Gemma Files

She's not a real person, in any way, shape or form -- which makes watching Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the first in a projected series of live-action films based around her exploits, a visually spectacular yet oddly cheerless experience.

An unexpectedly adult emotional rollercoaster with some very cold and unsettling things to say about men, women, marriage, and the lies we so often tell each other.

A magic-realistic fable whose lows soon prove as infuriating as its highs are intoxicating.

It's sumptuous, archaic, and longer than a firehouse ladder.

An exercise in outrageous style over substance.

It doesn't really hang together. And waaay too much style. Pity.

Renders the net result fairly squarely unenjoyable, on almost any level.

Not quite good enough to leave more than a vaguely pleasant, vaguely disappointing aftertaste.

One way or the other, there really is something to be said for a movie which seems to revel in its own inherent comic-book silliness.

Actually funnier than the first movie, but getting to those parts requires a little bit of patient mental fast-forwarding.

Kusama understands her subject intimately, and it shows.

This is half a good movie held hostage to the other, trashier half, and unfortunately for all of us, no rescue seems forthcoming.

Mandy Nelson's sugar-high bright-'n'-cheerful script takes a series of easy ways out, avoiding completely the prospective pitfalls of having to see any of these characters as complicated, contradictory, not entirely nice or identifiable-with -- actual human beings, in other words.

No classic, but two hours well-spent nonetheless.

Not even Goldberg's near-flawless central performance can polish Kingdom Come beyond mere soap opera pap.

Sunshine's historical reference-heavy narrative walks a fine line between novelistic tragedy and comically overstated melodrama, falling down on the job more than once.

Flirts with the idea of insight.

The lack of chemistry between he (Yun-Fat) and Foster is truly striking: so much so, in fact, that the strain of trying to manufacture some keeps her looking on the verge of outright illness throughout.

Has a soundtrack crammed with infectious music gleaned from fairly surprising sources.