When the movie "21" was announced with Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne, it sounded like a winner.

When everybody else involved in "21" was mentioned, it was doomed to be a loser.

• The Descendants
• The American

Someone told me I'd have to suspend my disbelief when I saw Battleship.

Not true. After a while you have no brain left with which to disbelieve.

Battleship is a loud lobotomy.

• CineVegas 2006

Boy, Beginners was a movie I was hoping and planning to like.

It had Christopher Plummer in a role that had to be tours de force and probably even Oscar worthy. It had Ewan McGregor, who is a solid talent.

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
• The Mighty Macs
• 2009 Oscars
• Fantastic Mr. Fox

Blood Diamond is a movie zircon.

It doesn't cut glass, but it cuts plot, character, and credibility. It could be Hotel Rwanda, but instead it's Motel Deep-Six.

• The Descendants
• A Serious Man
• Burn After Reading

Cars 2 runs out of gas. It's on fumes -- and some of them pretty noxious.

• Date Night

• Date Night

Chloe is an atrocious movie. It's artsy-fartsy-tartsy.

A female voice-over at the beginning says, "I can become your unflinching dream."

I flinched.

Pretension does that to me.

I think when they started filming Cloverfield, somebody accidentally dropped the camera. Someone else said, "Cool."

So they kept dropping the camera. And they threw it, and jerked it, and kicked it. And it went into terminal spasms.

Who is Adam M. Stone?

He represents the essence of The Company You Keep.

Is he the director? No, that's Robert Redford.

Is he the screenplay writer? No, that's Lem Dobbs.

• Straw Dogs
• 2009 Oscars
• Crazy Heart
• DVD: Bring it on, Joan

A Dangerous Method is a lustreless squabble.

In today's movie comedies, wit is as rare as Angostura bitters.

If movie comedies were stored at the supermarket, most would be in the day-old section. They certainly aren't fresh.

Education is under attack. It always has been.

If the essence of education is independent thinking, it's in free fall these days.

What's the difference between slasher films and chick flicks? In slasher films they suffer less, and they die quicker. Evening, bless its banal heart, is a chick flick in all its fatuous glory.

People Magazine picked Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as, "The Best Film of the Year!" At least that's what the ads blare.

• Fame
• Feast of Love

A 3-ring circus goes to Lowell, Massachusetts, in The Fighter. Based on actual events, this circus is mayhem.

In the main ring are the daredevils, led by junior welterweight boxer "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg).

• The Black Swan

Four Lions is a wayward, fitful attempt at incisive comedy.

• Get Smart

• The Hangover

A Good Day to Die Hard might be titled Rocky and Bullwinkle Die Hard. Except it's not that subtle. Or that good.

• Very Bad Things
• Hancock

• 500 Days of Summer
• The Happening

Happy-Go-Lucky is flibbertigibbet cinema.

Mike Leigh directed Sally Hawkins in this paean to a peahen.

Alfred Hitchcock should not have made musicals. He didn't.

Probably Clint Eastwood should not make sentimentalized, epical films about wish fulfillment. But there's Hereafter.

There has been a lot of discussion by reviewers whether or not I'm Still Here is a put-on.

• A Serious Man

• Albert Nobbs
• The Iron Lady

• 2009 Oscars
• The Hurt Locker

• Seven for the Holidays

• A Serious Man

• Shame

• CineVegas question and answer sessions
• CineVegas Blowout!

Giuseppe Tornatore's Malena lacks emotional resonance

• Unstoppable
• The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

• Where have all the flowers gone?

Micmacs is a Gallic mishmash.

It's a sloppy souffle that falls more than it rises. It's airless whimsy.

The already flopping Monkeybone deserves its fate

The film Monkeybone is a raucous mess. Director Henry Selick mixes animation and live action to the noisy, clumsy detriment of both.

• I Knew Hitchcock, and You're No Hitchcock

• Nowhere Boy

Scientologists, forget wives.

Get Tom Cruise some actresses. Please.

Cruise's forte, as an actor, is his solid credibility. But in Oblivion he has more chemistry with drones than with his two love interests.

• Censorship

• Date Night
• 500 Days of Summer

• Date Night

• The Academy Awards of Predictability
• 2008 Oscars
• On the Aisle

Rambo and Stallone

Do you want disembowelment and decapitation with your popcorn? Is gore glorious? Is brutality orgasmic? Is spurting blood the fountain of fun?

If so, Rambo is 4 U.

• "The future, Mr. Gits, the future"
• The Academy Awards of Predictability
• 2008 Oscars
• The Reader

• The Runaways
• Revolutionary Road

Righteous Kill

Imagine this conversation

A phone call between actor Bob De Niro and director Marty Scorsese

Bobby: Hello, Marty. I've been calling and texting, but you never answer.

(Silence)

Alaska has its Bridge to Nowhere. The movie The Road has its Bridge to Less Than Nowhere.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a film full of sound and fury signifying WTF. It's slick shtik.

Films that are aimed at a particular target audience can cause a critic dyspepsia.

• A Dangerous Method
• We Need to Talk About Kevin
• The Iron Lady
• Shame

• Stay for the Credits!

• Beginners
• Somewhere

• Funny People

Writer Charlie Kaufman is the pseudo-intellectuals' "intellectual." He's pompous, self-flagellating and pretentious. So they love him.

Kaufman makes Sarah Palin seem humble.

• Pirate Radio
• Taking Woodstock

• CineVegas 2006

Animator Chuck Jones was a brilliant master of comic destruction. It had wit, style, and grace.

Director Michael Bay is a master of destruction. It is witless, styleless, and graceless.

• The Debt
• Josh Bell hates everything: Terrence Malick: genius or fraud?
• The Tree of Life

Trouble with the Curve should be titled Trouble with the Cliche.

It was not written by a hitter; it was written by a hacker.

Unraveled is a con job.

It has the clammy hands of its crooked main figure all over it.

• On the Aisle

• Josh Bell hates everything: Destroying the world, one movie at a time
• 2012

There are chick flicks and upchuck flicks. The movie Because I Said So is an upchuck chick flick.

• Where have all the flowers gone?

• Please Give

• Side Effects
• The Descendants
• The Good German

• Goon
• The Green Hornet

• The Conspirator
• The Men Who Stare at Goats
• State of Play: TV vs. Movie
• State of Play
• Lions for Lambs

• The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

• Adventureland

Sugar and Spice is more like snips and snails and puppy dog tails

• Iron Man 2
• Tropic Thunder

• The Debt

• Hating for two

• The Debt

• Hating for two

• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

• Chloe

• Sleepless Night

• "The future, Mr. Gits, the future"

• The Debt

• Audio Interview with Stockard Channing

• Transatlantic Coffee