As far as teen comedies informed by 10th-grade English syllabi go, Easy A, partly inspired by "The Scarlet Letter," is remedial ed compared with "Clueless" and "10 Things I Hate About You."

A comedy of manners in need of Ritalin.

Though the redemption/coming-of-age narrative is highly predictable-with Glover appearing intermittently only to dispense bromides-Clarkson, at least, remains reliable.

In all fairness, Swank's unsubtle performance is often an extension of the bluntly dumb lines she and other cast members must deliver.

There's trouble in Paradis-and in a script that prizes frenzy over any actual feeling.

Guggenheim's insistence on not engaging with the injustices that children of certain races and classes face outside of school makes his reiteration of the obvious-that "past all the noise and the debate, nothing will change without great teachers"-seem all the more willfully naïve.

Most of the culinary footage is devoted to documenting-in flat, dull DV-the finalists' piece montée, or "sugar showpiece," in which sucrose is manipulated for its chemical properties, and dessert becomes a weird, often tacky sculpture.

Once the second act begins with a title card announcing "The Last 3 Months"-the amount of time John spends cooking up labyrinthine plans to spring Lara-Haggis's film becomes interminably nonsensical.

In its rushed, implausible moment of reckoning, Douchebag ends up validating the frat-boy credo: Bros before hos.

Like the first two Millennium movies, this final installment feels thoughtlessly put together, its script unpruned and rushed through, all to capitalize on the staggering worldwide popularity of its dead author.

Watching Nénette watch those who gape at her is an intriguing, multi-layered exercise of voyeurism, but one that wanes after our gaze is demanded for too long.

Levine, previously a writer for "Nip/Tuck," sets the bar low, content to work within the shopworn crises, lazy epiphanies, and eye-rolling moments of redemption that have become standard formula in Amerindie family dramedies of the past 20 years.

A late-act crisis precipitated by scandalous maternity news is straight out of the Tyler Perry Academy of Plotting, and all the beseeching of the Lord sounds like little more than product placement.

More accurately titled "Vidal Sassoon: The Slavering Advertorial," Craig Teper's obsequious documentary on the stylist who popularized geometric haircuts in the '60s is in desperate need of shaping and trimming itself.

It's about as exciting as watching David Blaine play Stratego and makes you miss the power of the first four films all the more: the uncontainable yearning of the Bella-Edward-Jacob triangle.

Terrified of alienating those who were raised on the originals, The Muppets panders to them instead, constantly blasting or restaging Top 40 hits from the past three-plus decades, continuing the cheap strategy that worked well on YouTube two years ago with the Muppets' cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Unlike "The Company Men," which successfully explored the moral conscience and despair of its corporate titans and middle managers, Margin Call's bids for sympathy for its most conflicted character, Spacey's Sam, fail.

A home-invasion movie as instantly forgettable as its title, Trespass is not without disturbing images: namely, Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman as spouses.

Keshavarz's earnest, well-intentioned first feature on women's oppression in Iran has trouble resisting its own heavy hand.

Even with her beatific face (the actress looks like one of Parmigianino's Madonnas), Farmiga is never wholly believable as a woman shaken by a crisis of belief.

Weitz and screenwriter Eric Eason are unable to commit fully even to this sudsy vision, tacking on a coda that completely undermines their already timid message.

The first from the Democratic Republic of Congo to be distributed in the U.S. That in itself is worthy of some kind of celebration, even if Viva Riva! too lazily indulges in shapeless genre excess.

Even KST is left floundering as the misconceived, underwritten totem of today's amoral, power-mad executive, wearing flowing trousers and medallion necklaces not seen since Faye Dunaway demanded a meeting in "Network."

Works best when its director tamps down his impulse to enhance the performances with florid narratives, focusing on just the singer and the song.

The growing disgust of both his family and business associates, all hazily drawn, may knock the magnate down, but it's a limp substitute for the public fury that still burns after the fall of 2008.

In her second film, writer-director Julie Bertuccelli, adapting Judy Pascoe's 2002 novel, "Our Father Who Art in the Tree," is sometimes partial to clumsy dialogue and scattershot pacing.

Machine Gun Preacher is the umpteenth onscreen iteration of a white savior aiding the most desperate in Africa.

Sharp and precise as its tableaux might be, though, Sleeping Beauty never burrows into the brain, and its tenuous provocations fizzle out quickly.