Gary Thompson

Clockwatchers is an updated 9 to 5, and as such, replaces that movie's straightfoward story of liberation from male oppression with something more Generation X-ish - liberation from a kind of self-imposed malaise. [12 Jun 1998, p.F7]

Fast Color is disciplined and restrained, yet feels a few tweaks away from being the rousing origin story it aspires to be.

Although the sci-fi trappings of Downsizing make it seem like a big departure from Payne’s previous work — The Descendants, Sideways, About Schmidt — it is the same in important ways. It’s a movie about a man suddenly separated from people he’s loved, trying to learn how to live again.

It finds the right harmonized note of melancholy and humor in its closing moments.

It’s a quietly inspiring portrait of selflessness, although not always a stirring one. The movie has a muted tone that tamps down emotions, and the acting is intentionally low-key throughout.

The idea of knowing your place may be offensive, but the idea of having a place is appealing.

Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is competent, occasionally rousing entertainment that nonetheless left me a little bummed.

Sheridan leans toward the lurid, but with the blood is a marrow you don’t get from other movies, where action is increasingly tied to fantasy. Soldado bludgeons its way into touchy border politics, and maybe lucks its way into a story focused on the moral imperative of protecting a single child.

A Man of His Word...is not a lecture. It conveys the pope’s concerns, certainly, but it also conveys his charm — his gentle, personal manner, his sense of humor (he quotes from the St. Thomas More joke book), his “charisma.”

Atomic Blonde is what fans of the Clash used to call a poser.

Damsel is designed to be a deliberately out-of-joint comedy about a woman forced to endure an exasperating ordeal. After two hours, I could relate.

Bacon is menacing enough, but his character, as written, lacks the shading and substance that made the villains of past Hanson films so interesting. Without the complexities, The River Wild is a so-so waterborne melodrama that compares unfavorably to Deliverance and even Cape Fear. [30 Sep 1994, p.47]

Foy is quite good in this role.

The movie will play in IMAX theaters and 3-D, which is the best way of seeing it. Director Albert Hughes (yep, the same guy who along with brother Allen did Menace II Society and Dead Presidents) and cinematographer Martin Gschlacht (the recent creep-out Goodnight Mommy) capture and construct some compelling images.

Hotel Mumbai sometimes surrenders to melodrama and action-genre imperatives, and it mixes actual people like Oberoi with fictional composites in a way that strays from the stringent just-the-facts discipline of a docudrama like United 93. But there is value, too, in its subjective approach.

Solo eventually finds its feet, and the movie gets better as it goes, but we feel throughout the tension between conflicting visions of Howard and original directors Lord and Miller.

City Hall also gives us a political drama with engaging moral and ethical dimensions. The movie is a welcome change from the fluff of "The American President" and the self-indulgent freak show that was "Nixon." [16 Feb 1996, p.44]

Something to Talk About goes wrong when it allows its agenda to interfere with the integrity of its characters. Duvall, Roberts and Quaid strive to humanize their characters, only to be undone with narrative detours that strain credibility. Kyra Sedgwick has a more rewarding, better defined role as Grace's smart-aleck sister. The movie also falters when it turns away from relationships and toward a limp subplot about a show-jumping contest. It ain't exactly "Rocky," but it does introduce us to the movie's only sympathetic male character. A gelding. [4 Aug 1995, p.37]

This movie has nearly as high a body count as "Us"...Is this satire? Homage? More like the desperation of a director who’s supplanted “vision” for emotion. The story leaves Dumbo without meaningful links to the human characters, and the scattered story of Farrell’s cohering family falls flat.

The story circles cleverly back on itself, putting an original spin on the familiar tale of the burned-out investigator reckoning with the defining event in a checkered career.

Though it’s been many years in development, it remains a timely look at the dangers of our increasingly outsourced, privatized military-intelligence network.

A more nuanced Bale portrait of a man enamored of secrecy, strong-arming, militarism, and vigilante impulses can be found in The Dark Knight.

Chemistry among the women is smooth, maybe excessively so. In movies about hustlers and confidence games, there is usually the scent of underlying treachery, the possibility of dishonor among thieves. In The Sting, for instance, we wonder: Is Redford conning Newman? Is the movie conning us? That kind of tension is missing here.

The movie, by German directing legend Wim Wenders, is a sequel to his imaginative, winsome "Wings of Desire," and maybe that's the problem. The second time around, Wenders' ideas just don't seem so imaginative. [04 Feb 1994, p.46]

The movie is antic, bouncing frantically from one story element to another, and poor Stevens, looking electrocuted and sleep-deprived, plays Dickens like the Man Who Invented Meth.

Courtney and James have good chemistry, and the sexual candor of their scenes together comes as a bit of a surprise, given the costume-drama, art-house tone of the production, though perhaps this is just the residue of James’ "Downton Abbey" days.

Ronan is good (as usual) as the spirited and rather haughty Mary, making the most of what, to be fair, is the plum role.

In conceptual terms, the movie has more in common with Scream, in that it’s an examination of genre clichés (in this case romantic comedies) that both satirizes and embraces them.

Despite the movie’s emphasis on physical action, it’s this chemistry that keeps the movie going.

Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral) has been brought in to class up the dialogue, and add some one-liners.... In addition, director Parker does some clever things visually.

Robert's relationship with Elizabeth is actually one of the film's better features – it is here that Pine's low-key charisma is put to its best use, and his chemistry with Pugh is useful in establishing the emotional foundation of their resilient marriage, which held together during the times of defeat, separation, and victory.

Having unleashed Phoenix, Phillips doesn’t seem to know how to contain or couch the performance. At some point he seems to have surrendered, and when the movie is over you realize Arthur is its only substantial character.

The Jumanji reboot Welcome to the Jungle is a happy surprise — a movie that turns out to be good (almost clean) fun, and is much more interested in character and comedy than special effects.

Isaac and Kingsley are game, and their scenes have decent dramatic tension, but of course the outcome is never in doubt, and in the end, Weitz is left to rely on more contrived thriller elements to give the movie a finishing kick, which feels nonetheless like a letdown.

Your fear that the movie will never end is the most palpable fear offered by Chapter Two, which substitutes spectacle for the creeping, escalating dread the story is meant to have, and that the first movie had in modest amounts.

Victoria & Abdul, though, is Dench’s show. She wrings dignity and humanity (and a good deal of comedy) from Lee Hall’s broadly drawn scenario, much as she did in this movie’s cross-cultural bookend, "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

There are a number of movies about addiction scheduled to be released this fall, and although The Oath isn't mentioned as being among them, maybe it should be.

What does work is Washington’s subtle, authentic, meticulous work as a walled-off, neurodiverse man.

One of the best of the 16 Bond films, thanks to Dalton's athletic, tough and deadly new 007.

Though mired in arcane subject matter, the movie is always lucid and reasonably engaging.

Bening is great fun to watch here, even when she’s just watching.

There’s nothing especially striking about the movie’s visual presentation – the Artemis is threadbare and creaky, a purposely anachronistic blend of the future tech and throwback furnishings. The actions is competent, the performers game.

The movie is swimming with ideas, but it values concept over character to a problematic degree. The Cured maps out an increasingly elaborate set of internal rules that govern its characters without defining or deepening them.

The direction by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, is competent and efficient, if not especially stylish or ambitious, and the squeamish should know the movie is backloaded with stabby, graphic, slasher-movie content.

His script is good-natured, more genial than funny, though director (and Philadelphian) Charles Stone III does get some good work from star Irving, who proves surprisingly adept at playing low-key comedy.

The foster-care comedy Instant Family has more heart than laughs, but enough of the former to squeak by.

Little Big League is wholesome, safe, reassuringly familiar. On the other hand, Little Big League is a recycling project that lacks an original or exciting moment. [29 Jun 1994, p.31]

First Knight manages to fill the screen with enough swashbuckling to keep things interesting for a while. [07 Jul 1995, p.29]

Ultimately, Reiner's attempt at an inspiring story of a black woman and a white man working together to further the cause of racial justice ends up being overwhelmed by the looming specter of impossibly complex racial politics. [03 Jan 1997, p.04]

The movie is at its best when the women are focused on the common enemy: getting older.

There is the potential here for an engaging adventure/survival tale, wrapped in a story of a woman finding her self-confidence by drawing on untapped reserves of strength. But Kormákur fails to find any shape in the narrative of Tami’s actual or psychological journey.

The Glass Castle is an unfortunately flat and messy adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir about growing up with extreme poverty and with parents who both inspired and damaged her.

It will entertain youngsters, the only people in America who have yet to see more "Rocky" movies than sunsets. [14 Jan 1994, p.50]

But as the increasingly far-fetched plot kicks in, the movie loses its personality, and plods toward a ludicrous conclusion that looks like the end result of a dozen desperate rewrites. [27 Sept 1996, p.04]

Aiello, Headly and Mazursky create memorable, unexpectedly sympathetic characters. Sometime director Mazursky ("Enemies, a Love Story") is especially poignant and brave here, playing a has-been director in a role that calls inevitable attention to his own stalled career. [27 Sept 1996, p.50]

While the movie initially adheres to the Chan brand — emphasizing athleticism over violence — it turns grisly and vicious in the closing scenes.

At least Aquaman has a different palette, and new shapes to work with. It’s still ultimately silly and dreary, and will test the endurance of fans who then must withstand an even longer credit sequence to get a whiff of the next DC story wrinkle.

There are certain lines in certain movies that could be used to warn a certain kind of viewer to stay away. Such as: "We like the same merlot." It tells you everything you need to know about Playing by Heart, an ensemble drama about upper-middle-class people whose characters are defined mostly by their fabulous homes and apartments. [22 Jan 1999, p.47]

The new King is competent, reasonably entertaining, faithful to the original, wholesome, sometimes even enjoyable.

A Heathers meets The Purge meets Russ Meyer free-for-all that takes elements of the Salem witch trials and transposes them to the age of the internet. That's a lot to take on, and there are diminishing returns by the time the movie reaches its bloody conclusion.

I give Goodbye Christopher Robin credit for presenting audiences with a Pooh origins story they might not want to see, but having settled on this subject, the movie seems uncertain how to proceed.

In essence, it shows that what the “horse soldiers” did was pretty remarkable — efficient, daring, effective.

The movie is often whimsical, a tone augmented by clever use of special effects and sudden flourishes of animation. Offbeat soundtrack selections and effective music by composer Andrew Harris help set the mood — ultimately genial and hopeful, and the movie is short and sweet.

Neil Jordan gives us a fancier version of the Lifetime staple in Greta.

Jarmusch, in his droll way, both celebrates and subverts the familiar elements of the genre.

There are also Photoshopped aggregations of Bergen, Fonda, Keaton and Steenburgen, and though they were never actually grouped together when young, they register reasonably well here as lifelong friends. The movie rides entirely on their charm, not so much on the strength of the writing or the jokes.

It’s a story with too many influences, no cohesion, no apparent narrative purpose.

Greenfield makes an ambitious attempt to tie all of these things together as symptoms of capitalism gone wrong in Generation Wealth, although her thesis is weakly argued, and thinly sourced – the movie often turns out to be a curiously insular polling of family, friends, and high school and college classmates.

While Keaton is many things, he is not Jim Carrey. Which, from Keaton's standpoint, is probably a relief. [17 July 1996, p.25]

In some ways the movie’s crazy fictions suit today’s modern mash-up sensibilities, and its cast reflects the patterns of modern migration that are creating a whole new world.

And yet, the focus of the movie remains fixed on the men, which makes this Ode to Strong Women seem a little patronizing. Or expedient. The director's long-time girlfriend, co-star Bahns, has the most flattering female role. Bahns had no acting experience when she was cast in the low-budget "Brothers McMullen." She still doesn't. Watching her her in "She's the One," you realize that it must be love. [23 Aug 1996, p.45]

Though fact-based movies are often guilty of bending truth to improve a story, Finding Steve McQueen goes in the other direction, downplaying strange-but-true elements that might have helped its saggy narrative.

The movie is actually not bad, until it goes full Lifetime Channel crazy in the third act.

Not long into Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, it becomes clear that the movie is never going to make what you might call sense.