So while the film clearly wants to be an affirmation of female agency, it plays instead like nothing more than the story of a girl who marries an ogre and waits to be freed by true love’s kiss.

Let's not make 4:44 Last Day on Earth sound cooler than it is. Compared with Lars von Trier's histrionically doomed "Melancholia," the film lacks any serious attempt to grapple with mortality.

Even if the music leaves you cold, there’s plenty of captivating awkwardness here, like Paul McCartney listlessly watching the monitors in his dressing room, or producer Harvey Weinstein solving a tech issue by calling Google exec Eric Schmidt in the audience.

There are tears, there is laughter, there are ups, there are downs, there is hugging and there is learning, but none of it will leave an impression. Instead, it leaves you only with a faint yearning for a proper, scary-Simmons chair-hurling freak-out.

Stallone's performance is a superb blend of stubborn-jawed gravity and ironic hamming as he heads, Godfather-like, for a confrontation with the Senate.

Despite some ingenious effects, a generally trivial exercise that never matches the punch of the original.

The film aspires to hommage, it's true, but its references are altogether too obvious. That said, there's a Psycho bathroom pastiche that's almost worth the price of a ticket all by itself; and no collector of movie mush will want to miss it for its good bits, which are more than a few.

Most of the blame must rest with McLeod, whose incredibly cackhanded direction piles on the whimsy by the bucket-load and can't come to grips with the absurdity at all.

Director Thomas (once Sgt Lucy Bates of Hill Street Blues) has recreated '70s sitcom-land with the kind of unerring attention to detail Merchant-Ivory lavish on a society ball, and she's drawn hilariously synthetic performances from a shrewdly cloned cast.

Awkward banter, a lack of narrative thrust and concentrated character deep-digging, and a performance by Sally Hawkins as a Russian maid that seems beamed in from another movie all contribute to the cinematic equivalent of a half-baked fruitcake.

For the undemanding, it may seem a fair stand-off; but compared to Hill's best work, it's merely a jerk-off.

A movie that gives Streep her most emotionally blocked character in years, without caricature.

The grim, black humour of yore sporadically breaks through the glossy sheen, providing moments of vintage vitriol.

The crass Scots jokes are irresistible; Alan Arkin's cameo as a mild-mannered police chief is sheer perfection; and the cultish references to Beat poetry should please slumming hipsters. Like an exploding haggis, funny but extremely messy.

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.

Sister is the one you remember; like the film, she's mesmerizing because of her flaws as well as her charms.

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.

A boxing movie in desperate need of Martin Scorsese (aren’t they all?).

Macdonald, playing an outsider with wisdom, is by far the most sympathetic character; the movie has plenty to say about the parenting traditions of the wealthy, not much of it favorable.

This is shameless stuff: happy, barefoot peasants sing that traditional Latin cancion, 'Crush the grapes, crush the grapes,' the moonlight is so strong you could get burned, and the metaphors are writ large as tabloid headlines.

If you want to feel good about a war with no end, this one’s for you.

Richard Pearce's thriller suffers from near-total predictability, with a script that careers headlong through clichéd situations, calculatedly coarse dialogue, and cardboard characters. That said, Pearce reveals a strong feel for lurid locations and spectacular set pieces, and makes the film look stylish, too much so in the case of the three leads. Indeed, taken straight it's all a little risible; but as fast-paced hokum pitted with plot-holes, it's polished fun - no more, no less.

It's about as deep as an afternoon of people-watching.

Brando-wheezing Gandolfini never slums it, but there’s still no shaking the sense that a pro has shown up for amateur hour.

This rather mushy combination of animation and live-action remains one of Disney's most controversial efforts.

Viewers enduring early adolescence or those grappling with its psychic scars will recognize the honesty in the comic humiliation.

Mildly diverting comedy in overexposed terrain.

Coppola's meticulous direction, and some exceptional acting (especially from Caan) never fail to rivet the attention, there's a pervasive and worrying sense of the central issues being gently but undeniably fudged.