It's not unenjoyable, but it isn't half the pastiche that Psycho II was.

We've come to expect diminishing returns from the once-promising Mexican director who then gave the world "Babel," but the combination of wallowing humanistic-cinema overkill and outright ridiculousness he lays out here represents a new low. Biutiful is not a tragedy. It's a straight-up travesty.

Even the stoniest face will crack when Aladeen sums up our cultural moment in a rousing, uproarious climactic speech worthy of both Chaplin and Team America.

To be fair, Craig is still the best Bond since Connery, and a Man Who Knew Too Much–style set piece at a Vienna opera house momentarily offers the fleetness and wit the rest of the film lacks.

A committed Denzel Washington is wasted in a legal drama that never gets around to making closing arguments.

Despite the attention the film pays to the divide between the man as the ungainly, loving second-gen immigrant versus the boozy provocateur, it's not a portrait of much psychological depth.

Al Pacino’s done so much Acting over the last 25 years (hoo-ah), it’s disquieting to see him digging deep again—often with subtlety—into a rich role with hidden depths.

Rise of the Guardians is an effervescent dose of fantasia that’s pretty hard to dislike. Unless, of course, you’re a cynical grump.

Clearly a labour of love for co-writer, co-director and star Alex Winter (the other one in the Bill and Ted movies), this freewheeling, anarchic, gross-out comedy should satisfy the six-pack post-pub crowd, but it can't really stand up to sober viewing.

This stab at the soft underbelly of American middle class paranoia looks increasingly contrived once the film loses direction in the daylight outside, and a realism intrudes that the film-makers just don't know how to handle.

Despite producer Jack Harris' pooh-poohing of the 'political subtext' theory, rampant Commie-phobia pervades as the ever-redder blob sucks the life-blood out of every sacred American institution, climaxing in a truly marvellous scene in which the enemy within devours an entire diner, over easy, with a side salad and fries to go.

Ed Harris is a performer made for Westerns, and he’s perfectly utilized in debuting director Michael Berry’s middling if still very watchable modern-day oater as Roy.

The boys all brag about sex but look like Mother Fist is their main mistress. The values stink, the music stinks, and Lemmy from Motorhead is a dickhead, but the movie is totally compelling. Rather like watching a car wreck on the opposite side of a motorway.

The closer we get to a climax (and the more that absurd reversals keep getting piled on), the less effective Dupontel’s brutish charisma is in keeping things interesting and afloat. You pray the next he-man outing makes better use of his presence.

Serenity, wonderment and worry mix in this awe-inspiring, musical tour of the Earth’s waterways.

Breathtakingly risky but valid under scrutiny ... Jojo Rabbit isn’t perfect; sometimes it strains to reconcile Waititi’s more relaxed beats (“Let everything happen to you,” is a line from poet Rainer Maria Rilke that gets big play) with his visual fussiness. But he’s legitimately breaking new ground. It will find an audience that gets it.

You brace for a certain amount of hand-wringing, lip-biting and pinup posing aimed at middle-schoolers; given the way that Eclipse initially suggests a potential for reaching beyond a preteen audience, you just wish the beefcake and cheese didn’t eventually overshadow its better qualities.

The central idea here is as durable and effective as a well-told fireside ghost story, but in the cold light of day, the film fades.

Dropping on top of the heap is Lucky McKee's barely competent domestic thriller, bound to make you groan more than think.

Inventive and anarchic, but by no means Gilliam’s masterpiece, Quixote reminds us of the romantic ideal that the world needs dreamers who dare to defy convention.

This is Sweeney’s film. Christy is a career-best turn, sure to draw favourable comparisons with Hilary Swank (who, funnily enough, gets a namecheck in one scene, as Million Dollar Baby was released during the movie’s timespan). She may not be a problematic dude, but she’s certainly Michôd’s most impressive lead performer yet.

Presley escapes the GI Blues and takes a job with a Hawaii tourist agency in this innocuous star vehicle/holiday brochure. Lots of scenery and one tolerable song, Can't Help Falling in Love.

The two gifted comedic actresses give their characters depth while also finding moments of lightness that stop the drama from ever bringing the pace down too much. It makes for a wickedly funny spin on the safe old British period drama.

(Untitled)’s onslaught of self-indulgent bohos and art-vs.-commerce clichés are as ersatz as their objects of scorn.

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.

If anything distinguishes director Régis Roinsard’s take on well-trod material, it’s his Technicolor-bright widescreen palette (recalling many a late-’50s pillow-talk romance without a hint of snooty irony) and energetically game cast.

You do sense, though, that the people behind MIB3 (mainly veteran producer Walter F. Parkes and script doctor David Koepp) were smart enough to let the audience grow up a bit, enough to get the Andy Warhol jokes and one brilliantly weird creation, a delicate alien who can see every outcome at once.

Weird for weirdness’s sake gets you only so far, however, and when Dupieux tries to connect all these strange goings-on to Dolph’s corporate-drone despondency, the movie takes a spurious turn toward rancid sentimentality. It seems that even a piece of dog excrement has feelings. Yuck.

Certain scenes achieve a genuine tension, as when Hackman has to watch a captured chopper pilot sent into a waterlogged minefield by NVA soldiers; but this is immediately undercut by a retaliatory bombing raid that destroys a camouflaged NVA hideout, regardless of civilian casualties. Like the film as a whole, such scenes elicit sympathy more for the tacitly guilty Hackman than for the innocent victims.

What made Snowden so compelling in the excellent 2014 documentary Citizenfour reduces him, in the context of an Oliver Stone thriller, to a blur. Even Hackers was more exciting.

Each of the three intercut stories in Hello Lonesome - all dealing with characters trying to overcome solitude - begins promisingly enough. Eventually, though, they all run aground on questionable decisions.

Even the soundtrack is mostly on-the-nose jug-band hokum, except for one cue: a searing old-timey version of the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat," courtesy of octogenarian bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley. If the rest of the movie had the same energy, spontaneity and soul, it would have been more potent than 190-proof hooch.

Aguirre is a find—she has none of the precociousness of the typical screen tween—but the movie’s magical-realist elements don’t jibe with the unstudied naturalism of her performance.

Made on a shoestring by a bunch of film school graduates (director and co-writer Croghan was 23 at the time), this sweet, brisk campus comedy has a refreshingly current feel. For once, you believe the actors are the age they're playing. The romantic musical chairs are routine, but Croghan has a light touch, and a shrewd eye for the rules of attraction. It's too unassuming to be brattily obnoxious.

It takes a long time for Brothers to become the movie it wants to be, and even then, it stumbles.

Uniting Sacha Baron Cohen's daredevilry with Werner Herzog's bombast, Brügger aims to expose "the evilness of North Korea" with a gloriously incoherent, kazoo-and-whoopee-cushion–inflected stage show starring a self-proclaimed "spastic."

Despite touches of enforced eccentricity, the story is redeemed by its observation of bittersweet relationships and self-deceptions.

This directness, however, contrasts with an over-complicated script by John Fusco, who sets the action in the aftermath of the 1975 battle at Wounded Knee and the controversial arrest of American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, accused of killing two FBI agents. But while appreciation may be enhanced by previous knowledge of these events, the story boasts integrity and serves as a forceful indictment of on-going injustice.

Yes, it’s derivative to a fault — but a deserved midnight-movie cult following is all but assured.

There's a simple story about lovers from different tribes, and Welch grunts beautifully clad only in a few bits of bunny fur, but the real stars are Ray Harryhausen's superbly animated dinosaurs.

Walter Hill proves unexpectedly reluctant to force the story, but he makes the red earth of the Moab desert burn with blood and shame.

Routine hi-jinks ensue, mixing strangely with ecology consciousness-raising, pseudo-scientific jargon, and everyday telekinesis.

Likeable performances (backed by a sterling supporting cast), plus good Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn songs, make it all pleasantly painless.

Del Toro and Amalric’s concentrated performances — the former resigned and shell-shocked, the latter agitated and servile — have an anguished grandeur.

The songwriting verve of Lin-Manuel Miranda is missed, too. Composers Barlow and Bear chip in with some catchy ditties, but there’s nothing to match How Far I’ll Go and You’re Welcome.

Only a periodic focus on the troubled backstory of the team’s coach, American cyclist Jock Boyer, strikes the wrong note, distracting from a far more compelling tale.

2024’s Mean Girls needed to be loud, full-throated and unashamed to steal the original’s glittering plastic tiara: instead, it’s an enjoyable exercise in nostalgia that won’t win too many superfans of its own.

The time-killing universe Byington has created makes sure we never forget how absurd he thinks the whole movie is. Fun for him, perhaps.

A mesmerizing study in excess, Peter Jackson and company's long-awaited prequel to the Lord of the Rings saga is bursting with surplus characters, wall-to-wall special effects, unapologetically drawn-out story tangents and double the frame rate (48 over 24) of the average movie.

Though wrenching moments are effectively delivered, the film teeters into clunker territory, with repetitive tasting scenes and cheesy shots of exploding glasses of vino. Too bad, because it’s an otherwise fascinating look into an ultraexclusive process, persuasively depicting the power of the palate.

There are a few extreme auteurists who claim that everything Siegel shoots is wonderful, but some of his more recent efforts have been frankly disappointing, few more so than this glossy, shallow comic heist movie.

Based on a true case history of a schizophrenic - here a woman with three personalities: a slatternly housewife, a seductive flirt, and a smart, articulate woman - this is worthy but somewhat turgid and facile, a typically Hollywoodian account of mental illness.

What really lifts this into the stratosphere of heady entertainment is its dizzy wit and intelligence. The dialogue is deliriously deadpan, the story surreal but surprisingly convincing, and the wealth of references to movie and TV classics hilarious rather than mere smartass posing.

Frothy romantic comedy with Garner taking over from Rock Hudson as Day's foil. The script, by Carl Reiner, takes a mildly satiric look at the world of TV advertising.

The movie's mundane account of moving on is ultimately more gripping than its wooden metaphors.

Jonathan Levine’s night of debauchery and hugs hits a sweet spot of inoffensive offensiveness.

Despite a roster of off-kilter documentarians each directing an episode, Freakonomics only partly delivers the sense of traipsing into uncharted territory.

We know how these bargains turn out, so all we're left to do is watch pretentious exchanges about grief pile up, laugh at the way the movie exploits its Indian-girl-as-innocence-personified notion and wish that Eddie Marsan's giddy cameo as Hell's personal weapons dealer were much, much longer.

Turturro, writing and directing in a register light-years from his nebbishy turn in "Barton Fink," has a more sensual NYC indie in mind.

What we’re left with are a bunch of unseasoned performers and a first-time filmmaker clearly out of his depth (good lord, those green-screen shots!) hocking loogies at Mickey and friends with hit-and-mostly-miss fervidness.

Too much of the movie feels predestined - down to the rainstorm on opening day - and subplots involving budding romance end up forcing what's implicit. Crowe, meanwhile, still can't stop abusing his vinyl collection; the aural wallpapering of Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens and others will surely please postboomer fans who haven't quite gotten the hang of silence.

This story is both uplifting and awe-inspiring. It deserves to be told better.

With Schaffner unable to find the necessary perspective to prevent the film from becoming unevenly episodic, it ends up looking as if it were tacked together by at least three different directors.

While never as disturbing as the first film, it fails to convince because of the turnaround in Harry's character, and because it posits in facile fashion degrees of taking the law into one's own hands: Harry's acceptable, the gun crazy kids aren't. That said, it has some fine action sequences, and is far less objectionable than the later Sudden Impact.

Fanning manages to bring soulfulness to a character who mostly reacts to others; you just wish the whole movie were, well, jazzier.

Fine enlarged production design and effects, and appealing acting from the little and the large.

You don’t have to be a filmmaker or a festival veteran to appreciate Sophie Letourneur’s tale of three women cruising for dudes at Locarno’s annual cinematic shindig, but trust us: It helps immensely.

An all-time low for the Enterprise and her crew, with Spock dead, the ship condemned, and everyone else looking about 104. Decent SFX, but a little more action wouldn't have gone amiss.

All ye searching for Primal Fear redux, abandon hope. The character-driven drama he (Curran) offers viewers instead is something far more complex, cracked and unique for an American movie boasting big-name stars: an unblinking glare into the abyss.

Oddly, the comedy of this partnership is dialled down, and the film’s few wisecracks don’t really land. It’s adventure, though, that everyone really wants from an Indiana Jones movie, and on that front it delivers and then some by prising open the old box of tricks and performing them one-by-one with care and respect. Add to that the rousing familiarity of John Williams’s score, and it all amounts to a comforting if not especially challenging reboot.

Ultimately, though, there’s not enough story to fuel a three-hour musical stretched across nearly five hours. What once was brisk and bright becomes a bit of a slog. Fans will be obsessified; everyone else, ossified.

Once the sharp, clever satire gives way to what feels like a special must-see-TV episode, the movie’s promise slowly deflates.

The sheer ambition is still there, but the storytelling rigour – Lasseter’s great forte – is again missing in Elemental, the studio’s latest big-screen offering.

Storm’s remarkable poignancy is made all the more palpable by its restraint.

A sad re-run of the Mean Streets idea (awkwardly adapted by Vincent Patrick from his own admirable novel).

Overall the movie isn't as synchromeshed as it might be; the rivalry between champions Carradine and Stallone isn't very interesting, and some of the gags aren't sick or funny enough. But it's a great audience film.

The film has the roughness you might expect in a first directorial effort, and also a perhaps unexpected leaning towards comedy. Lee makes great play on his character as the country boy without weapons confronting the denizens of the technologically-powerful West and winning hands down.

This may be terrifying news to Rob Zombie fans, but after years mining the 1970s for gunky shock moments, the musician-turned-filmmaker has emerged as an unusually sensitive director of actors.

It's a juicy story, though that doesn't excuse Jarecki from fixating above all else on the tabloid-ready twists and pop-psychological turns of Durst's story.

Berger’s script is little more than a series of contrived comic vignettes that prevent the actors from creating believable characters, forcing them to contort to fit the low-rent farce.

Explicitly quoting Chaplin-style routines, Lewis bends the sentimentality into shape to produce a witty and magical essay on comedy, illusionism and fear.

Ferrara’s unconventional methods only manage to serve Chelsea on the Rocks, his loving portrait of Manhattan’s boho landmark, the Chelsea Hotel.

As its title suggests, this is more of a self-conscious attempt to court quirky cult-film status. Nice try.

As with his previous film Golden Door (2006), Crialese proves that he’s more adept when evoking a lyrical naturalism practiced by his directorial ancestors than when he’s hand-wringing over social issues.

A darkly stylish horror film.

Winterbottom's risks are welcome; it may be time, though, to invest more heart instead of head.

The Cure’ has to be the first to reanimate corpses as a means of examining Ireland’s post-Troubles tensions. It’s a bold idea – and a good one – even if it never fully pays off in a ploddingly predictable final act.

Like the big-budget thriller “Green Zone,” which is also opening this week, Kristian Fraga’s documentary catapults us back to the chaos of Iraq circa 2003. But instead of action figure Matt Damon, we get garish, staccato images and hard-bitten voiceover from First Lieutenant Mike Scotti.

We've been here before; you may now yell "Cut!," print it and call the concept a wrap.

Satisfyingly spooky, Hollywood's second attempt at Stephen King's undead pet yarn is half wild, half declawed.

It’s all watchable enough but hardly a giant leap for documentary making.

The title character himself is also an unimpressive digital creation-Rogen might as well be performing his stoner-from-another-world shtick during a wee-hours movieoke session.

Part satire and part confessional memoir, the film is stronger on period flavour and Sonny's inner demons than on the humanity of some of the other characters.

Despite some rather silly dialogue, scripted by the usually reliable Donald Ogden Stewart from a French play, Cukor's civilised handling of the actors and his often expressionist visuals lend credence to the tale, with atmosphere thick and juicy enough to cut with a knife.

The tonal lurches – from jokey to earnest and back again – will have whiplash setting in by the time its eccentric fourth-wall-breaking coda comes around, while some odd casting choices (and accents) drain gravity from the serious moments.

As Holocaust-era movies go (Chastain’s maternal saint begins to secretly hide Jews in her cellar), this one is neither too pretty nor too ugly—which might doom it to a particularly banal shade of detachment.

Amid lush period costumes, the chemistry between Woodley and Turner proceeds with gratifying slowness, each step down an irreversible path measured and counted.

In its desire to make no concessions to Dirty Harry and its ilk, it destroys any potential interest with almost wilful perversity.