Liam Lacey

These images tantalize, but without satisfying, like a trailer for a narrative that would work better as a long-form series.

So, points for shoe-string filmmaking on several fronts. But however open-minded one might try to be, it’s hard to imagine how high, or how low, you’d have to be to recognize human beings in this grungy geek fantasy.

The loss of two-dimensional artistry of the original has some compensation of human warmth.

The characters of Rachel and Nick are charming but their relationship feels backgrounded by numbing amounts of money porn, stilted melodrama, and often-strained comedy.

The problems with The United States vs Billie Holiday aren’t about Day’s creditable performance, but pretty much everything that happens around it. That includes Pulitzer-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ time-hopping, confusing script and Daniels’ direction, which is both feverishly pulpy and stilted and laden.

The film — set over the course of one wedding day — rates as no more than a passable distraction, though those can be useful.

The movie rattles through ninety minutes of episodic jolts, the visual style is jumbled. Distinctive only in having a better effects budget than your average demons-in-the-attic quickie. While the super-parody elements offer a few snorts of amusement, the movie avoids taking on more complex ideas about Superman as an American ideal, though the filmmakers are obviously aware of the Bizarro context.

The decision to avoid having the characters speaking Chinese saves the trouble of subtitles but it also makes the drama feel generic, another pulpy sub-Scorsesian urban nightmare with episodes of spastic violence, the constantly throbbing soundtrack, the use of slow motion, and wide-screen, colour-saturated camera work.

While she’s not running up Billie Eilish-like social media influence, we understand that Collè is a kind of lightning rod for sexually-anxious, McJob-holding, roommate-sharing, millennial types. We also get the not-so-deep message, writ large and underscored, that sometimes transparency may be the best disguise of all.

Without having spent enough time to establish the background of the characters and their conflicted motives, Hunt leaves us bystanders to the mayhem.

For the fans, Us + Them offers a meticulously constructed concert experience for a fraction of the price of a live ticket and a chance to join a chorus in yelling back at the TV. For the casually curious, be forewarned: While Waters still burns with righteous zeal, at an often repetitious 135 minutes, the film will leave your backside feeling uncomfortably numb.

The charm and the limitations of this modestly budgeted, good-hearted trifle, set in a middle-class Scottish village, are its youthful energy and anxiousness to please. Along with the mechanically efficient tunes from the team of Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly, the entire film feels as if it could have been written and produced by a group of bright theatre students.

There are a few problems with Giacomo Durzi’s documentary, Ferrante Fever. The worst is that it’s mundane in the making, a talking heads and clips assemblage with a constantly breathless tone. The second is that betrays the entire idea of putting the work ahead of the literary cult: The film gives us neither the author in person, nor her writing, except in brief clips, read in voice-over by an actor.

When the movie abandons the memoir’s story of grief and joy it becomes less interesting.

Although the comic scenes are well-crafted, I Propose stumbles in the over-plotting.

At best, it’s no more than a puny version of David Fincher’s Fight Club.

While the performances are heart-warming, the characterization of Reddy feels reductive, overlooking the real-life contradictions, flinty humour, and eccentricities that might have made the performance less generic.

The film is full of lovely images, macro close-ups and time-lapse photography mixed in with some inspirational politics...But by the end, this gentle meandering film about a man who loves forests feels at least half-nonsensical.

Moon Manor is in a middle ground, a fiction that claims to be “true-ish”.

To give Noé’s credit, he used the Saint Laurent fashion money to practice the split-screen technique which is employed far more movingly in Vortex. He also made the only fashion ad I won’t instantly forget.

Whom is this movie for, really? It's too tame for the whooping crowds of women who made hits of the "Sex and the City" movies and "Bridesmaids." And for sure it isn't for parents with kids. You can probably find them, diaper bags in the aisles and toddlers on their laps, watching "Dr. Seuss: The Lorax."

A glum meditation on isolation and romantic malaise.

A redemption allegory so poker-faced you might forget that redemption is supposed to be a good thing.

There’s one illuminating segment in Alexis Bloom’s documentary, Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, which might have made a fascinating stand-alone short doc.

The best way to appreciate The Affair is to sidestep its pot-boiler pretentious and think of as an exceptionally elegant episode of House Hunters International.

For all these references to the fairytale, Sydney White soon takes an easier path, recycling familiar "Mean Girls" and "Revenge of the Nerds" scenarios.

That makes Mockingjay – Part 1 an experience to be endured, like a prison sentence, rather than enjoyed. By all means, bring on the revolution: It has to be more exciting than this.

The story is shockingly ordinary. The movie plays like an extended mediocre episode of the X-Files TV show or, for that matter, even a contemporary crime series such as CSI.

This Means War is a Valentine's date dud: Think wilted roses, squashed chocolates and flat champagne.

Reminiscence doesn’t leave us much to remember it by, apart from those mournful CGI vistas of water-logged Miami.

In the end, Eagle vs. Shark represents a convincing triumph for Dumb.

Promised Land is a low-budget effort, far too awkward and contrived a drama to change many hearts and minds.

Parental Guidance is one of those intergenerational embarrassment comedies in the "Meet the Fockers" line, where children can enjoy seeing grown-ups looking ridiculous.

The truth is you can find more entertaining absurdities and thrilling nihilism from watching the average episode of Melrose Place or Beverly Hills, 90210 and, at least on those shows, they don't confuse dumb with doomed. [13 June 1997, p.C6]

Leatherhead's a comedy of stock setups and kooky digressions in which nothing really comes to a head, and running at close to two hours, it lacks the essential brevity of the form.

The ninth film in the franchise is competent enough but it won’t freeze the heart or fire the imagination.

Apart from the overall endorsement of women’s friendships — and the credible warmth between the two likeable stars — the script’s feminist message is hopelessly muddled.

Ultimately, Next is just the next Nic Cage vehicle, another quirky story that allows him to do his patented neurotic balancing act in an askew world. The problem here is not just that Cage's shtick is wearing as thin as his hair; the role is a bad fit.

Screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River) is the real culprit here, creating a crude paint-by-numbers fiction that keeps yelling about the importance of the truth while hurtling in the opposite direction.

There's potential here for a macabre cult favourite touching on themes of technology and the body-mind split, but the movie's progression into rambling incoherence gives new meaning to the phrase "fatal script error."

A movie with a sincere social message and an exploitation movie sensibility, Antebellum is a clumsy cousin of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, an allegory of racism in a horror film about entrapment that goes wide of the mark.

Contraryto its exciting advertising, Event Horizon is not the most frightening movie ever made. If anything, the conventional pop-up scares and gross-out effects of this British haunted-space-ship story seem less terrifying than quaint.

Both original and good; the problem is the original parts aren't good and the good parts aren't original.

The story is a much more serious problem, a run-on, overstuffed narrative that feels like a very long prologue for a climax that never comes.

The goal is apparently a double exercise in heartfelt lessons and deep hilarity, but it's hard to tell because the pace feels so lethargic. Director and screenwriter Wil Shriner is a TV-sitcom veteran (Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond) whose idea of directing a movie is to make another sitcom, only four times as long.

The fun of Biker Boyz should be in the racing, and though director Reggie Rock Bythewood throws around a lot of techniques, nothing really ignites.

The documentary, Goodnight Oppy, is the sort of film you expect to see at your local museum or science center for school-age children. It’s a real-life Wall-E story, that’s easy to follow, full of emotion and Hollywood budget, and intended to elicit wonder and admiration for the National Aeronautics and Space Association.

A meditation of life, death, reincarnation and biblical symbolism that feels peculiarly like a head-shop poster, blown up to feature-movie size.

Performances, over all, are a mixed bag; Zeta-Jones does a fair, if incongruous, impersonation of a forties vamp, while Chandler and Pepper do well with limited screen time. As usual, Wright, as a Machiavellian police commissioner, transcends so-so-material to establish himself as the most complex character in the film.

The movie, which is roughly as predictable as the attraction of flies to dung, is a hackneyed mix of sentimentality and anarchic comedy.

More entertaining in concept than execution. What starts as geek comedy gradually slides into a familiar morality play about the savagery beneath the veneer of civility.

The movie is a preholiday trifle that’s mildly risqué and a lot sentimental.

In the world of pulp movies, where horror, westerns and Asian exploitation borrow and blend with each other, there's a point where the cross-genre mishmash begins to feel like gobbledegook. That's definitely the case with Sukiyaki Western Django.

Where this PG-rated adaptation of a hit Broadway show, adapted by Adam Shankman falls down is by being far too mild for its supposedly outrageous subject.

There's a scientific law to be discerned here that producers would be well to heed: Mediocre movies start to drag as soon as the action speeds up; when the explosions start, they fall to pieces.

There’s little here to improve upon the stilted quality of the original, and it’s even more cumbersomely plotted.

Throbbing musical crescendos and flickery flashbacks abound but apart from some outlandish plot machinations, nothing here is good or bad enough to be memorable.

Beyond the premise though, Held is pretty much stale ginger ale, not fresh, no fizz, thinly acted and tepidly paced. While it’s passably interesting, watching co-directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing (The Gallows) explore the antiseptic house as if watching a a real estate video, the accompanying thin drama drifts into episodic genre violence and doubtful logic.

There are the usual gaggle of embarrassing friends, a lot of voice-over and montages, a wedding, a funeral and wait … something’s missing. Oh, right. Hugh Grant.

Light to the point of disposability, Sweet Home Alabama is a small screwball comic idea that spins out far too long.

Rude, lewd and occasionally in the nude, The Hangover brings a collection of fresh faces to the familiar raucous male-bonding comedy.

The movie’s compromised tone, wavering between emo introspection and rom-com cuteness, is awkward in all the wrong ways.

What a shame that The Spirit isn't nearly as good as it looks.

With the two American actresses miscast, and the two young British lads behaving like a couple of "Brideshead Revisited" rejects, most of the dramatic heavy lifting is left to veteran English actor Wilkinson.

The contrived script is stretched to the breaking point by Reiner's listless direction.

Yet another stilted comic thriller.

The best sequence is a five-minute set-piece where Clouseau struggles with an accent coach to learn how to order a hamburger like an American.

Pathfinder is aimed more at the action-figure crowd than the history buffs.

Over all, the movie is just funny enough to make you wish it were much better than it is.

Smith’s charisma isn’t always an asset to the movie though. Unlike the unknown Macchio in the original Kid, there’s nothing vulnerable about Smith except for his diminutive size, which is its own problem.

Though Shark Tale will make waves at the multiplexes and move a lot of plastic toys at Burger King, the movie lacks real heart. It feels like a cold-blooded, always moving, profit-making machine.

This is a guy movie, a gothic creepshow.

The characters, full of blue-blood archness and angst, are partial to self-conscious speechifying.

As Whatever Works creaks along, the attention-getting nastiness of the first half dissipates and it turns into just another Woody Allen overacted sex farce. Of all the insults hurled about in the film, perhaps the worst is its pandering conclusion. What exactly does Allen take his audience for? A bunch of mindless zombies?

A high-pedigree, low-interest affair that serves mostly as an exercise in postmortem speculation: Why is a project with so many prominent names attached to it so sterile and lifeless?

Mediocre movie.

Coming from writers responsible for such material as "Snow Dogs" and "The 6th Day," National Treasure is not so much a no-brainer as a brain-stunner, so audaciously ridiculous you are initially intrigued, then soon irritated by its incoherence.

There's a whole lot of "American Beauty" and "The Ice Storm" packed into Lymelife.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus takes us deep into the imagination of Terry Gilliam, which once was a splendid place to visit. And might prove so again. But not here, because this film is less a coherent exercise of imagination than a haphazard lecture on its importance, a lecture that eventually dwindles into self-indulgence.

There’s a scene in a members-only club where Wyatt and Goddard meet, giving the two veteran actors the chance to go eyeball to eyeball for a couple of minutes of barbed dialogue. It almost makes the movie worth it.

The movie meanders on and on, like a bad sexual dream, until you finally wake up mumbling: Stella, please: leave that groove thang alone.

At two hours of repetitive heists and costume changes, Bandit grows bloated and progressively tiresome.

A movie with a confident sense of its own worthlessness, it speeds by in a flurry of candy-coloured cars, bare midriffs, screaming engines and a pulsing rap soundtrack.

Has a deliberately minimalist, retro look to it as well.

By turns raw, naturalistic and indebted to John Cassavetes, both stylistically and thematically.

The 3-D is a pain, and the excitable editing, slo-mo and speeded-up action frustrate attempts to watch the athleticism on display, but the last half-hour takes it up a notch.

The film is, in a word, ostentatiously odd. Whether one finds it insightfully askew or laboriously quirky will be a matter of taste.

What promised to be a teen screwball comedy with a supernatural twist soon descends into special-effects overkill and camp acting from the overqualified supporting cast.

Falling in the pillowy cleavage between mildly awful and slightly entertaining, Burlesque is a clichéd rags-to-diva story that culminates in a series of Christina Aguilera videos.

Only a few events happen in this minimalist film, and most of them keep getting repeated through most of its running time.

The movie is nothing if not anxious to please. There's a big, diverse, celebrity voice cast – Maggie Smith, Hulk Hogan and Dolly Parton as well as Caine and Osbourne.

If Jobs had been a producer on Jobs, he would have sent it back to the lab for a redesign.

Most of this is blandly palatable, at least for the first half. Cyrus, though she seldom strays from her two primary modes, pouting rebel or toothy girlfriend, has a winning on-screen presence, if only for her enjoyably abrasive edge in this deep well of pathos.

The effect of so much pretension and so many lovely images eventually becomes soporific.

Though by no means a good movie, The Internship floats along for fairly well for about half its length, thanks to the easy interplay between the two stars and a certain melancholic topicality.

This is the reliable raunch-plus-sweetness comic formula that goes back through the Farrelly brothers, Adam Sandler's comedies, "Revenge of the Nerds," "Porky's" and "Animal House."

A tart-coated sugar pill of a movie.

Jawbreaker breaks ground in one way. The movie is notably unpleasant, not just because it's morally offensive, but because it strives for this arch, artificial John Waters tone without any accompanying pay-off in wit.