David Rooney

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die doesn’t quite deliver on the sardonic promise of its catchy title, but its appealing cast and Verbinski’s flair for kinetic action set pieces make it a reasonably entertaining entry in the canon of gonzo sci-fi comedies fueled by existential dread about the dystopian techno-dominant reality we’re already trapped in.

Hardy brings sufficient charm (and witty voice work) to his symbiote-inhabited character’s internal battle between id and superego to make each entry diverting enough, even if they leave little aftertaste. And so it goes with Venom: The Last Dance, which caps the trilogy by going gleefully out on its own.

Ultimately, this is an original adventure that feels stitched together out of a hundred familiar film plots, often freely acknowledging its pop-cultural plundering, as in the family's obligatory slo-mo power strut away from a building exploding in flames. But for audiences content with rapid-fire juvenilia, the busy patchwork of prefab elements will be entertaining enough.

As the stakes are heightened, the filmmakers too often short-change dramatic verisimilitude with movie-ish cliché, implausible plotting and cumbersome dialogue.

There’s pleasure to be had from Sandler’s nuanced work and from the ensemble’s ridiculously deep bench of gifted supporting players. But the director’s fourth feature for Netflix is mid-tier Baumbach at best.

What might have been a cinephile's wet dream turns out instead to be seductive, stimulating and sodden, in that order, in the three-chapter reflection on love and desire.

For much of its running time, Zama is merely remote and enervating, too accurately reflecting its protagonist’s predicament.

In terms of brutal spectacle, elaborate period reconstruction and vigorous set pieces requiring complex choreography, the sequel delivers what fans of its Oscar-winning 2000 predecessor will crave — battles, swordplay, bloodshed, Ancient Roman intrigue. That said, there’s a déjà vu quality to much of the new film, a slavishness that goes beyond the caged men forced to fight for their survival, and seeps into the very bones of a drama overly beholden to the original.

Ambling drama shows an exasperating lack of economy and a weakness for diatribe dialogue, but becomes progressively more involving after a laborious start.

As an eco-political inquiry, the film is compelling even if its grounding in scientific fact could be more solid.

A bigscreen feature executed with a cookie-cutter small-screen sensibility, this often charming but untextured fact-based period piece is buoyed along by the redoubtable Judi Dench.

This is a handsomely produced, solidly acted thriller that’s certainly watchable, though the perplexing subtitle is not its only issue. Unlike its riveting predecessor, it’s absorbing but never quite gripping.

There's still a lot to love. Gadot remains a charismatic presence who wields the lasso with authority, even tethering lightning bolts in some arresting moments. However, I missed the more hand-to-hand gladiatorial aspect of so many fight scenes in the first movie.

An interrogation of Australia's history of racial violence that also takes on gender, identity and domestic abuse against a backdrop right out of an archetypal high country Western, the engrossing thriller is admirably ambitious but choppy, at times eluding the director's grasp.

While it tips its hat to screwball comedy, Puccini for Beginners owes more to contemporary sitcom. It also has way more in common with "Sex and the City" than "The L Word." None of that is entirely a bad thing in a film that never really soars but has enough breezy humor.

There are simply too many characters jostling for attention and too many competing plot strands in a not-quite-seamless marriage of hard-edged social realism with a lyrical novelistic overlay. That said, the film is rich in poignant moments and negotiates its frequent shifts from violence to gentleness to sorrow with sensitivity.

The material is at heart an intimate allegorical fairy tale about rarefied philosophical concerns.

While the film carries no writer credit, the accompanying voiceover commentary from all five band-members feels canned, short on off-the-cuff spontaneity and hindsight perspective. Still, even if it has not much more depth than a VH1 Behind the Music special, the doc holds ample pleasures for '80s cultists.

Nothing if not true to its title, this frenetically plotted serve of stoner heaven is insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun. But at two hours-plus, it becomes unrelenting and wearisome.

While the filmmaking is raw, undisciplined and groaning under a cargo of self-conscious quirks, it scores points for originality and wacky creativity

The film is quite well-acted and made with a stylistic imprint that's atmospherically tailored to the subject matter, if a little fussy and self-conscious at times. But it's an unrewarding downer.

Middleton's polished writing and amusing observations about the anxieties most people encounter when definitively farewelling their youth help compensate for her standard-issue direction.

While the director's penchant for extended silences and stagy character positioning make it all seem rather studied, the drama nonetheless is compellingly unsettling.

Despite a nagging tendency to milk sentiment from wrenching subject matter that requires no manipulation, the film is notable for its admirably inclusive perspective.

While the filmmakers' control of mood, menacing atmosphere and unsettling spatial dynamics remains arresting, their story sense grows shaky in a chiller that starts out strong but becomes meandering and repetitive. ... Still, this is classy, intelligent horror.

The non-linear structure works extremely well, making the drama a bracing emotional roller coaster of feel-good/feel-bad turns.

Jolie is even hotter, faster and more commanding than last time around as the fearless heiress/adventuress, plus a little more human. The less welcome news is that most of the same shortcomings that cramped the first installment are still dogging the sequel, which delivers on action but dawdles through downtime.

The film offers up more mysteries than it solves. Still, riveting work from Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as performance artists whose canvas is internal organ mutations will draw the curious.