A bold rethinking of a familiar old story and striking design elements are undercut by a draggy midsection and undeveloped characters in Snow White and the Huntsman.

More stylishly filmed than many others of its ilk, but at the end of the day, is just an ordinary slasher film.

Smartly observed and precisely visualized, 3 Backyards is nonetheless a bore: We never care for any of the characters and their lives of "quiet desperation."

Horror film buffs like to giggle as much as scream but there're no giggles here.

In The 5th Quarter, the filmmakers' hearts are in the right place but the execution couldn't be more wrong-headed.

After a promisingly tart start, the strident satire stumbles and falls into a sitcom-y hole from which it never emerges, despite the game efforts of its dynamic ensemble.

Skateland is every coming-of-age-after-high-school movie you've ever seen with a formulaic plot and well-worn characters.

The film wants to put on screen the sense of random play and concentrated games that fill a child's world for a few summers. In this it succeeds, but the film does not welcome others who might still retain memories of those NOT bummer summers.

Staggeringly cornball and squeaky-clean even when flirting with such issues as interracial sexual rivalries.

More aggressively violent and thankfully less mythology driven than previous installments, Underworld: Awakening is strictly for the converted.

Terse and understated, this is a spy vs. spy tale designed to minimize talk and maximize action, not at all a bad thing in movies but over-worked to near-exhaustion here.

Such heart-tuggers have their appeal to some people in any era, but earnest hokum of this nature has become increasingly rare. And for a reason.

The same tone and look are maintained, but the visceral excitement is muffled by familiarity, an insufficiently conceived lead character and the sheer weight of backstory and multiple layers of deception.

Though satisfying enough to please many casual moviegoers drawn in by King's name and stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, it will likely disappoint many serious fans and leave other newbies underwhelmed.

While Malcolm Venville's Henry's Crime is billed as a comedy it's more funny odd than funny ha-ha.

That the film works to the degree that it does is largely due to the sensitive performances. Bonnaire delivers a beautifully modulated turn.

Part murder mystery, part dysfunctional family drama and part meditation on the elusiveness of the American dream, Motherland doesn't fully succeed on any of its levels.

Won't win many new fans for the high-stepping dancer. It might even cost him a few old ones.

A humdrum straight line of a film, Monsters University never surprises, goes off in unexpected directions or throws you for a loop in the manner of the best Pixar stories. Nor does it come close to elating through the sheer imagination of its conceits and storytelling.

Yes, it's a cartoon, but it's conspicuously unmodulated, with the volume set on high and the pacing all but pushed to fast-forward.

With enough wedding-related shenanigans to pull in the date crowd, the guffaw-to-gag ratio remains relatively respectable, though there's nothing here that hasn't been attempted many times over.

When all is said and done, their Pulitzer-winning photographs prove more potent than this well-intended but frustratingly generic picture.

Shambles along with all the purposefulness of its title character, a kind of near-beer Lebowski who's neither reckless enough to cheer for nor misguided enough to disdain.

Sanders and DeMicco’s script doesn’t have the robust plotting, consistent wit or flavorful character development of the best family animation. And some of the voice actors have too little to work with.

The sort of sweeping romantic saga rarely attempted on our shores these days, Bride Flight should well please art house audiences, especially of older females, starved for this sort of old-fashioned fare.

Its schematic structure oversimplifies the drama, despite an interesting, mostly debut cast. It seems better suited for the small screen.

A worthy history lesson on the founding of the Chinese Communist Party with only partially entertaining aspects.

Ultimately, the film is best appreciated as a welcome big-screen starring vehicle for Fischer, who expertly navigates the comedic and dramatic demands of a role that keeps her onscreen for virtually the entire running time.

Some privileged nature footage from the African rain forest is dishonored by deeply silly narration in Chimpanzee.

This well-intentioned tween-friendly message movie is earnest to a fault.

Oscar-nominee John Hawkes' convincing portrayal of real-life "crop artist" Stan Herd is the exceedingly quiet center of an exceedingly nonabrasive film that has all the dramatic energy of plants growing.

Audiences can either fight it, trying to make sense of the shaky plot, or flow along with the film's languid, doomed romance accompanied by the southern poetics of singer-songwriter Tom Russell.

Earns its R but may leave audiences wanting more.

The movie is too much an act of hero-worship for there to be any critical distance.

An earnest tale about a faded rock star who discovers he has a teenaged daughter and takes her on the road, Janie Jones follows a predictable path and despite decent performances it does not catch fire.

Despite an intriguing setup, sharply drawn central characters and a lead performance from the luminous Jennifer Lawrence that elevates the material a few notches, House at the End of the Street is a by-the-book horror thriller that's low on scares and suspense.

To his credit, director Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cite Soleil) gets right to the business at hand where the set-up is concerned, but it's in the execution that this would-be thriller falls flat.

ParaNorman is an amusing but only fitfully involving animated caper.

Though Safe initially seems a little darker and more thoughtful than the British star's previous comic-book escapades in "Death Race," "The Expendables" or the "Transporter" trilogy, it ultimately reverts to testosterone-heavy formula.

This head-scratcher boasts visual imagination to spare even as its logistical complexities and heavy-handed symbolism ultimately prove off-putting.

This relentlessly quirky tale of a teen-age hermaphrodite displays some creativity on the part of debuting writer/director J.B. Ghuman, Jr. but not enough.

Dark Shadows sinks its teeth half-way into its potentially meaty material but hesitates to go all the way.

Amid the would-be and actual laughs, the screenplay tries to drum up drama, but every disagreement and tension is treated superficially and summarily resolved.

While leads Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis are amusingly on point as a pair of mud-slinging contenders for Congress, the platform is a wobbly political satire that flip-flops chaotically between clever and crass, never finding a sturdy comedic footing.

While Shearer admittedly makes an impassioned directorial debut, the film plays out like a data-heavy, extended investigative report with an academic emphasis on scientific findings over portraits of human suffering.

If ever a film cried out for the 3D treatment, it's The Mill & the Cross, an ambitious but frustratingly flat attempt to explore, analyze and dramatize a masterpiece of 16th-century art.

The dissected minutiae of this adultery drama unfortunately doesn't add up to a very original or moving whole.

A creakily old-fashioned comedy that forgot to pack the laughs along with the nudging and kvetching.

Given a bit of breathing room in the breathless script, Dempsey and Judd might have been able to develop some convincing chemistry, but relationship dynamics get squeezed out by relentless plotting.

A thriller element that has not been present in earlier Sparks movies is designed to draw reluctant male viewers to see the picture, but they won’t respond with the same enthusiasm as his core audience of woozy romantics.

This soapy effort about a prosperous businessman having a midlife crisis finds Perry working in the heavily melodramatic mode that marks his weakest efforts.

A moderately amusing but very uneven revisionist adventure with franchise and theme park intentions written all over it...This attempt by Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to plant the flag for another Pirates of the Caribbean-scaled series tries to have it too many ways tonally, resulting in a work that wobbles and thrashes all over the place as it attempts to find the right groove.

The film's inability to illuminate the finer points of the rigid form, to define what separates the great from the good, proves frustrating for the outsider.

The movie does say a lot about female athletes and the changing role of women in American society, but in aggressively pursuing the formula, writer-director-producer Tim Chambers is prone to exaggeration and a moralizing tone.

As much a memorial as it is a docudrama and as such it will interest educators and students, and make for sober television. It's a pity, though, that more of an attempt wasn't made to understand the killer and explain such things as why no one apparently thought to phone for help or hit the fire alarm.

As easy on the eyes and ears as it is embalmed from any dramatic point of view.

There's something about novelist Stephenie Meyer that induces formerly interesting directors to suddenly make films that are slow, silly and soporific.

Although director Alan Taylor manages to get things going properly for the final battle in London, the long stretches before that on Asgard and the other branches of Yggdrasil are a drag.

Once you realize the film is just going to be a string of encomiums against a backdrop of frantically edited archival material in which few shots are allowed to stay onscreen longer than three seconds, it's clear that no meaningful analysis of the woman's career or political agenda will be forthcoming.

Certainly delivers the goods as far as quantity of sex goes. But the quality will leave some cold.

The film tracks the history of the country, but viewers may feel the documentarian inserts herself too much into the story.

Though some of the movie's performances flirt with caricature (Siobhan Fallon's loud-mouthed aunt, Demi Moore as a brash and overtly sexual second wife), the movie has a center of gravity just strong enough to contain them.

Performances are strong across the board, and the movie offers a solid sense of place. But the mysteries, once explained, don't make a lot of sense.

After multiple "Saw" franchise releases, writer-director Darren Lynn Bousman goes it alone for 11-11-11, with at best tepid results elaborating an unconvincing premise.

An attractively designed but narratively challenged, one-note film.

Green has chosen for his focus to fall on Enrique, in many ways the least interesting character in his story, rather than the son or even the mother who is surprisingly protective and understanding.

Every character here is so squeaky-clean, and the prejudice as depicted is so toothless and easily overcome, that the film feels like a gingerly fantasy version of what, in real life, was an exceptional example of resilient trail-blazing.

The fact that the three actors who do most of the fooling around — Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon — have a combined age of 202 pegs this as a sex romp for the Viagra crowd.

Walking With Dinosaurs takes rewarding advantage of a much bigger budget and state-of-the-art technology to bring its impressive collection of Cretaceous creatures to vivid life. But while the walking part’s pretty impressive, the talking part — not so much.

In Bodyguard, Khan seems to have a tongue-in-cheek awareness of his major strengths - able comic timing and a cartoonishly muscular physique - and in case that's not obvious enough, he flexes his biceps to the beat in the film's opening song and literally winks at the camera.

Areces is inventive and scary in main role, though it's impossible to sympathize with his madness. Other performances are gaudy but perfunctory.

Australia makes a modest contribution to the growing sub-genre of everyman superhero movies with Griff the Invisible, a sweet but scattershot debut from local TV actor Leon Ford.

Although the conceit of an ever-so-erudite child palling around with an exceedingly wise concierge might be workable in a novel, cinema tends to realism, and Achache is too much of a novice to bring it off. The cuteness grates, and the setups and philosophizing are generally unconvincing.

Sumptuously clothed in vintage fashion, pop idols Wu and Hsu may bring in a younger crowd otherwise indifferent to the dated subject, but their performances are unimpressive.

Besson responded to something in the story that prompted him to step outside his comfort zone, but exactly what that was is unclear in this well-intentioned but pedestrian retelling of a stirring true story.

Proves too anticlimactic for the audience to maintain interest.

Fleshing out now-familiar tales of misconduct and bad judgment, Palin investigation is entertaining but holds no dramatic discoveries.

Directed with feeling for its richly layered protagonists, the film is elevated by its emotional complexity but simultaneously dragged down by the relative shortage of propulsive, hardcore action.

Cleverly put together by writer-director Matthew Bate, the film takes a bizarre, cult folktale and turns it into a picture that is more provocative than entertaining.

As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Dazzlingly designed and staged in a theatrical setting so as to suggest that the characters are enacting assigned roles in life, this tight and pacy telling of a 900 page-plus novel touches a number of its important bases but lacks emotional depth, moral resonance and the simple ability to allow its rich characters to experience and drink deeply of life.

A very important subject gets too dry a treatment to keep one's attention focused.

Everyone's comments are thoughtful and articulate but everyone stays "on message" so steadfastly that no dialogue ever ensues. It's 20 people giving the same lecture.

The movie has a hard time wrapping up its love story without feeling forced, however game the cast. Viewers won't be able to say they weren't given what they came for, but they might feel unsatisfied all the same.

Billy Crystal and Bette Midler hustle to peddle the threadbare material that makes Andy Fickman's comedy a perfectly tolerable, if uninspired, moviegoing experience.

The Thor Freudenthal-helmed sequel lacks the energetic zip of its predecessor.

Sunshine is stretched thin for the big screen. The decidedly art-house film is better suited for television.

A superficially diverting but substance-free concoction, a would-be thriller as evanescent as a magic trick and one that develops no suspense or rooting interest because the characters possess all the substance of invisible ink.

Would have made for a fine film noir 60 years ago but feels rather contrived and unbelievable in the setting of contemporary New York.

Enjoyable but as familiar as the old-school routines its magician heroes dish out.

Harrelson goes full bore from the opening scene and there are no scenes he is not in. But the effect is wearying rather than exhilarating.

The cast is fine, but the roles are superficial and too concentrated on the film's theme.

The film, both in scope and tone, has a downsized vibe that would have made it a much better fit on an ABC Family than in a movie theater.

Shah Rukh Khan's foray into bad-boy territory is all swagger with not much substance.

Cast and crew's investment in the story's tragedy and its ensuing moral debates is evident in every frame, but the film isn't fully successful in generating the same depth of feeling in viewers.

Although the film recounts an intriguing slice of social history, it is too haphazard and repetitive to be truly memorable.

The raging stamina, unrelenting violence, rapid-fire editing and truncated narrative all give one no pause for thought or even breath. By the time the central mystery is revealed in a nice twist, it gets swallowed in the messy, anti-climactic end.

Despite dynamic subject matter, prime archive material and insightful interviewees, Whitney Sudler-Smith's intrusive presence onscreen somewhat trivializes his documentary tribute to Halston and the decadent disco years.