Andy Klein

This is after all a romantic comedy, not a romantic tragedy, though you might not realize it since it’s almost devoid of humor.

For fans of the franchise, Evil Dead Rises marks a welcome return to the seamless blend of humor and genuine scares and creepiness that Raimi created 42 years ago.

Harrelson is enjoyable as always, and the rest of the cast delivers, but the film is too warm, fuzzy, predictable, and by the numbers to be anything more than a pleasant diversion that will vanish from your mind by the time you leave the multiplex.

The film operates like a clockwork mechanism. If there were foul-ups or major implausibilities—as such trick plots often have—they eluded me.

Instead of gags, we’re treated to endless observations about love, commitment, romance, parental responsibilities, and other well-trod subjects. None of this is particularly insightful or interesting.

Spinal Tap is still on the right side of the fine line between stupid and clever.

In the end, it's all just too damned much. It's more exhausting than edifying.

But by the end the audience, along with Clayton, has been jerked around so many times that it's almost too exhausting...By then, it's almost impossible to care.

May display an energetic and promising talent, but it is also uncomfortably close to being a 105-minute music video, with all the problems that suggests.

So uplifting, it's almost...gross.

It's not really a kids' film, nor it is particularly funny, by either design or execution. It is, rather, Columbus' latest attempt at a comically tinged tearjerker.

The film is overwrought, slow, and portentous, with confusing surreal elements and a narrative time scheme that's impossible to keep track of.

Despite the generally likable characters and the abundance of clever ideas, Lustig mucks it all up with her "trick" editing.

Except for a few slow patches, the movie is compulsively watchable: You keep waiting to see just how sick things are going to get.

Sad to say, the story is simply too slight to sustain the film.

Manages the seemingly impossible task of being very funny indeed and being as dark as anything Wong has ever made. This is an almost painfully bleak comedy that makes you squirm in the manner of “The Out-of-Towners.”

A warning is virtually mandated: No one who's even the least bit squeamish should even think about seeing Audition. But, if you have a taste for the disturbing, it's a trip that will stay with you for some time.

An uninspired, standard-issue mimeo whose only distinguishing feature is a reversal in its casting.

Maniacally funny. It remains neck and neck with "Young Frankenstein" as Brooks' best film.

The film is a masterpiece of nuance and characterization, marred only by an inexplicable, utterly distracting blunder at the very end.

Its tone has elements of Jim Jarmusch and the Coen brothers but without Jarmusch's self-conscious artiness or the Coens' hip snottiness.

At first glance, Schizopolis may seem like no more than a grab-bag of tricks and gimmicks, but repeat viewings reveal a more coherent pattern.

More involving and intriguing than any by-the-numbers studio thriller. In large part, it holds our interest because of its stylistic boldness, not despite it.

There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland -- some very good -- but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best.

This is not Tsui's best film by a substantial margin, but it's immense fun.

On the up side, there are some genuinely funny jokes, and Oedekerk has been wise enough to keep the running time down to 82 minutes, including the eight-minute closing credit sequence (which is worth staying through its entirety). But Kung Pow! is no "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"

The story is just as funny and touching. The only problem is the inevitable one: The freshness -- the novel delight -- is a little faded now.

The muddiness of the basic concept and the thinness of its execution eventually defeat even Witherspoon's talents.