A slight story with little action, this rueful dissection of male bonding builds to an undeniably emotional last act.

Think of Please Give as a finely tuned short story with every glance and gesture full of suggestive meaning. Drama is not high on the agenda here. There is a bit of comedy and, briefly, sexual mischief even though it doesn't look like much fun.

A would-be provocative satire that too often settles for sitcom-grade silliness, The Infidel represents an opportunity wasted.

Running two hours, "Casino Jack" is an exhaustive and exhausting elaboration of Abramoff's canon of greed and power that will enervate audiences with a surfeit of details.

A lifeless period romance of the cutesy-cantankerous persuasion.

Very much bearing the creative imprint of Robert Rodriguez, but directed by Nimrod Antal, the new edition, in its best moments, is an unabashed B-movie that plays like a jacked-up "Twilight Zone" with award-winning actors delivering the pulp-infused dialogue.

The colors are mostly gray tones with the sharp, disturbing animation that works well for a thriller. However, Metropia is weighed down by a convoluted plot.

Holy Rollers squanders a fascinating premise with predictable execution.

If there's one defining characteristic among English criminals, it's that they apparently are a quirky lot. That, at least, is the conclusion one draws from the endless series of comically tinged British crime thrillers that have come down the pike during recent years, of which the mediocre Perrier's Bounty is the latest example.

This attractive cast may help get an audience, but they will surely puzzle over such a downward-spiraling story that lacks inner logic.

A backwoods psychological thriller delivered faux-documentary-style, with mixed results.

Despite the lazily self-satisfied results, his (Sandler) aging fan base likely will come along for the lackadaisical ride.

In the end, an audience has far too much knowledge about Gregoire's movie projects and finances and far too little about what makes anyone here tick.

Features a profusion of provocative ideas and a wealth of vintage film clips but is unable to avoid having the inevitable feel of a college thesis.

Narratively, Wild Grass is a fractured romance, that never jells on any level, except for the backdrop visuals. Visually scrumptious, as if culled from the pages of good-taste magazines, it has the appeal of a designer catalog, and also the depth.

Thanks to the great Helen Mirren as the wife and Spanish actor Sergio Peris-Mencheta as the boxer, the film does create a convincing portrait of a late-flourishing love that takes everyone by surprise.

While its cast delivers uniformly breezy performances, most everything else about Ramona's move to the multiplex feels unremarkable.

Spoken Word, which centers on the tense reunion between a recovering addict poet and his dying father, features more cliches than it can comfortably handle and is not helped by its grindingly slow pacing.

This isn't so much that the story and characters are weak -- though they very much are -- but that animatronics and computer animation so anthropomorphize these critters that they bear more resemblance to cartoons than actual flesh-and-fur animals.

Aside from the sweltering Egyptian climate, little heat or excitement is generated by the film or its attractive stars.

Reiner again demonstrates compassion and insight into young people's battles to acquire self-knowledge, but in his new film, too many clearly fictional characters and contrived situations bog down his story.

Anyone who has seen the original knows exactly where things are heading, with the result that the proceedings seem far more manipulative than unnerving.

This seventh installment does at least provide a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the series in the unlikely event they choose to give it a rest.

Although well-meaning in its attempt to dramatize the stigma the subject evokes in the South Asian American community, Hiding Divya ultimately falters in its execution.

A faux black-and-white silent film that will gain immeasurably from its road show presentations, Louis is more of a novelty than a satisfying cinematic experience.

The next time you're invited to a French dinner party, you might want to give it a pass, if the tedious proceedings in Change of Plans are any indication.

Nothing really adds up, and the ending is downright absurd. You would like even the most austere, doctrinaire existential movie to earn its downbeat ending. This one fails utterly to do so.

Among the girls, Emma Roberts has solid scenes with Rockwell.

Abounding in dumb jokes that kids are bound to like but sometimes too scary for very young viewers, the movie -- also going out in 2D -- takes too long to find its footing and at best is proficient, not exhilarating.

The movie ends just when complications start to set in, which makes you wonder how invested Allen really is in the little melodramas within this comedy.

Strong performances by Kristin Scott Thomas as the stern Aunt Mimi, who raised the future Beatle from the age of 5, and Anne-Marie Duff as his troubled mother heighten the dramatic appeal of what otherwise is quite a dull film.

While Jackass 3D can never be accused of stinting on its spring-loaded arsenal of projectile bodily fluids, neither does it approach that sublime, laugh-until-it-hurts level of gross-out nirvana that made the first two installments so darned irresistible.

Todd Phillips' follow-up to the most successful R-rated comedy of all time serves up its share of laughs while not actually providing a terribly enjoyable time because of a queasy undercurrent that never goes away.

The movie never overcomes the triteness of its premise.

More than even the most faithful of the earlier episodes, this film feels devoted above all to reproducing the novel onscreen as closely as possible, an impulse that drags it toward ponderousness at times and rather sorely tests the abilities of the young actors to hold the screen entirely on their own, without being propped up by the ever-fabulous array of character actors the series offers.

It all ends up being a half-hour too much of a just okay thing.

Yogi is still smarter than the average bear, but Yogi Bear is much less smart than most of the year's kid-friendly cartoons.

Ultimately, the heavy-handed and annoyingly obvious aesthetic wears thin.

Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen brothers' "Blood Simple" as a Chinese period thriller-farce in a desert setting. A high-rolling but garish production with untranslatable regional ribald humor, it is aimed squarely at the China market.

International audiences will be confronted by a rather predictable and highly implausible road movie that strains to achieve too many agendas.

Landing somewhere between a generational comedy and soap opera, the film is forgettable fun.

Like the source material, it's ultimately less than the sum of its parts -- an assemblage of moderately interesting human interest stories that don't carry much weight on the big screen.

Like a frumpy version of "Knocked Up" playing out in a sadder, stranger world, Barry Munday offers two icky humans and hopes that, by the tale's end, we'll be happy they're procreating.

The audience it manages to reach will find it as vicerally satisfying as a doc on this subject can be.

It merely recycles 1987's "Broadcast News" with only a single reference to YouTube.

Although involving, this remake of a recent French film never reaches the anticipated heights of excitement and suspense.

The result is a scary movie that is genuinely scary in parts, although an adult can't help noticing this is set in the very worn and tattered territory of the haunted-house genre. Then when you get a glimpse of the CGI critters causing all the mayhem, the scares completely vanish.

Scott Thomas is an accomplished actress who can do passion as well as she can do light comedy. But she never quite convinces as a woman prepared to endure every humiliation to pursue her dream of a new life.

This version is unlikely to strike a similar chord with young audiences while severely disappointing older fans of the original.

Dramatically but unevenly explores the lives of four Palestinian women during the years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

One ticket buys you cowboys, samurais, gangsters, ninjas, spaghetti Westerns, Hong Kong martial artists, knife throwers and even Fellini-esque circus performers. But like kimchi pasta, some things aren't meant to mix.

So like much of this film, the viewer is turned into an observer. You never feel close enough to the action, either in the ring or in the kitchens, living rooms and tough streets where the story takes place. The characters engage you up to a point but never really pull you in.

Far less daring than her 1999 "Titus," which took an electrifying, stylized approach of a lesser-known play, The Tempest in comparison looks disappointingly middle-of-the-road.

A low-impact romantic comedy-drama from James L. Brooks in which the central characters are strangely disconnected from one another as well as from the audience.

Acutely observed but gloomy and lacking narrative, it tells of 12 months in the life of a decent but dull suburban couple and their friends, most of whom you would go out of your way to avoid at a party.

The widely heralded musical auteur deserves a more insightful documentary treatment than the one afforded in Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.

The film captures the energy, the stresses and the tension of people striking punching bags and each other but without narration, it all feels a bit random and uninteresting.

How much of this you'll find enlightening and how much simply creepy will depend on your tolerance for cinematic navel-gazing.

Despite some interesting ideas, Cool It's conventional camerawork and unexceptional editing don't contribute much additional value to a package that's unlikely to alter Lomborg's outsider status.

Very much a lesson, and a repetitive and uneven one at that, GhettoPhysics succeeds at least as a conversation starter.

How she (Dunham) made her movie is more impressive or at least unique than the actual story she chooses to tell.

The film starts out as a gentle Hollywood satire, shifts abruptly into a comedy of (bad) manners, turns into a crime story and deviates into a suicide attempt before it reverts to a Hollywood satire with a happy ending. No Hollywood satire should ever have a happy ending.

Managing nary a single original idea throughout its 93-minute running time, the film does benefit from a cast of sexy young TV stars who should attract the desired female teen demographic.

The movie comes up short on inspiration despite a stellar voice cast that includes James McAvoy and Emily Blunt and a toe-tapping songbook by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

The movie is a mixed bag, with many of the elements fun and intriguing, but since this is also a Michael Bay-produced movie, CG monsters and cartoon bad guys gum up a third act.

Remains mostly fascinating even in an amateur storyteller's hands.

Never quite achieves the balance of melodrama and dark comedy for which it's aiming.

Predictable, cutesy and nowhere near hot-blooded enough.

Like many action stars, Statham is good at cool brooding, but West's frantic style works against this.

Will please fans of Sara Gruen's best seller, but it lacks the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen.

The slapstick and action comedy interludes are haphazardly executed at best, and matters aren't helped by the film's incredibly ugly look.

The overall enterprise, for all its intrigue and visceral impact, feels overly thought out, affected and forced in its stylization.

Mumblecore meets Arthur Conan Doyle in the ambitious, if not always satisfying, Cold Weather.

Punishing for some, it could be just the cup of tea for the young male demographic.

Whatever one's view of Christian evangelical beliefs, from strictly a horror-film standpoint the movie needs a better villain.

In the end, given how little goes on in Breaking Dawn - Part 1 despite the major plot points, what you're left with is to gaze at the three leads, all of whom have their constituencies and reasons for being eminently watchable. The only hope is they'll have more to do next time around.

Limitless should be so much smarter than it is.

Every scene is on the prowl for laughs at the expense of the inherent drama in the lives of its colorful characters.

The millions of man hours put into producing this techno shock and awe must be staggering. Everyone got his job done, but somewhere along the way, the movie got lost.

Hill shows less snark and agitation than usual here, and the restraint serves him well.

There are eight individual decisions to be made here, yet Beauvois never humanizes any of his monks. The film instead consumes itself with songs, communal prayers and nightly meals.

There are guilty pleasures to be had in this frenzied B starring Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), who gives an acrobatic performance that makes the overcooked material watchable, if not entirely enjoyable.

The Rum Diary remains a relatively mild diversion, not at all unpleasant but neither compelling nor convulsive.

The new film may also serve a purpose by showcasing a dynamic and attractive new actor, Kenny Wormald but, otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers affair.

Even with the addition of new characters, such as the ones voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, George Miller's animated sequel just isn't very funny.

As the band of adventurers skips from one supersized Survivor-like challenge to the next, one can't help feeling the creative potential of Verne's vision is wasted.

Whereas Peckinpah managed not only to raise hackles but to get under the skin, Lurie manages only the former, which reduces the material to the level of sensation-mongering.

Heijningen doesn't display the instinct of the best Hollywood action directors to give the audience what it craves at the big moments, except for a few gory in-your-face shots.

A reasonably entertaining popcorn movie experience.

Like many lab experiments, this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion. Only someone as talented as Almodóvar could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie.

Effects work is slick, and Goddard keeps his foot on the accelerator with help from David Julyan's suspense-building score. It's just too bad the movie is never much more than a hollow exercise in self-reflexive cleverness that's not nearly as ingenious as it seems to think.

Representing a sort of equal opportunity religious variation on an all-too-familiar theme, The Possession is a Jewish-themed "Exorcist" that, if nothing else, should discourage the practice of buying antique wooden boxes at flea markets.

As novel and absorbing as In Time is in several respects, however, Andrew Niccol's latest conception of an altered but still recognizable future feels undernourished in other ways that are not as salutary, preventing the film from fulfilling its strong inherent promise.

This punishingly predictable tale will test whether sci-fi action fanboys can stomach having their cherished genre infiltrated by sentimental hokum about a down-on-his-luck dad and his spunky long-lost son.

Rowan Joffe's film of Graham Greene's 1938 novel "Brighton Rock" takes a gothic approach to the story of a young thug obsessed with hell with little of the writer's subtlety and too much reliance on a loud quasi-religious choral score.

A just-OK second feature from Ami Canaan Mann – daughter of Michael Mann, one of two credited producers here – and the latest outing for "Avatar" and "Clash of the Titans'" Sam Worthington.

A pedestrian chronicle of an eventful true story.

The film just doesn't mine enough humor or drama from this situation. Meanwhile most of the developments are wholly predictable.