Moore's voice is weak and fuzzy, directed at a choir that should already know the words by heart.

The thread connecting the ambitious girl to the acclaimed woman is enough to make us wish for a sequel titled "Chanel No. 2."

This topsy-turvy flick is fitfully funny, but more often it's just odd, like the first draft of a "Twilight Zone" episode that's missing its moral.

Extract has some flavor, but the comedic kick is diluted by flat characters and a thin story.

Michael as a character is defined almost solely by his helplessness and gratitude. He's as lovable as a lost puppy, but a more perceptive movie than The Blind Side would have let us see him from another angle.

Reilly is very funny as the sarcastic mentor, and director Paul Weitz strikes a loopy tone in the scenes at the freak encampment.

It's funny but (sorry, ladies) unrealistic that Jake continuously sneaks away from his young wife to canoodle with Jane. Baldwin is a blast, but the role requires him to indulge in indignities such as a naked webcam conversation.

What's most conspicuously missing from this ensemble is some input from the advertisers who subsidize Wintour's tyranny, and the readers who are seduced into buying her beautiful four-pound paperweights.

Unfortunately, producers (including James) went for the easy layup, showing so much on-court action instead of trying to hustle for insights about sports and society.

Moves along well until the characters and situations become too ridiculous to be believed.

Weaving between freshness and formula, The Boys Are Back earns a gentle pat on the head.

Raises more questions than it can answer in its travelogue format. It's because the premise is so intriguing and the drama is so compelling that the result is so confounding.

Even as Bard, filmmaker Milos Forman and Ferrara himself bemoan the changes, the lobby is filled with fine art -- and guests who aren't likely to harm you.

Neither a comprehensive guide nor consistently good, but because the theme is romance, most of these small bites of the Big Apple are easy to digest.

Tests the loyalty of fans that may expect his work to be extreme, but not to such an extent.

It's a calculated crowd-pleaser that skims over the surface of the era like a cruise-ship production of "American Graffiti."

Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell do yeoman work on behalf of their late friend and, as usual, Gilliam's film is a feast for the eyes. But all the king's men can't corral the horses running roughshod over basics like plot and character.

It's a pleasure to watch Ryan resurrect her trademark persona, a mix of perkiness and pique, as she flounces around the room. But it's shaded with a middle-age desperation that's half real and half chick-flick shtick.

The difference between McKay and Efron is like the difference between a Broadway spectacular and a high school musical.

What's finest about Everybody's Fine is to watch a good fella groping hopefully toward old age.

As much Fosse as Fellini. It’s a shadow of a shadow, refracted through a fun-house mirror. For all the noise and color, it feels like an exercise and not a natural expression.

If not for Blunt's solid performance and good support from Friend and others, The Young Victoria would not be worth the price of the ticket.

The excellent animation makes up for a so-so plot, but it really doesn't matter. "The Squeakquel" is for kids.

Although this stylish and ominously paced vehicle starts with a full itinerary, it never makes a vital connection.

Director Philipp Stolzl worked in the same dangerous conditions as the original climbers, and we can feel the chill and peril in our bones. It's a shame, then, that the screenwriter, unlike the camera crew and the characters, was afflicted with such timidity.

Fulfills its mission, which is to be a crowd-pleasing tearjerker.

Like other so-called "mumblecore" movies, including Bronstein's own "Frownland," this is an unnervingly intimate glimpse of dysfunction, with a shaky-cam aesthetic and seemingly improvised dialogue.

The CGI effects are a familiar sort and so is the heroic-quest motif. The principal virtue in this modest entertainment is that the young characters act like real teenagers.

While the rich people who violated a dead antagonist's wishes seem sleazy (especially when they refuse to be interviewed), transporting world-class artwork five miles to a bigger facility where more people can enjoy it hardly seems like the end of civilization as we know it.

It's deliberately difficult to untangle the crossed allegiances of the people that Kelly interviews, and it's melodramatic that he tries to smuggle Ming and a surrendered assassin onto a plane bound for the United States. But dramatizing such a complex situation is a necessary evil.

For better or worse, this is a straightforward performance film.

With its seductive images and smart dialogue, The City of Your Final Destination has the setting and circumstances for a ripe family drama or a literary love story, yet it never awakens from its siesta.

The spoof of consumerism scores some predictable points, but the tidy ending is a sell-out to the ultimate marketing machine: Hollywood.

Prince of Persia is woven of recycled fibers, but by the slipping standards of summertime entertainment, it's a magic carpet ride.

It's no classic, but Shrek Forever After is a pleasant reminder that every time a cash register rings, this ogre turns angelic.

A lot of care went into crafting the handsome production but not enough into making the handsome hero come alive.

As a diversion, Babies is like a wind-up toy that will tickle anyone with a pulse. As a documentary, it's like a cache of home videos that will frustrate anyone with an inquiring mind.

Maybe in his native language, Dujardin is no funnier than Steve Martin's "Pink Panther." But with subtitles, his deadpan delivery is hard to resist.

As a testament to traditions that are usually kept hidden from Hollywood, Holy Rollers is a mitzvah. But as a thriller, it's bubkes.

It's not quite infectious, but some of the high notes manage to drown out some of the guttural lows.

The film confirms it's hard to do brain surgery on a battlefield. But it doesn't take a brain surgeon to think it could go deeper.

The most provocative thing in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is the moment during the opening credits when we glimpse the comedy legend without makeup.

Why the bloodsucker and the wolf boy treat Bella as if she's the cat's meow is still a mystery.

Christopher Nolan's "Memento" was a movie-lover's dream come true, a puzzle that was engaging both intellectually and emotionally. But his Inception is a wake-up call, a blaring reminder that cheap tricks can't compensate for personal investment.

Jeunet -- whose influence can be seen in everything from the short-lived TV series "Pushing Daisies" to the Oscar-winning film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" -- remains one of the world's most imaginative directors. But Micmacs is a misfire.

I Am Love is easy to savor but tough to swallow.

Salt goes down easy, but it's lacking both nourishment and flavor.

It's a little black dress of a movie, an elegant hint of something sensual that is ultimately denied to us.

Between the carefully trained animals and their computer-animated mouths, the movie doesn't have much room for realism; but the 3-D effects are surprisingly effective, and this playful pic earns a pat on the head.

A passable popcorn movie, but fans of the first film who expect lightning to strike twice are liable to get burned.

The word that sums up the essence of this movie is "frustrating."

This homey construct is warm, exactingly crafted and painted with pop-country tones, but it's lacking a deep foundation where the issues that it raises can resonate. For a movie like that, we may have to depend on the Danes.

There aren't enough surprises to justify the title, but The Switch produces sufficient light for a late-summer diversion.

The Hefner we meet here is the likable rogue we already know.

There are audiences for movies that amuse us, and arouse us, and scare us, but the career of Todd Solondz ("Storytelling") raises the question: Is there an audience for movies that make us feel icky?

If you're interested in a drama about a few days in the life of an American abroad, you may find Cairo Time engaging. But for some viewers, it all may be just too subtle.

While it's both too crude and too commercial to be mistaken for journalism, the good news is that the headliners deliver.

Three actors portray the clumsy-but-limber Li in the years of his arduous training, when he is pulled between a teacher who's inspired by Mao and another who's inspired by bootleg videos of Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Although their latest film is not without a certain charm, it quickly wears out its welcome.

As phony as a poodle-skirted waitress at a mall diner, yet it's as sweet as a malt. A vanilla one.

The premise is pure formula.

A bizarre buffet of buffoonery, brutality and beautiful landscapes.

Like Ernest Borgnine, Philip Seymour Hoffman is an unconventional leading man with an Oscar on his mantle, and his bittersweet Jack Goes Boating has elicited comparisons with "Marty."

Only a heartfelt performance by Diane Lane rescues the film from abject mediocrity.

Waiting for Superman raises important questions while wearing a big red heart on its chest, but inconvenient facts are its kryptonite.

It's intellectual snack food, satisfying for a little while but always leaving you hungry for more.

Tangled is lovely to look at, but if you're not a pre-teen girl, you may be distracted by the split ends.

In skewering the neuroses of New York bohemians, Durham has left us too little to care about.

Plays as if Tillman studied the works of director Michael Mann ("Heat"), but got a C on the final exam.

Successful in small doses, but the full regimen needed more testing.

Pregnant with possibility; it's the delivery that disappoints.

It's a triumph of streamlined design, but TRON: Legacy never enters the fourth dimension where it's worth a plugged nickel to humans.

You would expect an epic with brains and hearts. Instead we settle for sturdy craft, with a stellar cast struggling to breathe life into the cold material.

That's right - this is an exorcism movie that those who actually saw "The Exorcist" in theaters can get into.

The saving grace of Biutiful is Bardem.

As a drama about coping with hard times, The Company Men doesn't come close to being as sharp or entertaining as "Up in the Air" - which starred Wells' "ER" associate George Clooney.

Barney's Version has episodes instead of plot, outbursts instead of wit and alibis instead of growth.

It's pure speculation on the filmmakers' part that Gaelic pagans were adorned with bones, blue mud and Mohawks, but the fire-dancing spectacle is a welcome respite from the beefcake of the journey scenes.

On a minute-to-minute level, it's an engaging mystery, the kind that rewards our participation with eye candy and adrenaline shots. But when we pull back for an overview, we see that it's flat and that pieces are missing.

Hits most of the markers of a flashback film but not enough of the beats.

Director Dereck Joubert gleans a valuable thread that connects us to these endangered creatures.

Strikes an uneasy compromise between liberty and justice. It marches at an efficient pace, but there's too much collateral damage to believability.

It's a compelling tale of surf and survival.

Call it "On the Lakefront." Or "Pretty-Good Fellas."

Notwithstanding some allusions to "Lady and the Tramp," the characters and their comic high jinks are nothing special, but the the getaway gives us spectacular 3-D images of the city.

A fairy-tale teenage romantic comedy that makes "The Breakfast Club" look edgy. And that's just fine, because this Disney product does straight-laced fairly well.

With its references to other properties in the Marvel universe and to classic tales of redemption, this no-surprises summer movie might appeal to those who've been bitten by radioactive spiders or the Shakespeare bug.

Canadian director Denis Villaneuve knows how to stoke a hot debate about the legacy of violence. But in this case, where there's smoke, there's not enough air.

L'amour fou means "crazy love," but we don't learn anything crazy about these devoted lovers.

X-Men: First Class is a mutant movie, half fun and half fearsome. For those who have developed an immunity to fanboy hype, the contradictory traits may seem to weaken rather than strengthen this beast, but readers of the "X-Men" comics will hail an origin story as satisfying as "Thor."

The moral lesson that this movie feeds us smells fishy - because it's not in the book. But the backbone story about a guy who inherits some penguins is enough to tickle the kids.

Yet notwithstanding its derivative dolefulness and PG-13 timidity, The Art of Getting By is smart and sweet enough to become the favorite film of some Midwestern adolescent who wrongly believes he's already seen the dark side.

Cars 2 is like a gorgeous sports car with a toxic tailpipe, a busted navigation system and a loud stereo that plays only commercials.

A serviceable behind-the-scenes tour documentary with about as much insight as a talk-show monologue.

A tearjerking romance that belongs to another era, when female moviegoers wanted to be transported, not grounded in grim realities.

Trollhunter has a lot of down time as the crew treks to the fjords, but it's also got dryly subversive humor and, eventually, some impressive special effects.

Unfolds like a fable instead of a believable slice of life. Mexican TV and film star Bichir gives a poignant performance, but he's distinctly more European than the cholos and Chicano laborers on the sketchy edges of the hero's plight.

A bait-and-switch comedy. It poses as a naughty "no-mance" about friends who use each other for casual sex, but at the moment of truth it goes limp.

Directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra were weaned on earthy comedies like "Bad Santa," and every moment of mature insight in Crazy, Stupid, Love is answered by a scene of formulaic farce.

Although this sober film spares us some of the grim, survivalist details, the harrowing adventure from a girl's perspective is so compelling that Julia's simultaneous sleuthing seems like an unnecessary distraction.

I still think it's a funny movie, but given its genes, it's a bit of a slacker.

It's a credit to the cast and to the worthiness of the idea that this overlong movie works at all. But those of us who already know that racism is bad could use a little more challenge and a little less help.

July is a provocative and honorably independent filmmaker, but given the meager rewards of investing our time, The Future wasn't worth the wait.

It's hard to imagine a better movie about corporate-sanctioned sex trafficking than The Whistleblower. But whether you're ready to confront this true story is a trickier question.

More damaging is Lurie's conspicuous "red state" rant, as he makes sure that every prominent guy in this film - save for the screenwriter and the black sheriff - fits all of the Southern stereotypes. That doesn't make it a bad movie, just one that is something less than Peckinpah's original.

A true story of animal rescue, and it even stars the sea creature to whom it happened. But it's the humans who do the cutesy tricks that make it a mixed blessing.

It does induce a few giggles like cheap champagne.

If you'd pay to see a film called "Hotel Rwanda: Maniac Manager," you might be receptive to this mixed-message movie, but skeptics should keep one eye on the exit.

Happy, Happy has the makings of a Norwegian "Ice Storm," but it goes out with a whimper.

A solid sci-fi/horror hybrid, but this iceman doesn't deliver enough to chew on.

This true story fills a needed niche, spotlighting women's basketball in the era before Title IX promoted equal treatment.

If you haven't seen a wasting disease in real life, you might think Restless is romantic. If you have, you might diagnose it as terminally cute.

Toast is lovely to look at, evoking both the gray-green milieu of Midlands life and the sensuality of good food, but it's like a whipped topping with no base.

Like a newborn planet, Melancholia is magnetically beautiful, but it's also an unformed mass of hot air.

The double deception of suppressed personality and repressed sexuality could have been the basis for a rewarding character study, but after Albert meets a kindred spirit and dares to dream of a happy ending, her denial and naivete become too much to swallow.

There's little that's new, revealing or stylish about this basic-black horror story, but if you've got a Goth sensibility, it might suit you.

With its broad strokes, this invitation to an important discussion is hard to ignore, but the blood and honey on the table is an unpalatable mix.

Act of Valor is a competently directed action movie, but forcing the audience to wear such narrow goggles is a dereliction of duty.

Like an acquaintance couple's baby pictures, Friends With Kids induces coos but isn't as cute as they think.

The Hunger Games is dressed as a dark satire of soulless entertainment, but like Katniss' adversaries in the PG-13 hunting scenes, it doesn't have a distinctive identity or go-for-the-throat.

There's some laughing gas left in the cupboard, but this series may require an infusion of new blood to last until "American Funeral."

Bully is a good start to a necessary conversation, but its loving voice is likely to be drowned out by haters who hide their own wounded hearts behind Internet pseudonyms and broadcast microphones.

Built on shaky and blood-soaked ground, but if towering technique is all you want from an action movie, then yippee-ki-yay.

The movie is missing the zippy chases and lovable characters of Aardman studio's previous films ("Arthur Christmas," "Chicken Run").

Elles is provocative company, but it leaves us feeling hustled.

There are enough F-bombs, a couple of chopped-off appendages and a flash of gratuitous male nudity to earn an R rating. But fans of producer Judd Apatow would expect nothing less.

The fiery finale is good enough to leave the legions smiling. But when a movie is expected to lift an entire industry, "good enough" shouldn't be good enough.

It still has cool creatures and 1960s set design, and the 3-D is the best of the season, but if you try to remember the story or jokes, you'll find that you've been hit by a neuralyzer beam.

Surviving Progress reiterates arguments made in movies such as "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Inside Job," it marshals minds such as Jane Goodall and Stephen Hawking, and it utilizes artful imagery reminiscent of films such as "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Up the Yangtze."

If the world were really coming to an end, we'd spend it with Knightley and tell her tag-along friend that there's not enough food for a 50-year-old virgin.

Eccentric enough to get mistaken for an uplifting fantasy, but it's Plaza who belongs in the penthouse.

A colorful indictment of corporate infestation, but it's missing a prescription.

As the blindered Abe, relative-unknown Gelber earns a sympathetic pat on the head. But as the character is braying for attention, he's stuck in his stall, while genuine dark horse Donna Murphy carries the narrative load as the middle-aged co-worker who prances into Abe's daydreams.

Hit and Run isn't a catastrophe, but it leaves loose ends and a more adventurous map by the side of the winding road.

Killer Joe is one of the most repugnant parodies of small-town stupidity that you will ever see, and Friedkin amplifies the shrill obscenities with blaring cartoon and kung-fu footage from his art director's fever dreams.

Although this Swedish vehicle is thoughtfully engineered and has some vivid streaks of color, it could use a jump start to escape the vanilla ice.

Despite some gruesome images and the psychotic fervor of Rakes, it's a frustratingly slow boil.

Ultimately a movie that could have been a little jewel is unpolished.

The rapid dialogue is dry and mannered, like a David Mamet play, there's virtually no story and Cronenberg's visual scheme is cold and claustrophobic.

Too modest to become a worldwide phenomenon, but sensitive teens and their older kin who pine for the '90s may want to take it for a spin on the dance floor.

By the time the meta-movie and cute-dog subplots collide in the desert, this high-concept vehicle has run out of gas. Movies about the filmmaking process may never get old, but self-referential hit men smell like yesterday's fish story.

Compared to most teen comedies these days, Fun Size is almost touchingly tame.

If your inner amphibian craves a wave, you have the right kind of brain to appreciate the elemental story and scenic backdrops. But advanced mammals might smell something fishy.

The Bay is better than a shallow exercise, but crabby horror fans may have preferred that Levinson took a real plunge.

It's not a good film, but viewed from a cockeyed angle, it's a great guilty pleasure, and director Bill Condon is in on the joke.

Penn has created a colorful tour guide, but in This Must Be the Place, there's no there there.

Like the politicians it tries to pull into the big picture, Killing Them Softly promises more than it delivers.

Hitchcock is an amusing lark, but the clumsy way it dissects the director is for the birds.

The Holocaust must never be forgotten, but like many well-intentioned documentaries, The Flat derives more power from the implicit strength of the subject than from the explicit choices of the director.

There's an alliance of interesting stories fighting for dominance here, but instead of a clear victory, Hyde Park on Hudson is the site of a muddled truce.

Because he's the protagonist of the movie and played by the likable Matt Damon, we keep an open mind, but Promised Land is morally ambiguous to a fault.

Obviously a labor love, and its very existence in a godforsaken marketplace is a minor miracle.

This true-ish story adds a romantic subplot to the prosecution of Japanese war criminals by American general Douglas MacArthur, but neither the love nor the war are completely baked.

It’s too cheesy and predictable to be a real miracle, but by Vegas standards, it’s a winner.

Like a taxidermied owl, Stoker is lovely to look at, but in the end it’s hard to give a hoot.

Draining most of the blood, sweat and tears from a true story, this music-minded movie capably covers a song we’ve heard a hundred times before.

Redford is an adequate director, and he keeps things moving at a moderate pace, passing up exits to more spectacular vistas or hotter issues.

A high-concept comedy that peddles some slapstick laughs and life lessons but little insight.

While the underrated Brosnan is effective as the cold-hearted produce mogul, the character starts as such a sourpuss that after he softens in the Sorrento lemon groves, it’s still hard to root for his inevitable hookup with Ida.

Mired in phoniness up to its neck. And above that, there's nothing.

This movie, which was made by an animation studio in Spain, isn't trying to make a social statement; it speaks in the international language of lightweight comedy.

Although it has a great look and offers a few thrills, the animated film 9 is one of this year's biggest disappointments.

In Couples Retreat, it's Favreau, not Vaughn, who is wound up, and this vacation comedy goes nowhere.

After watching Post Grad, you may wonder whether Hollywood will ever stop making generic comedies with zero tolerance for originality.

It's a worthy cause and an honorable film, the first full-length Disney cartoon with an African-American heroine. But without a strong story, it's a case of one step forward and two steps back.

More scenic than scary.

Despite the title, My One and Only is irritatingly repetitive.

As a melodrama, Brothers is passable entertainment. But the film squanders the opportunity to meaningfully portray the impact of war on American lives.

You ought to have a movie that's both smart and sexy. But Jennifer's Body is neither. Most damning of all, it's not scary.

Here's a riddle: What's Alice in Wonderland without wonder? It's a beloved character landing in the rubble of wrong-headed revisionism.

Technically proficient enough to keep us intrigued; but we shouldn't have to Google a movie to know if we were scared.

There are good movies to be made about romantic obsession, but the premise doesn't work if the crazy stalker isn't juxtaposed with a sympathetic victim.

Ultimately it's sunk by the hole in the middle: Paul Campbell (presidential aide Billy on "Battlestar Galactica") who substitutes smarm for charm as the archetypal player who gets played.

Initially, the puzzle structure and a pair of Oscar-winning actresses distract us from the dark vacuum at the center of this enterprise, but when it implodes, it doesn't reverberate.

It's eerie rather than wondrous.

Falls into that middling ground of horror film: neither scary enough to be exciting nor campy enough to be amusing.

In Hollywood, it’s all about the concept, and some studio executive must have thought it would be fun to watch Adams slogging around in the Irish mud. Unfortunately, there’s no accounting for taste.

There's nothing cinematic about this turgid tearjerker except the slumming presence of movie star Harrison Ford.

The comedy is so lame that the whole enterprise comes across as depressing.

What might have seemed like a lively idea -- an all-star roundelay about love in Los Angeles -- is as fossilized as the wooly mammoths in the La Brea Tar Pits.

While the plot is as flimsy as a hooker's halter top, it's buoyed by two actors with attitude and timing.

In the end, audiences will be neither shaken nor stirred. Just bored and confused.

a horrific misstep in the branding of Robert Pattinson. The erstwhile teen vampire, who daringly portrayed gay surrealist Salvador Dalí in last year's "Little Ashes," lurches backward into a pile of romantic rubbish.

This gravely serious drama is as insular as a tomb with Muzak. It takes a particularly heavy hand to make us numb to the abduction of two children, but that's the effect of the wall-to-wall music and earnestly dour performances.

If Repo Men could have sustained its ghoulish humor, it might have been a guilty pleasure.

The kiddie audience will laugh a few times, but it would take an electron microscope to find an original idea or joke in this entire cartoonish movie.

Hot Tub Time Machine isn't a good movie, but like a bubbling bath it keeps pounding at us until our resistance wears down.

Would have benefited from the kind of objectivity that Bass -- as Sar's well-heeled sponsor -- was hardly in a position to deliver.

This shrill caper is more like a blind date between fingernail and chalkboard.

In my old New Jersey public school, the first thing we learned was the smell of baloney.

Although it's stuffed with subplots, gadgets and bad guys, this tinny contraption is half-hearted.

Letters to Juliet has about half as much Shakespearean content as "Shakes the Clown" and even less sincerity.

The diabolical sadist of the team was director Joe Carnahan.

So friction-free that it slips from memory before the credits fade.

Its mean-spiritedness, stupidity and squandering of talent is uniquely Hollywood.

It's hard to love and hard to hate.

Duvall is a powerful actor, and this folksy fable could have been a career-capping feat, but the movie is toothless and slow.

It's almost offensive that Danny Glover is relegated to playing the mysterious old confidante who haunts the same fishing hole as Cal. By the time Glover's character delivers the homily, Legendary is pinned to the mat.

Manages to waste the talents of its strong supporting cast, which includes Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell and Stanley Tucci.

Weaver is a natural as the imperious Ramona, but the rest of the cast is flattened by the script, particularly White, who is just window-dressing in a movie that could use the rude humor she's displayed elsewhere.

Imagine if the "Godfather" saga had been told from the point of view of Talia Shire's character. The perspective of a don's daughter could produce a compelling movie, but The Sicilian Girl isn't it.

Red is an insult to our memories and to our intelligence, an unfunny farce whose veteran cast is cashing a retirement check.

His (Eastwood) first boring film.

A road-trip comedy that somehow renders both promiscuity and racism harmless. While we're soaking up the sunny surroundings, we're getting nowhere.

It's a worn-out show-business fairy tale piggybacking on a nonexistent trend.

A would-be light thriller that's so deficient in the genre's essentials - such as witty dialogue, intriguing characters and surprising yet credible plot turns - that you're embarrassed for everyone involved.

In the end, the movie is still a poetic injustice.

This movie is Denzel Washington stopping a speeding train devoid of subtext, blunders and earth-shattering revelations about the human condition. It is precisely as entertaining as it sounds; no more, no less.