Merely a paint-by-numbers condemnation of social intolerance. It's a slog of a sermon.

A train station finale is textbook tearjerker territory, but it still teems with exquisite sorrow.

It’s a 60-minute documentary that feels like days of watching paint dry.

In the director’s hands, these societal passion plays and “documentaries” offer a terrifying, top-down perversion of art itself--another insidious extension of politics by other means.

One wrongheaded jaw-dropper follows another.

Third times are rarely charms in the movies, much less fourth go-rounds, and it takes more than ho-hum 3-D and video-game-ready action sequences to liven up diminishing returns

The meal here is mainly nostalgia, larded with a thick sauce of irony.

The longer this profile of the mixed Muslim-Jewish crew follows players over the course of a difficult season, the more it establishes the difficulty of burdening one team to serve as a national symbol of reconciliation—and how hard it is to break free from triumph-of-the-underdog clichés with even the best of intentions

It’s gratifying to see Eisenberg move past nerdy-cutie parts; his slim shoulders, it seems, are capable of handling more than Michael Cera’s leftovers.

Packs a forceful punch.

Cribbing from countless Tinseltown efforts, this music-video-cum-perfume-ad is awash in excessively melodramatic flashbacks, car chases and references to the domestic illegal-immigration debate.

It takes more than a few good actors playing bad apples to sustain such familiar romps through regurgitated material. There’s no bounty to be plucked from Perrier’s Bounty. The treasure chest has long since been emptied.

A truly impressive portrait of self-destructive, smooth-talking alpha males, and a testament to an actor who waltzes across that Peter Pan–syndrome tightrope with the greatest of sleaze.

The film blows up a minor aspect of the New Wave to foolishly apocalyptic proportions, substituting gossip for gospel.

Poised between childhood and adolescence, arrogance and insecurity, the kids still make for compelling subjects.

The real treasure, however, is Bronstein, whose charismatically loopy, caffeinated performance carries an air of suspense: Can he keep his kids out of harm’s way? Will his clownish antics suddenly turn toxic? Is it simply a matter of when?

Can they really be setting up a sequel at the end, with Robin as an outlaw? Let’s hope so--that’s the movie you actually wanted.

From its opening montage of Hallmark-worthy kisses to a climactic clinch under the Tuscan sun, Letters to Juliet celebrates synthetic sentiment.

Too much of this love triangle rings false.

Kilcher makes the slog worthwhile--her face gleams with possibility, even in the character’s darkest moments--though one prays she escapes the typecasting trap ASAP.

The esteemed director, Ken Loach, isn’t really a fantasist--and it shows.

Sol Tryon’s dark, irrepressibly hilarious fable offers highbrow absurdism and low-budget filmmaking at their most clever and outlandish.

By movie’s end, you see flocks of umbrella-adorned commuters in a different light; and what’s often viewed as Japanese humility becomes a doorway to something huge and eternal. Bring the kids.

But while you can’t fault this labor of love’s conception, you can take issue with its leaden execution.

Although convincing as athletes, neither Miller belongs on a movie screen; personal parable or not, this feels like a too-familiar trip around the bases.

The big question isn’t whether middle-aged romance will bloom, but rather, how much sub-Jarmusch deadpan humor and pathos can you take?

An overall lack of drive drops the pacing from languorous to a slow, stalled crawl, but the journey itself isn’t the point here. For once, it’s the destination--forgiveness--that really counts.

With this depressingly bland sequel (scripted by snark specialist Justin Theroux), he’s (Robert Downey Jr.) stranded in lightweight arrogance.

Babies is barely more insightful than your average Flickr photo gallery or home movie clip: it’s just infant porn for prospective parents.

The big absence here is the man himself; Gibney couldn’t get the jailed Abramoff on camera, either due to unwillingness or a Justice Department intervention. Whatever the reason, it’s crippling.

Sherman based this obtuse psychosexual dystopia on his own hippie upbringing; the result is virtually teeming with bitter resentment for the drug-addled parent collective that inadvertently turned his adolescence into a chapter from "Lord of the Flies."

A believably unbalanced Bening scores the movie’s true coup: Karen’s revitalizing relationship with a sweetly persistent coworker (Jimmy Smits) is a rare example of Hollywood doing right by midlife romance.

Cowriter Branch isn’t much of a dramatist either, as this hoary midlife-crisis tale is watchable solely for its reliable cast.

What emerges is an illuminating, though terribly dismaying, portrait of the War on Terror’s lasting effects. Whether one retreats or steps out defiantly, there is no sanctuary.

This is like a subpar "Naked Gun" feature cooked up by Eisenstein and Godard during a drug-addled lost weekend. Where's Leslie Nielsen when you need him?

If this is what passes for contemporary art terrorism, we’ll opt instead for something truly subversive--like genuine art

Less a nightmare than a case of bad indigestion, this ’80s horror reboot is a primer in the humorless recycling of potent pop culture.

The only saving grace of this wannabe Looney Tune? The animals don’t talk.

The Good Heart dilutes Cox’s gravitas with quirk.

We like our secondhand vengeance as sleazy and bloody as the next grindhouse fiend, but even an intentional throwback shouldn’t feel content to coast on so much déjà vu.

Caan can’t seem to play up his strengths. He’s a raw talent who needs an editor for his scripts and a strong hand behind the camera guiding him. Mercy gives our guy neither.

She has real sympathy--characters that might have been brittle, mockable creations in another writer-director’s hands gain resonance here. But the filmmaker also might have very little to say apart from the way guilt enters into life, and then suddenly recedes.

Excruciatingly stupid movie.

One senses this is a production better suited to the stage.

Ghost Bird has a bad habit of briefly taking flight and then crashing back down into NPR-like stodginess.

The Losers is the ultimate example, scraped from the bottom of the comic-book barrel, where writer Andy Diggle’s figurine-like characters first had their exploits in an exciting War on Terror.

The only aspects marking The Back-Up Plan as modern (not fresh) are its skanky wallowings in hormonal urges and an equally sour penchant for potshots at the target audience: women who want to be mothers.

The sauciest of anecdotes are illustrated with faded vintage photos, all tiresomely filtered through the Ken Burns roving-cam effect and making for one chaste and unsexy cultural portrait--the biggest tease of them all.

At its best, this pomo oater gets within chaw-spitting distance of action-flick greatness; at its worst, the movie is simply unadulterated guns-and-guts fun.

That we never actually meet his Mr. Hyde is an inventive twist, but all the labored explanations (and tedious psychology) that follow the bad behavior and bloodshed make for a serious buzzkill.

Fine performers can’t salvage a toxically precious script, though Stone (Zombieland), with her disarming poise, makes a go of it.

If nothing else, Ruedi Gerber’s celebratory portrait of Anna Halprin--a postmodern-dance pioneer and Gerber’s former teacher--is a fascinating testimonial to the healing, age-defying powers of both her art and artistry.

The film fails to latch on to a consistent tone, shifting between scenes of prison life and the struggles of the family matriarch left alone--both of which are a bit too polished--turning a moving story into something emotionally lifeless

The film’s rigorous commitment to probing the undersea kingdom’s oddities separates it from the usual tepid Discovery Channel fare, and those looking for marine exotica and savagery will thrill to a sea slug that shimmies like a flamenco dancer and an orgiastic feeding frenzy involving dolphins, sharks and a school of sardines.

For those of us who find somber superhero movies faintly ridiculous, Kick-Ass is a one-film justice league.

After decades of endless policy debates, you’d think fixing America’s schools would be a complex endeavor. But apparently not--at least according to this tunnel-vision editorial.

So it’s no surprise that, even with longtime screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala watching his back, the director never finds his groove with Peter Cameron’s tale.

Proving that a comedy’s performers are sometimes more important than its jokes, this remake of Frank Oz’s dreary 2007 British farce of the same name livens up the proceedings by subbing in a comic African-American all-star cast.

That rarest of art documentaries, one that actually leaves viewers with a better sense of the gifted versus the phony.

Harry’s haunted by his own identity crisis, but that breakdown translates into nothing but smeary, slo-mo flashbacks. Forget about insight into the macho mind-set.

The spot-on cast almost holds the movie together, but whatever potential this timely premise has is wasted on reworking the same gag about overconsumption.

These artists are risking everything by playing Western-influenced music; that Ghobadi cheapens and cheeses up their subversion with Hollywood tricks makes for a seriously bitter irony.

Although based on the real-life tale of nine underage underdogs from Monterrey, Mexico who swept the 1957 Little League World Series, this Cinderella sports story rings false from first pitch to last.

About as deep as a kiddie pool, which isn't to say it's an unpleasant frolic.

The running time may make you blanch, but Connie Field’s seven-part documentary about the history and eventual dissolution of South African apartheid is well worth the commitment.

The filmmaker’s irreverent directness with his subjects makes for a savagely funny and bluntly insightful portrait of those who live with disfigurement.

Pornography: A Thriller may have a few interesting things to say about porn. But thrills? Not so much.

It makes you laugh in fits and starts, but more often it feels toothless and exhausted, the kind of project that exists to give Ray Liotta work.

This is one case where there’s more life in the morgue than out.

Watching people play a board game ain’t ever going to be scary, and that’s essentially what we have here.

Bratt’s performance suggests enough subcutaneous rage to give the proceedings an edge, even when the sluggish narrative takes the slow-cruise ethos of its low-rider culture far too literally at times.

What is impressive is the filmmaker’s facility with atmosphere, plus his ripe eye for giving blue-collar bruisers just enough dimension to make them more than mouth-breathing meatheads.

Like so many Doors chroniclers, DiCillo can’t help but fall under the singer’s spell; it’s understandable, but frustrating.

Even if you can miraculously avoid comparing this take on rock & roll record maker Leonard Chess (Nivola) to 2008’s similar Cadillac Records, Jerry Zaks’s lukewarm biopic still won’t get your fingers snapping; it’d be a runt in any litter.

An eerie resurrection regains some good will, but we'll have to wait for Neshat to catch up with the art of storytelling.

These guys belong in the avant-odd pantheon. They also deserve a stronger, more penetrating tribute.

Adapted from Dimitri Verhulst’s semi-autobiographical novel with a flair that recalls the squalor-and-dazzle visuals of “Trainspotting,” Felix Van Groeningen’s highly entertaining tale is full of hilarity, horror and heartbreak (sometimes within the same scene).

The overall hipness is a little too forced--it’s damn funny when it could’ve been poignant.

Church oozes lonely-patsy schlubiness and Shue radiates crazed heat, but the movie ultimately relies too heavily on dry wackiness and goes too light on the fatalistic bleakness.

Given that Sarandon played this same role so sublimely before in "Moonlight Mile," her devolution into theatrical rending of garments and gnashing of teeth is particularly disappointing, but no one--not Brosnan’s shell-shocked–by-numbers patriarch nor Mulligan’s wide-eyed waif--comes out of this steroidal pity party unscathed.

A dumb comedy out to prove its genre-defying smarts--the title is both an onscreen-supported reference to Walt Whitman and a wacky-tobaccy allusion--Leaves of Grass is a mostly mirthless affair; not even the sight of Edward Norton portraying twins tickles as it should.

Overall, the movie has the bantamweight feel of a really long DVD extra: Little details of the director’s ancestral stomping grounds are appealing, but don’t jell into something satisfying.

Burdened with a bevy of unlikely plot twists, this is less a movie sequel than the latest installment in a big-screen soap opera.

The film lurches through narrative incidents: Battle scenes, political intrigue and a ticking-time-bomb love triangle are all pitched at the level of mundane competence and rarely get the blood racing.

Alas, it all comes off as hit and myth, mainly due to our leaden, buzz-cut hero, Perseus (Avatar’s Worthington, no Harry Hamlin), and zero sparks of heavenly-body chemistry or humor.

Maybe Douglas Sirk could have made something profound out of the pseudo-ennobling horsepucky. As is, The Last Song is what the crinkle-nosed Southern belle in all of us would resoundingly deem “Trash! Trash! Trash!”

The doc dutifully allows for these varying viewpoints, but in a mode that’s not especially captivating, despite a guitar score by Brokeback Mountain’s Gustavo Santaolalla.

The most impressive aspect of Breillat’s feature is that it agitates like the best fairy tales, seducing us with otherworldliness before sticking the knife in and permanently inscribing the moral.

Like the "Scream" series, Hot Tub Time Machine is a cake-and-eat-it-too experience; you get both a vintage Brat Pack comedy, albeit one regrettably drenched in post-Hangover raunch, and an ongoing metacommentary at the same time.

This sex thriller is trapped in a tepid zone between quality trash and pretentious psychodrama.

An illuminating profile but a sloppy snapshot of the immigrant experience.

Never finds a common ground between the fantastic and the heartfelt. Such unintegrated flip-flopping between a muted character study and a horror flick relying on cheap scare tactics leaves you feeling mildly schizophrenic

Earnest to a fault, this tale of vengeance and retribution strives for Faulknerian pathos, but never rises above amateur theatrics.

You could chalk this kid’s flick up as another manic Saturday-matinee time killer if it weren’t for a singularly impressive element. It’s not the stretchy, lava-lamp–ish animation, which offers the usual in-your-face 3-D tricks.

An inspirational, humorous portrait of an individual grappling with an addiction that, unlike heroin or alcohol, has rarely been addressed in film.

The film’s tendency to wax sentimental occasionally undermines its authority, but you won’t find better behind-the-scenes looks at the era’s mouse-eared power struggles or at the making of modern Disney classics.

You know it’s bad when a caper comedy makes you long for the Goldie Hawn–Chevy Chase showcases of yore.

A tedious example of speculative fiction.