Kenneth Turan

Sensitively directed by Ron Shelton and helped by what just might be the best performance of Kurt Russell's career, Dark Blue is as interesting and successful as it can be within its limits, but those limits make this a more generic film than its makers intended.

Beautifully made but emotionally empty, it exists only for the sensation of its provocative moments.

Undeniably clever and inventive, Babe: Pig in the City has nevertheless sacrificed part of the freshness and buoyancy that made the original "Babe" so luminous. This sequel is more elaborate, more calculated and more self-consciously dark than its deservedly beloved predecessor.

The Birth of a Nation certainly has the power of conviction, but the grace of art escapes it.

Robert Redford, who for the first time stars in a movie he's also directed, has taken this soap opera material and treated it like something inscribed on yak vellum by the Dalai Lama.

The Wolverine is an erratic affair, more lumbering than compelling, an ambitious film with its share of effective moments that stubbornly refuses to catch fire.

"I am epic, hear me roar" is what the lion-centered The Ghost and the Darkness would have you believe. The reality is more like an acceptably loud noise than a true roar, but so few films venture into the old-fashioned world of historical action adventures that even a loud noise is a welcome sound. [11 Oct 1996, p.F16]

Self-conscious about its heroism with portrayals that lean toward the glib and the professionally uplifting, the film milks our sympathies too readily to be emotionally convincing.

Rachel McAdams gives the kind of performance we go to the movies for. The rest of the film isn't always up to her level, but it does provide genial entertainment until it runs out of steam.

As frigid as its name. Burdened with a story of some of the world's least interesting people going through a holiday crisis, director Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus get as close as any creative team could to making matters involving, but the task is finally too much for them.

Though Butcher is appealing, Saint Ralph is anchored by Scott's persuasive work as a model of intelligent decency.

Oblivious to niceties like subtlety, plausibility and discretion, it rushes heedlessly toward its destination of audience arousal. Like a flood, the impact is undeniable but it's not something everyone will want to get in the way of. [24Jul1996 Pg. F.01]

You're initially jazzed by his effrontery, but Deadpool, with his relentlessly glib, nothing-sacred attitude, is not an individual who wears particularly well.

There's no freshness here, no sense of newness or discovery. In its place, there's an earnest desire not to drop the ball, a determination to risk as little as possible in keeping this golden egg from cracking wide open.

More science-fiction space opera than superhero epic, it works in fits and starts as its disparate parts go in and out of effectiveness, but the professionalism of the production make it watchable in a comic book kind of way.

Whenever The Fifth Estate leaves the involving one-on-one drama between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, you wish it wouldn't.

Problematic but involving, Child 44 offers a picture of what individuals did to survive in a world turned upside down. The film's singular premise allows it to survive its various shortcomings, but it is a near-thing.

Its story line and performances are no more than serviceable, but those terrible twisters are state of the art.

In its determination to overdo sure-fire material, Billy Elliot becomes as impossible to wholeheartedly embrace as it is to completely reject.

Heavy on swordplay and spectacle, it's so intent on reviving the costume epics of the past it doesn't realize it's trying to be too many things to too many people until it collapses under its own weight.

Effective, but despite the trio's fine efforts Junior can't get past lightly amusing, never manages to work up a sustained comic head of steam.

Light and frothy though all this is, there is an off-putting element to "Josie," and it's what must be the film's world record number of product placements.

For the future, the Saint is such an unpleasant and predatory manipulator, it's difficult to root for romance. And when Kilmer's mightily convincing Ice King begins to melt, it's so out of character with what's gone before that its believability is touch and go.

The uncomfortable reality remains that although this movie is effective moment to moment, very little of it lingers in the mind afterward. The ideal vehicle for our age of immediate sensation and instant gratification, it disappears without a trace almost as soon as it's consumed.

A potent and unexpected mixture of authenticity and flash -- even if this is what happened on the ground, making it worth our time on screen is just beyond the contortionist abilities of even this most acrobatic of films.

Though Iron Man is diverting enough in the comic-book-movie mode, there is one thing it doesn't have, and that is dramatic unity. Unlike the irreducible element that is its namesake, Iron Man the movie is an alloy, a combination of several different and disconnected components that don't manage to unite to make a coherent whole.

Though it would be dishonest to call this an unqualified success, it would be churlish not to tip the hat to Love Actually's genuine charm.

Rules Don't Apply, as its name implies, is a movie intent on going its own way. It's not without its charms, but there aren't enough of them and they don't readily cohere.

Despite involved acting and Nichols' impeccable professionalism as a director, the end result is, to quote one of the characters, "a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully."

Rude, rowdy and raunchy, The Campaign gleefully skewers the current sad state of American politics. With a target that tempting, it's not surprising that this cynical and funny film hits more often than it misses.

It is a laconic, enigmatic piece of work, displaying the grace with spoken language that marked "Glengarry Glen Ross" but troublesome in terms of structure and character development.

Determined to use melodrama as a vehicle to get to other places and explore other possibilities, Sayles simply assumes the audience will go along with him. His skill is such that we invariably do, but the journey, like that of his characters, is not always an easy one. [04 Jun 1999, p.F6]

Going boldly where no one has gone before is not what it used to be. Contentedly settled into a prosperous middle age, the "Star Trek" series now seems more comfortable retracing its own footsteps, carefully offering its horde of fans interludes that aspire to do no more than fit snugly into the patterns of the past.

If The Hudsucker Proxy is a triumph, it is a zombie one. Too cold, too elegant, too perfect, more an exhibit in a cinema museum than a flesh-and-blood film, "Proxy's" highly polished surface leaves barely any space for an audience's emotional connection. [11 Mar 1994, p.1]

Essentially a late-'90s MTV version of "The Exorcist," a half-serious, half-silly piece of business that keeps us involved despite (or maybe because of) being more than a little overdone.

This overly derivative motion picture thinks it is doing and saying more than it is. Instead, it ends up as little more than a reasonable facsimile of the real thing, despite a subtle and effective performance by Ben Affleck, of all people.

A rambling, mildly entertaining performance film.

Starring Wesley Snipes as the suave Regis, Murder at 1600 is the modern equivalent of the routine B-picture, diverting in a small potatoes kind of way, though its budget and stars are big league.

As the only Austen work to be named after its heroine, Emma must have an engaging performance in the title role to succeed at all, and fortunately Gwyneth Paltrow, after a slow start, completely wins us over.

A self-satisfied film about insecure people, a quirky and episodic comic drama that squanders its genuine assets and ends up not as special as it tries to be.

Yet with so much going for it, the film's creators have made the classic Hollywood choice and treated its actresses like flesh-and-blood special effects. If you've got talent like this, or so the theory goes, a coherent story is a luxury that can be dispensed with.

Star Routh's presence and the joys of flight keep Superman Returns alive, but all those missteps dog its heels, holding it back like little touches of Kryptonite in the night.

Whenever The Commitments threatens to get bogged down in its own problems, Parker is savvy enough to pull it back with more of that invigorating music on the soundtrack. When that band starts to sing, the screen fills with genuine life, and that is too rare a commodity for anyone to second-guess for long. [14 Aug 1991, p.F1]

It shows promise but finally hits things so hard, both literally and metaphorically, that it's hard not to feel pummeled yourself by the time it's over.

It's a gritty story made in the director's more elegiacal mode, a confusion of style and content that is not in the film's best interests.

Hitchcock puts major league star power at the service of its peek-behind-closed-doors premise. But whatever that relationship was like in real life, this is one cinematic portrait of a marriage we could have lived without.

Robinson's combination of fortitude, restraint and passion for the game was stunning. You can't help getting caught up in this story, even as you are wishing the telling was sharper than it is.

Aside from Gere, First Knight acquits itself honorably enough.

If a concept is to sustain itself over a multipart story, it must make an emotional connection, and this "Reloaded," especially with stars cast for their lack of affect and affinity for blankness, cannot do that.

If I Stay takes time to find its footing amid miscalculations and awkward moments.

Plays like the setup for a movie that never materializes. It has all the elements for a successful comedy, but once the premise is presented, the film doesn't know how to deliver on its promise. That doesn't mean there is no fun in "Fun."

With what we see on screen weighted too much toward pain and too little toward redemption, this is a film we respect more than love, and that is something of a wasted opportunity.

Made with its subject's cooperation and talking to people like comrade in arms Gloria Steinem and Allred's daughter, fellow attorney Lisa Bloom, the film allows us, at least to a certain extent, to get behind the public persona to the private person.

Though originality is not one of its accomplishments, Anastasia is generally pleasant, serviceable and eager to please.

Strongly acted by a highly competent ensemble.

What makes the story worthwhile is the candor and personality of the band members.

What Surfwise reveals is that the dark side of the surfing doctor was that he could be a terrible tyrant, someone whose controlling, self-centered rigidity limited his children in ways large and small as much as it gave them richer lives.

Intent as it is on being both artistically and politically involving, The Great Water periodically miscalculates its effects, coming on stronger than it intends.

Though comedy is an intrinsic part of the play, director Zaks has not found a way to translate it effectively on screen.

Does have a large and capable cast and, in James Foley, a director with a taste for visual flourishes. They all so fell in love with the script by Doug Jung they didn't notice how much a derivative retread it is of superior material like "The Grifters" and even "The Sting."

Well-behaved and genteel from the get-go, it has its pleasures, but being wild and crazy is not one of them.

A Wolf at the Door is undoubtedly effective and well-crafted, but its tale of reckless obsession and its inevitably unhappy ending are finally too unsavory for its own good.

Constrained by the plot of the novel, the film keeps the two lovers apart for quite a spell, robbing the project of the crazy-in-love energy that made "Twilight," the first entry in the series, such a guilty pleasure.

Director Russo-Young, whose roots are in independent film, has brought a bit of a welcome indie sensibility to the proceedings.

As sanctimonious as it is sincere, this is a well-meaning picture that is seriously stuck on itself, that can't hide its air of self-satisfaction. [25 Dec 1991]

Not that you would anyway, but it doesn't pay to think too hard about "Rampage." Sure, it could be improved (shorter would have helped), but it gets the job done in a more or less acceptable way. Not the highest praise, but things could have been worse.

Because it is fearlessly sincere and not totally successful, Winter's Tale is easy to mock. But it is also hard not to admire its willingness to go all out in its quest for the grandest of romantic gestures.

The film's scary moments are too monstrous and its happy times have too much idiotic beaming, making the film feel like the illegitimate offspring of "Alien" and "The Absent-Minded Professor."

Though it has loftier aims, it is in reality strictly a film made by believers for believers. It's like the Discovery Channel version of the Greatest Story Ever Told, an earnest, not particularly distinguished piece of work that has none of the touch of the poet that made Pasolini's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" such a triumph.

Despite its good intentions, Spirit is more self-conscious and uninspiring from a dramatic point of view than one might have wished. Still, whenever it threatens to get bogged down in earnest dramaturgy, a stirring visual sequence -- rouses us.

Though there is heroism as well as love here, because it involves the deaths of people we have come to care about, Everest is finally a sad story, though not always a dramatically involving one.

Actress Kristy Swanson provides the ideal combination of energy and comic disdain that characterize a most unlikely savior. While it would be a mistake to oversell Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the sad and/or happy truth is that you could do worse on a warm summer night. A lot worse. [31 Jul 1992, p.1]

A mid-level commercial thriller, it is a solid and acceptable if not overwhelmingly exciting piece of work from a star and a director not previously known for their centrist tendencies.

Feels out of shape and self-satisfied, as if it knew it didn't have to try very hard.

What's on screen is too honest and from the heart to totally dismiss but too slick and contrived to completely embrace. This is a film that cares about genuine emotion but also wants to tame it, to tidy it up and keep it confined to quarters.

The Underneath doesn't add up. Made with polish and assurance, capably acted and intricately constructed, its overall impact is less than these parts would indicate. It is good but, against all logic, it is not good enough.

A solid, often engrossing film that doesn't engage us overall the way Denzel Washington's work does.

Story line and characterization are decidedly old-fashioned, and a curious decision about production design gives this wide-screen cartoon some of the look and feel of a Saturday morning TV cartoon series

Genial and entertaining if not notably inspired. But its most interesting aspect turns out to be fantasies of another kind, pipe dreams about the American political system and where it could theoretically be headed.

A one-trick pony, a movie that has a gift only for making audiences squirm.

The film's greatest asset and strongest selling point is the former senator from South Dakota himself, thoughtful and articulate at age 83, who talks candidly, even eloquently, about his political career.

The movie itself is a live-action cartoon, a fast-moving and cheerfully simplistic 88 minutes of exaggerated action put together with the preteen boy in mind.

I Saw the Light is solid but not spectacular, a retelling of a sad story that never catches fire.

The writer-director appears to be straining for his effects. Some sequences, especially one involving bondage harnesses and homosexual rape, have the uncomfortable feeling of creative desperation, of someone who's afraid of losing his reputation scrambling for any way to offend sensibilities. [14 Oct 1994]

Mulan has its accomplishments, but unlike the best of Disney's output, it comes off as more manufactured than magical.

Though Overnight seems to be cautioning us about the excesses of filmmaker ego, it isn't always consistent.

Though amusing enough to avoid absolutely drowning in schmaltz, it's sad to see a film with potential lose its way in the late innings.

With its shrewd mixture of paranoia and the paranormal, the way its elaborate mythology combines enigmatic phenomena with potent cabals intent on running the world, The X-Files experience resembles "Twin Peaks" crossed with "The Twilight Zone."

Both impossible to take seriously or seriously dislike.

Secretariat shows no fear of the sentimental, and that's putting it mildly. This is an old-fashioned, super-genteel family movie that opens with an equine quote from the Book of Job and makes ample use of the Edwin Hawkins Singers' gospel song "Oh Happy Day."

It's a solid, efficient comic book movie that is content to provide comic book satisfactions of the action and violence variety.

While it's futile to pretend that Life Is Beautiful completely triumphs--it's simply too tough a concept to sustain--what is surprising about this unlikely film is that it succeeds as well as it does.

If Leaving is a romantic parable, it is a dark and depressing one, emphasizing not the sensuality of attraction but rather the obsessive side of romantic behavior. This is mad love for sure, and that is not usually a pretty picture.

Like the television medium it genially satirizes, EDtv is a grab bag that's both amusing and frustrating.

Grainy as it looks in its massive Imax blowup, Mickey's misadventures with water and a broom still have the kind of magic even modern technology can't always manage.

The film sacrifices playfulness and humor to concentrate on a relentless display of elaborate but ho-hum gadgets and gizmos.

The visual allure of this production is undeniable, but having the nerve to be simple and nice all the way through is, even for Disney, verging on being a lost art.

Though it has its charms, Monsters, Inc. does not measure up. As a childhood entertainment it is certainly fine, but Pixar's celebrated lure for adults is largely absent.

Stays remarkably close to its predecessor in all the ways that count.

As insistent as it is skillful -- and it is very skillful -- it does all it can to pound you into enjoying yourself. The result is rather like being force-fed a meal of your favorite foods by the Terminator.

It's a film of exceptional technical virtuosity that could have used some help in the dramatic department.

This is a work of excess and passion, an untidy sprawl of a motion picture that is sometimes ragged, occasionally uncertain, but -- and this is what's important -- always warm, accessible and rich in emotional life.

Director Taylor Hackford brings an appropriate level of pulpy energy to the telling, and star Kathy Bates... gives a better performance than the film deserves as the grumpy and possibly homicidal title character.

Drive is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.

What's surprising about this traditional thriller, moderately successful but not completely satisfying, is exactly how genteel and unsurprising the execution turns out to be.

It's an intriguing film, one of the year's most interesting, but involving as much of it is, it leaves an unsatisfied taste when it's over.

The film's drawback, and it is a serious one, is that few of its characters wear very well. The more we see them, the less they involve us and hold our interest, a situation not helped by the bombastic, theatrical style of acting a few of the performers have felt free to employ.

Unashamedly silly, inevitably erratic, it has so much fun sending up the world of exploitation filmmaking that even the most serious film student won't be able to suppress a laugh or two. Maybe even more.

A Perfect Murder begins better than it ends, and the pleasures it offers turn out to be more of a transitory nature.

Half science-fiction tale, half espionage thriller, it's a pleasantly far-fetched endeavor that moves along so briskly that it leaves no time to consider its implausibilities, which are many.

Those who enjoy the old-fashioned Hollywood pleasure of seeing divergent threads neatly pulled together will be more than satisfied.

The efforts of an international cast including stars Oscar Isaac, Melanie Laurent and Nick Kroll notwithstanding, Operation Finale sounds more involving than it actually plays, ending up earnest and acceptable more than compelling.

The result is solid and efficient, if unadventurous, illustrating both the lure and the limitations of comic book extravaganzas.

A brisk and violent action programmer that can't help being unintentionally silly at times.

To her credit, Streisand has turned in a handsome, seamless piece of very traditional Hollywood direction. This is mainstream filmmaking at its main-streamest, smooth and glossy and reminiscent, in fact, of the kind of work Sydney Pollack did with Streisand in "The Way We Were" and without her in "Out of Africa."

Looked at now (2017), The Graduate is frankly a film you admire more than actually enjoy experiencing. Dark, pitiless and despairing, it plays stranger and more distant to me today than it did back in the day. So much so that one wonders if that was the plan from the beginning, when the fact that its mildly transgressive attitude seemed fresh and new disguised its essential nature.

Impressive but uninviting, Wyatt Earp is easier to admire from a distance than pull up a chair and enjoy close-up. A self-conscious attempt at epic filmmaking that feels orchestrated as much as directed, it has noticeable virtues but chooses not to wear them lightly. And at three hours plus, it finally encourages audiences to feel as trail weary and exhausted as any of its characters. [24 Jun 1994, p.1]

By being so provocatively candid about what for her is small stuff, Madonna understands that the reality of the film, the fact that she has in truth revealed very little of herself, really won't be noticed. What we get is exactly what she wants us to see, nothing more, and, certainly nothing less. [10 May 1991, p.F1]

The result is that "Spider-Man" goes in and out of focus. This is a film that is memorable in pieces but not as a whole.

K-19's determination to push hard for self-congratulatory morals and convenient resolutions undercut the film's strengths and make it more conventional.

Does have a satisfying ending and it's nice to see a G-rated film without bathroom humor, but there is too much formula and not enough reason to pay attention here.

Like the characters it presents, this film ends up with dreams it can’t deliver on, but just having the desire to do something different makes it a project worth paying attention to.

There is often not enough space for all these personalities to truly play out. They tend to become types rather than people, representatives of classes and points of view more than individual human beings.

Snyder stands revealed here as more of a beginner than a visionary in his uncertain approach to making an on-screen world come alive.

Shyamalan's great gift is the creation of atmosphere, the conjuring of spooky, unseen menace. When he gets around to doing this in Signs, all is well, but it's a tossup as to whether the film offers enough of a payoff considering how long it takes to get where it's going.

Sometimes sweet, sometimes scary, sometimes sour, Oz the Great and Powerful is a film that doesn't know its own mind. A partially effective jumble whose elements clash rather than cohere, this solid but not spectacular effort stubbornly refuses to catch fire until it's almost too late.

Though it keeps Auggie's fine sense of humor and his remarkably even-keeled attitude about himself and his situation, the movie version of Wonder feels more pat and After School Special-ish than the novel.

So meticulous in its craftsmanship and so earnest in its storytelling that it feels both physically and spiritually airbrushed.

Chomsky deserves a more thoughtful documentary than Power and Terror, and in fact he got it in 1993's "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" --The film's main flaw is the absence of other voices -- From a cinematic point of view, two sides of an issue are always better than one.

Simultaneously effective and uninspired, Red Sparrow is successful in fits and starts. A perfectly serviceable spy thriller, it inevitably leaves behind the feeling that a better film was possible than the one that made it to the screen.

While part of the film offers the expected, unsparingly violent action tropes typical of the series, there’s another aspect to the story, a surprisingly brooding examination of a warrior in winter, a dark story of a berserker who can’t let go, that’s in its own way bleaker and more despairing than we may be expecting.

If 1492 is dramatically inert, it is just the opposite visually. Its director is Ridley Scott, a wizard at re-creating the look of other realities, and he's done a remarkable job here, filling the screen with ravishing sequences from both the Old World and the New that are dazzling and intoxicating.

Alive does everything it ought to except the one thing you really want with a story like this, and that is transcend its material. A once-in-a-lifetime situation, filled with incidents that almost defy belief, calls for more of a once-in-a-lifetime movie, and that is beyond this film’s powers.

A typically energetic urban action melodrama, offering car chases, beatings, murders, a dog mauling, attempted arson, frequent double-crosses and pitched street battles worthy of Fallouja.

Daniels' pulp instincts do lead to vivid sequences...but this is one significant film where less would have been a whole lot more.

Viper Club is an attempt at a very difficult balancing act. It doesn’t quite succeed, but it deploys enough persuasive elements to make the attempt involving.

It may be standard-issue stuff, but it looks great and it almost makes you nostalgic for the days when stuntmen reigned supreme and mayhem and computers never knew how much they had in common.

Even when Griffin has a heart of stone, Tim Robbins is lacking in the knid of ice-cold magnetism that allows a thorough bastard to hold the screen like nobody's business. [10 Apr 1992]

A tragedy devastating to experience can feel generic when transferred to the screen, and that, despite everyone's best intentions and an outstanding performance by Nicole Kidman, is what happens with Rabbit Hole.

Ends up insisting on pat and overly tidy resolutions that are at variance with the emotional chaos it's nominally attempting to convey. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

That rare comic book movie that actually feels like a comic book. Which turns out to be mostly, but not entirely, a good thing.

It's hardly a perfect film, not even close, but it is the most entertaining made-for-adults studio movie of the summer, and one of the reasons it works at all is the great skill and commitment Cruise brings to the starring role.

For a disorganized film that has trouble deciding what it's about, When Comedy Went to School can be a lot of fun.

Despite a weakness for trying to tie things up with melodramatic violence, Singleton remains a fluid filmmaker who works well with actors. He may not be there yet, but he is on the road.

For very much like Peter, it has clearly gotten harder for this director to break free of the lure of material things and believe in simple magic. And whatever problems his Hook has, there are none that making the film on half of its budget wouldn't have cured.

Clever and amusing though it often is, “Murder” is also Allen’s whiniest film to date, and your appreciation of its pleasures will fluctuate according to your tolerance for his Angst .

Chances are you'll have a good time with Frankie & Johnny, but you won't respect yourself in the morning. It's that kind of movie.

Not as satisfying as the old and unimproved version. In a zealous attempt to broaden its appeal, the Zorro franchise has drifted from the qualities that made the previous film so successful.

Though ably acted and indisputably on the side of the angels, Suffragette as directed by Sarah Gavron is more dead-on earnest and schematic than it needs to be.

Better than the fiasco that was "Ocean's Twelve" (how could it not be?) but not as engaging as "Ocean's Eleven."

Loving and well-intentioned though this film is, it never convinces you that its subject matter merits this kind of idealized, worshipful attention. [09 Oct 1992]

The remarkable things about the new film, adapted by Vicente Leñero and directed by Carlos Carrera, are how smoothly it has been transposed to today's Mexico and how far good acting and skillful directing have gone toward tempering those melodramatic roots.

THE Kingdom has some power but not enough sense. A ripped-from-today's-headlines thriller, it wants us to feel as if we're watching something relevant when what's really going on is a slick excuse for efficient mayhem that's not half as smart as it would like to be.

Even if Dan and Gretta charm each other more than they charm us, the music they make is harder to resist than they are.

One overstuffed movie, but it's by no means a turkey.

The sheer physical presence of these creatures is much more believable and convincing than what can be generously characterized as the film's plot.

We have a right to yawn, but we don't, and Sarah Polley is the reason.

Though a definite improvement on the last three abortive Star Wars prequels directed by series creator George Lucas, The Force Awakens is only at its best in fits and starts, its success dependent on who of its mix of franchise veterans and first-timers is on the screen.

Overall, these brief sections, which feature both authors on camera, come off more like self-congratulatory infomercials than they should.

Alternately riveting and wearying, up-to-the-minute relevant as well as self-mythologizingly self-indulgent — as much of a heroic origins story as anything out of the Marvel factory — Straight Outta Compton ends up juggling more story lines and moods than it can handle.

With characters this alive, it's a pity that no one was able to build a more convincing film around them, instead of leaving everyone more or less out there on their own. [13 May 1994, p.1]

This is a film bound and determined to do whatever it takes to be your Valentine. If it had trusted itself more, it might even have succeeded.

This film feels completely haphazard, thrown together without much concern for organizing intelligence.

Though everyone tries her or his hardest to make it otherwise, this is by definition a place-holder film that exists not so much for itself but to smooth the transition from its hugely successful predecessors to a presumably glorious finale one year hence.

A forced march toward certain disaster, a scenario only passionate believers in predestination are likely to savor.

Yes, it's inventive, yes, it's out-there and audacious, but no, it's not always as funny as those good things would lead you to hope.

The Kite Runner is a house divided against itself. The Marc Forster-directed version of the Khaled Hosseini novel does one part of the story so well that its success underlines what's lacking in what remains.

Veteran director Roger Spottiswoode has tried to pep the old warhorse up, but the combined inertia of all those pictures over 35 years proves hard to budge.

This melding of two cinematic sensibilities, though effective at moments, is finally not as exciting or involving as it we'd like it to be.

Bardem's performance is so good it tends to mask how lacking much of what surrounds it is.

Although the pulp energy that Blomkamp brings to this material makes it consistently watchable, the film doesn't feel as singular as we would have hoped.

Genuinely moving at times, Philadelphia is trying, perhaps too hard, to break America's heart. [22 Dec 1993, p.1]

Although overly self-involved, Penn is surprisingly focused as a director.

Tentpoles are rarely guilty of overreaching, but Tomorrowland has a tendency to feel out of control, a film that is finally more ambitious than accomplished.

Salerno, as if he's unsure of what he's got, goes to great lengths to heighten the drama with crisp editing, a strong score, frequent sound effects and snappy visuals.

This Walking Tall does have the Rock, and that, both physically and metaphorically, is no small thing.

though it has its share of boggling action sequences and will serve as an acceptable introduction to domestic fans not familiar with Woo’s work, “Hard Target” is an awkward mixture, not on the level of the director’s best work, and leaves open the question of how well his style can adapt to Hollywood.

Perhaps inevitably because it is dealing with a big issue, This Changes Everything suffers a bit from being all over the map, touching so many bases that, though each is important, they don’t all cohere into a whole.

At once too neat and too messy, but films like this are too rare to leave it at that. Ragged but ambitious, it retains a core of genuine emotion -- this picture is doing the best it can, and although that may not be everything, it ought to count for something.

Having its heart and mind in the right place is not enough to make this a better movie than it is.

Though it is a vivid, promising piece of work from first-time director Ernest R. Dickerson, it also shows how difficult it's becoming to deal with this material in any kind of fresh manner.

Sommersby is not quite the old-fashioned romantic classic it tries to be. But given its problems, what is surprising about this three-hanky film is how close it gets at times to providing the traditional satisfactions of the genre.

The problem with Anna and the King is that it's caught halfway between then and now--- the film tries to throw in notions of cultural relativism and big power imperialism, but can't do without corny shtick.

In a sense it's a shame that Cocaine Cowboys is so obsessed by violence, because the film has interesting points to make.

After a summer of numbing mindlessness, there is something frankly refreshing about a movie that deals even superficially with as significant a figure as the rebellious 16th century theologian Martin Luther, one of the founders of Protestantism and the man who put the reform in the Reformation.

All this is good as far as it goes, but the problem is the good parts don't last long enough.

Disorganized but engaging, full of visual pyrotechnics and earnest emotion, it is diverting, if not necessarily convincing.

Things are sporadically troublesome about the film. The story goes in and out of being self-consciously earnest and ponderous, a situation that numerous tight close-ups of people's eyes does nothing to help.

"Breakdown" gets the music right and has the benefit of strong acting, but its unapologetically melodramatic plot has a tendency to throw everything at you but the kitchen sink.

A sweet and somber film that works hard to overcome its limitations.

Cute and light and wafer-thin, this film is pleasantly similar to its successful predecessor, "The Brady Bunch Movie."

A slick piece of summer entertainment that is counting on elaborate special effects to make its derivative, convoluted story line all but irrelevant.

Story and soul are never going to be kings on Skull Island, but they could have fared better than this.

Though this story couldn't mean more to Jolie, she hasn't been able to make it mean as much to us. Scrupulous and perhaps constrained at the thought of overdoing things, Jolie has allowed the enormity of the story to get the best of her, creating a film that is more disturbing than moving.

Crimson Peak's astonishing visuals don't enhance its story (co-written by the director and Matthew Robbins); they overwhelm it, encouraging us to stand back and admire the look when we should be involved in the emotional mechanics of this lurid tale.

But bearing witness can be a complex thing and in its concern to illuminate Sarajevo is prone to overkill, to trying too hard to squeeze in every troubling wartime incident.

This is a film without a center, a film whose young protagonist should have more texture, more of a compelling voice than she does. Through no real fault of the acting, young Astrid does not compel our attention the way she must if White Oleander is to succeed completely on the screen.

It's a nervy, quasi-documentary scheme that's often successful, perhaps more so than you'd expect for this kind of a hybrid endeavor. But Macdonald's technique eventually turns out to be as distancing as it is involving, paradoxically undercutting the reality as often as it enhances it.

Exhilarating and frustrating at the same time... the Coens' skill is such that you're not averse to following them anywhere, but every once in a while you can't help wishing they weren't so dead set against throwing the rest of us at least a hint of what's on their minds. [21 Aug 1991]

Frustrating though it can be, Spanglish still proves to be as resilient as its characters.

Aside from Paltrow's performance, Sylvia is neither a film so spectacular it shouldn't be missed nor something so tepid you have to stay away.

American Assassin is a serviceable, workman-like thriller that makes the familiar as involving as its going to get. It demonstrates that even Jason Bourne lite is better than no Bourne at all, if you're in the mood.

Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, Pocahontas is on the formulaic side, a copy that duplicates what its predecessors have done, only a little less adroitly and with a little less style. [16Jun1995 Pg. F.01]

Comes off as convincing but never compelling. There's a ponderous quality to it, as if it's forever clearing its throat to say something of value that doesn't quite get articulated.

While Chappaquiddick sheds some light on the proceedings, the film leaves us feeling, as Kennedy intimate Ted Sorensen (Taylor Nichols) puts it, "history has the final word on these things," not Hollywood.

What The Peacemaker doesn't do well, though it tries, is bring much in the way of emotion or character development to the table.

This is an earnest and way-contrived endeavor that manages, due largely to Costner's efforts, to be genially diverting in a gee-whiz kind of way.

As a result of trying too hard to maintain the original's insouciant attitude, what was fresh now seems institutionalized, what was off the wall now feels carved in stone and the film's trademark irreverence has become dogma.

Unfortunately, although Gilliam has always had a taste for the outre, he has allowed it to get out of hand here and swallow the picture whole. There's an excessiveness, an unwelcome too-muchness to "Grimm's" creepy moments.

A rehash of plot conventions from a slew of mismatched movies. A Perfect World will remind you of any number of previous films, but almost everything it attempts to do was done better the last time around.

Does benefit from Gibson's charisma...Whether it is quite good enough is another question.

A warmhearted horror show that puts cliched movie people into a realistic situation, the signals it sends out are nothing but mixed.

Mortal Engines is bursting with everything you’d want except compelling emotional intelligence.

Isn't good and isn't bad, it just isn't. A lethargic would-be entertainment as well as a dispiriting vanity project, it is such a misfire that it makes it hard to remember what was special about its predecessor.

A movie we might like to buy into if left to our own devices, but that idea is anathema to Turteltaub, intent on pushing us so hard that we end up pushing back.

What results is a film with some bright spots but whose effect is finally as muddled and wearying as the event itself sometimes is.

Harron has said she was determined to be nonjudgmental about Page, to do justice to the woman's "mystery and ambiguity." In practice, however, that attitude plays as coldness, and Page, for all her remarkable zest, comes off as a not terribly interesting person we're given no incentive to become involved with.

Its heart is so much in the right place it is difficult to get really peeved at it.

The film is well intentioned and mildly diverting, but in attempting to modernize its story it has lost many of the things that make the original so memorable and not gained much in return.

Unfortunately, absent a more objective context, Trudell's gnomic utterances do little to support those sentiments. By preaching so relentlessly to the choir, this film misses an opportunity to show what got them to sing in the first place.

A reasonably diverting albeit frequently improbable thriller.

We’re presented with another movie in the “Mississippi Burning” tradition that focuses on a heroic white person getting his eyes opened about the nature of his own and society’s racism.

Thor has its strengths, but it is finally something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be.

It does not have as much invigorating freshness as audiences have come to expect in computer animation.

Not without its funny moments, much of Birdcage seems pro forma and predictable. What felt original in 1978 is no longer half so inspired.

This single cautionary tale of how drug innocence gives way to woeful, hung-over experience proves to be way too predictable to effectively caution or even involve anyone.

Above all this is a film for gluttons for punishment, for those who never ever can get enough of Sylvester Stallone. Everyone else, please leave the building.

It's a wonderful piece of filmmaking, but once any mouth is opened the magic is immediately tarnished.

Though it is always pleasant and agreeable, this film has the bland and undemanding texture that characterizes movies made for network TV.

Though the film's second half has some good action moments, it never fulfills the promise of its earliest scenes.

Though it is effective in fits and starts, this third version of that sturdy tale (the fourth, if you count Sleepless in Seattle, which it in part inspired) never manages to be more than a reasonable facsimile of its progenitor.

Like "The Addams Family" before it, this is one of those clever, lively and ultimately wearying pieces of showy Hollywood machinery where a glut of creativity has gone into the visuals with only scraps left over for the plot and the dialogue. [27 May 1994 Pg.F1]

The best possible face that can be put on things is that Big and Little Edie (the mother died two years after the film was released, the daughter is still living) made an unconscious, unsavory, mutually advantageous bargain with the filmmakers: Make us famous and we'll return the favor. In retrospect it's clear that both parties lived up to their parts; only the audience got shortchanged. [14 Aug 1998, p.F20]

A motion picture with one foot in artistic expression and one in pulp fiction and commercialized violence. It wants the respect that goes with a quality production, but it can't resist providing the brutality and exploitation the film's core audience expects.

Watching it is like being in a room with a couple locked in a torrid embrace. It might be fun for them, but what's in it for everyone else?

A film whose reach exceeds its grasp. Hugely ambitious and not without moments of success, this indulgent 2 hour and 40 minute epic ends up as unwieldy as its elongated title. It's a movie in love with itself, and few things are more fatal than that.

The kind of tension you would expect is never completely present.

The Wrestler doesn't add up. It's constructed with great care around a lead performance that is everything it could possibly be, but the picture itself is off-putting and disappointing.

The result is a film that is solid and acceptable instead of soaring and exceptional, one unnecessarily hampered in its quest to reach the magical heights of the trilogy.

Striptease isn't in the kind of shape Demi Moore is. While her role as exotic dancer Erin Grant has the actress buffed and toned enough for the cover of Muscle & Fitness, the film itself could use a lot more definition. [28 Jun 1996, p.F1]

As far as the new disaster film 2012 is concerned, the world will end with both a bang and a whimper, the bang of undeniably impressive special effects and the whimper of inept writing and characterization. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

With its capacity to surprise, the film comes to life when you don't expect it to, in tiny but wonderfully off-center moments.

A persuasive thriller for most of its length, it stumbles in its attempt to become an upscale version of "Death Wish" and other vigilante dramas and ends up derailing with a soft thud.

Dances on the edge of flat-lining just like the DOAs that are Frank's stock-in-trade.

Being blissed out may be an enviable state for a human being, but it is not necessary the best one for a film. [25 May 1994, p.F1]

Though some of the choicest talent in Hollywood is involved, including stars Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond and director Sydney Pollack, "Sabrina" plays like a standard brand. A mild romantic comedy, undemanding and unobjectionable, it fits the definition of product, a film made not for love but because it was a package that could be sold.

Built of action-sport stunts, has adrenaline to spare. But, c'mon. Where is its sense of fun?

Although he works his hardest at the part and doesn't embarrass himself, even with the help of Stan Winston's vampire makeup Tom Cruise is plainly miscast as Lestat. [11Nov1994 Pg. F1]

While films are admired for making fantasy real, some manage a reverse, unwanted kind of alchemy, turning involving reality into meaningless piffle.

It's strong as can be in terms of production values and panoramic photography (as befits its $70-million budget) and weak as watery tea when it comes to little things like dialogue and character development. [22 May 1992]

If Welles was unhappy at the prospect of the human race splitting in two, he probably wouldn't be too crazy with his great-grandson's movie splitting up in pretty much the same way.

The film throws so much ersatz cleverness and overdone emotion at the audience that we end up more worn out than entertained.

The Road is a road you'll wish hadn't been taken. Not because anything's been badly done, but because there's a serious imbalance in the complicated equation between what the film forces us to endure and what we end up receiving in return.

Director Wes Anderson, who also co-wrote the "Royal" script with actor Owen Wilson, unquestionably has one of America's most distinctive filmmaking sensibilities, but that is part of the problem. As my mother used to say, too good is no good.

It has the awkwardness that characterizes many first features and, as befits a culture that does not always prize refinement, some of its performances and situations are not as subtle as they should be.

It's not the story that's the story here, it' the film' bravura visual look.

It finally can't transcend the limitations inherent in being no more than a way station in an epic journey, a journey whose cinematic conclusion is several years away.

Though the sequences of the actual heroism on the Paris-bound train are fully as crisp and involving as you'd expect, the other sections of the film, intent on demonstrating how undeniably everyday the three participants were up to that crucial moment, fall regrettably flat.

Given everything, it's no surprise that the verdict on the film has to be a split decision. Troy is a movie you believe in physically...Believing in Troy emotionally, however, presents a greater challenge.

The Mummy does have elements that are effective, especially Sofia Boutella in the title role, but with all the hurly-burly on screen the virtues get lost in the shuffle.

This action facility, however, is not enough to make "13 Hours" more than sporadically successful, in part because, at 2 hours and 24 minutes, the film is too long for its own good and risks feelings of repetition and exhaustion.

It is an acceptable enough thriller, neither the worst you've seen nor the opposite.

The Lover is easy to watch and even easier to forget. A pleasant enough piece of commercial sensuality from French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, its selling point is its very pretty, clothing-optional sex scenes. Their effectiveness, however, is undercut by an air of self-congratulatory pomposity that the film is way too insubstantial to support.

To be fair to Deathly Hallows, the filmmakers have tried hard to fill the proceedings with battles and chases and debilitating curses. Genuine filmmaking excitement, however, is harder to provide.

Neither the script nor the direction nor the acting has been able to make these characters into ones we want to invest ourselves in. The Truth About Charlie is one very busy film, but it's really not going anywhere.

Townsend's sincerity, his admiration for the idealism of the people behind the anti-WTO protests, is never in doubt, but combining drama with historical re-creation is frankly a challenge his filmmaking skills are not up to.

May make you weep, but not in the way anyone intended. Handsomely made, well-meaning but finally frustrating and unsatisfying, this perplexing film is an example of a previously unseen hybrid, the socially conscious, humanitarian action movie. It doesn't appear to be a genre with much of a future.

Does have its pleasures, but the feeling is inescapable that the person most pleased is Bertolucci himself. In essence he is the dreamer of the title, as eager to retreat into this hermetic world of his own creation as his characters are into theirs. Fair enough, but why does he have to drag us along with him?

Part manic comedy, part would-be heart-warmer of the "follow your bliss" variety, its odd combination of tones and situations leads to as many awkward, uncertain moments as funny ones.

A pleasant enough entertainment raised above its station by the quality of its acting.

The whale is wondrous but the drama not so much in In the Heart of the Sea.

All the imagination and effort (including 18 months of pre-production) that went into making the dinosaurs state-of-the-art exciting apparently left no time to make the people similarly believable or involving. In fact, when the big guys leave the screen, you'll be tempted to leave the theater with them. [11 June 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]

Batman Returns, the most eagerly awaited and aggressively hyped film of the summer, is, for better and worse, very much the product of director Tim Burton's morose imagination. His dark, melancholy vision is undeniably something to see, but it is a claustrophobic conception, not an expansive one, oppressive rather than exhilarating, and it strangles almost all the enjoyment out of this movie without half trying.

Unfortunately, Garner doesn't have as much screen time as her prominence in the advertising would indicate: Daredevil has a hard time staying alive when she's not on the scene.

Intermittently appealing movie romance.