A dragging, rhythmless piece of work.

Neither a masterpiece nor an embarrassment, but a workmanlike picture that sits, inoffensively, in the middling space between.

Some of the knife-twisting later scenes in "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" feel almost campy, like winks at the audience or studious self-referentiality. None of this is quite enough to ruin a gripping, gruesome fable, which of course del Toro's fans and other genre buffs will rush out to see, but it does render the movie a minor muddle rather than a horror masterwork.

As a pleasant domestic comedy/action-adventure that, refreshingly, doesn't seem to hate its characters, Date Night is just fine. But is it good enough to merit hiring a baby sitter? I'd rather have some potato skins at the Teaneck Tavern.

A not-very-good movie about a fascinating and underexplored subject: the unknowability of a marriage.

There's a lot to admire in The Brave One. It just doesn't cut as deeply as it needs to.

Sloppy but cheerful documentary.

No one — not McMahon (or McChrystal), the military, the State Department, President Obama or the press — comes out looking good. And yet, none of these characters or institutions comes away looking all that bad either.

A stylish and muscular thriller with some nifty twists and turns, a wicked sense of humor, several terrific performances and not one or even two but three of the best car chases in recent action-flick history.

The Rum Diary is enjoyable enough, after its digressive, episodic and voyeuristic fashion. But neither Depp nor Robinson seems quite aware that Thompson's story - both in terms of his brief career in Puerto Rico and in terms of his life - was at least as much a story of tragedy and self-immolation as it was of genius.

Breaking and Entering is so bloodless that even Minghella's best ideas come off as wan and pale.

Spike Lee's explosive, near-masterpiece media satire balances between brilliance and incoherence.

A movie that opens with a sensational bang and then proceeds to pursue the Big Questions about life and death in lovely, lugubrious and increasingly off-putting fashion, until all its drama has been frittered away in a dreamy, drifty haze.

If you're dragged to the theater to be someone's not-dumb date, pack a crossword and a light pen. It'll be the only puzzle worth solving.

A frothy, sexy, '60s delight with a movie lover's heart.

I can't recall the last time a picture left me feeling so caffeinated.

A movie that's laughable without, alas, even being enjoyably awful.

Sructured like a Mad magazine parody where there's a promised joke in each frame. It doesn't add up to a movie.

Troy isn't so much a simplified retelling of "The Iliad" as a re-imagined version of it, told wholly without imagination.

In its quest to create "wholesome" entertainment, the movie industry is furiously turning back the clock four decades or so, to the days when men were men, girls were cute but knew their place and pencil-necked Poindexters stayed out of your damn face.

Whatever its flaws, Maleficent is a family-friendly Disney adventure that offers a relaunched and thoroughly delightful Angelina Jolie.

Carell's performance as Barry, is nothing short of magnificent.

"Bambi" meets "Godzilla": Disney goes for the goo in a by-turns gory and sappy new epic of computer-generated images.

Just the latest forgettable thriller that might have been enjoyable if only its conclusion lived up to its windup.

From a narrative and cinematic point of view, the problem with Joy is simple. Russell is almost totally uninterested in the story of how Joy Mangano explored a bizarre and unknown new business model and became its first self-made tycoon, and as a result we aren’t interested either.

Shifting his focus away from white kids seems to have done Clark good, because Wassup Rockers is the least sensationalistic, and hence the least moralistic, of his films. It's an enjoyable if haphazard picaresque.

You'll either find The Extra Man utterly charming or thoroughly mystifying, but either way Kevin Kline, playing a community-theater version of himself, with all the foppishness and Shakespearean pretension but half the talent and none of the luck, inhabits its peculiar soul.

Mercifully, as seen from 11 years later, Jayson Blair himself seems a lot less important, not to mention a lot less interesting.