Caryn James

Foe plays to the strengths of its actors, two of the most natural and subtle on screen, and is endlessly engaging even though it eventually stumbles into head-spinning narrative problems.

The film’s slow-burn pace is an asset, not a flaw. Speak No Evil works best when it focuses on the Americans’ escalating fears, and collapses near the end when the psychological horror story turns into a predictable potboiler. But for a good three-quarters of the way, this Blumhouse production is an entertainingly elevated genre piece.

Richard Tuggle's new film wants to be a realistic thriller, but it merely acts out kids' fantasies of heroism and adventure, with drugs and rock music thrown in for a contemporary twist.

The actors keep the film going, at times by sheer magnetic on-screen presence even when the screenplay lets them down.

With a scatter-shot style that includes lengthy, often lame song-and-dance parodies, as well as special effects, slapstick and satire, the film can't begin to sustain its lunatic premise. But during the lulls between witty scenes, there is always something amusing to look at. Mr. Temple and his collaborators create a near-California so cartoonish and crayon-colored that the film comes to seem like Aliens in Toyland.

Major League trots out the standard formula, but has the wit to make fun of it now and then. The film is so loopy that it glides over its cliches and indulges in some congenial movie-baseball silliness.

It is a competent, occasionally witty genre piece that never tries to be anything more.

On Swift Horses isn't a disaster, but given its stars and potential, it is a disappointment.

It remains what it always was: a charming, escapist fairy tale.

Stephen Frears's film is always lively and often shrewd, but in the end Hero is at war with itself. The movie's Capraesque heart is locked in battle with its cynical, contemporary brain.

Major Payne takes about an hour and 10 minutes before it wallows in sappiness. That's not a bad record for a formula family comedy in which the ending is clear from the start.

The film has its entertaining, off-the-wall comic moments.

The best superhero movies let you ignore how ludicrous the plots are, but the silliness of The Fantastic Four is always in your face.

Casper is not the kind of smartly written movie that works on children's and adult levels at once. But with its lively pace, smashing visual tricks and one of the cutest heroes on screen, it is an engaging fantasy for very small children.

Despite all the insider’s access, though, in the end the behind-the-scenes episodes offer the illusion of intimacy, rather than anything really illuminating.

Chalamet gives Dylan a defiant look in his eyes and through these later scenes creates a visceral sense of his restlessness, of how important it is for him to break free of the public assumptions about him, both musically and as the spokesman of a generation. You can finally feel an energy that can't be restrained and that should have been in the film all along.

As an emotional journey Day One has its moments. For a supposedly scary movie, it's a little bit sloppy.

Beavan's costumes are dazzling throughout, including Cruella's glittering red dress at the Baroness's gala. But when the costumes overwhelm the characters and story, there's something hollow at the film's centre.

The other miracle is that the two stars of It Could Happen to You keep it sailing over a script that is often as predictable and flat as the movie's new title.

And as always in Peele films, clues and echoes are so detailed and carefully planted that it's hard to spot everything the first time through. He is still a master filmmaker, and even a mediocre Jordan Peele film is better than the strongest film of an ordinary director. Nope is that mediocre film.

It is funny, irreverent and crowd-pleasing, with a kaleidoscope of likeable characters and actors. Director Craig Gillespie (Cruella and I, Tonya) has turned a saga that ended up before a Congressional finance committee into a breezy entertainment.

While it lacks the ambition to turn its obvious plot into a film that feels new, it also avoids the pitfalls of moral smugness and stereotyping. It flows along easily, bolstered by Taraji P. Henson’s and Sam Rockwell’s vibrant performances.

Its detailed fantasy world, including a dark turn-of-the-century mining town and candy-colored futuristic space bikes, is as alluring as any live-action film. Yet this two-hour story about a lost princess, a flying island and space pirates is liable to strain the patience of adults and the attention spans of children.

You might call this the scattershot school of film making... The result of being pushed and pulled through the confusing styles of Near Dark is simple exhaustion.

The deepest flaw in My Policeman is that we grasp too little of the characters' inner lives.

While Channing Tatum is charismatic, and there are a few flashes of wit in the script, the latest Magic Mike sequel is 'tepid'.

It is impossible to separate Mr. Hartman's writing and direction from Mr. Horton's smooth, sophisticated camera work, which offers a broad view of the cluttered streets and also peers up narrow stairwells to suggest Mac's claustrophobic life. However their collaboration worked, ''No Picnic'' does not look or sound quite like any other film, and that's more than you can say about most movies of any size.

My Best Friend Is a Vampire does manage to come up with a few witty scenes.

Would have been better if it had been sleeker and shorter. After all, this film isn't aiming for high-toned drama, just high-energy entertainment, which is what it delivers.

The longer it gets, the loopier it gets. [19 Jan 1992, p.13]

The film’s immersion into the anti-abortion movement — with a smattering of pro-choice voices woven in — is consistently fascinating. But Lowen’s measured approach also raises a question: How loud does a warning cry have to be to register? Eye-opening though it is, at times Battleground is muted to a fault.

The Seventh Continent is one of the most stylish films in this year's New Directors/New Films series. With its fragmented pattern of beautifully composed and repeated images from middle-class life, it rejuvenates a 1960's style that would seem to be exhausted by now. But the Austrian writer and director Michael Haneke pulls viewers through a good portion of the film on the sheer strength of his visual flair, avoiding the classic trap of how to create a film about boredom that is not boring.

The Hunt is a smart satire that uses genre tropes to explore volatile social issues.

Graceful but slight, in the end The Movie Teller tries to do too much and accomplishes too little to fulfill its big ambitions.

Craig's performance is wily and joyful, and the film's biggest flaw is that there is too little of him, as Johnson often turns the spotlight from Blanc to other characters.

But it takes on a quieter, more psychological tone and becomes infinitely better when Fiennes arrives.

This slick movie proves how much fun it can be to watch first-rate actors challenge our credulity and rise above a second-rate script.

With a little more wit and a little less blood, Renegades could have been Lethal Weapon Jr. It is a fast, violent, implausible film about mismatched partners, and though it doesn't exactly break the bounds of its trashy genre, it's not at all bad for what it is.

The fights are about as sophisticated as watching kids in a playground, and they rely heavily on slow motion, as if that will instantly create tension.

The satire of the 50's is more bland than biting, dependent on authentically garish costumes and sets. And when the horror-film scenes begin to intrude on normal life (what is hanging from the cellar ceiling, anyway?) Mr. Balaban can't make the dark elements seem comic enough to mesh with the rest of this nightmarish joke.

Enormously good-natured - exactly the wrong tone for a comedy that needs all the rambunctious lunacy it can get. Instead, this story of an American mistakenly deported to Mexico as an illegal alien is amiable and plodding, the very last things you'd expect from Cheech, with or without Chong.

Sometimes eloquent and often rocky, Magic Hour is good enough to make you wish it was much less predictable.

With its homogenized flavor, this Body Snatchers seems like a movie made BY pod people, FOR pod people.

Peter Werner, who has directed some stylish television shows (''Moonlighting'' episodes and the mini-series ''L.B.J.: The Early Years'') is competent but dull here. The endless car chases through parking garages and close-ups of the two friends talking seem conceived for a television-size scale and budget, then blown up to fill a larger screen.

Though the story evokes old movie formulas - from Strangers on a Train to the 1952 film The Narrow Margin, which inspired it - this film does not reinvent them. It dully echos their conventions.

Can't Buy Me Love has an identity crisis that's a mirror-image of Ronald's own. He thinks he wants popularity at any price, though he's really a sincere guy. The film thinks it wants to be sincere, when all it truly wants is to be popular, just like the other kids' movies, so it sells off its originality.

Selena y Los Dinos remains a slick doc most likely to appeal to her fans.

This story of corruption and conspiracy in a small Louisiana town might have passed as a taut if familiar action thriller — if it had actually been taut.

Karia’s attempts to make the play cinematic work well at times.

Howard the Duck' begins as a mild satire about a duck who fell to earth, but midway through, the star is upstaged by horrifying demons and dazzling light shows.

Satisfaction is a typical, low-budget summer movie, where everyone has a hot romance, a good body and an expensive haircut.

The film, from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, is a typical action-comedy that benefits greatly from its two stars, and slightly from their unexpected characters, before plunging fast into explosive but trite set-pieces.

With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.

Only the comic parts soar, and they fit uneasily with the pallid romance and half-hearted family drama.

Mr. Romero, who adapted the screenplay from Michael Stewart's novel, wraps up more loose ends than anyone cares about, yet leaves some nagging bits of illogic.

Darkman sustains mild interest throughout, but it never takes off, partly because a real-estate scam, gangland shootouts, city corruption and a love story clutter up the sad story of Westlake's strange mutation.

Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.

In the end, Now and Then doesn't work well enough as nostalgia for adults or as a story that girls today might identify with. Yet its young ensemble makes it vibrant and enjoyable, even when it fails to surprise.

The film is lively and detailed enough so it is never boring, but it never takes off dramatically or realizes its intriguing possibilities either.

It is a quirky, ambitious, praiseworthy project that somehow becomes a victim of all the cliches it was invented to avoid.

Martin Short can do anything, it seems, except find the right movies to star in.

The new film is much pokier in its pacing, with duller characters. Despite some highlights, including Branagh in top form as an even more somber than usual Poirot, the film is watchable but it is also something lethal to a mystery: uninvolving.

Elm Street 4' does have an endless onslaught of astonishing, often grotesque special effects .Mr. Harlin only has to keep things moving, which he does with restless camera work, swirling high above Freddy and his victims. Freddy, who says I am eternal, seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, immune to directors and scripts.

The best that can be said for the film is that it leaves Ernest behind now and then to focus on Santa, who is played by Douglas Seale with sweetness, sincerity and an amazing amount of dignity, considering his surroundings.

There is plenty to admire technically in his drama . . . But its substance is a mashup of ill-fitting parts, indebted to both Romeo and Juliet and Douglas Sirk.

Shaped by a near-constant monologue from a golden retriever named Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain is watchable but flat, with only occasional flashes of wit and feeling.

Although Manville and Hinds are always worth watching, it’s obviously a problem when the actors and the scenery so thoroughly overshadow a film’s story.

For all its clever updatings, stylish action and witty escapism, Licence to Kill is still a little too much by the book. Mr. Dalton is perfectly at home as an angry Bond, and as a romantic lead and as an action hero, but he never seems to blend any two of those qualities at once.

There are some grotesquely stylish and scary moments in Phantasm II, the sequel to a 1979 film that Don Coscarelli made as a precocious 25-year-old. Unfortunately, these episdoes seem to take as long to arrive as the sequel did.

It’s an intriguing premise. ... But The Greatest Hits is the kind of film that should sweep you away with its charm and emotion. Instead, it’s too transparently button-pushing to go beyond the stale tropes of the weepy drama.

Death Wish 4 is as efficient and predictable as Kersey himself, and inoffensive as long as you can root for a sociopathic hero.

From characters to camera angles, this story of a self-absorbed jazz trumpeter is one long cliche, the kind that might make his most loyal admirers wince and wonder, Spike, what happened?

Ernest Goes to Jail so resembles a high-spirited cartoon that it is likely to be more amusing to children and less painfully obnoxious for parents than its predecessors.

With its sluggish script and unaging characters, The Karate Kid Part III has the rote sense of film makers trying to crank out another moneymaker.

Though the film hints at psychological intrigue, it never moves beyond the limits of its genre.

These robots transform in a flash; the colors are shocking pinks and electric greens; the film is packed with one-to-one combat, large-scale battles and exploding planets. Despite these improvements, though, the movie is not for anyone too grown-up.

The movie The Baby-Sitters Club offers the same comfort factor as the books, but suffers from a definite lack of excitement.

Mildly informative but superficial, Shooting the Mafia is much less dynamic than its title.

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a lame attempt to cash in on her character's success.

The cast, though, is full of extraordinary actors, who do what they can to redeem a lame script and style.

When Stoney explains that Milk Duds belong to one of the four major food groups, the dairy group, that's about as funny as things get. For a film that prides itself on throwing around Pauly-isms like fully (meaning yes), and grindage (food), Encino Man is surprisingly not buff (cool).

Back to the Beach opened yesterday. But if you catch a television commercial for it, or the rock video that's on television, you'll get the joke and see the most this movie has to offer.

This new Rebecca feels as if someone at Downton Abbey were having a bad day.

Renfield is worth watching for Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina's entertaining performances, and not much more.

In this film, suspense and psychological horror have given way to superhuman strength and resilience...The one effectively handled scene is the last, which promises a sequel with a feminist twist.

Disturbing for all the wrong reasons.

A flawed little time capsule, the doc veers uneasily between kindly character portrait and shallow attempt at media studies.

The Iron Claw's shallowness and eventual treacliness are especially disappointing.

A superficial and sporadically witty piece aimed at such easy targets as family squabbles, small-town folk and beauty contests. The film is not actively awful; just dull and banal. [28 Apr 1989, p.C12]

Though the script for Hellbound is related to the Barker story, the film drops its plot whenever a fake-looking monster walks on the screen. Ogling strange creatures is the film's true reason for being.

Julie Bovasso as Mr. Alda's Italian mother and Joe Pesci as his sleazy brother-in-law infuse their roles with as much life as possible, but they can't overcome the dullness of Mr. Alda's wedding.

Anyone old enough to have a license is probably much too old to be amused by License to Drive. Though the plot and action never get better than a television movie of the week, the engaging cast brings much more style to the material than it deserves. [06 July 1988, p.C17]

There is nothing radical or especially distinctive about the style of this mildly entertaining documentary.

Bill Murray has a single scene as Lord Krylar, an amalgam of all droll Bill Murray characters. William Jackson Harper is wry as a sympathetic telepath, who unfortunately disappears for much of the film.

It's commercially calculated to have something for everyone - suspense, humor, even a bounty hunter from the krites' planet who poses as a rock star. Unfortunately, the film doesn't have the humor or the budget to match any of these goals.

While Pain Hustlers is a perfectly fine title, the film probably should have been called Liza Drake, the name of the sales rep played by Emily Blunt, who single-handedly almost saves this tone-deaf drama from itself.

In the end, Baby God does little more than check one more name on a list of predators.

The script, which he wrote with Alain Le Henry, is as confusing and tiresome as the direction. What is meant to be a touching, comic relationship between Marx and Johnny is simply flat.