Gary Thompson

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.