Most disheartening of all is that, after shooting four films in a row abroad, Allen seems to have lost his feel for New York locations.

Full Frontal could not be more opaque. I honestly don't have a clue what it's about; it went completely over my head.

Gladiator's combination of grim sanctimony and drenching, Dolby-ized dismemberings left me appalled.

A tepid, jumbled Hollywood fable whose final message seems to amount to little more than "Follow your dreams," or worse, "Stay tuned for the sequel."

In a film of more prepossessing style, the glaring leaps of logic might be easier to overlook, or at least there’d be more incentive to do so, but the cellphone is Soderbergh’s enemy as well.

It's the cinematic equivalent of a plastic-covered couch under a "Bless This House" sampler. And that's not a bad thing, for audiences who have a high threshold for sentiment and a low one for dramatic conflict.

Fraser’s all-in commitment to playing Charlie—300-pound fatsuit and all—put me in mind of Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in Joker, an act of faith so complete it managed to be the only transcendent element of a thuddingly bad movie. But Fraser’s beautifully judged performance isn’t enough to save this abject wallow through a mire of maudlin clichés about trauma and redemption.

Transcendence is nowhere near as elegant, witty, or insightful as "Her." Pfister and the screenwriter, Jack Paglen, grapple ponderously, sometimes oafishly, with the ethical and philosophical issues at stake in the film’s premise.

Mad Men is a super-stylized, not particularly realist piece of work—that’s why it can feel as mannered as theater. Are You Here strives for a more grounded tone, but, what it gains in realism, it gives away in psychological acuity and emotional oomph.

For all the contemporary relevance of the issues it explores, there’s something morally and aesthetically muffled about The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Nair is so busy making sure we never lose sympathy for her handsome and charming protagonist that the film ultimately founders in a tangle of humanist platitudes.

The nudges and winks in Dumbo about Disney’s predatory practices are an invitation from filmmaker to audience to share a knowing chuckle over the essential soullessness of the entire enterprise.

Vaughn hasn’t only run out of things to say but people to hate, and without that underlying aggression, the movie feels like it’s just going through the motions. Better luck next time, bruv.

The picture is an empty parlor trick, but it's carried out with a master's concentration.

Overstuffed and far from spry.

It's evidently important to Allen to work, work, work, but he's starting to make his movies by rote instead of passion. Could he handle -- psychologically -- a year or two off? Could he afford -- creatively -- to keep grinding them out?

Planet of the Apes has been designed and photographed (by Phillipe Rousselot) with real artistry, but in all the ways that matter it's hack work.

Hall Pass is about two guys trying to recapture their youthful mojo, but it also appears to be made BY men who fit that description.

The most shocking thing about I Think I Love My Wife isn't the language, the sex, or the racial humor. It's the fact that it's not a funny movie. At all.

Martha Marcy May Marlene took a good hour to start really getting on my nerves. Up till then, I kept cutting this maddening little psychological thriller break after break, because it has the outer form of a promising debut.

More time in Middle Earth is exactly what The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey provides - so much more that the movie starts to feel like some Buddhist exercise in deliberately inflicted tedium.

The movie's themes are enormously resonant, which makes its doddering tastefulness that much more frustrating.

You can see the potential, and you can also see the places where Allen didn't (couldn't?) rise to the occasion.

It certainly doesn’t work in Mid90s’ favor that it is the third movie released in the past two months to focus on an outsider with a turbulent home life seeking out community in the world of skateboarding. Even without the unflinching documentary "Minding the Gap" and the sure-handed docufiction "Skate Kitchen," Mid90s would feel phony, but the former’s understated and thoughtful treatment of its protagonists’ real-life tragedies contrasts sharply with Hill’s attempts to wring pathos from his manufactured ones. Next to them, Mid90s just looks like a poser.

If Bohemian Rhapsody’s superficial gloss on the band’s rise sometimes feels like a useful feature, the hackneyed way it treats Mercury’s life and fall is close to fatal. And after you leave the theater, you may find that first part isn’t such an asset after all.

Rather than having too much pure Tolkien, it offers too much pure Jackson. It may occasionally seem to be aware of its undiluted preposterousness, but that hardly eases the experience of sitting through its endless cartoonish action sequences and overwrought emotional payoffs.

Sputters to an ignominious halt in the first 20 minutes.

Speaking for myself, I’m fine with the concept of terminating The Terminator — and there’s no need to blue-orb back any more augmented hitmen or - women to do it.

The best thing in Burt Wonderstone, besides that final gag, is the second-sickest: Jim Carrey's performance as a David Blaine-esque street magician named Steve Gray.