The film never entirely overcomes the sense that it's a calling-card vehicle.

Leaving is a tawdry potboiler slathered riotously in portent, complete with a lamebrained detour into vengeance that only Claude Chabrol would be able to pull off.

Everything from the direction of actors to the dialogue signifies the work of a filmmaker who favors easy audience-baiting reactions over dramatic momentum. Doesn't the man who would later teach Bruce Lee how to kee-yah deserve better than a chopsocky Punch-and-Judy show?

Who knew entering a belated adulthood could be so easy-and so utterly joyless?

It's a functional sequel, but with all that spirited slicing and dicing, the director could have at least broken a sweat.

It's less a film than one long advertisement for itself-and for the fact that mindless entertainment truly knows no borders.

From a bevy of cheesy jolt scares (alarm clock! barking dog!) to the embarrassing sight of Zellweger and Ian McShane treating this Orphan-style B-movie silliness with grave seriousness, the film proves to be one hokey-horror riot.

A completely unnecessary sequel, plays a lot like "The Godfather, Part III"-lush, self-parodic and cut adrift from urgency.

The movie's real asset is Reynolds himself, utilizing his comedy chops for unexpected levity.

A strong contender for both the artiest drug movie and the druggiest art movie ever made, Gaspar Noé's tour de force of forced perspectives and free-form grief is, in every sense of the word, a trip.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's mostly whiffed docudrama makes the influential poem by Allen Ginsberg (Franco) seem dull, ordinary, pedestrian instead of pioneering.

Zack Snyder's films have some of the best opening-credits sequences in cinema; the unfortunate thing is that there's always a movie after them.

The plentiful pop-doc touches ensure that this wake-up call won't put you to sleep, even if the ratio of spoonfuls of sugar to medicine occasionally seems skewed.

Though the movie is a testimony to one man's will to survive and a testament to a vanishing art form, Tibet in Song's greatest achievement may be the way it shows how China recast traditional songs as modern pro-Communist propaganda-an eradication of an invaded country's culture through insidious co-option.

The stars here are not the moms, but the kids-and they are truly amazing.

Since love and boys fall strictly to the side, we can't tell if this wrongheaded caper was intended as a feminist indictment of female competition or a plain old girl-fight flick.

It isn't the first time death has figured in an Allen movie, but the way he grapples with it here (leaving each character at a moment of irresolution comparable to staring down the man with the scythe) is much more potent and direct.

There's more than a few things off in this tale of a disillusioned professional thief (Affleck, dull), his unlikely inamorata (Hall, wasted) and the determined FBI agent (Hamm, solid) out to apprehend him.

Hoffman predictably knocks a familiar role out of the park (and just as unsurprisingly, wrings excellence from his performers) in this rather trivial, downbeat four-hander about a working-class couple trying to connect during a Gotham winter.

A dog in wolf's clothing, Lionsgate's drab, anthropomorphic animal saga does little more than reconfirm the preeminence of Pixar.

The script, credited to one Bert V. Royal, seems to have been run through an out-of-control sass machine (seriously, it'll make you appreciate Diablo Cody's tact).

I'll respect the studio's wishes to abbreviate all plot description. God knows, they're marketing it like the second coming of "The Crying Game," though the revelations that await Nev are only shocking if you believe P.T. Barnum was really in possession of a genuine Fiji mermaid.

Movies about children fending for themselves are predicated on pushing prepubescent despair into viewers' faces, which only makes this Swedish film's graceful mixture of terror and transcendental girl power that much more impressive.

The Freebie grimly reaffirms the status quo, concluding it's better to have no sex at all than to forsake the Ikea-furnished domestic dream.

This behind-the-curtain portrait winds up revealing only the most superficial-and glaringly obvious-of truths.

Audiences with infinite patience and no need for linear storytelling do get an intimate tour of The Anchorage's picturesque island off the coast of Stockholm, its landscapes lensed with loving appreciation. Past that, the experience of sitting through Ulla's daily routines yields little more than a travelogue and a vaguely contemplative vibe.

The film favors conspiracy theories and half-truths, in addition to discrediting Planned Parenthood as a racist institution and "Silent Spring" as the work of a vindictive cancer victim. It will incense you-for all the wrong reasons.

As the film reminds us, this Kentucky city included a world-class philharmonic, one that became the first to actively recruit new works from contemporary composers.