It’s supremely annoying to see the ups and downs of romance reduced to archer-than-arch line readings and bloodless mortal kombat. What’s more frustrating is that the film, adapted from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s popular comic, is an endless visual delight.

The thought behind this body-splattering nostalgia trip is unformed and stagnant.

From the moment Joel Schumacher’s dour teens-in-crisis melodrama establishes its group of spoiled (and so, so unloved) Manhattan silver-spooners, you long for anything to leaven the tsk-tsk prurience.

It’s a contemporary movie musical that makes you feel genuinely sky-high.

This highly fictionalized look at the Wild West early days of Internet porn is off-putting in almost every way, with sledgehammer stylistic flourishes (incessant shaky-cam; a Rolling Stones musical cue as ironic comment) and dialogue that sounds like it was written in a testosterone-fueled haze.

This is the kind of autumnal sentimentality that the Academy goes wild for--a (rightly) venerated performer acknowledging his own mortality by pandering to cheap-seat emotions.

Cue those weepy violins. Indeed, you get everything you’d expect from this mostly saccharine melodrama.

Director Christian Carion (Merry Christmas) establishes a low-key yet threatening atmosphere right from the start, and gets terrific performances from Kusturica and Canet.

Director Phillip Noyce is an old, um, salt at this kind of amped-up action movie nonsense (see his two Jack Ryan entries, "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger"), and he keeps things grounded in physical reality.

Never quite shakes its sitcom-ish setup. The director alternates incident-laden storytelling with penetrating character moments that her terrific cast acts to the fullest.

The setup is pure Looney Tunes, and indeed, Despicable Me is at its best when trading in the anything-for-a-laugh prankery that was a specialty of the Termite Terrace crowd.

Her (Angela Ismailos) heart’s in the right place, but her subjects’ ruminations demand a much larger canvas.

Only "Slumdog Millionaire’s" Dev Patel, as the bastard prince of the villainous Fire nation, truly gets jiggy with the fantasy. Everyone else stares off into green-screen space and waits for lunch to be called.

Alain Resnais’s mind-bending new feature.

The aural and visual overload that marks most of the director’s work is here in spades--few documentaries look and sound so distinctive.

This smug and callous action-comedy is about nothing but teeth.

All three of you clamoring for a sequel to "Wild Wild West" have got your wish: Jonah Hex--an adaptation of the DC Comics series about a Western antihero with otherworldly abilities--gives that Fresh Prince–starring disaster from 1999 a run for its wasted money.

The filmmakers do a good job of laying out the whos, whys and wheres through diagrams, reenactments and testimonials from veterans on both sides of the skirmish.

Winterbottom’s inability to bring off this lurid stew of sex and violence is one problem; his (mis)direction of Affleck is another.

The flaws pale against what's illustrated, which is not just how Prop. 8 passed, but the sordid, cynical workings of our political machine.

It’s easy to think of comics, especially time-tested ones like Rivers, as mechanical laugh-generators. Stern and Sundberg allow her to reveal the deep-rooted humanity of those ever-present quips, and the effect is humbling.

The intention outweighs the execution, though there are still pleasures to be had.

It’s a neurotic treatise that simply adds to our cultural dementia instead of illuminating it.

If you’ve seen "Species," you know where this don’t-mess-with-Mother-Nature horror show is going, though director-cowriter Vincenzo Natali has a few interesting twists up his sleeve.

When The Father of My Children shifts focus to Grégoire’s wife (Caselli) and children (the eldest is beautifully played by De Lencquesaing’s actual daughter, Alice), Hansen-Løve’s hand steadies, and she reveals a true talent for intimate, behavioral observation.

One wrongheaded jaw-dropper follows another.

A Jerry Bruckheimer–produced video-game adaptation--it has to be good, doesn’t it? (Ya, sarcasm.)

The tone this time out is primarily comic.

Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve is telling two stories here: The first is a concentrated, slow-burn tale of personal self-destruction, while the second is an anecdotal, perceptive study of a family dealing with tragedy.

Those who’ve seen director Mike Newell’s DOA Harry Potter entry shouldn’t be surprised at how flat and dull this spectacle is; his fantasy-filmmaking ability ranks somewhere between nil and zilch.

Another year, another George Romero Dead film. But wait, there’s plenty to delight in his sixth zombie eat-’em-up, which follows a rogue group of soldiers who come between warring clans on an isolated island.

The film blows up a minor aspect of the New Wave to foolishly apocalyptic proportions, substituting gossip for gospel.

An exercise in tedium.

Laurent knows the facts of his subject, but he loses the emotional thread amid all the flimsy homage.

Kilcher makes the slog worthwhile--her face gleams with possibility, even in the character’s darkest moments--though one prays she escapes the typecasting trap ASAP.

All slap-happy superficiality.

Too much of this love triangle rings false.

Stephenson is too close to it all; he’s never able to truly dig below the cult flick’s frenzy, to examine the very real pain of both the film’s makers and the audience that takes rabid, gleeful delight in their folly.

A prosaic plod, with events, dates and characters sloppily composited to fit into a two-hour feature.

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?

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.

A believably unbalanced Bening scores the movie’s true coup: Karen’s revitalizing relationship with a sweetly persistent coworker (Jimmy Smits) is a rare example of Hollywood doing right by midlife romance.

A believably unbalanced Bening scores the movie’s true coup: Karen’s revitalizing relationship with a sweetly persistent coworker (Jimmy Smits) is a rare example of Hollywood doing right by midlife romance.

What emerges is an illuminating, though terribly dismaying, portrait of the War on Terror’s lasting effects.

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?

One senses this is a production better suited to the stage.

The performers clearly relish these lines, and Scott, simultaneously feral, manic and despondent, is a particular standout.

The running time may make you blanch, but Connie Field’s seven-part documentary about the history and eventual dissolution of South African apartheid is well worth the commitment.

About as deep as a kiddie pool, which isn’t to say it’s an unpleasant frolic.

The value of Field’s film is in how it shows the snowball effect of persistent protest: Hate eventually buckled, though the melancholy of the movie’s final passages suggests there’s much more injustice to bring to light.

The resolution of the murder plot -- part O. Henry, part EC Comics -- is an ironic lip-smacker that concludes the mostly rote proceedings on a giddy high note.

Like so many Doors chroniclers, DiCillo can’t help but fall under the singer’s spell; it’s understandable, but frustrating.

This is one case where there’s more life in the morgue than out.

Neeson clearly relishes the role, but he never plays to the cheap seats by going whole-hog psychotic. The character’s motivations remain tantalizingly opaque from first frame to last.

Everyone Else’s power comes from the accrual of seemingly disparate incidents; a multifaceted portrait of the duo (and a larger examination of the ins and outs of any relationship) emerges amid all the sex, fighting, affection and insults.

Like so many Doors chroniclers, DiCillo can’t help but fall under the singer’s spell; it’s understandable, but frustrating.

The film lurches through narrative incidents: Battle scenes, political intrigue and a ticking-time-bomb love triangle are all pitched at the level of mundane competence and rarely get the blood racing.

A dumb comedy out to prove its genre-defying smarts--the title is both an onscreen-supported reference to Walt Whitman and a wacky-tobaccy allusion--Leaves of Grass is a mostly mirthless affair; not even the sight of Edward Norton portraying twins tickles as it should.

Maybe Douglas Sirk could have made something profound out of the pseudo-ennobling horsepucky. As is, The Last Song is what the crinkle-nosed Southern belle in all of us would resoundingly deem “Trash! Trash! Trash!�

It would be overly polite to call this a pale shadow of the tone-shifting Coen brothers farces from which Nelson -- who costarred in O Brother, Where Art Thou? -- is taking his cues.

Blood, sweat and tears flow in this grimy action-adventure-cum-male-melodrama, which features a Pan-Asian superstar trifecta doing their best to emphatically outgrimace each other.

The meanings of Close-Up shift, subtly and profoundly, with every viewing; the only certainty is that its rewards are boundless.

The most impressive aspect of Breillat’s feature is that it agitates like the best fairy tales, seducing us with otherworldliness before sticking the knife in and permanently inscribing the moral.

A tedious example of speculative fiction.

There are plenty of moments when the appearance of a flying, green-glow Chevy Malibu would be a welcome distraction.

The most impressive aspect of Breillat's feature is that it agitates like the best fairy tales, seducing us with otherworldliness before sticking the knife in and permanently inscribing the moral.

This is Young in his playroom, grabbing his toys at random while indulging his every antimelodic whim, and Demme’s off-the-cuff approach makes for the perfect aesthetic complement.

Young seesaws maniacally around the stage, the music surging and regressing with exhilarating unpredictability, the end seemingly never in sight. It’s an unholy tantrum that Demme treats, quite rightly, like a miracle.

Comes off as a clunky first draft.

Bong is so concerned with whodunit that his creaky genre mechanics diminish Kim’s determined performance.

Bless you, R.Patz & Co., because this gloriously steaming pile is officially in the bad-movies-we-love pantheon.

Bong is so concerned with whodunit that his creaky genre mechanics diminish Kim’s determined performance: She’s often shunted to the side of the action...

Bless you, R.Patz & Co., because this gloriously steaming pile is officially in the bad-movies-we-love pantheon.

Tales is all medium-shot chatter clumped together under cutesy chapter heads and scored to chirpily repetitive Muzak.

Unlike Romero’s film, what’s missing is a trenchant sense of connection to our historical moment.

Unlike Carroll’s perversely idealized protagonist, Burton’s Alice is just another anachronistic feminist tearing down Victorian patriarchal norms. Even her—[shudder]—Avril Lavigne–blared theme song is a skin-deep grrrl-power accessory.

Unlike Romero’s film, what’s missing is a trenchant sense of connection to our historical moment.

Burton’s Alice is just another anachronistic feminist tearing down Victorian patriarchal norms. Even her -- [shudder] -- Avril Lavigne–blared theme song is a skin-deep grrrl-power accessory.

It’s a shame that Toe to Toe adheres so stridently to Indiewood clichés.

Desperation oozes from every frame of Cop Out, which front-loads its best joke -- then spends the rest of its running time endlessly spinning its wheels.

This is some soul-sapping dada with which director Kevin Smith is staining his already-dubious résumé.

Krause and Martin consistently rise above the material; we’ll hopefully see more of them under better, less Larry Clark–like circumstances.

Polanski has made a genre piece with a verve and vitality that’s in sadly short supply.

Speed can be a virtue, but there’s something extremely off-putting about the way The Wolfman, Universal’s latest horror classic redux, races through its opening scenes.

When the beast finally bursts forth, the character becomes, for the most part, a digitally augmented blur -- there’s no room for a performance underneath all the 0s and 1s.

Polanski has made a genre piece with a verve and vitality that’s in sadly short supply.

Sontag’s true talent was for the printed word; behind the camera, her limitations come more harshly to light. Upon Promised Land’s release, she recounted her experiences in Vogue--an all-too-appropriate forum since her film is mostly chic posturing.

Somewhat underwhelming sequel.

John Travolta breaks the braggadocio meter in the latest tightly wound actioner from "Taken’s" Pierre Morel.

Strangely enough, our knowledge of what’s to come makes Word Is Out that much more affecting, because it shows that there were—and are—pockets of peace amid the brutality of an ongoing civil-rights struggle.

All the retroactively enlightened symbolism gets monotonous, and reaches an absurd apex with the introduction of a party-line newspaperman played by that scowling emblem of Teutonic depravity, Ulrich Tukur.

The cast to die for is almost entirely wasted in this machismo-marinated slab of Brit-crime nastiness.

The cast to die for is almost entirely wasted in this machismo-marinated slab of Brit-crime nastiness.

There’s no room for such soul-searching uncertainty with Gibson. After a few rapidly ticked-off minutes of gloom, the mission is clear: Get the sons of bitches, and make ’em pay.

Cleverly playing on the genre’s propagandistic ties to the Third Reich, the film reflects the tragic arc of National Socialism in each ominous crevasse and in every grandiloquent gesture.

Often resembles a prime John Carpenter thriller--call it "Assault on Manger 13"--until an overcaffeinated angel-fu climax significantly lowers the intelligence quotient.

Sadly, “Get out of my lab!” is not the new “Get off my plane!”

For a few brief moments, the film becomes something close to Greek mythology, as opposed to graphic-novel imitator. What a feeling!

Arnold deviates into a generic retribution plot that acts as a creaky catalyst to push Mia out into the world at large. The affected realism thus reveals itself to be a hoi polloi–patronizing crock.

As subcultural anthropology, it's unassailable. Yet the often ugly-looking DV aesthetic dilutes the cumulative effect.

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

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.

As subcultural anthropology, it's unassailable. Yet the often ugly-looking DV aesthetic dilutes the cumulative effect.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

There’s some small pleasure in watching one of the great screen performers play such a recognizably fragile type, though De Niro and writer-director Kirk Jones shamelessly milk the situation for sentiment.

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.

Cage is not quite Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo in the Big Easy. But his performance hits all the right mythopoetic beats, rising above the thin script and late-night-cable aesthetic.

The film slowly loses the sobering toughness of its initial inquiry, and finally comes off as bloodline-biased hagiography.

It’s a dud.

It’s unfortunate that the result is so unaffecting, especially in light of all the things the director does right.

Given the months-long hype, what’s most bewildering about Sundance sensation Precious is its overall shrug-worthiness.

The unspoken theme underlying Dickens’s prose--that the money-grubbing Ebenezer is conversing with semblances of his own self--finds near-perfect cinematic expression through Carrey’s efforts.

Wiseman’s films are as much living organisms as they are subjective portraits.

West is far more adept at and interested in sustaining an unrelentingly ominous mood than in executing the genre-required spook shocks.

Only Billy Connolly, as the boys’ way-of-the-gun pa, brings a smidgen of sobering gravitas to the proceedings, though he can hardly counter the pounding hangover brought on by all the mock-virtuous butchery.

There’s nothing more boring than a life embalmed with halfhearted Hollywood bombast, which only makes the film’s fleeting pleasures stand out all the more.

Which of the protagonist’s interactions are real and which are artist’s fancy? Hong never lets on, preferring to set character and audience adrift within his motion-picture Rorschach test.

Less deadpan spoof than loving act of possession, Black Dynamite near-fully channels the look and feel of its blaxploitation ancestors, warts and all.

Adela’s troubles feel slight and underdeveloped in the face of the world around her; it’s all too appropriate, in the end, that nature swallows her whole.

The true soulfulness of Sendak’s parable never emerges.

It’s too easy to say that Peter Billingsley shot his eye out with this inept comic trifle, but…well, he shot his eye out.

Visual Acoustics goes out of its way to remain as kindly and pleasing as Shulman himself.

A slipshod documentary about a fascinating subject: the loaded history and current complications of African-American hairstyling.

Lone Scherfig directs it all as if it were a breezy lark, so a third-act tonal shift makes for an incongruous, excessively moralistic fit with everything that’s preceded. Most insulting, though, is the way in which the climactic passages miraculously tidy up every frayed edge of Jenny’s life.

Lone Scherfig directs it all as if it were a breezy lark, so a third-act tonal shift makes for an incongruous, excessively moralistic fit with everything that’s preceded.

Visual Acoustics goes out of its way to remain as kindly and pleasing as Shulman himself.

The Horse Boy comes off as both an edifying work of advocacy and an invasive home movie.

What follows is pulp made near-profound through director Jonathan Mostow’s sure-handed guidance.

This is hackwork of the highest order, lacking in all poetry and barely comprehensible aurally or visually.

It helps that Fame has been cast with performers who have the glow of possibility about them.

It makes sense that, within his own act of remembrance, Ferrara would include a hotel tenant’s home-movie footage of the September 11 attacks. The underlying message, in both cases, is the same: Never forget.

There’s little that can be done with material wrung of its complications to accommodate an ultimately life-affirming, it-all-works-out agenda.

Writer-director Jane Campion approaches the tale with an artiste’s respectful solemnity, but it too often comes off like "Twilight" transplanted across oceans and centuries.

Kate Beckinsale is about as convincing a U.S. Marshal as Joan Crawford is a loving mother. But like that megastar of yesteryear, she gets a helluva terrific entrance in the Antarctica-set murder mystery Whiteout.

Director-cinematographer Steven Soderbergh’s indifference to the material is palpable and of a piece with his deathly dull output of late.

There’s a marked sense of retreat in this tale that’s never explored--everyone goes out of the way to remember the past through rose-colored specs.

Crank’s Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor direct with their usual flashy brio, and basso profundo Keith David has a sublime cameo as a cop indignant at the thought of a pistachio peanut butter sandwich. It’s that kind of movie, folks.

Sobering stuff for an animated movie that pitches itself somewhere between cutesy children’s entertainment and hectoring Grimm’s fairy tale. The problem with 9, though, is that it lacks a consistent tone.

This Disney-sanctioned documentary on Papa Walt and company’s 1941 visit to South America is a dull, dry bit of mythmaking.

Liverpool’s revelatory final shot--in which an object akin to "Citizen Kane’s" Rosebud is presented for our contemplation--adds one last mysterious layer. Like everything else in this enigmatic masterpiece, the image resonates with myriad metaphorical possibilities.

Laurie’s story holds interest thanks to Taylor-Compton’s intense, nontrivializing dedication to the role, especially when the character’s feral brother comes calling.

The doc’s breakout star is Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, a former model whose plain appearance (the end result of a horrible car accident) and frumpy clothing belie her genius for fashion. She counters her boss every chance she can get and provides the film with a much-needed emotional center.

Lee and Schamus make history blandly palatable; in the process, they rob the times and the people they’re portraying of their complications.

It doesn’t matter how much garrulous delusion the subjects spout. [Director] Pray buys it wholesale and propagates the myth that there’s something to respect about getting inside people’s heads and rewiring them into mass-consumptive lemmings.

An astounding portrait of a person entirely out of sync with her own existence.

Detractors and proponents alike will see what they want to see in this two-and-a-half-hour World War II fable, which hits all the beats of a retribution-laden genre piece without ever entirely satiating character or audience bloodlust.

The effort is certainly more appreciable than the execution.

The film is a trying yet worthwhile sit, not only for the information it relates, but for the sensations it elicits.

Import Export demands we contemplate the horror and the beauty of existence in equal measure.

It’s hogwash of the highest order, a romanticized take on disability that sees it both as God-gifted higher calling and seductive precoital bling.

No one views the world like Roy Andersson does. That fact alone is enough to recommend the Swedish director’s latest collection of interconnected, often single-take vignettes.

It’s an entirely new world that we’re left in -- a place where the rules of the movie we’ve just experienced no longer apply.

Radcliffe, in particular, comes off bored and distant, more hitting the marks than baring the soul.

This live-action adaptation of Hiroyuki Kitakubo’s popular anime one-off from 2000 appears to have been made by a company of finches tweeting, 'Cheap…cheap.'

It might sound damning to say that the film resembles a bullet-riddled carcass just barely clinging to life, but it’s exactly this ephemeral sensation, which Mann sustains for the entire two hours plus, that distinguishes Public Enemies.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, doing her run-’n’-gun best, doesn’t mine traditional suspense so much as impart a queasy feeling of monotony.

It’s a big ol’ wallow in unpleasantness, a film that relies on simplistically patriarchal antagonists and vague, wet-willie cries for intervention.

Animation is so often used for frivolous flights of fancy that it’s something of a shock to see it employed in the service of a tale that emphasizes human foible and mortality.

Animation is so often used for frivolous flights of fancy that it’s something of a shock to see it employed in the service of a tale that emphasizes human foible and mortality.

The film is founded on shaky, near-exploitative ground, something mirrored in the agitated handheld camerawork by Alex Bergman and in Berkowitz’s offhand comment about the good this film could do in encouraging safe sex.

Much like Tetro and Bennie in the film’s final scene, Coppola has been swallowed whole by darkness and yet attained a necessary clarity that may otherwise have evaded him. It could be said, strangely enough, that the abyss was never so enlightening.

Away We Go in brief: the endless promise of profundity trampled by dime-store psychologizing.

Jia is one of the guiding lights of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers, and 24 City is a potent exploration of his constant theme -- the tectonic shifts that occur as the old gives way to the new.

Chekhov’s principle of drama is in full effect, but what’s remarkable about this film is how it slowly steers its way from portent to poetry.

A preciously deadpan comedy that never lays claim to its own distinct identity; it’s cinema as a mass-manufactured snow globe.

How dark the con of Ron that he can so vividly simulate thought in what is truly an intellect-free enterprise.

This is an expertly constructed thriller that never rises above the trappings of its genre.

The time-jumping narrative and self-consciously somnambulant mood undermine the writer-director’s zeitgeist-inspired thesis.

This rather trite visualization is made all the more banal by comparison with the many ravishing images Sorin and cinematographer Julián Apezteguia capture in the movie proper.

Doe-eyed earnestness dulls every edge, and Eden-like naïveté reigns supreme.

Jim Jarmusch's latest - his best since Dead Man (1995) - practically begs for dissection and analysis, but it's better, perhaps, to read the film's many repeated symbols, sayings and actions as mood enhancers rather than intellect stimulators

The mostly first-person documentary Tyson isn’t a dud, exactly, but it does feel like a missed opportunity.

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This astonishing documentary takes a contemplative look at Peru’s recent political history via members of the service and street classes who reside in the capital city of Lima.

If great movies resulted purely from wizardly technical displays, then Czech writer-director Bohdan Sláma’s The Country Teacher would be a masterpiece to give Béla Tarr pause.

MvA is mostly a brainless parade of half-baked gags, punctuated by the occasional fourth-wall-breaking effect. Only those who desire a paddleball to the kisser or a face full of Mothra snot need apply.

It’s all declarative surface, and director John Maybury treats the proceedings like a Josef von Sternberg wet dream, at once elegant, campy and desiccated.

Duplicity does indeed bend and buckle under the weight of many a final-reel revelation, though it never entirely collapses.

Best to take a page from Rose’s métier and bleach this one fully out of sight and mind.

This concession to cheap psychological realism still manages to stand out and stick in the craw.

Carlos Saura’s documentary on the Portuguese musical tradition of fado is an inviting and immersive experience, the third piece of a song-and-dance triptych that also includes Flamenco (1995) and Tango (1998).

Garrel père reunites with Garrel fils for this frequently tedious rumination on rabid passion that still manages to linger in the mind.

Sokurov sees his titans of history as men playing gods, and Hirohito’s climactic renunciation of his divinity is the deeply affecting end point.