Stolen’s major flaws result from writer Glenn Taranto’s screenplay, which keeps piling on plot twists at the expense of anything resembling character development.

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

In fact, ruthlessly ironing out Berger's subtleties of tone in favour of a rumbustious Animal House collision between Belushi and Aykroyd, it becomes increasingly tiresome, with few funny moments to leaven the proceedings.

Feels pedestrian and moribund.

Surprise! The upper-middle-class family is still rotten to the core. In Vivi Friedman's overstuffed farce, the parents cheat on each other, the daughter dresses like a streetwalker, and the Bible-thumping son starts carrying a Glock.

The trek to get there is sluggish at best, torturous at worst. March away, penguins. Far away.

It’s all heading somewhere special as Kelly muses on masculinity and colonialism, but then coherence gives way to flashy visuals and bursts of expressionistic violence.

The movie isn't without its charms, with several supporting characters - a hotel-desk clerk, a French police chief - adding a touch of "Pink Panther"–esque humor to the mix.

Devotees of John Sayles' witty, literate screenplays will be disappointed by the repartee of subtitled grunts, while beneath the film's apparent plea for tolerance lies the offensive (if quite possibly true) assumption that tall, tanned Californian blondes represent the highest form of human life.

The film stumbles through rounds of ham-fisted melodrama.

Unfortunately for this rock documentary, this fan-to-frontman saga is not that interesting a turn.

The film plays like something Boyle could kick out in his sleep, all his supercool devices listlessly deployed in service of a mediocre wet dream.

Ceremony passes by quickly and painlessly, its annoyances easily forgotten. On the plus side, Thurman and Angarano do work up a sweet odd-pair chemistry.

Given only hints of personalities and the thinnest strands of stories, we’re left with a hum of tinny snippets instead of anything that resembles the glorious noise of people putting on show after show after show.

Zeroing in (with much of Mulligan's usual quiet sympathy) on adolescence and the moment of sexual awakening with the added weight of The Way We Were type of nostalgia, this is a mess of contradictions.

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

The disparity only makes Reeves's earnest-but-monotonous turn that much more pronounced-and the film that much more dismissible.

The artist formerly known as Aragorn remains an engrossing screen presence, but this campy thriller is a tad too close to simply having him sing the telephone directory.

Aside from a few witty Looney Tunes–esque sight gags, such as one hilarious image of a woolly mammoth being swallowed up by the tectonically shifting earth, the stereoscopic visuals are a busy, personality-free digital blur.

Even at its most affecting, Simon Killer rarely seems like more than a cinema-du-Gaspar-Noé simulacrum. The languorous long-takes, dissociative sound design and strobe-light scene transitions meant to mirror this emotional con artist’s skewed view of the world are anxiety-of-influence hand-me-downs through and through—viscera without vision.

In this comedy, three Parisian swingers find their bachelor pad invaded by the fruit of a night of forgotten passion. Noisy, and not short of unison waddling walks.

It's a shamelessly sentimental interpretation of history, with television ushering in a generation which has lost the art of communication and the ability to care. Against this blinkered vision, even Levinson's confident direction and ability to capture the absurdities and rhythms of everyday speech fail to provide sufficient compensation.

Intrigue and eroticism abound, all of it watchable, none of it particularly exciting. And the misty widescreen photography lends the proceedings a funereal air of respectability that's like catnip to Oscar voters.

The Sapphires might pass muster as escapist fluff, but its pretensions of significance go woefully awry.

No amount of emotional ballast in the film can make up for the tedium and repetition inevitable when a murder is shown and then dissected in two separate court hearings.

Dramatically handcuffed and smothered in overbearing mood music, this lightweight New York crime thriller is desperate to look and feel gritty; the cast, meanwhile, deliver vein-popping diatribes between clenched teeth and weep openly in a desperate ploy to earn gravitas.

An adaptation of Mike Batistick's Off Broadway play, this stagy character study about immigrants living off the crumbs of the American Dream revels in cut-rate street smartness. Then comes the third act, at which point the film moves from obvious message-mongering to the beating of a post–9/11 dead horse.

The Rock deserves better than this ho-hum revenge picture.

The film feels more stale than timeless. Ditto the movie's rapid-fire dialogue, a stream of self-conscious patter that largely misses its targets and repeatedly takes the zing out of Tambor's zesty line readings.

The story is too rich in incident for Fabian, whose episodic TV-movie approach speeds through Laing’s lifetime of abuse.

Shockingly dull.

Instead of pushing deeper into any psychological dilemmas, this dirty-laundry doc gets lost in a sensationalistic flurry driven by a serious emotional unraveling.

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.

Taking the worst of it on the chin is star Jack Huston, whose Jewish prince turned galley slave, Judah Ben-Hur, suffers from a distinct lack of personality—he’s like a boulder that someone forgot to chisel into a statue.

Lumpy-but-loveable Charles Grodin is the insurance investigator, sniffing out a swindle among Acapulco's lotus-eaters; Fawcett-Majors (comely but coy) is posing as his wife, while emphasising that a quick bunk-up is out of the question. Together they're in a routine comedy-thriller, which looks good but is neither funny nor thrilling, and carelessly wastes its supporting cast, with Art Carney reduced to caricature and Joan Collins on automatic pilot in a hilarious replay of her rich-bitch nympho persona.

Shoddy and exhausted from the start, this painfully unfunny buddy-cop comedy lands with a plop in the January sewer of failed Hollywood castoffs.

It feels a little too skin deep; a film content to get by on its vicarious thrills. And the rush eventually wears off.

Kosinski continues to lavish far more thought on how his elaborate fantasy worlds look than how they work, and neither the politics nor the human stakes here coalesce into rational or relatable drama.

Mostly, though, this Creek has run dry.

At once maudlin and doggedly sarcastic, the film gives you the uncomfortable sensation of being condescended to by an idiot; it is, transparently, a product of the advanced technology it purports to despise.

A film which never really manages to confront us with the enormity of its subject, nor with any kind of analysis as to why rape occurs.

Filmed with the somber pretentiousness of a "Babel," the movie never quite converts its premise into something grander (never mind believable). Meanwhile, the world starts to riot, yet their bed is warm. Will love save the day? Unfortunately for us, our sense of smell remains intact.

At least the Abrams-helmed Star Trek from 2009 had a pretzel-logic playfulness; the portentously subtitled Into Darkness is attempting like hell to be a Trek for our troubled times. The franchise has been thoroughly Christopher Nolan–ized.

Becomes a clumsy gringo approximation of something else. In this case, it's the old respectable-man-obsessed-with-fallen-angel cliché, which Demy fils tweaks with broad melodramatic strokes and Freudian flotsam, as well as a complete lack of focus or storytelling chops.

From the moment the picture wobbles reluctantly on to the screen, this clearly demonstrates that the Baltimore boy was ahead of his time when it came to punk aesthetics and shock for shock's sake.

Director Jeanne Labrune (Vatel) makes the most out of having a compellingly watchable movie star at her disposal, but neither some odd stabs at humor nor Huppert's versatility do much to enliven what's essentially a superficially sexed-up soufflé.

Bouncy musical numbers and plenty of social concern, but the star, regrettably, is on autopilot.

There are a handful of brilliant set pieces, including a scorched-earth attack on child beauty pageants. But this exercise in wink-nudge bad taste simply leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Whether sleuthing or smacking around thugs, Sisley makes a dashing hero, but this glossy action flick is heavy on tedious convolutions and depressingly light on character depth, suspense or political-economic intrigue.

There are nun jokes, mafia jokes, big breast jokes, karate jokes, Jaws jokes, more big breasts. It's a long ride.

In contrast to his short, sharp fighting style, Seagal's presentation of the human conflicts and underlying issues consists of vague, sweeping gestures.

More of a massive back-patting for bleeding hearts than a comprehensive-or even semi-comprehensive-survey of DIY protest art, the film unintentionally makes the perfect valentine for the OWS version of radicalism: It's righteous, full of rage and cripplingly unfocused.

There’s a marked sense of retreat in this tale that’s never explored--everyone goes out of the way to remember the past through rose-colored specs.

Fine photography, but the script is a typically numbing affair, and the cast, aside from Peck and Meillon (whose part was considerably cut), seem totally out of their depth.

The problem is that the filmmaker brings D-grade craft to these B-movie exertions, making his florid maximalism more entertaining to talk about than endure - despite the best efforts of his ardently slumming A-list cast.

Riseborough's acting offers total commitment in the face of lunacy, but it's a shame she's flapping around in an egotistical film with such a terribly warped sense of purpose.

This is the ultimate sin of the film, generically helmed by lad-auteur Guy Ritchie: Logic seems to be thrown out the window in order to make room for clashes on a partially completed Tower Bridge. It’s way too elementary.

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.

This is the same old safe, sappy movie that shows up on TBS every weekend.

It goes off the rails early and often. You almost have to give it props for how resolutely batshit it is. Almost.

Give this literally and figuratively bloodless spooker a pass.

Whether it's Caplan and Webber trading goofy dance moves or Brie being perkily OCD-ridden, Date works best as a collection of winsome, unconnected vignettes; its ideal distribution model would be piece by piece on YouTube.

It's too bad V/H/S starts off on such a high note. Mainly, the omnibus film feels undercooked, even on the grounds of its forced technological setup.

The result is a well-meaning bore, which isn't sure whether to play it for laughs or to make a serious point, and ends up missing out on both fronts.

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

Clapton has led a fascinating life, and is a contradictory and inspiring figure. Save for a few moments, this film just doesn’t serve him well enough.

Dean Morgan’s cheeky-chappy act is grating indeed, while his tight-lipped rival’s so utterly stolidly Firthian we could easily be watching his Madame Tussaud’s mannequin. Painless anodyne fare, though genuine laughs are few, apart from comfort-eating Firth’s illicit ‘naughty choccy’.

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

A bizarre, conflicted mess, horrifying when it’s trying to be funny, oddly appealing when it turns the screws.

At an overlong two-hours-plus, Ambulance is Bay at his most masturbatory.

For Pixar, which must surely have a Woody western in mind, it’s a wake-up call. Let’s hope they’re soon back on more fertile ground, because Lightyear feels like that horrible moment when you broke a much-loved toy.

For all its freedom to reimagine her life and rescue her from cultural victimhood, Blonde is just a bit too willing to chuck her overboard and watch her flounder.

Perhaps the director is trying to show her socialites’ path to finding themselves, but her point ends up as lost as the film’s aimless hedonists; like its characters, Lotus Eaters is a visual treat—and emotionally vapid.

The movie meanders like its dissatisfied, part-time pothead protagonist, not wisely but too well.

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

The keenest irony is that Imogene’s fake suicide note is the most convincing thing she’s ever written — which makes perverse sense since Girl Most Likely is DOA.

Because both dialogue and direction are none too exciting, one's tired eyes wander endlessly over the space base sets, where there has been an overuse of that potent sci-fi movie convention which conveys 'realism' by showing that life on the outer limits will be as dingy and badly lit as a suburban subway, with all the usual vices.

For a movie with a critique of mediocrity well within its grasp, this one settles for an embrace of it, barely breaking a sweat.

The whole movie feels like a case of the sweats, putting you in desperate need of the chicken soup of recognizable human behavior.

Madagscar 3 is less interested in plucking the last bit of meat off the series's bones than with simply picking the lowest-hanging fruit.

Essentially an overlong, off-brand episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

If you loved the first one, you’ll happily sit through this one. It’s just not quite as good.

Bong is so concerned with whodunit that his creaky genre mechanics diminish Kim's determined performance.

Ultimately, the silly material overwhelms the style, particularly in a final act involving magical hillbillies living in them thar hills — during which the movie attempts to make a serious point about the importance of faith in the midst of a lot of bad teeth, worse wigs and cheap jolts. Right.

A soundtrack of churning rock songs by the Kills is as close as this misfire gets to authentic grrrl power, borrowed as it is.

Whatever possessed Bell & Co. to turn a slow-burning creepfest into a frenzied freak show of multiple exorcisms (including one in a moving car), the devil only knows.

What was Clint thinking? (Or Martin Scorsese, when he made "Shutter Island," for that matter.)

One would be better off experiencing Woodley via her heartbreaking turn in last year's "The Spectacular Now," a drama that actually has more to say about nightmarish cliques and individuality than any lackadaisical slide into future schlock.

Not all of these vignettes are duds – Amy’s meet-cute with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell, excellent) over pints and pool in a Camden boozer is genuinely terrific – but they don’t make a script that already feels soft-soaped to get the Winehouse’s estate’s approval, feel any less pedestrian.

Given Maxwell’s dry style and fixation on 19th-century vernacular, the result is less like a peering examination of the turbulent political environment than a reenactment of a Ken Burns documentary—or a museum tour.

A set piece involving a skyscraper and a sports car proves he can induce sweaty palms, but one nail-biting moment and some much-misssed Murphy mouthiness won't keep you from feeling like you're the one being ripped off.

Despite the unlikely script credit for Rita Mae Brown, Jones's debut feature is little more than a Halloween clone, reliant on buckets of blood and sudden surprise rather than suspense.

The animation has little depth of field (galloping horses hover inches above the ground), the colours are watery, and there's not much Englishness in the settings. The characters, too, are unimaginative, with only bad boy Ruber (voiced by Oldman) providing any originality (his song and dance number is the one highlight).

It’s a shame that Toe to Toe adheres so stridently to Indiewood clichés.

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

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!”

If its juxtaposition of bad behavior and dairy products leaves you stone-faced or wearily sighing, you should exit the theater posthaste.

The ‘bad sibling comes good helping the autistic one’ plotline isn’t exactly new (hullo, Rain Man), and there isn’t much more meat on the bones here. Where Music really stumbles, though, is in its fantasy musical interludes.