With the exception of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” Oscar nominee Kathryn Hunter’s fiercely committed performance, much of this well-designed but boring film yields a shrug.

There’s a hallowed place in cinema for multi-character dramas. But “Horizon,” simply put, doesn’t feel like a movie. It feels like the seedbed for a miniseries. Much of what happens is wispy and not very forceful; the film doesn’t build in impact, and it seldom seems to aim in a clear direction.

The movie doesn’t have the budget or imagination to permit subplots.

This hyperactive toon extravaganza has color, flair and energy to burn. But it’s the sort of relentless juggling act that finally proves more exhausting than exhilarating.

The truly chilling aspect of Killing Zoe is the correlation Avary makes between the gang’s nihilistic attitude and its penchant for violence. He pinpoints the schism in a precise and unnerving manner.

Director Vincenzo Natali (“Splice”) is more effective at sustaining clammy suspense than hiding all the holes in Brian King’s script. But top-billed Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) is effective enough to generate a rooting interest in the plucky protagonist of the piece, and to sustain interest when narrative logic turns fuzzy.

The film is sharply written and crafted, lavishly photographed, impeccably acted, with lots of twists and turns — yet for all that, it somehow lacks zing.

Tonally, the movie walks a tricky line between easy-target satire and female-empowering corporate case study, falling into the overcrowded junk-culture nostalgia-porn category so recently represented by “Tetris,” “Air,” “BlackBerry” and “Flamin’ Hot.”

Results here are just middling funny, with no truly memorable high points and a sum impact that goes poof!

Lee and Protosevich have made a picture that, although several shades edgier than the average Hollywood thriller, feels content to shadow its predecessor’s every move while falling short of its unhinged, balls-out delirium.

Mixing elements of Trading Places with a Three Stooges short, this latest test for rap duo Kid 'n Play scores low on the SAT spectrum but should connect with a narrow range of older children and younger teens, at whom it's clearly aimed.

Heartburn is a beautifully crafted film with flawless performances and many splendid moments, yet the overall effect is a bit disappointing. Where the film does excel is in creating the surface and texture of their life.

Solid family fare with plenty of yocks...For the most part, helmer Jeremiah Chechik makes an adept debut, injecting plenty of energy and spirit.

Despite abundant talent on both sides of the camera and a bevy of eye-catching supernatural beasties, this f/x-heavy story of a literature-loving father and daughter battling dark forces unleashed from the pages of a rare tome doesn't conjure much in the way of bigscreen magic.

Represents a passable follow-up to the venerable Peter Pan story and mercifully, at 72 minutes, is exactly half the length of the last attempt at same, Steven Spielberg's lamentable "Hook."

Unaffectedly hip and affably manic, Down & Out With the Dolls picks up where "Singles" left off.

A sober, unsensationalized enactment of a Holocaust incident. Von Trotta keeps sentimentality at bay and, as a result, the film isn't as emotionally wrenching as it might have been.

Mildly scary but not particularly engaging on any other level.

Smartly structured, crisply lensed docu Pop Star on Ice is a fascinating portrait of outspoken Olympian and three-time U.S. figure skating national champion Johnny Weir.

It’s cheesy enough fun while it lasts, but in the Harlin pantheon, it isn’t a patch on “Deep Blue Sea.” Then again, few things are.

To be sure, Aniston leads with her scowl here, in the sort of performance that often gets called “brave” but is, in fact, more accurately described as a well-executed change of pace.

From a filmmaking perspective, it’s no easy feat taking what looks like so much chaos and organizing it into a character-driven comedy, but that’s just what Affleck and co-writer (and “City on a Hill” series creator) Chuck MacLean have accomplished, giving Liman the blueprint to alternate between unpredictable set-pieces and more relaxed examples of male bonding.

For his (Besson) fans, Angel-A is an achingly sincere but protracted effort to trade mostly action for mostly dialogue.

David Schwimmer's first bigscreen directing effort reveals something very different: a thoroughly competent mainstream craftsman who imposes no individual character on formulaic material.

After the accomplished smoothness of "Match Point," it's back to more ragged form in Scoop, despite the almost identical posh settings, and the return of Scarlett Johansson as leading lady.

Since The Exorcist was one of the most frightening films ever and Exorcist II one of the goofiest, chances favored The Exorcist III to fall somewhere in between, though not nearly far enough up the scale to rival the original.

It’s a nail-biter and a head-scratcher rolled into one: The mind may initially race to keep up with logistics, but eventually one acknowledges the futility of trying to make sense of a situation that Bay himself hasn’t managed to clarify.

The Judge pivots on a simple yet inspired stroke of casting, pitting Duvall’s iconic gravitas against Downey’s razor-sharp wit, and then supplying no shortage of opportunities for both men to chew the scenery.

Part of the problem is that since everything is at so incessant a fever pitch, suspense flattens rather than builds, and we don’t care much about characters who spend nearly all their time yelling instructions at each other.

Drawn from real life, the conflict between cultures is good for both a laugh and a sober thought along the way.

Using the familiar device of cuisine as a metaphor for national identity and personal feelings, bitter-sweet pic about a man torn between his ethnicity (Greek) and the country of his birth (Turkey) makes its points lightly and entertainingly, with only a routine third act letting down the package.

A luridly entertaining thriller that plays like “Fatal Attraction” for extreme religiophobes, or perhaps a very gory episode of “The Brigham Young and the Restless.”

The film simply examines the prejudice that’s standing right in front of it. It’s chilling, but it’s the tip of the iceberg.

A clever indie suspense that draws on fantasy-tinged notions of virtual reality and identity exchange to create an ingenious tale more in the realm of an intimately-scaled thriller than sci-fi.

All in all, this Eastern western is a jovial genre cocktail, but it’ll be more interesting to see if its director can bring greater nuance to whatever his next project turns out to be.

Fendrik seems more interested in the rich jungle surroundings than in the generic human struggle in the foreground, alternating between clunky setpieces (such as the sitting-duck rowboat shootout) and long stretches where the characters say nothing.

Only Downey elicits the kind of sympathy to distinguish this drama from a photojournalist essay of the kind that might run in Vanity Fair. Of the secondary roles, James Spader as Downey’s pusher is terrifically smarmy. Unfortunately, this sick relationship doesn’t become involving until the last third of the film, when Downey really begins to fall apart and is forced into male whoring to pay his drug debts. Visually the picture is a treat.

Jennifer Eight is an unusually intelligent and unexploitative late-season thriller, which probably won't help its chances at the box office. Involving without being exciting, pic is notable for avoiding most of the standard suspense film contrivances, as well as for Conrad Hall's utterly smashing cinematography. Interesting cast and sober approach will mean more to critics and sophisticated viewers than to general audiences, resulting in OK results during brief release window before Christmas heavy hitters put this out to video pasture, where it might fare better.

In essence, British director Nigel Cole has brought a breezy arthouse sensibility to this tale of fated love.

While the surfaces, backgrounds and sense of constant motion are authentic to their tinselly cores, what goes on among the fictional participants resembles gag-reliant improv routines that haven’t been entirely worked out.

Golda is a good drama about Israel. But it will take a great drama about Israel to dig into the nation’s long-simmering moral ambiguities.

Bloopers under the closing credits reveal how much improvisation was involved here — and how that’s a poor substitute for a good script, no matter how talented the cast.

At just 78 minutes, this bustling, absorbing doc hasn’t quite enough time to entirely draw us into the lives and perspectives of its likable human subjects: We’re given sketched-in backgrounds and familial food histories, but their personalities remain somewhat elusive.

Assuming the victims' point of view in the type of kidnapping that's now epidemic in Latin America, Jonathan Jakubowicz's Kidnap Express depicts a nocturnal Caracas with tense energy.

Despite occasional awkwardness in character motion, viewers will be swept away by the luxuriant creation of alternate universes.

A repetitious, borderline-silly vanity project.

Adult fans of good thesping in the service of a lightweight but thoroughly entertaining story should bask in the antics.

A bland and dour screen version of Sebastian Faulks' highly engrossing bestseller.

Uneven but generally well-acted.

Respectfully modest effort.

Bigger, sleeker and better than the first, sequel Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is a joyride of a movie that takes the winning elements of the year 2000 hit to the next level.

Earnest and well-intentioned.

It’s as creatively anemic and blandly calculated as, say, this summer’s billion-grossing “The Lion King.”

All of this is silly, borderline senseless, lively, and without any real rooting value at all. The supposedly lovable misfits here aren’t, no matter how the cast members feign hilarity at their potty-mouthing. Not that it matters — because nothing does in this expensive toy of a film, which ultimately works on the level of a disco ball. It’s shiny, it moves, and is accompanied by much noise.

Pug-faced, slack-jawed and marble-mouthed, De Niro and Penn mug their semiarticulate proles with relish, but as religioso fish out of water their con game becomes a tiresome joke.

Where the film falters is in the writing of its central relationship: That Jackie and Angelo love each other fiercely doesn’t make their interactions any less hard to take, and Australian newcomer Thwaites (“Maleficent,” “Son of a Gun”), despite his ample charisma and pitch-perfect American accent, can’t quite get past his character’s callow, whiny affect.

While there are several mile-wide plot holes and one key under-developed main character, the film emerges as a tight, intriguing old-fashioned drama that gives audiences a hero worth rooting for.

This South Los Angeles-set dramedy flirts with terminal stereotypes and high-school movie cliches right and left.

For sheer inventiveness of situation and the charm that such an idea projects, The Love Bug rates as one of the better entries of the Disney organization.

Lady on a Train is a mystery comedy containing plenty of fun for both whodunnit and laugh fans. Melodramatic elements in the Leslie Charteris original are flippantly treated without minimizing suspense, and the dialog contains a number of choice quips that are good for hefty laughs.

While director Guy Ritchie's excesses and modern concessions -- among them a lot of explosions -- remain intact, the parts of this second "Sherlock Holmes" are considerably more rewarding.

Switch is a faint-hearted sex comedy that doesn't have the courage of its initially provocative convictions. Undemanding audiences will get a few laughs from the notion of a man parading around in Ellen Barkin's body.

A handsome contraption that's never very engaging, let alone convincing.

The pic is less than fully satisfying as a conventional performance cavalcade, but sustains considerable interest as a behind-the-scenes overview of a musically and culturally diverse event.

There’s precious little in The Protégé that audiences haven’t seen before in some form or another, but that’s hardly a liability, since the script recombines those familiar elements in such entertaining ways, counting on Q, Jackson and Keaton to make these stock characters come alive.

Gutto demonstrates welcome restraint and a meticulous avoidance of anything that resembles exploitation, relying on indirect yet impactful allusions to keep us constantly aware of the mortal stakes involved. All in all, this is a singularly promising debut for a first-time feature filmmaker.

Six Minutes to Midnight, helmed by Andy Goddard, wants to be a Hitchcockian thriller, but merely manages a familiar pastiche peopled with stock characters that should divert less-discriminating viewers.

For the most part, Hyams’ lackluster direction and the repetitive quality of the action sequences squander an intriguing premise and impressive production design, leaving few moments that elicit the sort of “Wow!” response such fare needs in order to prosper.

As long as this film sticks to what its title suggests, The Pick-Up Artist is a tolerably amusing comedy. But as soon as the compulsive skirt-chaser gets hooked on one girl, James Toback's long-gestating portrait of a one-track mind becomes bogged down in unconvincing plot mechanics.

Enjoyable, if sometimes scattered, comic exploration of the quest for integrity and depth in a world wowed by artifice and superficiality.

Engaging performances by the principal players, including Richard Jenkins as a legendary coach beset by personal demons, are almost enough to win the day, but in the end, the cliched narrative is too slight to put the picture over the finish line.

The film reaches a narrative and emotional impasse once it gets past the will-they-or-won’t-they stage.

Alterations made on John O'Hara's 1935 novel by the scenarists (among other things, they have updated it from the Prohibition era, spectacularized the ending and refined some of the dialog) have given Butterfield 8 the form and pace it needs, but the story itself remains a weak one, the behavior and motivations of its characters no more tangible than in the original work.

While it was exciting to see what “Tron” might look like in the 21st century, the brand gets in the way of Ares’ internal evolution. However fascinating it might be to watch him “level up,” what audiences expect — and what Rønning delivers — are cycle races and dynamic gladiator battles.

Although closer in tone to "Office Space" than Herman Melville, Jonathan Parker's absurdist update of Bartleby is surprisingly faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of the "Moby-Dick" author's 1853 novella about an under-achieving Wall Street copy clerk.

Lahti's feature directorial debut walks an innocuous middle line between the story's maudlin possibilities and its meaningful potential.

A very mild animated entry from Disney with a distinctly recycled feel.

By turns darkly comical, seriously scary and purposefully incendiary, Bush's Brain may seem, depending on your politics, either a shamelessly one-sided assault on a popular U.S. president or a justifiably harsh critique of a politician who personifies the Peter Principle.

You might leave Glee 3D feeling a little gooey all over, but that slushie does taste kind of sweet.

Unlike the disturbingly mysterious original, Saw III is a neatly wrapped-up package that explains everything -- including Jigsaw's evil contraptions and the background of his crazed female assistant.

Both “Ted” movies are, ultimately, one-joke affairs rooted in the idea of taking some emblem of childhood innocence and vulgarizing it.... That joke, though, turns out to be a resilient one, and the chemistry between Wahlberg and MacFarlane is infectiously puerile.

Katie Holmes makes an undistinguished helming debut with All We Had, a middlebrow drama with no pretensions but also no depth.

Spacey makes an honorable and intelligent helming debut with less-than-dazzling material.

A risky idea only occasionally gets both wheels off the ground in "The Theory of Flight," a sometimes wryly amusing, oftimes dramatically awkward story

After an eight-year series hiatus, Bride of Chucky emerges with recharged batteries and a mordantly funny edge that's attuned to the dawning millennium. [19 Oct 1998]

By trying to cram in as many explanatory info dumps as possible, Burger neglects to tend to the elements of the film that could easily make up for any narrative deficiencies: namely, a sense of place and a feeling of urgency.

Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra, collaborating as directors for the first time, channel the artificiality of late Manoel de Oliveira but without the enticing mystery, hampered by an understandable earnestness that yearns for a more subtle approach.

The director, Michael Gracey, is an Australian maker of commercials who has never directed a feature before, and he works with an exuberant sincerity that can’t be faked. The Greatest Showman is a concoction, the kind of film where the pieces all click into place, yet at an hour and 45 minutes it flies by, and the link it draws between P.T. Barnum and the spirit of today is more than hype.

Even dedicated Phantasm fanatics may be hard-pressed to discern anything resembling a unifying narrative thread. But the latter group — the film’s target audience — likely will be willing to eschew coherence for the opportunity to savor this chaotic reprise of familiar characters and concepts in the cinematic equivalent of a greatest hits album.

Mothers’ Instinct doesn’t breathe: It hasn’t the grandeur of great melodrama, nor the savoir-faire of great noir. Like its mismatched heroines, it’s constantly, twitchily figuring itself out, as we sit tight, intrigued, tensely waiting for it to trip.

A smattering of funny gags and the nostalgia value of the cast — none of whom, curiously, have ever shared the screen before — keeps the whole thing more watchable than it has any right to be.

While the new studio’s debut can’t touch “Toy Story,” it’s an auspicious start for a talented group of storytellers.

More hagiography than history, Heather Rae's long-in-production portrait of Native American activist and poet John Trudell has the uncritically admiring feel of authorized biography.

The film doesn’t quite have the verve or originality to capitalize on its spasmodic absurdist impulses, leaving the whole in a rather innocuous middle ground despite all efforts at quirkiness.

The first live-action adaptation of the phenomenally popular Japanese manga created by female author Hiromu Arakawa proves to be a mixed bag of eye-catching visuals and uneven storytelling — rushed and choppy at times, and draggy and repetitive at others.

With Alfred Hitchcock its director, more was expected. The story appears to be run through in a straight style as though closely following John Galsworthy's London stage hit.

Club's entertainment value suffers at the expense of trying to capture the events as they happened -- an ill-advised endeavor, considering everything.

The result is at once fun and fatiguing. Scary it’s not, and many viewers will find their patience tested by the character they most hope will be dealt a quick demise being the one we’re principally stuck with.