Ultimately, ATL is the same old teenager angst in a mildly novel package.

Free Zone is similar to the car-based films of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami but with a more improvised, less-finished feel.

Papale's story is more than any fan could dream of, which is why it's frustrating that Invincible feels the need to embellish it. While mentioning he never played football in college, the film ignores that he did play in a semipro league prior to his Eagles tryout.

Moderately amusing.

You never really end up rooting for their happiness, as a couple or individually, so emotionally there's not much at stake.

The result is a cast of characters who are little better than automatons themselves. This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the film were as captivating as it was surely meant to be. Instead, the Quays work overtime to make both their story line and images as obscure as possible.

The real star of the film is Horton, whose straight-talking ways and supportive circle of friends are a stark contrast to the haughty insults of academia.

Herzog's drive to bring Dengler's story to a wide audience might have paradoxically caused him to do what he seems normally to abhor: compromise.

Instead of a unique directorial style and a memorable soundtrack, we get a movie that, visually and aurally, pretty much goes by the book.

It says a lot about this movie that the most arresting character in it is Mary, whom Morton unsurprisingly endows with a fanatical combination of narcissism and rage.

The film never gets beyond Chapman's obsession with "Catcher in the Rye" and a few bits of "Taxi Driver" dialogue to show us anything we didn't already know.

Ultimately, the movie takes its characters, and the absurd ethical dilemma it subjects them to, far too seriously.

The oddball cast, by the way, includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, who is infinitely more convincing speaking Cantonese than she is in her (presumably native) English.

The ensemble can't bring enough, though, to overcome the unoriginal setup and predictable story arc.

The plot, as hinted, goes strictly by the "How April Got Her Groove Back" book, but it must be said that the performances push it a notch above pedestrian.

If the title hadn't already been taken by another equally strained recent comedy, the new Kevin Costner vehicle could have been dubbed "Idiocracy."

It devolves too often into slapstick shenanigans and comedy of embarrassment.

Every generation gets the cinematic vampires it deserves...The current decade, judging from the bloodsuckers on display in Twilight, will be remembered as one of guilt, restraint and denial. It's just not that fun to be undead anymore.

It's not a political film, but it's also not a bland recitation of homilies about the honor of serving one's country. It's a jokey road movie, in which three soldiers heading home from Iraq are forced into a cross-country van ride together.

No matter how noble, not everyone's life should be made into a movie.

Politics and art come together in predictable, moderately enjoyable fashion in Paris 36.

Once all the pieces of the story are assembled, the whole thing turns out to be not that big of a deal.

This may have been fertile grounds for satire in 1925, when Noel Coward's drawing-room melodrama Easy Virtue debuted on the stage, but by now this film version feels rather done.

Portland's dreary climate is used to good effect, but it's not enough to make up for the director's needlessly convoluted approach.

If the plot unfolded in a less formulaic way, this could have been an impressive dark-tinged comedy. But in the end, it's more a case of talented actors trying to find something fresh in a fairly stale tale.

What could have been a complex portrait of a flawed man dealing with the perils of success ends up far less interesting.

The increasingly unlikely escapades culminate in a finale that's as narratively lazy as it is morally questionable, lending further credence to the voices that proclaimed Haggis absurdly overpraised for the 2004 Oscar-winner "Crash."

Whereas Carver writes about alcoholics, this movie is about alcoholism, which is completely different.