The problem is the material itself, with its trite observations and shockingly flat writing.

A self-impressed epic with grandiose vistas, flat characters, and a subplot about Native Australians.

Both Harris and Gooding, Jr. are fine actors trapped in a mawkish, pandering production that wastes the latter and is a waste of time for the former.

Amid every action cliche in the book, outmoded stereotypes, and a plot derivative of every futuristic drama made in the last fifteen years, Ultraviolet comes off as nothing more than a pale copy of better, more inventive films.

Kevin Spacey is a darn good actor, and he's a pretty good singer to boot. But those traits alone do not excuse the painful experience to be had sitting through Beyond the Sea.

Some of the effects are squirm-worthy, if not actually frightening. Amid all the fake profundity, those moments -- you know, when the film is actually entertaining -- are rare.

The movie tires itself out setting up the complex plot.

The pretentious title might be trying to make a statement about the new, fast-moving economy. It's also a weak reference to the first Wall Street. But mainly, no, it's just pretentious.

It's just a spectacularly lazy movie that's content to trod the same well-worn ground as its predecessors.

The climax is the only thing for which the rest of this flick exists.

What once was a gifted comic's fluid improvisation is now a doddering old man so embarrassing he's uncomfortable to watch, and the surrogate father-daughter needling he has with Johansson is creepy when you realize Woody the director is shooting her seductively in that skintight bathing suit.

Trust the Man mainly feels like the work of a New Yorker who hasn't left his trendy neighborhood in ten years.

Director Brad Anderson (Session 9) overtly cribs from everyone from Dostoevsky to Kafka.

Krasinski and Moore are an adorable couple, but marriage material they aren't, especially since they're given a mere ten minutes to form a full-fledged relationship before Williams breathlessly barges into the picture.

Overall, Little Black Book is the cinematic equivalent of chic lit--mildly amusing, but completely forgettable once you're done with it.

By straining to make a respectful war film for everyone, Winkler and Friedman have wound up with a toothless picture that won't satisfy anyone.

Overall, I Am Legend is a wasted opportunity -- a rickety, weather-beaten framework around an otherwise strong central performance from Smith.

At best, this movie functions as a brief companion piece to Boy George's new Broadway show, “Taboo.”

We'd really like to crawl into William Hurt's head and experience whatever movie he thought HE was making.

There are certainly some laughs to be had in Holiday (mostly of the "so dumb it’s funny" variety), but not much else.

What little anti-war critique Peirce presents -- and she has it in her, which makes it all the more dubious -- gets trampled over by jingoistic Rambo porn.

For the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between "American Beauty" and "The Royal Tenenbaums"; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors are, in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively.

Paycheck is a bogus journey.

The story is a vapid "Casablanca"-lite.

Earle fans might see this film as a satisfying portrayal of a man they know and love, but those unfamiliar with the man and his music will likely leave the theater without much more interest in him than when the movie began.

A nonsensical vision of pre-history that lurches randomly between "caveman vs. jungle beast" encounters -- Roland Emmerich's Shlockalypto -- and a rococo Stargate spin-off involving pyramids, slave uprisings and oracles.

There's no question that Civil Brand has an ambitious premise, but it feels boxed in by the standard prison-movie formula.

A tediously noisesome English-language remake of an Asian horror picture that wasn't any great shakes to begin with.