Caryn James

The film is lovely in the graceful way it executes its unsurprising content, and the actors make it soar even at its most predictable.

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

A film that assumes it's up to the job of dealing with life and death and love, but is not even up to dealing with lobsters.

[A] witty, entertaining remake.

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

Director Anne Fletcher has made better rom-coms, like The Proposal, but they had better scripts. Written by producer Kristin Hahn, Dumplin’ clings timidly to its YA roots, which are firmly on the unsophisticated side of the spectrum.

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.

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

The film becomes more exhausting than tense. In the end, all that manipulation backfires. Unlike the best of its genre, the rote Five Feet Apart isn’t wrenching enough to jerk a single tear.

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

As talented as Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton are individually, they don’t have much chemistry.

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.

The sequel has better and at times galvanizing special effects, a darker tone and a high-stakes battle between good and evil. Best of all, its characters are more vibrantly drawn, and tangled in relationships that range from delightful to lethal.

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.

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.

Banality is precisely the problem with Shirley Valentine, the one-woman stage play that has been turned into a misguided, fully cast film.

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

Their appeal as a couple of gorgeous outlaws is the main reason to see this sleek, entertaining remake of Sam Peckinpah's 1972 action film.

This paranoid fantasy is so resonant that it makes The Net an enjoyably creepy thriller, even though Irwin Winkler belongs to the nothing-is-too-obvious school of directing.

The didactic screenplay sinks the film. Instead of exploring characters, or having them spout witty lines, Ting has them explain everything to each other, out loud, almost all the time. ... It’s great to see more films with Asian and Asian-American actors and stories, especially one written and directed by a woman. But while Ting’s movie may be heartfelt, it offers viewers more fluff than heart.

Style is almost everything here, and it's a tough call whether the star is handsomer than the sets.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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