Surprises you with heart.

There is one thing interesting about Alex Cross, and if you miss this, you've missed the whole movie. It's not the story - it's worse than mediocre. It's not the lead actor - nothing wrong with Tyler Perry, but as an action star he's no Vin Diesel. And it's not the dialogue, which has a clunker every other scene. It's the direction. Notice the direction. Alex Cross is a good example of what a seriously talented director can do with a heaping pile of garbage.

We're left with a metallic aftertaste.

At a brisk 101 minutes, My Spy doesn’t overstay its welcome. It knows exactly what it wants to be and how to get there, and it is made more engaging than it probably has any right to be thanks to the oversize charisma of its oversize star.

Something about Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot keeps it from adding up to a satisfying movie experience. It has the feeling, rather, of a story you might hear about a friend of friend.

Audiences will walk away thinking, "What was that?" But they will walk away thinking.

Dogs are notorious scene-stealers in the movies, but in the sappy yet mildly entertaining Dog Days, the humans mug just as shamelessly as their impossibly cute canine counterparts.

An old-fashioned and family-friendly comedy.

A bizarre original from the bizarrely original director.

The film is good enough to inspire viewers to learn more about Fela, but it should be better than that.

As the photographer, Baldwin tries to keep his chin up, but he's ultimately sunk by the built-in ludicrousness of the character he plays. But Hopkins -- through wit, luck and imagination -- emerges victorious from the barren wilderness of Mamet's script. He has only himself to thank.

The humor is lowbrow, but the screenwriters and performers have a sense of pride that makes them strive for stupid jokes that haven't been done before.

Perhaps Patten is trying to do to us what Rinpoche does to his followers, but the film's meandering structure and intrusive narration detract from the focus on the master.

Too many moments elicit a polite half chuckle, when the screenwriters are trying for uproarious laughter. But it benefits from an excellent cast, who seem to be all in. And whenever there’s a stretch of extended mediocrity, it’s almost always saved by an unexpected moment of politically incorrect inspiration.

Although some of its parts are brilliantly executed and played by a terrific cast, the result is scattered, overamplified and unsatisfying.

One to One: John & Yoko combines the best aspects of Boomer nostalgia with generational overindulgence.

Because “Leave the World Behind” is weak and unconvincing when it comes to character interaction, the film drags in the moment-by-moment, despite its stellar cast.

Some of the talking heads say entertaining or thoughtful things and some of the locations are quite exotic. But does this justify 98 minutes of screen time?

Has the usual overlong running time, the half-hearted feints in the direction of human feeling and the obligatory action sequences that are big without being either exciting or particularly legible.

The material obviously had to be stretched to fill the big screen for almost two hours.

Many of the individual scenes are compelling, with a gritty tension that recalls "The Wire" and other good television. But too many of the attempts at "The Sopranos"-style comic drama fail.

Overall, the film sparkles. But it's a curiously unaffecting sparkle, an example, almost, of how the special effects stole Christmas.

Its dazzling special effects make its combatants flip and fly, spin and soar, all the while punching and kicking each other like jackhammers, only to leave viewers utterly unmoved.

Its virtues of crisp, uncluttered photography and striking performances are frustratingly undermined by the muddled pretensions of Hungarian director Peter Medak. [09 Nov 1990, p.E7]

If you see the movie, notice how the ending is no ending, and the fact that it even feels like one is entirely a function of Michael Giacchino's musical score.

An enjoyable movie not because of any special gifts by the filmmakers or emotional resonance in the script. It was more like destiny. Once someone jotted down the concept on a cocktail napkin and hired B-Boys who could actually dance, the movie pretty much had to turn out OK.

It's probably pointless to complain when a movie sets out to be stupid and actually is. (And the people who came up with a couple of these ideas think male models are dumb.)

There's some serious food for thought here.