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.

Has neither enough bite nor enough heart to sustain it as a female-revenge-fantasy-cum-romantic-comedy; even its “shocking” switcheroo and faux-edgy moments seem remarkably frivolous and flavorless.

Plainspoken music doc relies on firsthand testimony from band members and key observers.

Even supremely talented actors like Melissa Leo (as a confidently sexy trucker) and Brendan Sexton III (as a train-station beggar) are stifled by all the pseudo-redemptive mush.

Provides more groans than laughs.

Working with uneven material, the illustrious cast is too often stranded in a realm of tony, high-art camp.

An economic slump is no reason to settle for this junked-up, unintentionally depressing "Office Space" bootleg.

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.

For better or worse, that detour into proverbial uncharted waters ends up hipchecking a by-the-book hagiography into the realm of compellingly cracked vérité.

The problem is that the film also refuses to move beyond a glacial pace, and its choice to go slow-and-low doesn’t scream art-house aesthetic so much as unintentionally sluggish. For such a small character study, that decision ends up being a doozy of a deal breaker.

It’s a gut-wrenching yet redemptive tale of fathers, sons and the horrors of war, which Marder allows to unfold with minimal intrusion or manipulation.

The problem here, though, is that the movie often feels fat instead of lean. A terribly purple folk score by Kate and Anna McGarrigle hypes the spiritual aspects of the Inuit way of life; you’ll die laughing on the tundra.

Terrific performances and superb cinematography (by Claire Denis’s right hand, Agnès Godard) lift cowriter-director Ursula Meier’s feature debut above its thuddingly metaphorical premise.

Adult children and friends watch nervously as Pippa reclaims a measure of spunk; too bad it all feels like one of those pharmaceutical ads for longer, healthier lifestyles.

And then, Robert Duvall appears—or, should I say, insinuates himself out of the muck. Cagily, his character wends his way into the story, played by the one American actor who might best understand the limits of bluster. “It’s foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these,” he mutters in the Duvall twang, the weather and indignity beaten into him, and The Road suddenly feels major.

Eye-candy–wise, the film plants a big wet smooch; everything else about this happily-ever-after tale, however, feels like a mere air-kiss.