Avoid: Amelia

There had been some early talk that Hilary Swank could nab her third Oscar nod -- if not win -- from the biopic Amelia. But the reviews have begun trickling in, and if The New York Times has its finger on the pulse of a serious movie-watching public, this film is a dud not worth the $10 admission ticket.

Manohla Dargis writes:

Alas, excesses of any pleasurable kind are absent from this exasperatingly dull production. ... I don’t recall a single dented automobile or a fissure of real feeling etched into a face.

...

The actors (Swank and Richard Gere) don’t make a persuasive fit, despite all their long stares and infernal smiling. (The movie is a more effective testament to the triumphs of American dentistry than to Earhart or aviation.) It’s hard to imagine anyone, other than satirists, doing anything with the puerile, sometimes risible dialogue. The screenwriters, Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, give Earhart a voice-over even as they forget her voice.

Harsh.