Ceremony is a callow movie: Winkler exhibits no comprehension of the class anxieties he addresses, and extends precocity into adulthood. That callowness is Ceremony's subject scarcely makes it funnier.

If Skateland is the sort of work Ritchie's future holds, it's proof that some talents are better off staying home.

Anyone who's seen a martial-arts picture expects a certain amount of thumb-twiddling between the big numbers, but director Andrew Lau's handling of exposition is markedly poor, distended with rubbish plotlines, flashy sadism, and overwrought jingo.

Aspires to nothing more or less than carrying along an audience through a string of unremarkable kills, often involving high-jumping fish.

Lockout is, not unexpectedly, a potluck of derivative references.

Par for the course in blowout CGI adaptations, a great deal of detail and bustle is gained at the expense of charm - for all the miracles these armies of animators can achieve, they have yet to successfully reproduce a humble artist's line.

Despite such ubiquitous timidity, one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions here.

Possible resulting "fun" is only slightly mitigated by contemplation of the wearisome decadence of American popular culture.

The Dark Knight Rises is a shallow repository of ideas, but as a work of sheer sensation, it has something to recommend.

Boom was produced under the auspices of pal Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, which has a tendency toward broad-comic morality tales and multiplex populism that often shades into remedial-level pandering.

Has the parallel between the actor and the mercenary's trade ever been so overt?

As de-mythologizings go, Trollhunter has neither the wit, nor art, nor social insight to honor the legacy of George A. Romero's "Martin."

The long takes and lack of theatrical affect are presumably meant to heighten the realism by dispensing with film - fiction artifice, but in the process, everything that might lure a viewer - the seduction of style and plot or an engagement with characters - is forgotten.

Like a child bluffing at knowing a secret, St. Nick teases and frustrates.

The screenplay is by Variety editor Steven Gaydos, and it combines a working knowledge of on-set dynamics with corny cinephile in-joking, frequently elevated by the fresh evidence of Hellman's craft in the tranquil, largely nocturnal atmosphere, until the closing-credits song ruins everything.

"Wood" is still by far Depp and Burton's best collaboration, exhibiting the balance of tone between kitsch parody and zealous fantasy that's missing in Dark Shadows, less a resurrection than a clumsy desecration.

It's the kind of thing you feel you should laugh at through a phlegmy, hacking cough-and it does get laughs, if inconsistently, predictable given the circumstances of production.

Unrelentingly mundane, as if made with the sole purpose of draining the topic of adultery of any prurient interest.

The same laxity given to the performers extends, unfortunately, to the film's structuring, a lazy Susan rotation between storylines and monotonous settings.

Anderson['s] lavish visual imagination is matched to a placeholder idea of character that's almost avant-garde in its generic stylization, dialogue buffed of personality by passing through 10,000 previous movies.

Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay.

Never the same movie for five minutes straight, Septien can't sit still.

Rather than viewing moral chaos from the eye of a storm, director David Pomes watches his movie blow off into the storm itself.

The rather unappealing character of Axel is indulged with every opportunity for redemption, as Spacey is indulged with every opportunity to showboat.

Taken 2 rarely embodies the values of concision and focus that it extols, and any breathing room from the hurtling narrative illogic only allows the audience opportunity to notice slips in Mills's father-knows-best infallibility.

Gigandet fills every close-up with flirtatious face wrinkles, embarrassed smiles, and anything else he can think of, to the point where Jake seems downright spastic; although not terribly good at acting, Gigandet seeks to compensate for this fact by doing a lot of it.

This is intended as one of those kid's comeuppance stories, in which a new maturity is won through contact with salt-of-the-earth types and honest labor but is done with an almost total lack of charm.

The film is flecked with moments of interest, though this decidedly minor and not particularly cinematographic affair is clearly best suited to television.