Has sturdy production values, a tony cast and middlebrow tastefulness up the wazoo, but barely any soul, bite or genuine passion.

Much of what transpires is wholly unconvincing, although the proceedings are made palatable by the highly appealing performances by the two leads, who display a genuine onscreen chemistry.

A great many of these individual scenes are funny... But the film fails to do what those rare, immortal rom-coms get right: take all its individually pleasing ingredients and make a satisfying movie out of them.

The delicate drama is sweet and sincere but a tad thin to resonate.

The film only intermittently displays the snap, precision and stylistic smarts a mixed-tone project like this requires; a half-good effort is not enough where buoyancy and a sly-to-mean spiritedness are required at all times.

For high-concept melodrama that's low on complexity, this very solemn film takes itself way too seriously. But it's not entirely without interest, thanks to sleek visuals and decent chemistry between alluring leads Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart.

The actors' raw honesty and the unvarnished authenticity of the Southeast Texas environment lend weight to this slow-burn drama about responsibility, even if its storytelling is unrelentingly downbeat and lacks muscularity.

Amusing but not as funny or suspenseful as it could be.

While that let’s-band-together-and-save-the-park setup clearly isn’t the freshest acorn on the tree, director and co-writer Cal Brunker (2013’s Escape From Planet Earth) at least manages to keep all the ensuing chaos at a reasonably brisk clip. Drawing similarly energetic performances from his voice cast is another matter.

Distinctly and proudly old-fashioned in its retro, film noir vibe, A Walk Among the Tombstones is notable for its dark atmospherics and strong performance by Liam Neeson.

Despite its shameless manipulations and unsubtle approach, it’s an ambitious and well-intentioned feature debut from a director whose future efforts bear attention.

Beautiful to look at, this is nothing more than a Little Engine That Could story refitted to accommodate aerial action and therefore unlikely to engage the active interest of anyone above the age of about 8, or 10 at the most.

The film is elevated by the quality of the performances, with Breslin and Henley movingly affecting as the closely bound sisters and Sorvino convincingly conveying her character’s inability to function.

The film’s attempt at blending humor, poignancy and melodrama results in an awkward mish-mosh. But it has heart to spare, and the performances by the multi-generational ensemble are very effective, with particularly moving work by the veterans in the cast.

The convoluted, cliché-ridden storyline, apparently inspired by the director’s father’s real-life experiences in the drug trade, is the least interesting element, while the brief, perfunctory action sequences no doubt reflect the low budget. But the film certainly looks and sounds good.

Less exploitative and a bit smarter than its seedy adult-film setting would suggest, the shoestring-budgeted film is nevertheless a niche outing that will rely on a stunty premise to attract voyeurs to its debut this Valentine's Day.

Baron Cohen and Strong are both robustly physical performers, and their finest moments are when they’re grappling with each other, producing a great tangle of limbs and teeth. But the script, credited to Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham (based on a story by Baron Cohen and Johnston), is not especially generous to the other members of the cast.

This ultra-slick, fantasy-inducing visit to an international wonder world of wealth and deception plays more like an inventory of thieving and gambling techniques than a captivating diversion, even if it's hard not to be voyeuristically pulled in by some of its ruses.

A passably silly but lowbrow buddy comedy.

Amid the not-so-troubling setbacks, unbelievable triumphs and perpetual spring break, the movie takes one or two nice twists.

Over the last couple of reels the film shakes off its self-conscious inhibitions and displays some healthy unruliness, and just as we're warming to a group of characters whose indulgences have been not only culinary but emotional, it's all over.

Although the film’s dark humor and colorful, thriller aesthetics provide some juicy material at the beginning, its overindulgence in chatter, fornication and occasional gore feels too blatant to make Sono’s social commentary run anywhere but skin-deep.

Despite the affecting performances by the two leads, this overly muted drama fails to make much of an impact.

Without creating fully fleshed characters or truly involving conflict, the film aims instead to provoke howls of recognition and tears of gratitude by appealing to very basic notions of parent-child love.

This effort offers some mild amusement but lacks the anarchic wit to make it anything more than a slight diversion.

Unfocused, overly long documentary raises provocative questions.

Despite a neat narrative twist delivered during the end credits, Alien Abduction is ultimately a by-the-numbers enterprise that will please only the most undemanding audiences at midnight screenings.

Less time spent fetishizing his own image and more on building credible character dynamics and psychological complexity might have helped make this film the dramatic equal of its technical craftsmanship.

Formulaic and often hard to swallow, the picture offers little beyond the familiar pleasures of Duvall's old-coot mode.

Despite Meat Loaf’s hammily entertaining turn as the desperate owner of a musical theater summer camp, the film fails to live up to its obvious inspirations.

A fair-to-middling little date movie.

While the screenplay by De Paolis and Sarah Nerboso falters in its melodramatic plot elements, its incisive characterizations and well-drawn smaller moments provide some compensation.

Though its even-tempered account may be more thorough than print and TV coverage at the time, the doc doesn't offer anything dramatic enough to draw many eyeballs at this late date.

Writers and directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have crafted a solid script... Holding the enterprise back, however, is a terribly restrained directorial approach and academic visual style that prevent the lubricious story from truly coming to life.

Has its entertaining moments and boasts pungent performances from such supporting players as Ron Perlman and John C. McGinley, but never quite succeeds in managing its uncomfortable tonal shift from dark comedy to true-crime thriller.

Recognizable human behavior is not this film’s forte -- which wouldn’t be a problem if something else would take its place but Punch never finds the right tone for the heterogeneous material, with sweetly melodramatic scenes alternating with high drama, some light action and farce.

Whether they’re filing ridiculous complaints about each other to the unflappable mayor (Michel Blanc), arguing over the proper presentation of ingredients or sharing a cafe table, Mirren and Puri bring an effortless command to their roles.

The drama and intensity that are [Haggis's] signatures are mostly missing from these vividly dramatized but uninvolving romantic crises, none of which are particularly believable.

With its splashy paintbox palette and jaunty pop soundtrack, All Cheerleaders Die just about hangs together as a cheerfully goofy romp.

Despite some evocative moments...the film is too elliptical and fragmented to have the desired impact. It ultimately leaves the viewer, much like its hero, in a state of dazed confusion.

While Murphy coasts along on charm, his material is just not sharp enough to generate big laughs.

There are some good ideas struggling to be heard, but they're drowned out by the contrivances, the gunfire and the screaming.

More notable for its small, incisive moments than as a moving depiction of the way that familial relationships are affected by life crises, the film makes only a minor impact.

Unfocussed editing and Mark Rivett's unimaginative score contribute to a lightweight feel that is best suited to TV viewing.

Ericson Core’s Point Break strips the silly fun and relatively straight-ahead narrative from the original for a humorless, if photogenic spin on extreme crime.

Good People follows a familiar thriller template without managing to be particularly compelling.

While one might agree or disagree with their theme, aesthetically Citizen Koch is feisty.

The screenplay... seems to generally lack a throughline or focus, coasting from party scenes full of drugs and alcohol to work-related drama but rarely managing to get inside the head of the self-destructive character the designer had become by the 1970s.

The result is vivid when focusing on those directly involved in the war but laborious when devoted to the fretful hand-wringing of do-gooder outsider characters, which is a lot of the time.

For the first time his ongoing collaboration with scriptwriter Paul Laverty, Loach's studiously safe-hands approach -- typified by regular collaborator George Fenton's near-incessant score -- can't counterbalance fundamental screenplay flaws.

While the director prides herself for having a mix of pro and amateur actors improvising scenes, many awkward moments emerge as the characters seemingly are just instructed to let their conversations and interactions flow: the result is missed beats, protracted silences and characters staring at each other or into space for too long.

The film earns a few laughs thanks to the energetic efforts of its hardworking cast, but they’re decidedly of the hit-or-miss variety.

The director-screenwriter does manage to invest the familiar proceedings with some quirky, original touches.

The film offers some diverting background on the man.

Ahluwalia has striven for a very self-consciously arty aesthetic here, more Gus Van Sant than Michael Mann. This is a commendably bold way to approach material that might otherwise have drifted into routine lowlife crime-thriller territory, but it also drains a rich story of narrative momentum and emotional punch.

A schmaltzy, mildly satisfying Anglo take on the BFFs-to-bedfellows subgenre that’s been seen recently in romantic comedies.

Desert Dancer too often lapses into generic cinematic clichés, failing to live up to the dramatic potential of its subject matter.

Harry and the Hendersons is a disappointment.

Neither an inspirational faith-based film nor an attack on Christian dogma, Will Bakke’s comedy/drama Believe Me plays like a religious variation of "Risky Business" minus the sex.

Although screenwriter John Kare Raake’s Raiders of the Lost Ark template may sometimes seem a bit shopworn, at least it doesn’t dwell too indulgently on Viking mythology, playing to the strengths of the action scenario instead.

The film represents the director in a more pensive, even philosophical vein, less interested in propulsive cinema and more reflective about what would seem to mean the most to him—dreams, and the ability to make them come true. This is what The BFG is about but, unfortunately, that is basically all it’s about and by a considerable measure too explicitly and single-mindedly so.

Strong performances by Lily Rabe and LisaGay Hamilton aren’t quite enough to redeem Redemption Trail.

The frequent voice-overs, in which the boys read what they wrote (heard over shots of them writing), add distance rather than insight because it is not the action of writing that's revealing but the events and thought processes that led them to write what they did.

Has some clever ideas up its sleeve, but otherwise fails to provoke much interest in the travails of its 40-something central character.

A blithely derivative romantic comedy that isn’t without a certain smug charm.

The historical overview they provide is insightful and lucid, yet their polished production intermittently lapses into dry chronology while they bury the lead.

Restrained and elegant to a fault, this first feature from co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams is too muted in its catharsis and too overcrowded with superfluous characters to be fully satisfying, but the delicate central performance keeps it watchable.

Sinister 2 comes up a bit short on creative resources, although director Ciaran Foy probably gets enough right to entice those partial to the original.

The film features plenty of photogenic real-life locations and some genuinely exciting action sequences.

While there’s much to enjoy here – particularly in the touching performance of Hiam Abbass – there’s also plenty that is cliched and forced.

Fortunately, the two stars always brighten the proceedings.

Although all the main characters and plot points survive the transition intact, they don’t carry the same weight. Him and Her have an undeniable literary, collegiate feeling, like reading a long novel and getting to know the characters inside out. Them steps on the accelerator in a sort of Cliffs Notes version.

Less an introduction to the green-burial movement than a portrait of one man who embraced it after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, A Will for the Woods is more sentimental than journalistic.

Although many of the subplots play nicely, they take away from the main thrust of the film: a tightly knit family living so close to the enemy, who rarely is seen and never understood. So this is relegated to a footnote in favor of story lines that, while wholesome, are neither dramatic nor cinematic.

It's got a few things going for it and it's not unenjoyable to sit through, but, at the same time, the tone and creative register never feel confident and settled. It's not bad but not quite good enough either.

The film fares best when it slows down a bit and allows the Turtles' personalities, which are quite engaging, to shine through via their amusing comic banter.

An elegantly confected cream puff of a melodrama, The Age of Adaline plays like an exercise in handling a preposterous story, booby-trapped for maximal ridiculousness, with tasteful conviction. Far from the bloated tearjerker suggested by the trailer, the film is pleasant, respectable and a bit dull, reining in the inherent silliness of its material and taking few risks.

An obvious labor of love, this hand-crafted film is beautifully made – photographed, scored and edited with a grubby lyricism that makes its shortage of plot momentum all the more frustrating.

While the violent sequences are very effectively staged, the results are a strange hybrid that doesn't quite work. Lacking the antic, witty humor of something like the similarly conceived Gremlins or the full-out gore of a traditional horror flick, Krampus never really finds it niche.

Despite the author’s scripting and the fine central performances by Joan Allen and Anthony LaPaglia, this low-key effort directed by Peter Askin fails to fulfill the potential of its provocative premise.

The gaps between the hipster comedy of the star, the incipient sentimentality of the story and the gravely depressing reality of the setting provide tonal abysses simply too vast to bridge in Rock the Kasbah, an intermittently amusing but dramatically problematic mish-mash that careens all over a rough and rocky road.

Individual scenes are charged with energy, tense confrontations are numerous, and Hillcoat and Cook's intentions were undoubtedly partly to tease and taunt viewers with uncertainly about where they, and the characters, stand, to figure out who's got the power and who doesn't. If it was possible to give a damn about any of them, it would help.

A peculiar and frustrating portrait of a man coping with chronic illness by indulging in carnal and intellectual pleasures, Angela Christlieb's Naked Opera presents itself as a documentary but is unconcerned with answering even the most basic questions viewers will have about its subject.

That the film mostly falls flat has far more to do with the largely unconvincing material rather than with the co-stars, who are more than game for often clownish shenanigans Black and his co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi have concocted for them; in fit and starts, the actors display a buoyant comic rapport.

The feature-length film ultimately becomes repetitive, with the lack of contextual information about the subjects’ lives rendering the proceedings shallow.

In the end, the film is so guilelessly unabashed about its hokum that it becomes sort of endearing in a way, and one can’t but admire the likes of Cox, McElhone and Toby Stephens as the boo-hiss bad guy for fully committing to the corn.

Compared with the first film, this one embraces the premise’s essential preposterousness, although not necessarily to winning effect.

Aniston submits an honest, sturdy performance. However, the film, directed by Daniel Barnz (Phoebe in Wonderland, Beastly) and written by Patrick Tobin, is less emotionally potent than it wants to be.

Instead of complex personalities and dilemmas, we mostly get clichés.

The idea is original enough to pique curiosity, and the small cast, led by Alba Rohrwacher and the up-and-coming Adam Driver of HBO’s Girls fame, digs gamely into the material, but something is missing.

What might have looked intriguing on paper appears to have been largely pared away in the artsy mannerisms and loaded silences of Brit director Daniel Barber’s self-consciously elliptical treatment.

The problem is that the romance as depicted is just not interesting enough to sustain realistic treatment. It's sweet but a tad dull. The two characters lack dimension, and their stereotypical situations seem entirely generic.

Winslet’s mix of grace, gumption and private sadness is the chief reason to keep watching, but she deserves a more dynamic film.

It was a given that this meeting of two iconoclastic directors would yield something far more unfettered and instinctive than conventional bio-drama. But the result borders on incoherence, providing few startling insights for aficionados and minimal illumination for the uninitiated.

Laura Wade’s adaptation of her hit play, Posh, has sacrificed much of its savage comedy en route to the screen, and while the dark drama is never dull, its portrait of upper-crust entitlement run amok is seldom surprising either.

Reliant on suspense rather than gore, this is functional middle-brow psychological horror and screenwriter Joe Croker finds plenty of tired haunted house tropes he’s happy to recycle in adapting material from Susan Hill’s original novel.

The director attempts to infuse the film with a dreamy poeticism via slow motion and other stylistic devices, with the results feeling mildly pretentious.

Largely forgoing the CGI effects usually endemic to such efforts, the film has the actors clad in werewolf suits and make-up designed by Dave and Lou Elsey that produce a slightly ludicrous effect, as if they were unusually large kids trick-or-treating. That the characters maintain their full powers of speech only adds to the silliness, although the hunky lead performers manage to carry it off with hirsute sexiness.