It’s a kick to see Cera cut loose from his patented befuddled-nerd routine, even if the film’s caricatured performances and fish-in-a-barrel scorn are sure to be monotonous for some.

This reverential, sentimental and occasionally bittersweet film only erratically illuminates his (Eric Kandel) ideas. Rather, Petra Seeger prefers to honor Kandel’s boyhood remembrances as a Jew in Nazi-era Vienna.

The film spends too much time following a Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land, limiting most of the substantive material to the last act.

Credit Broderick and the cast for putting across the fey Indiewood bullcrap with committed, nearly convincing effort.

The White Ribbon comes dangerously--wonderfully?--close to playing like an evil-kid flick.

To her credit, Howard’s performance as a class-obsessed Southerner is decent enough to keep things from completely devolving to community-college level. But such weak work needs strong hands all around to guide it, and one pair isn’t enough.

Na keeps pulling the rug out from under us, and his brawny genre exercise doubles nicely as a scream of social anguish, since most of the twisted screwups occur at the hands of bumbling or corrupt cops.

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.

It’s bad enough that Nancy Meyer’s latest conventional romcom is blessed with a title so bluntly unimaginative as to seem facetious; the rub is that it’s not even a truthful assessment.

The real drama in Parnassus comes from the troupe of sideshow performers, led by a terrifically morbid Christopher Plummer.

This colorful, cranium-bursting film isn’t about one specific tale so much as the endless ways you can present narratives; it’s nothing less than a kitchen-sink deconstruction on the art of storytelling.

Shockingly dull.

Blending CGI and live action, this “squeakquel” to the witless 2007 kids’ film proves just how dangerous such technology is when placed in the wrong hands.

While the movie isn't "Witness," you know that comic scenes of target practice are going to make sense around the bend.

The question lingers as the movie comes to its triumphant body-swapping close: Is this a pro-environment parable or a prophecy of virtual realities yet to come? Cameron's new world may very well be a verdant Matrix.

Let’s not dance around it: Nine--is a dud.

Vallée and his lead get high marks for kittenish revisionism. In all other respects, however, this movie is indistinguishable from every other throne-and-scepter biopic to hit the screen.

Once you get over the droll joke of seeing an equine Web surfer wearing a bathrobe and sipping his morning coffee, the movie settles into a shrill groove from which it never escapes.

A manufactured kid-in-jeopardy climax and Blake’s rehab stint blow the mood. Until then, this is great American acting.

It would be risible if Ozon’s hand didn’t remain so steady and confident throughout, all the way up to a complicatedly upbeat conclusion that recreates the Christian Annunciation with the straightest of faces.

It’s a movie that tips toward overkill--even Ronan’s voice is amplified into a weird whisper. More quiet would have helped.

The movie isn’t adventurous, but I’m sure glad it exists.

Christopher Isherwood’s seminal queer novel deserves a film adaptation that captures both its sense of place and its activist spirit. Cowriter-director Tom Ford settles for the glossy ephemera of a Vanity Fair cover spread.

It’s likely that only Herzog would dare to, and succeed at, resolving this singular cinematic object by contemplating the fate of an abandoned basketball.

The film is set in a celeb-owned Miami restaurant and many of the gags--exploding entrees, the swallowing of a diamond ring, on-the-job drunkenness--feel like leftovers.

Antal and his performers’ pure B-movie esprit is undeniable.

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

Reitman, who also cowrote the screenplay, feels the constant need to "deepen" his characters, granting them wants and motivations--especially during the moralistic third act--that are totally alien to how they're initially portrayed.