Mick LaSalle

Aside from Patricia Clarkson, who is practically this movie's reason for being, the great virtue of Last Weekend is that it's exactly as it presents itself.

Cherry is like three different movies in one: the teen years, the war experience, and then life as a drug addict. It’s held together by the smart writing, by the overarching tone of tragic absurdity, and by Holland, who hits every bump on Cherry’s way down.

Reveals one mystery, only to reveal another that it can't quite penetrate.

It's silly, witty and good-natured, not scary so much as icky, and not horrifying or horrible but consistently amusing.

If his two previous films suggested a director dipping a few toes in dark waters, Un Prophete marks the moment when Audiard took the plunge.

That none of this seems snarky, but sweetly human, is largely thanks to Rogen, who never makes Herschel ridiculous, but aspirational, as if he has a vision he’s working toward.

Sharper works like a machine, and so it seems unfair to complain that, by the end, it feels too mechanical. It’s fun. It should have been more fun, but take the fun where you can get it.

The Dying Gaul has the best kind of story in that it unfolds as a series of surprises, and yet every step, twist and turn seems inevitable in retrospect.

Jarmusch's presence as a director is always felt, from moment to moment, in ways that are small but never random. Even establishing shots -- exteriors of buildings -- suggest his sardonic, quietly despairing vision. With Mystery Train, Jarmusch comes of age. [21 Dec 1989, p.E1]

It’s a lovely children’s movie, which isn’t to say that every moment of it is splendid and enchanted, because that’s not the case. The experience of watching Dumbo is more like, “This is OK, this is all very pleasant” — and then suddenly, there are tears in your eyes, and not from allergy season.

Best of all, the filmmakers know when to pull the plug. Date Night clocks in at 88 minutes and would not have been as funny at 89.

A wistful romance with metaphysical overtones, the movie is warm and charming. [10 Jul 1992, p.D1]

It’s oddly worth seeing.

The actors perform as though this were a first-class effort, and at times almost make you believe it. Matthew Modine is boyish and explosive, and Melanie Griffith further establishes herself as an interesting and original actress. Her line readings are odd, yet strangely right. [28 Sept 1990, p.E1]

Oldboy is an immersion into pure twistedness. The purity of its twistedness is its saving grace.

Crowe is not messing around here, not trying to dream up opportunities to throw himself another close-up. He’s a genuine director.

For people already interested in fashion, the film’s appeal will be obvious, but Dior and I deserves to go beyond a small target audience.

Bogdanovich films Noises Off in long, unbroken takes. Though for the most part he doesn't give us the whole stage but moves in to follow the action more closely, the camera moves as one's eyes might, while following the play. Bogdanovich does what he has to -- he gets out of the way of Frayn's original farce. And the result of his thankless toil is a movie that doesn't quite feel like a movie, and that's not quite as good as the play, but that's pretty good anyway. [20 March 1992, p.D5]

As a lesbian thriller, the movie calls to mind the Wachowski’s “Bound” (1996), though “Love Lies Bleeding” is clumsier and more spontaneous, as though it were being made up on the spot. Though the spontaneity ultimately exhausts itself, it’s enjoyable most of the way.

Little gem.

It's the complexity of Lurie's moral universe that makes it linger in the mind.

Ultimately, Fortress is a formula picture, an action film that has to resolve itself in a conventional way. Still, until its last five minutes or so, when it takes a slightly silly turn, Fortress is nicely realized and holds your attention. [4 Sept 1993, p.E1]

It’s mildly amusing when it should be funny, sentimental when it should be deep and all too easy when it should be unsettling. It’s still some kind of success, but a modest one.

It’s a very good movie, and it features a blood-curdling performance from Joaquin Phoenix, in the most frightening portrayal of a violent maniac in decades. One more thing: It’s clearly a response to the times.

Perhaps the movie's use of the past is more than cosmetic in this one regard: Watching Woody Allen revisit his old themes and obsessions already feels like a nostalgic experience. Actually setting the movie back in time deflects this and makes a virtue of a shortcoming.

Entertaining and pleasing for children and parents, and not in the schizophrenic way of most kid's movies, which toss naughty in-jokes over the kiddies' heads.

Seizes on a primal fear and flogs it for two hours.

A charming and wise film.

But for director David Cronenberg and the commitment of his actors, A History of Violence might have been a cartoony action film. Its origins are in a cartoon, of sorts -- specifically, in a graphic novel, by John Wagner and Vince Locke.

The Daytrippers is low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.

Anyone who has ever felt morally right and completely in the minority will have a point of entry into this movie.

Martin Lawrence finally gets to show what he can do as a screen comedian.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a bladder-buster of a movie with no obvious bathroom break, no section where the story starts to sag. This makes it, almost by definition, a good and admirable piece of work. But Killers of the Flower Moon is also a lumbering mess, an ungainly and tonally odd film that, for all the strength of its parts, has little cumulative impact.

Davidson’s appeal is essential to the movie’s success. If you know him only from “Saturday Night Live,” you’ll be surprised by him here. On “SNL,” he can be zany and annoying. Here he has a very particular quality that seems to be coming from a place of past pain. He has equanimity. Without making a fuss about it, he’s attentive to other people’s feelings. He just seems like a decent, thoughtful young guy, someone that you’d like to see come into his own.

Although I, Robot provokes thought, it doesn't exactly deliver thought, despite the occasional Cartesian reference to "ghosts in the machine."

Shock and Awe is no “All the President’s Men,” but it does present a nice balance to the earlier film’s ultimately rosy picture.

Ryan's comic timing continues to delight, while Kline is touchingly heartfelt as a man doing what is evidently all too easy to do -- fall in love with Meg Ryan.

The drama surrounding the romance gets a little too precious -- though I loved it 15 years ago; maybe I'm getting cynical -- but everything else is excellent, including Jack Nicholson, who is subtle and sly in a small, key role. [18 Jan 2004]

Night Always Comes isn’t an especially ambitious movie, but it’s simple where it needs to be simple, and it’s complex when complexity is called for.

This is a tense film that builds in impact as it goes along, and ultimately, it’s riveting.

The impressive thing that Oslo, August 31st does is that it somehow relates what Anders is going through to the city of Oslo in general. Anders is not a metaphor for Oslo - that would be cheap and silly. Rather, he is just one more story in the naked city, and we see him against the backdrop of other people, having quite different lives.

The first half of White Palace is done so well that it's tempting to overlook the fact that once the picture gets its two lovers together, it has nowhere to go -- and it goes nowhere for the last 50 minutes. [19 Oct 1990, p.E1]

It is, for what it’s worth, a good documentary, though I imagine its true worth and true nature can only be revealed in time. At the starting gate of 2018, we can have no idea how this film will be perceived in 10 years, and maybe we don’t want to know. Then again, maybe we do.

Hooking Up is a pretty good movie. I enjoyed it and could even imagine watching it again. But it’s also the movie that shows that Brittany Snow doesn’t have to be relegated to pretty good movies. She’s ready for better.

Whatever your religious affiliation, you will come away thinking that if all this did actually happen, it probably happened something like this.

The result is a movie that, like the book, is episodic and has dips in energy but has more than its share of glory and illumination.

Sweeney gives the movie its extra spark, its sense of occasion.

Just Mercy isn’t the best movie that could have been made from its subject, but it’s good enough.

Jennifer Aniston...doesn't have much screen time, but in playing this slightly insecure, affable young woman, she does her best film acting to date.

What's interesting about revisiting the film today is that the elements that engaged people most at the time - the thriller plot and the glimpse into Soviet life - maintain hardly any fascination. But the love story - what might have been regarded at the time as the obligatory "romantic interest" - stands out as something of lasting appeal. [26 Mar 2017, p.Q41]

Triple 9 is terrific melodrama, but it’s melodrama all the same, and shameless.

It's that wonderful, totally unambitious yet satisfying thing, a really good movie.

An admirable film, not a great one -- yet. It drags a bit.[Restored version]

Buscemi eschews the conventional and ends "Trees Lounge" on a stranger, more tantalizing note.

An outstanding effort that maintains the integrity and purpose that distinguished "The Fellowship of the Ring."

An excellent film noir.

Does a beautiful job of capturing that mood -- the exuberance and wistfulness of one man's last year of youthful irresponsibility before joining the rat race.

At its best, the movie expresses an affection for dogs and is very much attuned to what is wonderful about dogs and what’s funny about them — their sincerity, their credulousness, their odd tendency to get nervous over nothing and yet to occasionally remain oblivious to real threats.

It's a film that, in its own peculiar way, forces viewers to question their values and ask themselves how much they're willing to sacrifice for a functioning society, and how much is too much.

The movie’s biggest asset, aside from Buckley, is the set design. To look at the physical interiors of the houses is like stepping inside a Vermeer painting. Care was taken to provide “Hamnet” with the most realistic and detailed of settings.

Within limits, this is an excellent documentary. Even fans who think they've seen everything will see things here they haven't seen.

Re-creates that chilling sense that comes when, in the middle of a pleasant conversation, one realizes the other person is off his rocker.

What happens is important, but more important is how it happens and whom it happens to.

The Dark Half is another retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story, but King and Romero fail to work out the premise of the story. [23 Apr 1993, p.C3]

Though hardly anybody’s idea of a jolly time at the movies — and not nearly the equal of Florian Zeller’s previous film, “The Father” — “The Son” provides an arresting and unsettling experience. It’s an interesting movie, and different.

Written by William Gibson, who adapted his own short story, and directed by New York artist Robert Longo in his feature debut, Johnny Mnemonic is inescapably a very cool movie. Running at a fevered pace, with laser and light explosions, it introduces a fantastic yet plausible vision of a computer-dominated age.

The laughs, including the big laughs, keep coming right up to the closing seconds.

A film very much of its moment, in ways both good and bad. But the important thing is that its virtues are extraordinary, while its flaws are easy to forget because they’re so common.

Aladdin, the live-action remake of the 1992 Disney animation, is more than a pleasant surprise. It’s a complete delight that stands up its own and is, in many ways, an improvement on the original.

Not as simple as it looks, though its appeal is simple: Robert Redford goes to prison, and James Gandolfini ("The Sopranos") is the warden. That's a movie worth seeing right there.

In its modestly comic way, the movie delves into the question of when it’s better to lie than tell the truth.

Hardly a riveting experience. It has slow patches, but it has a cumulative effect, thanks equally to Hansen-Love and Huppert. We come away feeling enriched and expanded, without exactly knowing how or why.

Ultimately, The Fighter loses its courage and betrays the terms of its own story by fashioning an interpretation designed to please the people it portrays. It does a switch on us, by changing its focus from Micky's character to Micky's career and then pretending it was really about the career all along.

To an extent, the movie waters down its moral complexity by introducing a flat-out villainess, who begins to guide Jean’s actions, thus absolving Jean of some moral responsibility. Still, it’s hard to complain when the villainess is played by Jessica Chastain, the best person in the world to play a cool, coiffed, composed entity of evil, looking for a new planet for her displaced people.

Takes the financially successful formula of "Legally Blonde," the Reese Witherspoon hit from two years ago, and does something unexpected. It fiddles with it, changes it and actually fixes it.

A successful work of art. To see this movie is to feel that you've lived it.

In The Five Obstructions, we meet the Danish filmmaker for an extended period, and he's exactly what a fan might hope and expect him to be like: impish, insightful, unpredictable, mildly sadistic and rigorously honest.

This is a cute movie, a kid's movie, and a rather good one.

As Wade, Gary Poulter is the most authentic-looking old drunk you'll ever see onscreen - something I thought before I knew the story of his casting: Poulter was a homeless man who was recruited by a casting director. He'd never acted before, and yet he's remarkable in this.

As presented here, the novelist Violette Leduc is fascinating and strangely lovable, at least as seen from the audience. But actually knowing her? That would have been work.

Hard, ugly and nasty yet a stylistically vigorous and often insightful piece of work.

Along the way, Looking for Eric emerges as a portrait of a world and a way of life. You will probably not want to live in Manchester after seeing this film, but you'll like and respect the people.

The movie benefits from the frankness that filmmakers were allowed in these pre-censorship days. Dvorak, in her best showcase, is sympathetic as a woman bent on self-destruction, because we appreciate that she has desires she can’t contain.

Best of all is Winona Ryder, who gets to play a brilliant teenager, as she did in ''Heathers.'' It's almost automatically comical to hear such a clear, emphatic and intelligent voice coming out of a kid. But Ryder also works that oddness for dramatic advantage, creating with Dinky the sense of a great spirit temporarily stuck in a child's body. [12 Oct 1990, p.E3]

Has enough wit, energy and geniality to please everyone.

Elizabeth works in a number of ways. It's a feminist film. It's also a kind of spy thriller and a superior historical drama.

In Mission: Impossible III, we find out whether it's still possible to look at Tom Cruise and not see a weirdo. The answer is yes, but a complicated yes, because it takes time.

Subdued yet percolating with suppressed emotion.

Spielberg's sledgehammer way with emotional moments, never more obvious than here, kills some of the pleasure for adults and robs the movie of the ultimate laurel -- classic status. [2002 re-release]

There are turns and twists and multiple dashes of the unexpected, and it is all impressively arranged and justified.

Conclave is a fascinating drama about the personal and political machinations involved in the selection of a new pope. If a bunch of cardinals filling out multiple ballots over the course of several days doesn’t exactly sound riveting to you, prepare for a surprise.

Child actors usually seem either vacuous or snotty, but 8-year-old Max Pomeranc qualifies as a find. As Josh he comes across as a genuinely nice kid, and his intelligent, watchful eyes make him a believable chess talent. In fact, Pomer anc is a highly-ranked chess player who has competed in the national finals. [11 Aug 1993, p.E1]

Tense and compelling, with the added charm of a mischievous spirit.

There are moments that are too macabre and outlandish, but Gilroy steers the movie just this side of farce, just this side of Chayefsky, and keeps it all within a realistic framework. At times watching, you might wonder how he’ll keep the story going, how he’ll top himself. But he does.

Sally Potter's twin interests - in grand world movements and in the grand internal movements in people lives - are effectively brought to bear in Ginger & Rosa, her best film of the decade.

The beauty of The Joneses is that the salesmen are as much the victims as the people they're deceiving.

One thing Yesterday does is rather miraculous. It forces us to hear these Beatles songs as if for the first time.

Does a fine job.

Like all great works of art, the story’s point has resonances beyond its era and even beyond the specific subject of gay people, generally.

Gone Girl is a great thriller until it stops being one, about 20 minutes before the finish. Until then it’s brilliant, not just a triumph of story but of strategy, a movie that keeps the audience grasping and reaching in all the wrong directions, while consistently delivering something a little better, a little crazier and a little more disturbing than expected.

Pedro Almodóvar is one of the few filmmakers with the ability to infuse the screen with his own consciousness, and to see The Skin I Live In is to enter into his nightmare.

It's precisely that fear that Redford sets out to explore. The Conspirator is all about the un-American things Americans can do when feeling collectively threatened.

Remarkable in several big ways.

Speaking of female gangsters, no review of The Kitchen should overlook Margo Martindale, who steals every scene she’s in as a mob matriarch — a gravelly voiced monster with a gutter mouth and a big photo of John F. Kennedy on her wall. Martindale gets to be evil and has as much fun onscreen as she can without smiling.

The promise is double the fun, double the laughs, and the movie can’t quite deliver on that. But there are still big laughs to be had, and there’s the pleasure of watching these two gifted comedians sharing the same frame.

Wild has so many things in its favor that it’s tempting to leave out the fact that it’s a movie about a hike that sometimes feels like being on a hike, a long one, without many changes of scenery. But the movie’s achievement is that it overcomes this.

An odd hybrid but a successful one. It marries the lyricism and heavy atmosphere of a European art film with the soaring spirit of a Hollywood love story.

A cautionary tale as well as an expose on the power of the American fast-food industry. That the documentary comes across as more than a sermon has a lot to do with Spurlock's personality, which is outgoing and instantly engaging.

A strange concoction, clever and self-knowing in the extreme and yet operating in primal ways that bypass wit. Something about it feels very modern.

Mama is skillfully made, and although Chastain is the best thing in it, she's not the only thing in it.

Shirley is slow and uneventful, but intermittently interesting, and Moss is great. In the end, what tips Shirley into the realm of recommendation is that Moss will be the only thing anyone remembers of the movie. That means that, even if it’s only an OK experience, it should last as a good memory.

It's stupid but glorious -- Dominic (Vin Diesel) and his crew of high-spirited street racers are hired by an FBI agent to hunt down an international terrorist in London. Ridiculous and entertaining from start to finish.

Rhys Ifans is an engaging protagonist, playing Marks as a passive and seemingly unflappable character whose iron nerve and ability to keep cool in a crisis get him out of more than one desperate situation.

Some of the dialogue in Made was improvised, and the comic invention at work here -- Vaughn's and Favreau's -- make Made into a rough gem.

A charmer, a movie whose embrace of cinema is so passionate it could be mistaken for an embrace of life.

Stylized and visually arresting, with intense sex scenes that earned the film an NC-17 rating, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is an immersion into another time, place and mentality.

Tells the story of Leo Tolstoy's last year from a refreshing new perspective.

After a slow start, this is the rare film that gets better as it goes along. The story, about two scientists working in a post-apocalyptic New York, deepens and builds an intense rooting interest. The action sequences are too much out of a video game, but this is intelligent science fiction -- and it benefits enormously from Tom Cruise in the lead role.

Those of you who don't work for a newspaper may also be interested in what it's like on the inside - how stories are generated, how editors and writers interact, etc. For what it's worth, it's an accurate portrait.

Waititi adopts a tone that’s wild enough to accommodate all possibilities, so that even while we’re laughing, we’re in a state of anxiety.

Aims to do nothing but please, and it accomplishes its modest aim with charm and intelligence.

May hit a few wrong notes, but it strikes an emotional chord.

The Shadow is more than just the product of the trend to make high- tech features out of '30s superheroes. It's adventurous film-making, genuinely enthusiastic and genuinely inspired. [01 Jul 1994, p.C1]

Keaton is fun to watch — fun and a little bit eerie. He plays Ray as all drive and no soul.

This is the movie for anyone who has ever sat around with friends and thought, "Someone should make a movie about this," a film that captures the tenderness and quick humor of hanging out. It's not an easy task. We may find our own friends delightful, but watching other people's friends is a dreary prospect.

In the moment, it's intermittently transcendent, heartrending and beautiful ... and busy, repetitious and boring.

It’s easy enough to have problems with Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. It’s not nearly as truthful or as dramatic as it could have been, and it glosses over things that could have added those elements. But it’s hard to argue with a movie-length experience of listening to Whitney Houston’s voice.

Knowing nothing about "X-Files" is no impediment to appreciating this for the well-acted, adult piece of work that it is.

Levinson's sure touch keeps audiences smiling and manages to maintain an aura of good nature in a film that, at heart, offers a caustic, almost bitter vision of American institutions and contemporary politics.

This is a pretty good action movie that justifies bringing back the Superman franchise -- a dubious proposition to begin with -- by taking the plight of the superhero seriously. Henry Cavill is charismatic in the lead role, Amy Adams is an ideal Lois Lane and, as the villain, Michael Shannon does the best Michael Shannon impersonation you've ever seen.

Final Destination 5 is irresistible, and the reason it's irresistible is that it speaks to us in the language we all understand, which is fear.

At its best, and it’s mostly at its best, Frozen II has an air of enchantment.

It is partly a failure, but mostly it succeeds, and the film's aspiration is so enormous that that's enough for a moving experience.

There are times, not too many, when the movie drags. But when you consider all the pitfalls avoided, and all the laughs and pleasures it provides along the way, Dark Shadows is a satisfying and skillful effort.

Southside With You proves once and for all that a romantic film doesn’t rely on suspense. We know these people are getting together. What holds us to our seats is wondering how it will happen.

Everything about Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is striking and remarkable — except Denzel Washington as Macbeth and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth. This is not to say that they’re terrible, because they’re not. They’re better than decent. If you saw them in a regional stage production, and you didn’t know who they were, you might go home saying you saw a pretty good show. But neither is quite up for their role nor quite right for it.

Cumberbatch fleshes out a portrait of uncompromised and resolute selfhood. In that way, he carries us and the movie over some long stretches of blue-screen emptiness.

The fortunate thing about for Inequality for All is that, for all its good information and useful insight, it also has an appealing person at its center: Robert Reich, the economics expert and Berkeley professor who was also the labor secretary under Bill Clinton.

In the end, W. makes up in immediacy what it lacks in objectivity.

Cruise's undeniable star voltage makes it all palatable, and the film is gorgeous to behold and even to listen to, from the rolling green hills to the galloping horses to the "Lohengrin"-like theme music on the sound track.

Bernal is quite good as the young media specialist - it's always surprising to see how strong a presence he is in his Spanish-language films and how he all-but disappears in his American films. Is it a matter of the roles or the language? The jury is still out.

Retains the earlier film's ability to delight the viewer with surprise effects and flights of fancy, only now the effects are better.

The not-as-good news is that, like “Wall-E” and “Up,” Inside Out has a great opening, a satisfying finish, and something of a sag in the middle. But this time it’s only a sag.

A sturdy and sophisticated crime drama from the Philippines that takes a pretty gruesome situation and enriches its presentation with lots of human detail.

Fabrice Luchini is one of the delights of world cinema, and in The Women on the 6th Floor he finds a role ideally suited to his odd mix of fussiness and sensitivity.

Scrooged doesn't pack the wallop of "A Christmas Carol" - you won't cry or walk out resolving to become a better person - but it's a funny and imaginative high-class effort. Best of all, it stars Bill Murray, who has only to raise an eyebrow to get laughs. [23 Nov 1988, p.E1]

Cage's great performance is matched by Shue, who becomes the focus by the middle of the picture.

The movie becomes inventive in new ways and even cheery. It’s a true delight.

Red Heat, the new Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie, avoids most of the usual action-movie gimmicks and is better for it. It co-stars Jim Belushi and opens around town today. [17 Jun 1988, p.E1]

One of the nicest things about Father of the Bride is that it's not ashamed to be old-fashioned and sweet. It's also not ashamed to get sappy and drippy and gooey, but you have to take the good with the bad. [20 Dec 1991, p.C1]

Despite its faults Rambo III has an undeniable momentum and, judged on its own terms, a certain comic-book appeal. [26 May 1988, p.E1]

With Body Snatchers you get a middling, respectable horror movie, one without any frightening unconscious echoes and with too much of a pedigree to try to scare you with something cheap, like gore. [18 Feb 1994, p.C3]

Sleeping With the Enemy is bound to be a crowd pleaser, with its cool, crazed villain and with Julia Roberts in the lead, as a woman who fakes her death in order to escape her husband. But everything surprising and gripping about the movie happens in the first 20 minutes, and after that it follows a predictable course. [08 Feb 1991, p.C1]

This is lesser Woody Allen -- nothing horrible, but nothing to recommend except to his particular fans. [25 Jan 1991, p.C1]

It's long; it's expensive, and it was clearly created with the intention of being a great film. I've got nothing against bloated epics, just as I have nothing against blockbusters. But as bloated epics go, Bugsy is not particularly special. [20 Dec 1991, p.C1]

There's a real commitment to key moments; a sense of depth and understanding. It has labor of love written all over it. [22 Aug 1990, p.E1]

CB4 has a good time parodying the rap world, and the mock songs and fake videos featured here are funny and dead-on. But more and more as it goes along CB4 gets bogged down in details. The inspiration goes out of the picture, and the last half hour is just a matter of going through the motions. [12 Mar 1993, p.C1]

Scenes that should have been cut are included, so as not to disappoint anyone. What could have been a small, sweet and genuinely scary film is instead a full hour too long and many millions too fat.

The new Robert De Niro film with Bill Murray, Mad Dog and Glory, is just off-balance enough that it may throw audiences off, too. It is not a romantic comedy by a director who can't do that particular dance, but a strange hybrid between comedy and drama. [5 Mar 1993, p.C1]

Tony Scott's vigorous direction is sometimes too vigorous. Loud rock music underscores many scenes, and Scott's habit of shooting at odd angles begins to seem like a mannerism. But on the whole his ambitious attack helps make The Fan entertaining in the moment, even if it's forgettable immediately afterward.

I found the sensory bombardment of Tank Girl ultimately numbing and at times had to fight to stay awake. But let's be fair: This isn't a film for people over 25. Or over 20, for that matter. Tank Girl is for teenagers, who will find something exuberant in its anarchic spirit as well as in its barrages of image. Teenagers are also sure to appreciate, probably more than adults would, the film's off-color humor. [31 March 1995, p.C3]

Unfortunately the movie is also a bit too long, and for long stretches it's about as entertaining as, well, a long stretch. Still, if this were one of those movie-review TV shows, I'd have to give Lion's Den a (tiny) thumb's up, for its aura of authenticity and for the ferocity of Gusman's commitment.

My Fellow Americans is one adjustment away from being a great movie. As it stands it's a pleasing but mediocre film, with a great cast, a great story and a misguided script.

Old age is seen from a sentimental distance; interaction between characters often rings false; and Ariel is an indistinct, happy idiot. The impression that comes across is of a writer who cares but doesn't really know what he's talking about. [25 Dec 1993, p.E1]

Sister Act is lifted above its formula by a strong ensemble cast. It's not just a matter of Goldberg and Smith, who are excellent. Kathy Najimy all but steals the picture as the bubbly, cheerful Sister Mary Patrick, and veteran Mary Wickes does a nice turn as Sister Mary Lazarus, a tough nun from an earlier era. [29 May 1991, p.D1]

Young Guns is really a modern action movie in the revenge mode, disguised as a western. But with all its faults, it more or less works. Palance is a great heavy, Estevez makes an off-the-wall hero, and there's usually enough happening on screen to keep you interested. [12 Aug 1988, p.E3]

Often the picture drags, getting caught in its own goodness and going for a generalized sense of wonder, till you kind of wish you could apply the spurs. [17 Sep 1993, p.C3]

So what's wrong with Joshua? Two things: The audience is ahead of the movie, and the movie never catches up.

It doesn’t help matters that the movie seems to end three times before it ends, and none of those ends are satisfying.

It's a gallant battle against flawed material, and Hirschbiegel fights it to a draw.

A boxing movie that exists in that gray area between prototypical and typical, the quintessential and run-of-the-mill.

30 Minutes or Less is a strange case. Either it goes for a particular tone and doesn't achieve it. Or it does achieve a tone that's not really worth striving for.

Entrapment is an adventure movie without two brain cells to rub together.

A nice idea for a movie, but has a mostly silly script and some of the craziest and most laughable casting imaginable. But the movie's main challenge is a simple one: It is very difficult, next to impossible, to build a movie around an inert, inactive character.

There’s a mystery at the heart of The Song of Names, but it isn’t much of a mystery, and once it’s solved, the movie loses what little interest it has. Though not exactly a Holocaust drama, the film is one in which the Holocaust figures tangentially, but crucially. Yet the movie’s overall effect is strangely inert.

The musical numbers are the only real drag on this otherwise odd and appealing picture.

As for Williams, he's a warm actor in an oddly cold movie, and his presence certainly doesn't make things worse. But Toys doesn't call for anything new from him. [18 Dec 1992, p.C1]

The main appeal of Summerland, a considerable one, is that it allows Gemma Arterton to hold the screen for a nearly unbroken 90 minutes. It showcases her in a variety of modes and moods and provide some huge acting moments that make us recognize that, somewhere along the line, Arterton has become a powerhouse.

As it stands, Wakanda Forever feels as lost and forlorn as the Wakandan people.

The film is bleak, not particularly compelling, and the characters are frustrating, the enemies of their own happiness.

It’s all rather enjoyable, and O’Connor, having starred in “Mansfield Park” (1999), certainly knows her way around 19th century romance. Yet the question remains: What is the point of all this?

The result is a reminder that, with weak material, it’s often worse to have a really good actor. The weaknesses just stands out in sharper relief.

Admiring The Singing Detective is easy, and so is appreciating the originality of the story's conceit, the artistry of the actors and the directorial intelligence of Keith Gordon. But loving it would take an act of will.

A weird mix of the refreshing and the dispiriting, Kick-Ass 2 is appealing in its brutal honesty and repellent in its honest brutality.

Most viewers will have no more fun watching this story than the characters do living it.

The kind of horror movie that's not a bit scary and quite a bit gross.

While Showgirls was funny the whole way through, Striptease has long, dreary stretches, where you're forced to watch Demi Moore undressing.

Senior Year is a just-OK movie, but it’s a very good Rebel Wilson movie, in that she has been funny in supporting roles, but this is the first time she has excelled as the name above the title.

The result is a movie that's kinetic yet slow, whose joys are architectural more than spiritual.

Feels forgettable, even though, in the moment, it's often very funny.

At its best, it's a good picture, and at its worst, it's almost good.

Open Range veers wildly. It's a movie of beauty and sensitivity, and tedium and absurdity.

Not entirely successful or appealing - not exactly a delightful evening in the company of scintillating characters - but interesting all the same.

Stanley Donen's spouse-swapping comedy is not as naughty as it might have been, but it showcases Mitchum in a good comic role. [11 Jul 1997, p.D1]

For the first 20 minutes or so, Crazy People is lightweight but fun. Then the movie defies its own logic and falls apart. [11 Apr 1990, p.E1]

Estevez further undermines the film by casting himself in the lead role. He gives an odd performance, in which he consistently seems to be going for enigmatic, but he ends up just inexpressive.

There is something of a Halloween costume about Woody Harrelson’s appearance in the film. He looks as if frozen midway into some morphing process between himself and Lyndon Johnson, a process that, by pure chance, happened to stop at the precise moment he began to look comical.

Sure, The Mauritanian is better than staring at metal bars and better than two hours of rigorous legal preparation. But it isn’t better by much.

This is win-win for everybody, but it's too win-win - a setup that short-circuits drama, that shoehorns a situation into a precooked formulation: He's a real prisoner and she's an emotional prisoner, and each offers the other the possibility of freedom.

The Promise is hardly grotesque; and it has good things in it, but by the end, it just feels like a failed manipulation.

The movie has a certain integrity and creates an interesting atmosphere, largely thanks to the soundtrack, of all things, which gives most moments a dreamy undertone.

Feels more like an earnest commercial for music education than successful entertainment.

Murphy seems committed to pushing his hostile vision, and that in itself is interesting. [01 Jul 1992]

Lone Survivor, from start to finish, is a tale of disaster, of bad luck and bad communication, perhaps even faulty planning, though that's hard to say. So the movie loses the common touch of average folk trying to get by, while also losing some of the pleasure of watching a crack unit at work.

Not a mediocre film. It is, by turns, a great and awful film.

The problem is the script, which, in scene after scene, contains no surprises.

Its impression lingers in the mind, giving the film a longer half-life than it would otherwise deserve.

Vulgarity is fine when it’s pure and democratic. But when it’s mixed with sentiment, it feels false. That’s the problem with Buddy Games.

Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.

Maybe it’s unfair, but I came away feeling cheated by Eddie the Eagle. It’s a jolly real-life tale about an underdog who made a splash at the 1988 Winter Olympics, and it does make you feel good, but it turns out that the film’s story is 90 percent fiction.

The film's overall construction is faulty. Its dramatic situations ring consistently false, and the story is phony as anything off the Hollywood assembly line. And yet, it's sincere phony.

uUninspired, unnecessary and formulaic.

It starts exploring different facets of its premise and transforms itself into a fairly competent suspense thriller. That's enough to make it respectable, but a few things keep Next from being lovable or memorable.

Does a number of sly things.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is boring, but not in the usual way of boring movies. It is colossally, memorably and audaciously boring.

Becky is no “Straw Dogs.” Really, it’s mostly just a nasty genre movie with some gruesome scenes of violence. But it’s served well by a script that doesn’t merely embrace the gimmick of a pubescent girl fighting bad guys — it takes it seriously enough to explore it, at least a little.

So any "Nightmare" movie has a built-in handicap going in, but the better ones find ways to compensate, by casting appealing young actors (they're always young), by having imaginative dream sequences and - most important of all - by keeping the dreams short. By that standard, this new "Nightmare" is a fairly decent effort.

A formulaic, predictable and yet reasonably likable picture.

There's something wrong with a time-travel movie that allows an audience's interest to drift so that we have time to worry over where he's parked, and whether he remembered to take his key.

The movie gets bogged down in the formula conventions of romantic comedy, and in the process, it loses all honesty.

It's a coy, cautious film about a frank, fearless writer.

There’s nothing wrong with Aftermath, but for one strange and nagging thing: To watch it is to want to be faraway from its world and everyone in it. The movie draws a circle around itself that holds no attraction or appeal, though it’s in every other way competent, well-acted and reasonably intelligent.

Of mild interest as a curiosity, but not as entertainment.

The early scenes are amusing and true to life.

Has some laughs - more than a few thanks to Michael Douglas as a dead swinger (the movie's Jacob Marley) - and some moments of tenderness, too.

Sabotage cannot be called a good movie, not with a straight face. But as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, it has something.

Most of this huge-cast extravaganza is a botched farce. When that doesn't work, it turns sentimental. The presence of liked and familiar actors helps make it watchable, but there is no disguising that this is a weak, badly constructed comedy. At least it's short.

No classic, but neither was the original starring Burt Reynolds. Instead, it's an odd mix of amusing nonsense and nastiness that chugs along, hit and miss, until the last section, which is the best part of the movie and its real reason for being: the game.

By the end, it reveals itself as too pat, too absurd and -- as a polemic against capital punishment -- philosophically self- defeating.

It’s Miller, however, who gives the most affecting performance, in that we see the light fade from her eyes. What an awful thing this husband did to her — to praise her for courage and then use all her courage against her.

Feels like an extended skit stretched and stretched, maybe not to the breaking point, but to the sagging point.

The film is long, empty and bogus.

Married to the Mob picks up pace throughout and builds to an exciting finish. [19 Aug 1988]

It depicts the world of a century ago in a way that comments on the anxieties facing the world today, and it does so, at least for a while, with cleverness and a sense of fun.

Is it a comedy if the audience laughs or is it a comedy if laughs were intended, irrespective of whether they're generated? Excuse Me for Living qualifies under the second definition.

Lister is quite funny and engaging. It's just too bad that some of that screenwriting wit couldn't have been shared with the movie's protagonist.

The movie has some clumsy dialogue and awkward turns, but the picture is brisk and likable.

It is not what could be fairly called a bad movie, but neither is it fine enough to be a good one, with its lineup of dull characters and a limp story that functions like a conveyor belt.

A sequel was called for, and so a sequel has arrived -- but it's a slightly zombie-like version, with the size, look and shape of the original movie, but without its lightness or spirit, its soul.

For all its goofiness, director Widen has made a film with some genuinely creepy moments.

Perfectly acceptable, perfectly bland, competently acted but by no means a scary horror movie, in which "they" are coming to get people.

The Passion of the Christ should have left audiences in a state of exaltation. Instead it just leaves audiences exhausted.

It's a modest and mildly funny effort, with good scenes and touches of incisive satire, but it's not quite funny enough, and it's undermined by its camera technique.

The history itself is the main appeal here.

The fact that the movie has to entertain with digressions is an indication of more than looseness, but rather a shoddiness...Nothing connected with the job is of any interest at all.

Benefits enormously from smart casting across the board.

Though Zack Snyder is known as an action director, he is a genuine artist and one of the most exciting and promising filmmakers to emerge in the past 10 years. His new movie, Sucker Punch - let's just say it - is a failure, but there's so much talent on that screen that the movie can't be dismissed as a waste of time.

The film’s thoroughness is a virtue or a problem, depending on one’s point of view.

Even the interesting parts of A Lego Brickumentary aren’t that interesting, but are rather more like the best thing you might hear while being cornered by the most boring person at a party.

Curiously and unexpectedly, the movie brings on a suffocating feeling of constraint. It's a consequence of seeing characters with such terribly limited mobility.

A movie with lots of heart but no heartbeat.

The main thing to like about Stone Cold is that the movie is honest enough to have things go wrong -- so wrong, and in ways that are unexpected. [18 May 1991, p.C3]

Burden is a film of integrity, with something even better than a social conscience. It has a social purpose. If you see it, you’ll learn something.

To its credit, the movie eschews cheap dramatics, but at times it eschews dramatics altogether.

Buoyed by some sensitive performances and nearly tanked by insensitive filming.

It's precisely Seagal's incongruity that has made him a great absurdist hero -- and that makes Fire Down Below a kick.

It’s conscientious. It’s watchable, and it’s never less than competent. But it seems to strive so hard to be inspirational, rather than letting the inspiration come through the story, that it becomes preachy and self-conscious.

To the extent Final Portrait succeeds, and it does intermittently, it’s a rather deadpan comedy about two men trying to understand each other against a cultural and generational gulf.

It has no ambition, little sense and false sentiment, but it does have velocity, high spirits and scale.

There are reversals of expectation, miraculous escapes from certain doom -- all the things that make thrillers thrilling. But The Da Vinci Code isn't thrilling.

The result is a film that's honest and tepid, intelligent and dull, worthy and forgettable.

So, there you have it, a bad good movie, or a good bad movie, but a very decent Jennifer Lopez movie.

It exudes goodwill and high spirits, occasionally makes you feel really good, and yet here and there and in some definite ways, it kinda sorta stinks.

Summer fluff that admits to being summer fluff, but it's no better off for admitting it...Intended as lightweight comedy, but if you think about it too much, it's not so funny.

It's a little of this, a little of that, and in the meantime there's not a single joke to crack a smile over. [20 Mar 1993, p.C3]