Michael O'Sullivan

A mediocre production that nevertheless will strike a deep and resonant chord with viewers.

There are a number of surprises in the idiosyncratic film, and one of its pleasures is the oblique and unchronological way in which Ward peels away the layers of the story, flashing backward and forward in time and jumping between Earth and the Beyond, separating his scenes with blindingly blank, white-out screens.

Feels like a hazy high that takes too long to shake.

In the end Monsieur N. could use a little less cloak-and-dagger and more of what made "The Emperor's New Clothes" work, i.e., heart.

Despite the unforced humor and honesty in the performances of its young and talented cast, The Wood spends too much time wallowing in arrested adolescence to make you feel you've traveled anywhere.

A well-crafted story with a unique voice. But its literary gifts are outweighed by its pictorial prosaicness. Dimming the screen in every shot is the unmistakable shadow of the page.

Despite this tale's surface sheen and propulsive momentum, it never transports one very far.

The smart but slight film implodes under the weight of its own "excessive linguistic pressure."

It's no worse than any number of other cookie-cutter slasher flicks geared for the slightly post-pubescent market.

It's effectively frightening. It's just not the kind of frightening that stays with you very long, unless of course someone decides to make the same movie . . . yet again.

There's actually a lot going on in this little movie, and first-time feature director Stephen Daldry, turning his talents from the theater, handles all of it deftly.

What modest pleasure the film affords is largely thanks to the charisma of its genial stars.

Plays like a piece of mediocre music, gorgeously rendered.

That script – co-written by Terry Hayes and director Brian Helgeland – is almost too noir for its own good at times, but Gibson somehow manages to pull its implausibility off.

In trying to compose a poetic love letter to a time of liberation and freedom, Haynes has merely conjured up memories of druggy excess, egotism and tight trousers. The only mementos worth saving from the experience are available on the soundtrack.

Although Monkeybone will undoubtedly make you laugh at its slapstick highjinks, the irony is that for a movie that's ultimately about soul, that's the one commodity that's in precious short supply up on the screen.

The movie is pretty unabashed about the all-but-corny sentiment: Each of us has something to give.

As a rule, the drawn and computer-animated imagery is top notch and seamlessly integrated, but the central characters' tawny complexions and the often chiaroscuro lighting sometimes obscure all but the whites of their eyes and their pearl-perfect teeth.

Meet Joe Black is Hopkins's movie and, despite the film's unnecessary length, his quiet and dignified performance almost carries the ball across the finish line.

It's the Weather Channel on steroids.

The film as a whole, while possessing a kind of vicious beauty, feels as cold and as embalmed as a corpse.

A generally well-made tale of humor and hard luck.

A tad preachy and more than a little bit sanctimonious.

A jaundiced view of litigation, however authentic, is not necessarily the stuff of great drama, even of the legal-thriller variety, which by definition is confined to a claustrophobic courtroom.

Charming but slight comedy.

If these repugnant people were really your friends and neighbors, your time would be more profitably spent reading the real estate listings than the movie reviews. But for 1 1/2 hours in a darkened theater, the derailment of their unhealthy emotions makes for one compulsively watchable train wreck.

Yes, Knowing is creepy, at least for the first two-thirds or so, in a moderately satisfying, if predictable, way.

The kind of stunning and contentious work of art that will leave a lot of folks speechless.

Where Town and Country gets really good and weird – and I do mean good – is only after about an hour into it in deepest, darkest Idaho.

Overwhelmingly predictable despite its cute surprise ending, Tortilla Soup is a filling but unoriginal dish.

Charming but slight.

It's a pretty compelling yarn, not to mention full of pretty pictures, and yet it could be so much more than that.

It's a lot more tightly focused than the first outing, and for fans of the demented comedy of Elliott and Cross, or the thespian chops of Woods (a last-minute replacement for an ailing Marlon Brando), it's worth putting up with humor that's the filmic equivalent of a big, spit-soaked raspberry.

Make no mistake. This is partisan filmmaking at its most gleefully unapologetic. Unless they're also masochists, Bill Clinton haters and Ken Starr fans will know better than to buy a ticket.

There's something that never quite works about the film.

Satisfies and disturbs in just about equal measure.

It is also, despite the all-too-rare focus on the Filipino American community, a creakily familiar take on an age-old family dynamic.

Cares not a whit for such arbitrary concepts as justice, crime or punishment. It understands the relativism of right and wrong and takes a kind of perverse pleasure in reminding us that there are some things we'll never know.

Sappy but sweet B-ball Cinderella story that succeeds thanks largely to the outsize charm of its 4-foot-8-inch, corn-rowed protagonist.

Presents an America that is as much about the pathological display of imperial power -- a showmanship of arrogance and violence -- as policy.

Blade's stomach-turning special effects, bone-crunching martial arts and cynical humor will more than satisfy any action-film addict's need for a fix of eye-popping escapist adrenaline.

Fitfully amusing and ultimately kind of heartwarming in a twisted sort of way

A considerable cut above the crop of recent features by other 'SNL' alums.

If Guess Who were either a whole lot funnier, or a whole lot less funny, it would be a far better film.

It is this sense of real life blurring with make-believe that Allen's film is really playing with, like a kitten toying with a scared mouse. Back and forth he bats the subject, moving between reality, illusion and the imitation of reality with a deft touch that may bruise but never kills.

A blackhearted little film. What's being marketed as a frothy French confection about jealousy (specifically the jealousy of a regular guy married to a famous movie star) also just so happens to be a portrait of a marriage going down the toilet.

The pleasure is entirely like eating cake made from cake mix. It's not like you don't know how it's going to turn out, or how it tasted the last time you ate it.

Now for the bad news. The filmmakers seem to have spent so much attention and, presumably, money on getting the primates right that they completely forgot about the people.

It’s Rainn Wilson who steals the show as the cocky physical education teacher who takes charge when the pint-size monsters corner him and his fellow educators.

Destined to be forgotten in the wasteland that stretches between the actor’s best work and his worst, this dumb-but-not-dumb-enough, simultaneously heartwarming and disheartening film features layer upon layer of wedding-disaster clichés (complete with a trashed cake).

The domestic drama, like the heist story line, fizzles out in the end.

The overly schematic nature of High-Rise does not entirely diminish its pleasures as a story, which include, in addition to Wheatley’s richly lurid visual sensibility, an effective metaphorical tool in Laing.

A funny thing happened while watching Luce. With only a half-hour or so of the movie left to go, it suddenly occurred to me: I wasn’t sure what the movie was actually about. Or, more accurately, it was about so much that, at the point where most films are starting to wrap things up, this one felt like it was still just setting the stage.

The Marksman proves itself to be the cinematic version of comfort food: satisfyingly familiar but full of starch and empty calories.

It's a rousing, fast-paced tale, told with a modicum of verve and packed with colorfully flawed, occasionally heroic and even tragic characters. It also feels disappointingly bloated and too fast-paced by half.

It has certain je ne sais quoi, if graphic nudity, self-referential humor and serial murder — neck stabbing, eye gouging, alligator munching and shotgun blasting — are your thing.

Based on "Romeo and Juliet" the way a martini is "based" on vermouth.

In order for the trick of the film to work, however, one must hold Morgan to a standard that the movie is unlikely to live up to.

As large as Earth Two looms - literally - in the frames of Mike Cahill's film, so do its implications. It's one big, honking metaphor, as much as a special effect. As a symbol of second chances, it's as intriguing as it is frustratingly obvious.

Just inspiring enough, just scary enough, just sappy enough and just funny enough to get by.

Jason Bourne belongs to Damon and Greengrass, whose admirable — and entirely appropriate — goal of playing it for kicks comes across, this time around, as an oddly joyless chore.

The action is sufficiently gripping, even if the drama plays out along predictably violent lines.

Even if you agree with the film’s argument that teenagers shouldn’t be locked up for life when there are other ways to save them, “Monsters” doesn’t offer a convincing argument that a screenwriting class is that lifeline.

Director James Watkins knows how to make a body jump out of its skin, even if he does use the face-reflected-in-the-mirror/window trick once too often. At the same time, the film is kind of, well, silly.

In the end, The Devil's Double is one long balance sheet. On the plus side are the dueling performances of Cooper, which anchor the film. On the minus side is a seemingly interminable litany of violence, abuse and degradation. They cheapen the film by nudging it in the direction of a splatter flick.

For all the outrageousness of Kevin’s alters, the movie falls oddly flat: less tantalizingly enigmatic “et cetera” than “blah blah blah.”

Ironically, the film is conspicuous not for its brio but its blandness.

It's like a PBS version of a movie of the week about child abduction, complete with histrionic, spit-flecked speechifying in quaint Irish brogues.

The Keeper will win no filmmaking prizes. But it doesn’t mean, or need, to. Like an infomercial, its aim is more simple, direct and unapologetic: to call attention to an epidemic hiding in plain sight. By that measure: mission accomplished.

The anarchic spirit of the film suggests the screenwriters (brothers Kevin and Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher and Bob Logan) may also have been a little high on bee venom when they wrote this thing.

It is also very much a Mike Flanagan film, for better and for worse. Part homage to Kubrick’s moody atmospherics, and part hyper-literal superhero story, Doctor Sleep is stylish, engrossing, at times frustratingly illogical and, ultimately less than profoundly unsettling.

It’s all so confusing. But reason is an obstacle to appreciating The Nun II. What you need, like Irene and Debra, is faith — in this case, in the power of pure nonsense.

Disorder is, in other words, more of a technical achievement than an artistic one. The movie is at its best when it recreates what it must feel like to be in a constant state of paranoia and pain. If only that feeling were accompanied by one or two other emotions.

Despite the marquee names and their obvious talent, the film feels like a made-for-TV movie. It’s slight and episodic, with a weirdly scrupulous ambivalence about its subject, whom it seems torn between loving and loathing.

Kandahar is very much a box-ticking exercise, with Butler playing the same kind of hero — perhaps literally the same guy — he has built a career out of.

While it’s gratifying — and occasionally gripping — to see that story told in 12 Strong, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film contains few genuine surprises, at least from a cinematic standpoint.

Although laced with adrenaline and flavored with noirish seasoning, John Frankenheimer's Ronin is a disappointingly conventional thriller.

Mostly, this is a problem of storytelling, not acting. Moss is riveting, even if the material is not.

Controversial, yet undeniably powerful.

The film's title suggests the wry irony of hindsight: We've come a long way, baby, but we're not there yet. Any Day Now could do with a little more of that astringent humor and a little less sap.

Goes beyond interesting, though, to moderately annoying.

It’s an emotionally stagnant affair, whether it’s going for laughter or tears.

There are a few laughs here and there. Most come at the expense of Ferrell, who plays the kind of hapless (and occasionally shirtless) straight arrow that the actor could turn out in his sleep.

A compelling if singularly sour tale.

This is an untaxing, big-budget summer popcorn movie for the whole family. Like the ride itself, it requires no more mental engagement than you would devote to any theme park visit (excluding the thrill rides, which actually raise a pulse.)

That’s the real, and somewhat obvious, lesson here, in a lovely yet flawed confection that might be summed up by two words: beautiful nonsense.

At times, the movie struggles to maintain the critical balance between detachment from and engagement with the thing it’s making fun of.

Scares, to be sure, which is certainly one promise on which it delivers. But the film offers little insight into what it seems to be saying is essentially a mundane fact of life: When one devil leaves the world, there is always another one waiting just outside the door.

Even Lawrence, in the end, is a letdown. As entertaining and committed as she is — and she’s easily the best thing about Joy — the actress ultimately can’t sell a souffle that’s half baked.

The film does have its moments, mostly involving the relationship between Meir and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, nicely played by Liev Schreiber, whose character engages in delicate negotiations with her over a bowl of borscht, speaking in a seductive, diplomatic rumble.

There are pleasures to be had here, though it wouldn’t be accurate to call “Peter” fun, by any stretch of the imagination. At times this admiring but uninspired making-of movie feels like the cinematic equivalent of the Karl/Marlene character: fawning to the point of sycophancy.

In the end, 13 Minutes isn’t about the timing or logistics of one man’s plot to kill Hitler at all, but about what made that man tick.

It’s a mildly engrossing if wonky exercise in what could be called a kind of selfish activism.

Yes, “Honk” picks some low-hanging fruit. But it also, as it turns out, leaves a sour aftertaste in the mouth.

Dear Nicholas Sparks, There's no easy way to say this. But with Dear John, the latest of the five films made so far from your sentimental, best-selling novels, I think our relationship is in trouble.

It’s incrementally more fun than it is silly.

Even as Brick Lane manages to sidestep one formula, it falls prey to another.

The problem, sadly, is that the whole amounts to less than the sum of its parts.