Caryn James

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?

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

A mystery about retirees who solve cold cases for fun, it is as gentle as a game of Clue and as cozy as an Agatha Christie novel, but its glittering cast and a touch of self-awareness make up for that lack of originality. This modestly entertaining film is uncool and filled with stock tropes, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything more.

Looking through these layers of time, this flashy, extravagant rock musical, which opens today at the Ziegfeld, elevates style to a symptom and cause of social change. And though it aims for more coherence than it delivers, it has endless flair with no self-importance...For all its unevenness, Absolute Beginners is high pop culture.

Miller Costanzo’s debut is more than promising. It should stand as a wonderfully accomplished launch to a bright career.

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.

Finally Dawn is uneven, and at 2 hours and 20 minutes indulgently long, but it is also full of texture, wit and a few done-to-perfection set pieces.

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.

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

Don't be misled by commercials that make The Ref look like slapstick silliness. This is a grown-up film that delights in undermining Christmas cliches.

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.

Throughout, Colman and Cumberbatch's performances make the dialogue much funnier than it sounds in print.

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

Child's Play has some limp dialogue among the clever touches. Its appeal is clearly for upscale horror fans rather than a general movie audience. Yet it is a fitting successor to the classic television horror stories it takes off from.

For now, Sweeney's celebrity still overshadows her acting.

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]

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.

This film is as slick and shiny as Glinda's lip gloss, but it may also be just what its many fans want.

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.

A drama with dazzling visuals, subtle performances and deft nods to classics like Days of Heaven and Bonnie and Clyde. ... While Dreamland doesn’t entirely overcome its familiar trajectory, the film is so stunning in every other way that its narrative shortcoming hardly matters.

Writer and director Richard Tanne (Southside With You, about Barack and Michelle Obama's first date) takes what sounds like a terrible idea and transforms it into a sleek, well-played romance that largely makes the cliches believable.

It's hard to create tension when the stakes are so low. But the film's breezy tone and ultimately strong emotional depths make up for that flaw. This big-hearted Thor, thundering and sensitive, may be just the diverting hero we need right now.

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

At times it's as if the film itself was stitched together from the parts of other movies, but collecting all those bits and pieces is a sign of Gyllenhaal's huge scope and ambition.

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.

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.

Alice Englert expertly finds the line between satire and sincerity, mocking the slipperiness of the spiritual-enlightenment industry while acknowledging the serious intentions of the people — in this case very well-heeled customers — who think it’s at least worth a try.

Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Emerald Fennell's new take on the classic romance is far from faithful to the original book – but it is "utterly absorbing" in its own right.