Keane (2004)

As the title character, Damian Lewis gives a wholehearted performance but his situation never quite rings true: after the abduction of his daughter from the New York Port Authority bus terminal, Keane teeters on the edge of insanity (but then doesn't), struggles to scrounge cash to continue his hotel limbo (but then doesn't) and for the benefit of the viewer (but not for the believability of the story), he also helpfully provides an out-loud commentary of his mad thoughts.

★★☆☆☆

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No Reservations (2007)

If you stir through this watery soup, you can occasionally glimpse the ingredients director Scott Hicks was playing with in the kitchen and see what his dish was supposed to be (an emotionally-stunted chef discovers love when she takes in an orphaned niece and meets a man) but the movie is served up in such a limp fashion and with so little energy, it takes on the flavour of a reprimand levelled at a successful career woman who, even though she is able to run the kitchen of a popular New York restaurant and takes in an orphaned niece without hestitation and is polite, calm and friendly with neighbours and colleagues, is nonetheless treated like a mental case, called a loon, and ushered off to therapy sessions with a psychologist because she isn't devastated at not having an Aaron Eckard with Point Break tresses in her life.

★☆☆☆☆

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Nim's Island (2008)

Perhaps if you've read Wendy Orr's children's book this kids movie about an island-dwelling girl, her father missing at sea, and a San Franciscan author of adventure novels who overcomes neuroses to come to the girl's rescue, doesn't seem so inane, but if you haven't, the movie is a not very interesting jumble of disparate details including a volcano, Doctor Doolittle animals that all but talk, Australian tourists, fantasy muses, and caricatures, not characters, with Jodie Foster's Alexandra Rover, for one, stumbling about in a mackintosh hat like Paddington Bear.

★☆☆☆☆

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Signs (2002)

This movie about a Pennsylvanian family struggling to maintain normalcy as they monitor media reports of a series of strange goings-on across the globe, benefits greatly from having been made by M Night Shyamalan while he was still committed to making good movies, and before its lead, Mel Gibson, embarked on a series of strange goings-on around the world all of his own.

★★★★☆

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