For 1,347 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 27% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 70% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 11.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Joe Neumaier's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 49
Highest review score: 100 Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride
Lowest review score: 0 88 Minutes
Score distribution:
1,347 movie reviews
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    This insightful doc from director Andrew Rossi addresses topics that get more polarizing each year: the high cost of college, the factors that dictate who’s educated in this country and the culture that surrounds those decisions.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Where the film fails, ironically, is in the central love affair. Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is undeniably gifted, but his Stravinsky is a blank, stoic presence only comfortable at a piano.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    It can sometimes be hard to sit through, but another song is coming soon, and anyway, close your eyes and imagine you're on vacation, sipping vino in a piazza, soaking in the street life.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Challenging and thoughtful, but is also, like its characters, a prisoner of its own anger.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Spy
    The moments when Spy falls apart are when the film fancies itself the real thing. The times when it works are due to its leading lady.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Hellion is a glimpse into rural American childhood that’s both tense and melancholy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Has moments of power that push through a fake-out script.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Upstream Color is weird, but it’s worth the time.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Whether the young ensemble attains it remains to be seen. The standouts, though, are Naughton, Pennie and Perez De Tagle.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    The movie could have gone several ways, too — and it is heartbreaking to watch this ambitious story choose the wrong one and get lost in space.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Only in its final scenes do the usual WKW themes emerge in full bloom, but purists shouldn't miss it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Just as precise and self-consciously precious as predicted. Which doesn't mean it hasn't got moments of charming wit buried under all its archness.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Morris mixes piercing sit-downs with disturbing evidence. Though soldiers, including the notorious Lynndie England, express remorse, it's haunting to hear how several prisoners were "nice guys" or known to be innocent, yet no connection is made between those remarks and the images of torture.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Though there's too much movie-style self-deception, Sheridan is excellent, and his scenes with the consistently engaging, criminally underemployed Campbell Scott are subtle and serene.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    To see these children of waitresses, salon workers and fathers on disability burdened because they stepped up is humanizing and heartbreaking.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Lengthy clips of leaders including Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael bring us back to emotional moments in this country's history.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Director Chen Shi-Zheng's film has a graceful energy, and three strong performances help make this serene drama - and its shocking conclusion - quietly moving.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    With musical numbers and fight scenes as big as its heart, director Nikhil Advani's action-comedy really does sample it all.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Without excessive emotion or drama, director Javier Fuentes-León's film - and Mercado's performance - gently captures the power of emotions whose silent rattle is even stronger than reality.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    The boat rides and picnics we're privy to are an enjoyable way to get to a bittersweet conclusion. Yet it's hard not to feel like we've taken this trip before.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    So the big surprise of Horrible Bosses 2 is how far it gets on the hopped-up jabberjaw alliance of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day. In the 2011 “Bosses,” they were swamped by the conceit: White-collar pals try to kill awful employers. Now, freed up to free-associate, they’re totally winning.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Jack Black adds new depths to his slippery comic persona in Bernie, a movie that may not ultimately add up to much, but which is filled with wonderfully odd details of weird Americana.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Though it's rough around the edges, it is also, undeniably, a nervy, confident debut.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Michael Starrbury’s astute script draws us in slowly, depicting the realities of Mister and Pete’s lives in progressive reveals.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    This honest and engrossing film shows how ingenuity and spark can restore excitement in education. That goal needs every helping hand it can get.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    The trouble is, too much of director Shawn Levy's '80s-ish lark is filled with noise, when it really needed more quietly silly stuff.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Tries to capture that moment -- complete with air guitar-playing deejays -- and unapologetically rides a wave of nostalgia, but ultimately sinks due to a bloated, watery script.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    That truthfulness, along with the movie's emotional honesty and narrative polish, help tag this NY-grown indie as one to seek out.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    A movie that’s of two minds. It’s well-grounded, but also over the top. It’s a man-vs.-machine epic and also an intimate drama. It’s quirky-smart yet sci-fi silly. And it winds up being half as good as it could be.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Just when you thought it was safe to stand up to a bear in the woods, this jarring indie horror drama will make you scurry back indoors.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    If you're looking for an incisive portrait of self-generated stardom, you won't do better than this.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Oasis also takes aim at the bottled-water industry, entertainingly calling in psychologists to break down our fears of what is - or isn't - contaminating what we drink.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Donald Sutherland's passionate rendition of a speech from Trumbo's 1971 film "Johnny Got His Gun" (based on his novel) is worth the price of admission.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Their devotion to their art is admirable, and the film gets under the skin, if never really in our blood.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Liv Ullmann’s screen version of August Strindberg’s 19th-century drama is an austere, pared-down take that does one thing extremely well: It allows actors Jessica Chastain, Samantha Morton and especially Colin Farrell to shine. But this emotionally brutal work is anything but cinematically engaging.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    With witty throwaway bits and Cavanagh's fast delivery, "Scot" gets away with a third-act dip into hearts and platitudes. Otherwise, it's refreshingly snarky and quick.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    A thoughtful drama about guys who have a moment in the big time before returning home to an odd reflected glory.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Director Nimrod Antal’s grungy gang-of-thieves pic is tough and, for this genre, surprisingly ethical.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    If you’re searching for smart, soulful teen entertainment, you can start looking inside Paper Towns.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    There are two stormy performances from Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz that elevate Allen's melancholy thoughts on love and relationships.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Craig, far from James Bond but still swaggering, makes a leathery, craggy commander, and Schreiber - who'll show his full-on action chops this summer in the Hugh Jackman "Wolverine" movie - is tough but sullen. Yet all this old-style moviemaking doesn't always pay off.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    It appears that turning the John Ford/John Wayne classic "The Searchers" into the church-vs-vampire adventure Priest was not an altogether god-awful idea. As long as we don't get "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" as an elegiac zombie drama, this adaptation of a graphic novel has some bite.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    If there's a book-loving adventuress or adventurer in your house younger than 10, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island provides a lighthearted break from the death-obsessed "Harry Potter" franchise and other literary but limp adventures like the "Narnia" films and "The Lightning Thief."
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    It's been a long, not always linear path to the opening of the new tower, planned for 2014. Yet, as one observer says here, the project has helped heal New York in a very New York way - acrimonious, messy and loud.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Hoffman, Morton and Jon Brion's aching score somehow capture the all-too-human need to get things right. If you're in a certain frame of mind, those moments make up for all the stagecraft.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    It’s playful, stable and sexy, thanks to a cast that knows how to find the sweet spots.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    This gorgeous-looking documentary is crying out to be remade as a family film feature.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Sex is plentiful, but the lust is for paydays. This is territory covered far more vibrantly in “Margin Call,” yet director Costa-Gavras (“Z,” “Missing”) still has good, old-fashioned indignation to count on.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Fearless nonfiction filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side," "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer") details a history of horrific abuse by Catholic clergy in this tough-to-watch documentary.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Transporting as it is, this doc leaves a bad taste in your mouth, if just for the ill will it drudges up.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Though too much of this of-the-people, for-the-people chronicle is by necessity gummed up by clunky captions and explanations, it is an effective, and heartfelt, clarion call.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    The movie hits a beautiful, celebratory note.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    As this strong, moving documentary shows, for those who came to the U.S., reconnecting to their culture and blood relatives can result in a generation of young people who feel "somewhere between" Chinese and American. They're never fully one or the other, but in the best cases can feel part of both.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Though Lorenz Knauer's film is as thoughtful as his subject - with a break for interviews with Pierce Brosnan and Goodall's fellow UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie - the study of chimps is given short shrift.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Parents should know that the ending makes the last moments of this family-friendly documentary as tough as "Bambi." But the lessons about friendship are gigantic, indeed.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Though it teeters at times on the edge between potboiler and melodrama, Arbitrage benefits from a notable lack of sympathy for Gere's Gordon Gekko-like Miller. Rather than seeming pat, Jarecki's straightforward cynicism is pointed and purposeful.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Watch for a cameo by young animator Tim Burton.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Atmosphere is three-fourths of the game in a horror film, and The Lords of Salem has it in spades. It’s not too much to say that until this culty-witchy throwback chiller turns too bloody, it shows how far a little style can go.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    The actor (Garcia), whose banked anger has been a secret weapon since "The Untouchables" 25 years ago, paints a fascinating portrait of a man moved by fate.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Branagh, taking advantage of his experience helming 2011’s “Thor,” shows an allegiance to the genre he’s working in; both as director as co-star, he pours on the menace.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Haneke's superb cast provide beautifully measured hints at the disconnect between the ribbon's symbolism and the entire town's unspoken atrocities.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    This frisky late-’50s-set French comedy about a competitive typing contest hunts and pecks a bit for fun after its story gets rolling, but it’s visually vibrant throughout.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    The cast is generally game for playing cardboard cutouts, with Goodman having the most fun.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    A quiet, oddly serene movie with a curious soul.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Those who came of age during Knievel’s rise, rise and fall will enjoy the fun moments. But this family-sanctioned film comes up short in terms of objectivity.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Movies like this, from "Diner" to "Beautiful Girls" to "Garden State," have a standard trajectory, and this film's no different. But it has a nuance and a rumpled comfort with itself, which turns Fairhaven into an inviting place to visit.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    A fairly gripping cautionary tale.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    What emerges is a portrait of the "psychic risk," as her father says, of living a creative life - and the intense feeling that entails.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    Howard, whose previous tales of men in professional peril include the topnotch “Apollo 13” as well as “Backdraft” and “Cinderella Man,” works with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to create a style in the racing scenes that makes the most of every angle. By the time the final lap of Rush starts, we’re up for the ride.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    The film awkwardly mixes political, social and medical issues and ends up being less than the sum of its parts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Joe Neumaier
    A "Blair Witch"-y creepshow that owes a lot to Japanese horror.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    A good-ol'-boy civics lesson that's too scattered to achieve its predictable goals.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Amusing as it is, it never feels real.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Low-budget, grubby and gleeful, but with a nice sense of style and apparently an endless supply of dry ice. Points deducted, though, for a too-easy alien-corpse joke.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    If it were just Hurt's show, it'd be a helluva trip.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Noise ultimately becomes a slice of city life instead of a great satire.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Despite the Spierig brothers' punchy visual style and satiric tone, Daybreakers eventually devolves, though Dafoe and his Southern drawl goose things up and Hawke has a greasy romanticism.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    When the haze wears off and the movie grounds itself in reality, it's a bummer. Until then, though, what's weird here is gloriously weird.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    In a certain kind of indie movie, the only thing sweeter than a bad boy transformed is slow, sad tragedy. Mercy has both, which isn't good.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    This year-in-the-life comedy will appeal mostly to its target audience -- the boys of middle school, USA -- and frankly, that's all it needs. Who else would appreciate the idiocy of social pressure,
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Yet it all comes down to one simplistic idea, and the result feels like a one-film evangelical movement.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Sparky voice performances and heart make up for this family film's theft of Tim Burton's sensibility.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Sadly, once the movie shifts gears, it becomes a timid "Donnie Darko."
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    This action-comedy will seem fresh only to 8-year-olds -- though it may give parents an excuse to introduce some of the '50s horror movies it parodies.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    The "Star Trek" gibes feel especially lazy, since the movie ought to be "Men in Black" kicky, not sketch-comedy dusty.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Plays like a throwback to gritty-but-softhearted English dramas of the 1980s like "Mona Lisa" and "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid."
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Neumaier
    Director John Scheinfeld's film, utilizing interviews with friends and collaborators, hits a high note on Nilsson's friendship with Ringo Starr and his fear of stage performance.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    If only this Eddie Murphy flick had taken its own advice and spent a little more time being reflective instead of hyperactive, it might have overcome a trite script and awful, obvious excuses for comedy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    True Story is a prisoner of its own dull storytelling.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Steen, her face full of remorse, does a great job of portraying someone unclear of where to go or what to say without a script.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Stoker is like the baby David Lynch and Tim Burton had, then left on the doorstep of the Addams Family. Full of heavingly gorgeous images that envelop a viewer before smothering them, its maddening elements eventually become too much to bear.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The mystery at the heart of the film is a riddle wrapped in an enigma covered in dullness.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The oh-so-out-there mentality earns some chuckles, but that, along with Piven's preening, gets very trying. A hard sell is still a hard sell.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The kids' story gets out of control, but Andie MacDowell is a pleasantly earthy mess as Victor's out-of-it mother, and familiar New York faces (Ann Magnuson, Mark Boone Jr., Richard Edson) lend quirky support as the out-of-it elders.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A movie that's so anachronistically mushy and awkward, it earns extra credit simply for being so innocent.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Only Wahlberg rises above the muck; everything else here feels buried in concrete.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is overhyped as Billy Bob Thornton is slow and steady.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The Identical is one wacky movie, based on a bit of truth.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Certainly, the West Memphis 3 deserve more chances to detail how the justice system went nightmarishly awry. But take this as ultimately more personal journal than investigation.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    In what world does Smart People exist? Clearly not the real one, though this dramedy wants to think it's filled with ironic insights about love and family.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This taut but cliched little thriller is like "Wait Until Dark" with neo-Nazis.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    When a movie is this strange, it's gotta count for something.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The tricky camera moves that fill up Silent House make for one-half of a nerveracking horror film – before the movie's obviousness just gets on your nerves.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Snitch is like watching an elephant on ice: inelegant, but you admire the effort.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Had the film stood still more often, its stylish gambit would have worked better.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This gruesome, allegorical drama is dark and unsettling, but not so original that it begs to be let in.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    What keeps the movie afloat, though, is Seann William Scott as Steve Stifler.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Unfortunately, its present-day tale, involving a career woman seeking to mend her 20-year bond with a girlfriend injured in an accident, is lax and clunky, and its story-within-a-story - a tale of two laotong, or soul sisters, in oppressive mid-1800s China - is gorgeous but simplistic.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    While the film is slightly better than similar efforts Allen made between the ’90s and his recent time in Europe, it’s both too broad and too shallow.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Unfortunately, director Joe Maggio's film, despite showing real promise and an ear for threats delivered with a smile, runs out of gas.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The G.I. Joe team is back, and most of their sophomore movie adventure, G.I. Joe Retaliation, is as bland as their name and as subtle as an exploding tank.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    If Deadfall had more life, it might have been about more than just its wannabe edge. Ruzowitzky, whose 2007 film "The Counterfeiters" won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, understands the movie's simple plan. But it nonetheless puts us into a big sleep.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Mud
    Stripped of his former pretty-boy image, the Texas-born actor is snarly and gnarled, and understands what Nichols is aiming for. That’s crucial, as Mud needs something to stick to.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The earnest attempt at family drama doesn't benefit from the abundance of movie-of-the-week cliches.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The film works better as an uncomfortable character drama than as a murky family mystery, which Karpovsky deepens with some psychobabble. Still, a nicely sinister and shuddersome effort.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Too many threads are woven together here, but occasionally, it just connects.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A lot of gleeful audience members are interviewed in Glee: The 3-D Concert Experience, though the source of their happiness could be a lot of things.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Patric and Baldwin react to all the morbidity with restraint, and Vassilieva keeps her bald head high. But they won't be able to help this barefaced vulgarity earn any terms of endearment.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A mopey indie family drama like In Our Nature can't quash "Mad Men" star John Slattery's charm no matter how badly it tries.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Our time spent with Nenette feel as stifling and airless as hers.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    For better or worse, the blood and bone-crunching remains most prominent.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Andrea Di Stefano’s filmmaking debut has a spotty sense of urgency, but we get to know neither Nick nor Escobar, so both the innocence and the fiery threat lack impact.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    His (Bateman) performance is fun. Too bad The Switch is not.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A lot of heart, a jaunty mariachi score and a lush Eisenhower-era look help as the family-friendly story follows the usual sports-drama plays.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There are parts of “Escape From New York,” “Air Force One,” “Cliffhanger” and countless Luc Besson movies strewn about. Big Game doesn’t stomp on their memory, but like an overenthusiastic fan, it does smother them with amateurish zeal.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Winds up feeling like a form of emotional tourism. The images recall Terrence Malick, but the film fills "atmosphere" into dry narrative holes where a story should reside.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Noble but dull.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Aniston is fine, and sometimes good even, in director Daniel Barnz’s maudlin and overly obvious drama. She has layered moments of sympathy as a woman afflicted with chronic pain. And unlike in the bad rom-coms she does too often, Aniston absolutely shows some serious chops.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Now CDL aficionados have One Day, though it is a tedious addition to this subspecies of rom-com, despite Anne Hathaway's efforts to make us fall for her regardless of the setting.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    It reads like a Cinemax special event, and as good as Leguizamo and Waterston are, the skeevy, fantasy-fulfillment plot that drives David Ross' movie is uncomfortably risky business.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    After a while, Vacation starts to reek like a car when the kids have their shoes off. Really, though, that stench is a studio digging through its old titles, trying to find something fresh to remake.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Lutz, who was a boy when his family fled the Long Island home, is full of belligerence in this chronicle of his family’s alleged run-in with a ghoulish home where a murder had occurred.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Heartening, and yet, a year after being filmed, unintentionally aggravating.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Though the film plays like late-era Woody Allen — not necessarily a good thing — and Goldberg’s rambunctiousness is more annoying than liberating, there’s a serious depth of feeling here. Bosworth, thankfully, is attuned to that, and makes the most of it.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There’s a good chunk of info for those eager to know how the sausage gets made, as well as the facts of life and death surrounding what we consume. You just have to pluck the PR feathers and find the good parts.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Sadly, the film gets mired in traditionalism, something the man himself always railed against. But worth a look for seeing intellectual bravery (still) at work.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Forget the minor, derivative scares in The Lazarus Effect. The real jolt here is seeing a well-known name playing a monstrous evil force.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Sadly, Hit & Run, for as much sporadic fun and genuine heart it has, runs out of gas. But it's not for lack of trying, and that counts for something.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The movie gets repetitive, and when it calls an audible and goes somewhere unexpected, it pulls back quickly. Too bad.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The only bit of machinery that makes the film move is Jason Statham, who's provided the steely saving grace in so many modern action movies.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There's a climactic putt, of course, but by then you wish Duvall would get one more "Tender Mercies" under his belt so you can forget about this tin cup of a family flick.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Taken 2 has a plot that could have been written by a GPS program, and contains all the technical charm that conjures up.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The class issues make them pariahs, the love scenes belong on Cinemax After Dark, and the emotions writer-director Catherine Corsini believes are so adult are clichéd. Still, Scott Thomas is beguiling as usual, the one expected thing that's welcome here
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Though diligently paced and sharp to look at, the mysteries inside Mother are, finally, bloodless.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Though it takes time to find its courage and heart, Gigante, like its oversized hero, merely has a slow, shy way of doing things.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    "Parnassus," while not unwatchable, is also an elephantine mess.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Sadly, this gorgeous-looking adult movie plays out the same theme over and over, never going anywhere surprising. At least we have Binoche to guide us to hell and back.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Insidious doesn't feature the lazy, home-video-style terror of "Paranormal Activity," thankfully. But it's also pretty normal activity for a ghost story.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A dramatic tale of survival and horrific memories struggles against distracting melodrama in Sarah's Key, and unfortunately, melodrama wins.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This is the kind of movie that, in order to puff itself up, quotes Meyer Lansky, Napoleon and Native American sayings. But according to Hoyle — as poker players would say — the film really just does boilerplate Hollywood drama.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Jeff Preiss soaks his movie in a brownish retro atmosphere, which helps smooth over the many dull spots, but only briefly. Though his cast is strong even when the movie lags, they often feel like soloists doing their own thing next to each other — always melodic but never truly meshing.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Haunting ideas and efficient storytelling, but director-cowriter Alex Rivera needed to fine-tune a bit more.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Danis Tanovic never undersells the anger and tension in the family, yet while the emotional underpinnings feel raw, much of "Cirkus" also winds up spinning 'round to obvious, if uncomfortable, places.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Janssen's affectionate, almost-1970s-style view of innocents-at-large may not be polished, but earns points for being from the heart.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Digs up familiar ground without adding any fresh dirt.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This stoners-meet-government-assassins mashup is as meandering and paranoid as a guy toking up in front of City Hall. Sometimes that’s amusing, but most of the time it’s tiring.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    If "Ice" never really solidifies, it's nonetheless the work of a filmmaker whose seriousness is worth watching out for.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    When boxing cliches work, they can deliver a knockout. When they don’t, as in Southpaw, we get just punch-drunk.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Peter Webber (“Girl With a Pearl Earring”) fills the film with conciliatory emotion and jarring vistas of post-atomic landscapes. Unfortunately, Emperor needs more good ol’-fashioned swagger.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Now Bell can break out of the genre. She's served her time.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This is just one nutso, painfully unfunny family flick.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This old-fashioned sword-and-sandal drama has all the bread and circuses we've come to know from the movies. It flirts with interesting story choices, but ultimately, all roads lead to boredom.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The Canyons has more in common with Schrader’s opulent immoral tableaux “The Comfort of Strangers,” “Auto Focus” and “The Walker” than with his other work (including the script for “Taxi Driver”). It’s weaker than those, though, and less biting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Marshall shows off the breathtaking landscape, but with interiors, he populates the ale houses and encampments with cliches - like dueling female warriors, one a mute and the other a white-haired vixen.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Juan Feldman trusts his actors to charm us, which they do — up to a point. But there’s only so much that can be wrung out of this spinster-meets-exotic stud, “Summertime”-lite affair.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Though much of the film's power is tamped down by the passive storytelling style, Dillane's performance as the adult Jakob is compelling, and Ayelet Zurer is beguiling as Jakob's late-in-life soul mate.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Hopped up like a Bugs Bunny cartoon on mescaline and as chatty and uppity as a 5-year-old, Burn After Reading could be seen as the Coen brothers' need to let loose after the tightly wound "No Country for Old Men."
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Smith ("American Movie") sees the poetry in everyday people, and lets his rambling story find its own rhythm.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Writer-director Will Slocombe presents a familiar buffet, but there’s good stuff to pick over.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    not a good comedy. But there's no airbrushing out the funny surrounding its star.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Some parents are mellow, and others have instilled emotional problems in their children. This less-than-illuminating work resembles the spelling-bee doc “Spellbound,” only with a promise of high-end endorsements and far more pampering.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The dissection and discussion, though well-intentioned, winds up lifeless.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Gugino is having a ball, but every scene feels like an oh-so-arch one-act.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This stately chiller owes a lot to 1960s British flicks like "The Innocents" and "The Haunting," but unfortunately heads towards cliches with every step.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This rambling, unfocused, shuffling documentary paints the famous standup in broad strokes, only occasionally providing worthy examples of how Winters inspired generations.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    It put-puts along like a moped in busy traffic, content to amble around but not go anywhere.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Feels stagy and anti-visceral.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    When "Pineapple" goes from ganja to genre, it sours.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Comedy characters change and grow. Sometimes, as we see in Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas, they become so much like old relatives that their edge is gone.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Unfortunately, there’s a more potent power present here: dullness.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The big problem here is that dark sci-fi satire works best when it aims for several targets. Repo Men aims at corporate greed, which is good, but doesn’t fill in the details.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Never achieves the David Lean style of epic it aims for - exterior vistas and interior dramas - but it has two charismatic performances, beautiful Chinese locations and an admirable lack of sentimentality.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Overshoots the mark by spinning its implausible, hyperviolent tale around too tight a family circle.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    If The Conjuring were less of a con job, horror fans would not feel equally as trapped.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Maddeningly mundane, this Romanian drama aims for an antiseptic look at random violence and, unfortunately, achieves it.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    That Awkward Moment is eminently forgettable — but worth remembering as Poots’ moment.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The 6- to 10-year-old audience this movie is aimed at deserved better.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Actors are left with too much time to play emotional symphonies, while inevitably having to hit too many required notes.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Don't expect to taste anything surprising.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Predators tries to spice up the hunt-or-be-hunted thesis, but from the get-go, director Nimrod Antal's movie has nowhere to run.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    While its tone and humanity offset the futility of each side's need for one crucial hill, much of this intense, honorable film is too drawn-out.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Cenac is witty and Heggins has a wary stillness, but the movie itself seems too shy to let them really engage each other.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Proudly matter-of-fact but, sadly, far from gripping.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Franco himself is ponderous playing Williams, which tends to overwhelm everything. A cool concept, and A for effort.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There’s no fleeing the clunkiness in No Escape.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Its young heroine is proud to be herself; there's just not much for her to do beyond that.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Apparently, it takes a village - or the collection of villages known as Los Angeles - to go nowhere slowly.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    About the kinds of showbiz hangers-on seen in the background of a Scorsese movie, and it feels like those guys decided they were the real stars.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A high-concept goof that’s hard-pressed to surmount its twee preposterousness.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Westby's nervy story is like "Desperately Seeking Susan" played straight. Let's hope O'Grady's next film meets this one's potential.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Like the bloated channels it parodies, the movie stretches to find something to say, then settles for stupid.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There are times when a Kilmer performance is like watching a clock move: well-timed and oddly compelling, even though it's totally predictable. That's the case with Felon, which doesn't belong to Kilmer but which he steals anyhow.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Duchovny tamps down his sardonic style to play a quiet guy, but the result is blandness. Timothy Hutton gives a solid turn as a standup businessman. In all, director Anthony Fabian isn’t sure how to build a nontreacly movie out of an inspiring true-life story.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There’s also little point and a garish quality that goes from pulp to junk fairly quickly, despite Pegg’s presence.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Every generation gets a "Big Chill," and this tired but well-meaning indie contains many clichés of the "pals-pondering-life" movies that came before.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Fanning's watcher is watchable, yet the kid-actress extraordinaire is so polished it kind of makes your head explode.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Hector wants to connect to our inner child, but it feels more like a long story from a good-hearted but dull grandparent.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The final fate of Adolf ­Eichmann is certainly a compelling subject. But its dramatic impact is severely diminished here by stilted filmmaking and wooden performances.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Yen, who also choreographed the fights, is a natural hero, and the large canvas and pseudo-superhero tactics work for a bit, but then the action gets sidetracked in place of myth-building.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    His humor works best when it's throw-away, but "Zohan" throws everything up to get a yuck. It's a shock to see how many "yuck!" moments Sandler settles for.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Calvary is like a philosophical Agatha Christie mystery. That’s certainly not the worst thing to be. But it’s also the film’s undoing, because the reliance on specific genre cliches undermines the movie’s more serious intentions.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This is an odd little directorial debut from Matthew Lillard - the onetime Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo," now a solid character actor thanks to "The Descendants" and "Trouble with the Curve" - but it has its rewards.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Perhaps afraid that watching a symbol of liberty repeatedly go boom isn’t enough, Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt add family drama, an attack on Congress, a plane crash and the possible nuking of the Middle East. What isn’t tonally jarring ends up shatteringly inept.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There’s far too many moments of sabre-rattling, and too much confusion about who is aligned with whom, and why. Those who know and love Tolkien’s texts will have a vested interest. Everyone else may grow restless.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The emotions veer from bawdy to sweet and then to obvious, though the film is stylish, and Dolan's artfulness helps when the movie loses focus.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Jaak Kilmi's remembrance of growing up under Soviet rule never tries to be anything more than a curiosity.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Dour animated adventure that aspires to holiday joy, but is as enjoyable as a sock full of coal.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    May feel especially like a statue covered in drapery. Unfortunately, the movie's attempts to steam things up feel about as exciting as an after-dinner mint.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Of the supporting performances, Gugino, Leguizamo and Wahlberg offer solid turns, but are let down by dialogue.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Movie references abound, but there's not enough humor to fuel even 90 minutes.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Most of the movie unfolds in such a dull manner.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The meta-satire hits you over the head until not just your Spidey sense is tingling.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    As an exercise in atmosphere, this claustrophobic creeper does a lot with a little, even if the movie winds up providing just superficial shivers.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Another nicely understated performance from Jesse Eisenberg anchors this shambling drama.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    “Um” winds up as empty as its mean streets are phony.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Cusack and Jane look like they’re improvising much of the time, and while that doesn’t lead to a better movie, the off-the-cuff approach is the best thing in the film.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Though the film’s untested cast struggles with the drama, and the sketched-out story is often banal (there are several amateurish calls-to-mom scenes), the presentation of a specific city subculture is etched from the heart.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Ferrera's shaggy tone, which fits the iconic building, gets irritating. Still, if you come for the stories, you'll stay for the company.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    There's less to Beastly than meets the eye - and what meets the eye is no great shakes, either.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Narratively static and morally banal. That may be par for the course, however, when half the movie is spent watching shallow kids try on other people’s clothes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A frosty-eyed, imperturbable actress in “Atonement,” “Hanna” and “The Host,” Ronan is at least able to sell Daisy’s new focus while the movie loses its own.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Has TOO much happening, which befits a comedy with a lot of targets but ultimately makes the whole operation scattershot.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Cathy Moriarty and other Scorsese alums pop up, but these mean streets feel too derivative to thrill.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Larysa Kondracki's fictionalized account of a true story is underserved by a melodramatic script; the result is like a film of a "60 Minutes" segment. Still, Weisz is strong and smart. And David Strathairn shows up in is-he-good-or-evil? mode.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Dignity dies a million deaths despite the best intentions.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Screenwriters Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair’s script feels like a first draft that was written in one night as they got pumped up on Red Bull and speed-watched Netflix. Guys: Another few polishes could only have helped.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The self-conscious poetry and Cruz's diagnosis of bipolar disorder threaten to add too many notes to this quiet drama.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Though Rust and Bone aims for a blasé attitude toward disabled drama - in a far more artificial way than another French film, "The Intouchables," did earlier this year - it's underwritten characters and hoary approach plunk it into mediocrity. As wheelchair-bound Stephanie practices her whale-training motions to Katy Perry's "Firework," it's eye-rollingly obvious.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A movie needs to announce if it's playing games. Pulling the rug out from under a viewer is fine for whodunnits and psychological thrillers and the usual suspects. But a supposedly grown-up drama like The Other Man ought to have scruples about where it plans to take you.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    A work of words as lovely as “The Prophet” deserves a better artistic interpretation than this animated venture, which consists mostly of pedestrian, ’70s-quality visuals.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    You’ll never buy an inexpensive T-shirt without feeling guilty again. At least not after seeing Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio’s thorough documentary, which explains something you already know — American manufacturing is dying.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The movie gets too claustrophobic, while its noble attempt to take on suffering remains laudable.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    William H. Macy has pitch-perfect instincts as an actor. As a movie director, he’s bound to do better than his first feature, this big-hearted, nicely paced but ho-hum character study.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    All of that ends up making this movie — originally titled “Jeff,” in a telling bit of overpersonalization — feel like a late-night cable-news hack job.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The “Millers” script — it took four writers to cobble together something that seems so slight — hits too many obvious notes between the moments when Aniston can strut her stuff.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    What Getaway needed most is enough juice to get to the finish line, narratively speaking. Because while jumping into the car is great, the fun dies fast if there’s nowhere to go.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Some of the talk gets a little bombastic, but it's hard to deny the thrill involved.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The fact that it stars the extremely funny Melissa McCarthy is both its saving grace and incredibly frustrating.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    No
    The result was remarkable, but the story of it, while true to the moment, needed — ironically — much more dynamism.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The long shadow of David Fincher's "Seven" falls on Anamorph, a moody, ultimately unexciting thriller.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Marries an unengaging love triangle to a flat visual style, nearly squashing the one good thing in it -- a scruffy, slouching performance from Peter Sarsgaard.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Becomes too melodramatic and bleakly obvious. Weaving, though, as always, is never less than magnetic.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Shares a spiritual link to the Japanese works of Hayao Miyazaki but lacks his films' narrative drive and magical overlay.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Goes about its game so bloodlessly, the result is some of the most unexciting action and seduction sequences in recent memory.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The story here, like a lot of bar bands, goes loud to cover up mediocrity. When Streep sings, though, so does the film.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Sergei Bodrov’s movie is based on a kids’ book in which Tom was a 12-year-old, and the actors wisely pitch their performances to a young crowd.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Weitz – who did a great job adapting Nick Hornby's "About a Boy" into an affecting 2002 movie – can't bring the pieces together here.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The great David Strathairn can make any film watchable, but even he can’t save this dry dramatic thriller.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    As a film, the result is static, like Ang Lee’s similarly muddled “Taking Woodstock.”
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Empathy for the all-too-real plight of the working poor drives this heavy but bold indie. Sadly, though, it falters under the weight of too much drama.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Feiffer sometimes gets snagged on the look-at-me nature of her meta-performance, veering from pathological to pathetic, and not always in the best way.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Sometimes, less is more. Case in point: Thanks for Sharing, a film that’s a little too eager to be ID’d as a “sex addiction dramedy.” As a result, solidly grounded performances from almost all the cast members wind up playing second fiddle to navel-gazing.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    It's the same movie town we've seen many times before, with dingy mechanic's shops, barren parking lots and a greasy-spoon diner where all the clichés come together.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The movie lumbers, and Loach and screenwriter Rona Munro's affectless approach winds up tamping down the movie's good intentions.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Yes, there are good moments from a team of veteran British actors, but overall, this return visit to the 2012 gray-set rom-com is deadly dull.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Gandolfini scoops up another chance to show off the gentleness he left at home during six seasons of “The Sopranos.”
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This earnest, at times touching, reach-for-your-dreams doc about musical hopefuls in middle age gets sidetracked quickly. When it should focus on a reunited R&B group, it wallows in the self-aggrandizement of an L.A. producer and, most awkwardly, a New York cabaret singer.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    In either a stunningly brave or misguided act of meta-absurdity, Real Steel, which is about a boy, his dad and the robot that changes their lives, actually feels as if it were made inside the mind of a kid obsessed with robots.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Writer-director David M. Rosenthal fills this dewy road-trip movie with too many cliches. From the glimpses we get of Shue's character, that may have been a more rockin' story.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Velvety storytelling still feels more thawed-out than heated.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Boasting perhaps the most bored-sounding voice-over ever, this unexceptional drama imagines itself - much as its young heroine does - to be far more noteworthy than it actually is.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    All those cliched literary trappings come together in Stuck in Love, but the final product feels more like a footnote than a finished work.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Unlike last year's superior "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer" - which put its grade-school heroine through similarly seasonal woes - "Dog Days" squanders several chances to find something magical in the mundane.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    "Field of Dreams" this ain't, and Crowe, whose "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous" are justly held in high esteem, can't build the right frame here. It's neither fish nor fowl; a "guy-gets-his-life-right" rom-com runs smack into a "kids-with-animals" lark.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This sometimes-taut little thriller is sullied by its unnecessary masquerade as a documentary presented by HBO’s gonzo news show “Vice.”
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The film doesn't play games; it's basically just Lucas going through a short story-like period of reflection and redemption almost entirely without dialogue. It's not enough, but it is what this underappreciated actor does best.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    If you're going to have a ghost in your movie, it might be a good thing to present a viable alternative to that ghost. Mama, however, presents a battle between two not very good options before crumbling like a sheet on a string.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    It may not be one of his finest roles or one of his more memorable films. But in its own way, Boulevard may be one that says the most about him.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Despite the incongruous romance and abrupt action beats, Crowe gives a likable, sympathetic performance. But it all starts to dry up before our eyes. Emotions feel false or melodramatic, flashbacks are drawn out and coincidences and connections are forced.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Just another loud, boy-centric comedy aimed at ’tweens. The movie turns a slight children’s book — in this case, Judith Viorst’s 1972 fave, from which it takes mainly the title — into a charmless mishmash.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi did a wonderful job adapting “The Borrowers” into “The Secret World of Arriety.” But this slow-moving film, also from a book, tends to plod rather than float.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This drama, as traditional as its subject was epochal, is earnest and studious to a fault. Rarely has a film about upheaval felt more like a textbook.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s often ludicrous, occasionally thoughtful epic, puts theology front-and-center, and doubles down on its blockbuster ingredients — like adding huge rock monsters with glowing eyes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    This National Geographic production mixes two amazing adventures, neither of them quite what you expect.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The result is that, as with Hanks' performance, what's missing - subtlety, truth, an earned sense of rebirth – is stronger than what's here. Despite all the connections in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it never connects to us the way we need it to.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Despite a few fiery breaths, there’s mostly hot air from a lot of serious actors slumming it.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The film's major action sequences are never exciting, and even the now-requisite destruction of New York feels lazy.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Though much of the film is overcooked and overwrought, it’s well-played, and writer-director Kieran Darcy-Smith keeps us guessing, and watching.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The cutesy energy is just too much in this Aussie comedy that’s overly bemused by its quirkiness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Kidman is able to draw you in even as the movie's solemn, morbid obviousness wears you out.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Orphan doesn't add much to the genre except, disturbingly, a fetishistic bent that's creepy in the wrong way.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    For all the trickiness and bluster, Shutter Island is dead inside.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Director Scott Teems' film is as quiet as untilled soil -- not always a good thing -- but Holbrook has a handle on where to dig.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The forced coming-of-age parable that filmmaker Joe Wright laces with fairy-tale symbolism is heavy-handed from the get-go.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    The big twist to Closed Circuit is stated in the film’s TV ads, so even the element of surprise is lost. There may have been the making of a juicy, episodes-long BBC series here, but as it is, there’s barely any juice at all.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Scenes of the director as a school-age boy in a Varda film are haunting, but end up simply sparking a desire to see Varda's work.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Safe House devolves into unexciting action scenes that feel left over from the "Bourne" flicks and are peopled with cloak-and-dagger stereotypes.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    It's laughably, eye-rollingly absurd.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Bloom's watchfulness and brittle seriousness anchors The Good Doctor, even as it wanders away from reality and into its own bizarre world.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Joe Neumaier
    Kosinski’s ultimately underwhelming film leads nowhere. As its palpable sense of dread — well-sustained in a gently cascading first hour — gives way to dead ends, this Omega Movie shoots itself in the foot.

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