.

The entire film is a thrown-together collection of gunfights and in-jokes. The film is more concerned with expanding this universe of seedy tequila bars and dusty city streets than it is in telling a narrative story.

The religious symbolism couldn't be more obvious (or disturbing). Keep your religion out of our vampires, Hollywood!

Too bad the movie was assembled by Hollywood types -- Joel Schumacher directed, Jerry Bruckheimer produced -- who like to have things 15 ways at once. Hollywood types don't like journalists, so while they're lionizing Guerin, they go out of their way to make almost every other journalist depicted in the picture despicable.

There were times watching this movie when I felt I was being force-fed 30 pounds of crème brûlée. Which isn’t to say I choked on every minute: I chortled heartily at the thread about the comeback of the washed-up rock star (Bill Nighy).

If it makes anybody feel better, one character in the picture does point out that the whole "extraordinary rendition" concept originated with Clinton. So there's balance for you.

It’s very colorful, for sure, but the dialogue is lead-footed at best.

The result is oddly schizoid, but also so insubstantial that to call it oddly schizoid suggests a weight it doesn't have.

Ella Enchanted seems squarely aimed at 12-year-old girls, or, I don't know, maybe 8-year-old girls.

At heart, a light, watchable film.

I'd like to say that Flightplan is one of those white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat thrill rides that critics are always raving about, but instead, it's more like a transatlantic flight with no clear destination, where the cabin noise makes it impossible to sleep and the in-flight movie is a rerun.

I don’t quite cherish Thackeray’s novel, but a can-do feminist, multicultural contemporization of it strikes me as, well, unnecessary.

We can only speculate why McConaughey chose to play the role this way, but in all honesty, it's a good thing he did. His loony performance is the only surprising thing about this otherwise paint-by-numbers inspirational drama.

Starts out strong and boasts a convincing picture of the post-war world as an anarchic desert. But it comes to ditch its fun stylization for vague themes of religiosity and morality, leaving you with a disappointingly muddled movie.

Dead Man's Chest is best summed up by the scene where Sparrow and Will battle each other atop a runaway water wheel. Like the characters, this movie is just running in circles.

The problem here, which vitiates the picture's ingenuity and causes it, finally, to sink like a stone, is in the physical execution of the material.

The period sets and costumes and the arch dialogue are exaggerated as if to underline the movie’s satirical intent—but in fact it has none.

Overburdened with themes and symbolism, Baltasar Kormákur’s latest effort seems more apt for a term paper than a movie review.

That it's so flat as an action movie probably has a lot to do with why people might prefer to jawbone over its putatively controversial aspects--there's really not much of a “wow” factor to revel in.

Parents might like the film, but will be too busy explaining the complicated plot to their children to really enjoy it.

There’s an over-abundance of dialog that can be downright boring, especially when it’s sandwiched between fast-paced car chases and all-out gun fights.

When he runs out of material to tickle with, Black dips into his musically tenacious "deedle-diddle-dee" for some sure-fire ridiculousness.

An uneven love story but a picture-perfect love letter to Italy.

Ultimately fails as a film in its broad strokes and inadequate scene development.

Since the story really is about nothing more than who ends up with which bag of money, those eccentric details--that cow, the butchers' language--don't feel organic, but rather cosmetic. They're glamour to conceal the mundane.

Favorably, Atkinson’s family-friendly, rubber-limbed professionalism can revitalize even the most vapid of material, which this certainly is. Anyone who has seen an episode of Black Adder can tell you that he’s leaps and bounds funnier than this sitcom-grade bauble.

Predators biggest failing is that it manages to make its sci-fi violence absurdly boring.

Somehow the movie ends up feeling like a museum piece or, worse still, a work of fiction.

The kitchen action here is pretty diverting -- everybody involved seems to have boned up on their Bourdain and Buford, and having done so, sanitized what they've gleaned with Hollywood polish.

Might have been a tasty black comedy if treated as such, but the twisted sense of humor is never allowed to elevate beyond the cutesy sensibilities of a romantic comedy.

Even Depp's increasingly tired antics can't lighten the dour mood; in fact, Sparrow is completely overshadowed here by Rush's lively turn as Barbossa.

The Ten has one foot in "Monty Python's Meaning of Life" and another in their "Life of Brian," but ultimately we get the David Letterman School of Comedy: mediocre jokes continually repeated until they sometimes become uncomfortably funny.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend was written by longtime "Simpsons" scribe Don Payne, but you wouldn't know that based on the finished film, which lacks the intelligence and sly wit that has kept Homer and the gang on the air for all these years.

There's no question that Death of a President fulfills its objective as a conversation starter, but as a movie, it's sketchy at best.

I hold Soderbergh in high esteem, but as handsome a technical achievement as it is, The Good German plays to me as a failed experiment.

It's great that the comedian felt the call of a higher office, but it's a call that apparently only he can hear.

As a bonus, it contains, at least, the best death-by-carrot scene in the history of film.

American audiences have seen Ju-On. And The Grudge just goes to show why remaking it is such a frivolous idea: What's the use in wasting so much energy if the filmmakers aren't going to fix what was wrong with the movie in the first place?

In the film, the cleverness just isn't there. There's still a lot to like about Chicken Little - the animation is top notch, and the characters, if somewhat recycled, still generate the requisite sympathy and chuckles.

There are moments where Spacey and Bosworth have their fun in spite of the film -- they both adopt Southern "characters" as disguises at one point, which is a hoot -- but overall, 21 is a busted hand.

It really never amounts to more than a barely warmed over rehash of teen dance flick moves.

Betty White is what makes this film memorable as Andrew’s grandmother. She steals every scene, and adds the sweetness that a film like this needs.