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.