Joe Leydon

Francophile film buffs and obsessive deconstructionists might be amused, but less indulgent auds will find derivative pic artificial and mannered.

Uneven but modestly diverting.

Provides enough cheap thrills and modest suspense to shake a few shekels from genre fans before really blasting off as homevid product.

For the most part, Lemmon, like Matthau, recycles shtick from earlier, better pictures. But then again, their roles call for little else, and Out to Sea actually benefits from their stock turns. [30 June 1997, p.65]

A few abrupt narrative transitions indicate that some scenes, for whatever reason, must have been discarded during the editing process. But what remains on screen is enough to hold attention and generate rooting interest, especially if you’re amused by inside-baseball allusions to the film and TV industry.

A classically low-tech monster mash.

Long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension.

Mildly amusing but overly discursive.

Earnest and understated, Weekend has the intimate look and feel of a two-character stage play that has been opened up -- but only slightly, with minimal addition of supporting players -- for a mostly faithful filmization.

Perfectly harmless, often humorous, featherweight confection -- think "Serendipity" re-imagined as a teen-skewing Saturday morning sitcom.

The picture could provide modest amusement for indulgent viewers with a taste for tales of loquacious killers and not-so-innocent bystanders.

The interaction among opposites inspires an abundance of predictable race-based jokes, many of which have the saving grace of actually being funny.

Has a washed-out look that may be off-putting to auds who might otherwise enjoy the pic's uncondescending view of Southern characters and customs.

Up until its unfortunate third-act detour from intriguing verisimilitude to frustrating abstraction, director Marcin Wrona’s Demon enthralls as an atmospheric ghost story with a cheeky undercurrent of absurdist humor.

Despite enough good intentions to pave a four-lane highway, the ardently sincere but dramatically unfocused For Greater Glory plays like a multipart miniseries that has been hacked down to feature length.

Commands attention less as historical counterpoint than as a sturdy showcase for the neatly balanced lead performances of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.

Indie effort evidences more energy than wit, and spends too much time on set-up before a slam-bang pay-off.

Small children who will accept it as rock-'em, sock-'em excitement with a touch of gender-specific empowerment, and hipper teens and grown-ups who can appreciate the whole thing as a semisatirical hoot.

Will please devotees without attracting many, if any, new converts.

Trouble is, apart from some modestly inventive carnage and an undeniably humorous hambone turn by Malcolm McDowell, there's really nothing here to make genre fans dash through the snow (or maneuver through traffic) to megaplexes before the low-budget, high-concept Canadian production's Dec. 4 homevid release.

Junky, jokey and sometimes both at once, pic marks yet another attempt by World Wrestling Entertainment to establish one of its burly superstars as a movie lead.

A sluggish, charmless misfire in which even the most appealing players -- must try too hard to make anything close to an engaging impression.

There's no denying the pic's overall impact as a compelling study of art as a source of transcendence. And it will come as no surprise if this well-crafted doc eventually serves as source material for a dramatic feature.

Documentarian Jessica Yu employs everything from animation and voiceover thesping to archival documents and eyewitness accounts while examining Henry Darger, a self-taught artist who has been posthumously lionized as a visionary genius.

A frenetic, featherweight trifle aimed at tweener femmes.

A modestly inventive, sporadically exciting thriller that nonetheless proves too faithful to its central conceit for its own good.

For all her attempts at documentary-style verisimilitude, filmmaker Ashley McKenzie doesn’t really cover much new ground with Werewolf.

It’s an occupational hazard of rambling psychogeography that the unwary traveller will find themselves irritated as often as they are enthralled: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Gee negotiates this hurdle with variable success.