Mick LaSalle

Puccini for Beginners is literate and sensitive, characterized by witty dialogue and smart, emotional two-person encounters.

Remaking Get Smart for the big screen might have sounded like a bad idea, but the movie shows it to have been something else: a REALLY bad idea.

A culture-clash comedy that, in addition to being very funny, captures some of the discomfort and embarrassment of being a bumbling American in Europe.

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.

Blue Chips is in many ways like a modern Frank Capra movie, about a battle between corruption and idealism, money vs. love, the pack vs. the individual. It's an Americana story about white farm boys and black ghetto kids bringing their talents together in a pure endeavor and about the cynical forces that would pollute that. [18 Feb 1994, p.C3]

This is a story that should have been, at the absolute most, 20 minutes long.

'Night' is the kind of horror movie where a zombie puts his hand through a window, grabs the hero's face with a decayed hand and fellows in the audience laugh, knowingly. The laugh I can understand. The "knowingly" part I don't even want to think about it...As horror movies go, it's a little better than average. [22 Oct 1990, p.F1]

From its first minutes, Mid-August Lunch establishes a special tone and quality that could only be Italian. It's a mixture of warmth and gentle farce, tender observation and absurdity.

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.

Why such a structurally scattered movie should hang together at all is a mystery. That it does more than that, that it works brilliantly, is a miracle, or at the very least the product of unquantifiable causes.

Booty Call never quite gets tiresome, thanks to the appealing cast and its sexy-goofy spirit. The picture succeeds in finding jokes within jokes.

With Stewart, we arrive at the only saving grace of Seberg, but a genuine saving grace. She is the only reason to see the movie, but she’s a really good reason.

Qualifies as director Giuseppe Tornatore's second full-fledged masterpiece. His first: "Cinema Paradiso."

A cute movie, a little too cute and a little too aware of its own cuteness.

It demonstrates a filmmaker in complete command of his craft and with little control over his impulses.

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.

Greta is not just silly but obvious, and without any hint of a larger purpose, beyond hitting the various plot points of the human monster genre. Twenty minutes before the finish, it degenerates into a joke, and not a good one, but just fair enough to see through to the end.

This is the sequel to “The Craft,” folks. For what it is, the movie’s OK, except that it tried to be more than it is, and it isn’t.

Entertaining and suspenseful, the movie shows the politicking and strategies that go into this annual ritual, and Costner is at his beleaguered best.

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.

It's a likable action picture that's fun and entertaining even when it's a bit silly. [16 Mar 1990, p.E1]

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

Gerry is ragingly bad art that contributes to a definition of independent film as something no one would want to sit through.

Family Business has star power going for it, and all three names above the title get the job done. [15 Dec 1989, p.E1]

Cocaine Bear is a movie that will appeal mostly to people who think it’s hilarious to get their dog stoned. If you’re someone who loves to sit on an old couch with a bong between your legs, crying with laughter as your dog bangs into furniture, “Cocaine Bear” might be your “Citizen Kane.”

The movie maintains interest throughout and it’s ultimately satisfying, though with one qualification: The last minutes treat the story as though its whole purpose was to illustrate a social and political issue. It’s actually, for 98% of its running time, the story of a person — and it’s better that way.

Funnier than the silliest comedy because it's surprisingly real.

Aselton gets a lot said in 78 minutes. I think the main thing she says is something never overtly spoken, that life is essentially a lonely experience - even when we're surrounded by activity, and even if we never shut up.

Sympathy for the Devil does the two things that every good Nicolas Cage movie must do: It gives him license to be manic, but it also gives him a realistic context in which his mania can delight and surprise.

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

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has an overwrought title, but it’s the best movie of the film franchise.

Though he crafts a story worthy of a thriller, Hancock’s main concerns here are twofold: the type of personality drawn to this kind of police work, and the effect this work has on them.

An irresistible movie about a guy who goes on a journey, the kind an audience can't wait to take with him.

Matches a dingy urban setting with a compelling situation and throws in an ensemble of interesting characters who become even more interesting under stress. This emphasis on character -- in a sense, the movie's underlying humanity -- is what especially links it to the 1970s.

The Signal starts off as an alien version of "Blair Witch Project" and then drifts off into cold plotlessness. But for a while, a little while, it seems like it just might be interesting.

In the end, the great fault of Terminator: Dark Fate is that the filmmakers didn’t trust what they had. They didn’t trust how much audiences enjoy Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They didn’t trust their audience’s interest enough to let the movie breathe. They thought Hamilton and Schwarzenegger could be seasonings for a dish of the usual slop.

By the time we get to the last 20 minutes, Empire of Light is so scattered, so without impact or focus, that every scene could be the last. Ending it anywhere would make equal sense, because making sense is no longer a possibility. The movie is a glossy wreck.

Makes a persuasive case.

A warm comic story that's fairly engaging even when no one is singing.

Indeed, it's hard to figure out why this film was even made, beyond the fact that it could be made, that there was a loose idea and talented people willing to join in the fun. It's neither serious nor funny enough, and it adds nothing to Jarmusch's reputation. If anything, it might hurt it retroactively.

The best thing to say about “Munich: The Edge of War” is that it has an interesting take on Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who preceded Winston Churchill. In the opinion of many historians, it’s not the correct take, but at least the movie has a point of view.

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.

The Beekeeper is the purest stupid fun I’ve had in a movie theater since “F9: The Fast Saga” in 2021.

Though “It Ends With Us” ultimately lands in the zone of social commentary, the experience is mainly one of witnessing life as experienced by one woman over the course of years. And it’s worth the journey because of Lively and her simultaneous and contradictory mix of pleasantness and cold discernment.

There is a built-in pleasure in seeing Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen in the same movie. We’re used to them. We like them. We like being around them — but not so much that we can’t notice that Book Club is a pretty strained affair, not especially funny and weirdly off key.

Imagine the worst "Deadwood" episode ever, and you'll get an idea of the general tone of Beowulf & Grendel, which is full of anachronistic cursing, tortured syntax, dark humor and lots of hairy, homely, filthy-looking people.

Dolby provides Dern with a chance to be cranky and vicious, but what else is new? The revelation here is Lena Olin, who gets her best role in years as the artist’s second wife, Claire, an artist in her own right who gave it all up to make a home with and for a demanding husband.

Automatic weapons versus shot-guns. Silly stuff, but it held my attention. [21 Oct 1989, p.C3]

Daniel Day-Lewis has emerged from retirement to do something he has never done before — make a truly horrible movie.

As a work of entertainment, as a cohesive narrative and as an artistic whole, there's no way to call it anything but an on-balance average effort. Yet there's nothing remotely average about the movie's warm spirit, its imaginative and arresting cinematography or its handful of unique, brilliant scenes and shrewd, bizarre performances.

The tone is balanced, reflective and reasonable. Avni is a major star in Israel, and he is an actor with world-class charm.

It's a winning little movie about two people who get together, though they have no business getting together.

Has a lot going for it -- but too much going against it to be a clear-cut winner.

One of the most witty, entertaining family films to come out in some time.

Never dull, but it's rarely more than gently entertaining.

The filmmaking seems caught between a genuine desire to present life as it’s actually lived and an obligation (self-imposed) to be politically correct at all times. Even so, the filmmakers, here and there, craft scenes that have the ring of truth.

Two things hold back Don't Stop Believin' as a documentary. The first is that it presents the world of Journey and the people in it through such a lens of love and light that it begins to seem like a publicity film...The second flaw is that it leaves out vital information. It doesn't, for example, answer the big question, "What happened to Steve?"

"Alita” is an action movie, and some of that is who-cares. But the bigger thing about this film is that it makes us think about humanness, what it means, what it is, and what it might be in the future.

The resulting film has some wrong notes and touches of preciousness, but mostly it's a moving and effective presentation of life under Nazism, as seen from an unusual angle.

The latest Audrey Tautou film, Delicacy, is sensitive and well acted and fits under the general category of "good movie," and yet it would be hard to get excited about it.

In the end the most interesting thing about In the Mouth of Madness is its weird relationship with itself -- its cheesy horror celebrating the power of cheesy horror, while pretending to be appalled.

Murphy is the key here. It would be a pleasant surprise to our time-traveling moviegoer from 1984 to find Murphy looking so much like his old self and in possession of his old gifts. His comic timing remains impeccable, and laughing with him here is both fresh and familiar, an ideal combination.

In an attempt to be complex and fair-minded, a simple story becomes a jumble of confused motivations.

Usually, with movies, you can imagine how they were made — how the idea came, and the process of its creation. But Knight of Cups seems as if it arrived whole. If there’s a better film this year, get ready for a very good year.

Every so often he inflicts something like Irrational Man on the world, which is so awful you have to wonder if Allen wrote it himself or farmed it out to some look-alike cousin out to destroy him.

With Kika Almodovar seems to be saying something about voyeurism, though what he is saying is never nailed down. [27 May 1994, p.C3]

The best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year.

Watching Inside is like being stuck inside a house, unable to escape. No, it’s worse than that. It’s like being stuck inside a house, unable to escape, and Willem Dafoe is there with you.

Amiable though slow-going.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker does the most important thing, the one thing it absolutely had to do. It ends well.

A funny and appropriately skewed comedy.

A handful of acting moments aside, Being Flynn is a drama without much in the way of rewards.

It should have been the poker equivalent of "The Hustler." But it suffers from iron-poor blood. No energy. It just lies there.

A smart, controlled film, made with considerable integrity. It doesn’t try to scare you with loud noises or threaten you with the imminent certainty of seeing something disgusting. Instead, it throws a handful of characters into a simple, yet harrowing, situation and then explores that situation in depth.

Scott removed the adventure aspect, and some of the movie's passion was lost, too, like a dolphin caught in a tuna net. Perhaps it's for that reason that a movie that starts out with the potential to be great somehow falls short, and what seems as if it's going to be a revelation ends up, instead, simply a worthwhile, reasonably interesting variation on an old theme.

A tense, concise and elegantly shot film.

RocknRolla attempts to depict a world of ever-expanding chaos. But the chaos is only in the way the story is told. The actual vision Ritchie offers is pedestrian and tame.

Epps is a leading man on the rise, and Cool J. is something to see.

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]

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.

Reveals essential truthfulness about families.

The early scenes are amusing and true to life.

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.

Most of the enjoyment of “American Dreamer” comes in watching Dinklage react to indignities and awkward moments.

Every single thing wrong with John Dies at the End might have been avoided had John died at the beginning, along with all the other characters, transforming an awful full-length movie into a harmless five-minute short.

Unfortunately, by the time the movie gets around to the parts that might have dazzled us, Emancipation already lost its audience.

Audiences will walk out with that good chiropractor feeling, the one that says, “Yes, I have been manipulated. I have been nothing but manipulated and pounded on for the past 90 minutes. And it was a very satisfying thing.”

For those who have seen the previous 'hood films, Don't Be a Menace isn't just funny. It's a relief. Things might be bad, the movie suggests, but they're not so bad you can't laugh.

Yet something's missing in director Mira Nair's treatment -- specifically, a point of view about the material, a compelling reason for this historical excavation beyond the fact that Reese Witherspoon makes a convincing Becky Sharp.

It's warm, spontaneous and heartfelt. Zeffirelli cared about his memories, and he's done justice to them.

Palindromes isn't a wise movie, or a particularly true movie, but it's an honest one and a singular experience.

Amateur gives the impression of a sloppy first draft. It begins with a splash, meanders until it reaches feature length, then ends abruptly.

It’s not an exciting film, and it’s not a film with some wider social relevance. But it’s a film that’s wise about people in a way that’s rare. It also launches Dylan Penn, and someday that will matter.

Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, a senselessly adapted, ill-conceived, poorly acted mess of a film that's guaranteed to frustrate anyone who loves the play and to put everybody else to sleep. [18 Jan 1991]

There is no denying that every time Gyllenhaal steps into a frame she takes a sleeping movie and wakes it up.

Without peril, The Phantom can only get by on dazzle, and there's not quite enough of that to hold interest -- unless you're 8 years old and seeing dazzle for the first time.

By the Grace of God begins to spin its wheels, with unnecessary scenes that give color to the events, when we’re more interested in the grand movements.

Burns presents two mildly amusing fellows wrestling with romance and expects the audience to see them as embodying universal dilemmas. At the very least, he wants us to take these guys as seriously as they take themselves.

The only problem with The Better Angels is that it’s not nimble enough to vary its strategy or to find ways for the character of young Abe (Braydon Denney) to grow over the course of the movie.

It has action sequences that will appeal to people looking for the usual pyrotechnics, but the core of the movie - and the source of the audience's interest - is emotion.

A romantic drama, a rare kind of film these days, even though romantic dramas were once a dominant genre in America.

At times, the sight of reserved English actors slapping, hugging and acting all Russian looks bizarre, though one casting choice is prime: Bob Hoskins has the ideal air of impish menace in the featured role of Khrushchev.

An appealing Hollywood satire.

Yet the personalities of the actors are so appealing here and the direction by John Badham (''Stakeout,'' ''Saturday Night Fever'') so filled with inventive comic bits and details that Another Stakeout plays much better than you'd think. It's a consistently entertaining two- hours-or-so at the movies. [23 July 1993, p.C3]

Free State of Jones is an extraordinarily ambitious film, and for that reason, it’s not perfect.

Everything about the idea of Mr. Popper's Penguins sounds lovely, and everything about the actual movie is ugly.

Something is wrong with A Good Woman: The lightning never strikes. It's never quite alive.

You should approach Resistance as a fact-based World War II movie and not think much about the Marceau connection. The truth is, even if young Marcel didn’t go on to become a major artist, this was a story worth telling.

Tender Bar is a lovely movie — so long as it stays within a half mile radius of the bar. When it drifts from the bar, it collapses. When it goes back to the bar, it lifts a little. But it stays away too often to be called a success.

In this new Conjuring, every scene of demonic possession, every demonic hallucination, and every underworld visit and visitation land with unsettling impact. These are, in a sense, action scenes, and they’re creepy, chilling and very well done.

So this is a good comedy, as bad as it can be and still be good, but good.

(Washington) raises it to the level of importance with an acting job that's one unbroken chain of intense emotion.

As far as complete wastes of time go, Zookeeper is not especially offensive. Yet it is surprising that everything you might expect to be charming in it just isn't - namely all the bits involving animals.

Although the picture's title and promotion might lead you to expect another "Wayne's World," Airheads is something more substantial. It's a spoof of heavy-metal culture that at the same time respects the vitality and pent-up passion behind it.

At 116 minutes, Five Feet Apart is too much of a just-OK thing. All the same, I want to see Haley Lu Richardson’s next movie.

Lyne has always gone the extra step, and Deep Water shows that he hasn’t lost his touch.

A dynamic story, sprinkled with some interesting ideas about the preciousness of culture and how societies might rebuild themselves.

Australia shows all the signs of having been a labor of love for director Baz Luhrmann. One problem: It's his love, and the audience's labor.

The moments of action are interspersed with lengthy plot developments that are hard to follow.

O has one advantage over "Othello" -- since it's a new movie, not a classic, it has the power to surprise.

An entertaining film that's true to its world.

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]

Dead-on hilarious.

It's as if there's a barrier between the viewer and the story that never comes down.

Gainsbourg is always going through a little more than she cares to tell the audience about, but the connection her character makes with Samba — real, complicated and not typical — is one of the movie’s highlights.

in addition to the quality of its dialogue, Levinson’s script is a testament to the value of talking and listening, past the point of discomfort, past the point it hurts.

More than the usual bad or even numbingly horrible movie. It's an amalgam of many of the modern cinema's worst tendencies and modern filmmaking's most unfortunate misconceptions.

Nothing in her performance in the second two-thirds of the film hints at the shallows or depths that could allow Maggie to be a killer -- before or after. [19 March 1993, p.C1]

Taking place mostly over the course of a single day, it’s a smart and languorous film that finds time to luxuriate in conversations and to create a feeling for small-town American life.

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

Can't Hardly Wait has freshness, comic invention and an engaging romantic spirit.

Essentially, “I.S.S.” is a fine movie for what it is, and the only reservation is what it is. It’s a cramped-space movie in which the stakes feel higher to the characters than they do for us.

Red Sparrow is a thoroughly entertaining movie that stays fresh and interesting for all of its two-hours-plus running time. But what kicks it into a higher level is that it’s a terrific vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, one of the few movie stars who deserves one, who is a film star in the classic sense.

In a way, the new Carrie is almost too easy to enjoy. Everything discordant and all the nagging weirdness and strange feelings surrounding the original have been smoothed down, and what we're left with is a well-made, highly satisfying and not particularly deep high school revenge movie.

Brought off with such skill and commitment that there isn't any time to snicker at its obviousness.

Measure of a Man is intended as a touching coming-of-age film about one crucial summer in a young man’s life. But it’s a movie of gestures and feints, in which we’re constantly being told of events and relationships rather than seeing or feeling them.

For Pérez Biscayart, it’s the sound equivalent of a masterful silent-film performance, and for Perelman, it’s the welcome return of an important filmmaker.

Fly to the Moon is absolutely awful. The only interesting thing about it is how long it takes for a viewer to figure out how bad it really is.

When Costner is good, as he is here, his acting has a purity to it, an unspoken moral dimension. Underneath the sensitive, stoic facade is a loquacious, intellectually alert actor with an encyclopedic understanding of the film tradition he occupies: the rugged, humble movie hero, embodied by the likes of Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda.

Coming now, today, In Time is not just satisfying. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's important, because that would overstate it, but it certainly feels like part of the national conversation. It arrives in theaters at a time when people are camped out in New York saying the same things as the people in the movie. It's weird the way films often anticipate the near future.

The attempt is to create a reality wide enough to accommodate the extremes of absurdity and hard political truth, but the pieces never cohere, and so we end up with a rattling bag of disparate elements.

It isn't elegiac, but enraged. It doesn't look back with sorrow, but forward in dread. And it's made with a clear intention - to stop the Iraq war.

An Irish drama that's a lot more sly and a lot less straightforward than it appears on the surface.

An utter debacle.

These guys are very normal off stage, making them easy to like and not very exciting to watch.

At its best, the film uses fishing as a window into the internment experience. At its worst, it uses the internment story as the backdrop for a documentary on trout fishing.

The role of Arielle was originally supposed to go to Diane Kruger, whose tough-minded realism would have been interesting here. But Marlohe, earthier yet more ethereal, is ideal.

There may be better examples of cinematic art in 2013, but for a good time at the movies, it's hard to imagine anything beating this action extravaganza, from director Roland Emmerich, about a very Obama-like president.

By grounding everything that went before in an earthy realism, Hardwicke earns the elevation of the nativity sequence, one of the more beautiful scenes in this year's cinema.

Unfortunately, the thin story feels terribly stretched and often doesn’t make sense.

Isn't all bad. It isn't good, either, but it's better than it deserves to be, and if one sits and watches, the laughs do come, a few.

A first-rate thriller about arrogance at the top.

In his feature director debut, Grant Singer (previously a music video director who’s worked with artists from Sam Smith to Skrillex) adopts a measured pace that lends the movie a somber, mysterious aura. But he breaks that up with smart, psychologically insightful cutting.

A film one watches at an emotional remove, but from that distance there are sights and moments to appreciate.

The movie is really a sexy, emotionally true portrait of a handful of people wrestling with their impulses and trying to find their way to happiness.

It's middling Allen, which means that fans won't be sorry to see it, while everyone else can wait until the next "Bullets Over Broadway."

A very smart, very shrewd movie, and the smartest, shrewdest thing about it is the way it masquerades as just a fluffy comedy, a diversion, a trifle.

Does a number of sly things.

A notable, worthwhile picture.

The emotion the Zucheros are trying to express and illustrate here is a deep, fathomless, infinite loneliness, and here and there, but more than once or twice, they hit their target.

Blackhat is pretty much nonsense, which Mann directs with such misplaced energy and with such little natural instinct for the material that, for most of the running time, the movie’s problems seem entirely his fault.

The story, based on a novel by Victor Headley, is pointless and occasionally ridiculous. And the movie is hardly helped by a protagonist that we’re expected to care about, even as he does an unending series of colossally stupid, violent and self-destructive things.

You won't see another film like Fay Grim this year, and we should give Hartley credit for making it work on his own terms.

Breaks the formula for teen romances. Martin Short, as the vain and zany drama teacher, does not disappoint.

Duller than first version.

By the end, “Coming 2 America” has us. It’s strange, these movies that create a warm feeling. It’s hard to say why or how. But when Murphy sits on the throne watching a bad lounge singer (also played by Murphy) perform “We Are Family,” it feels like the summation of the three decades of virtuosic silliness that Murphy has brought to the screen, and of all that has meant to us.

The movie's flaw is impossible to ignore, turning on the most tired of romantic comedy conventions: Someone knows something, and all that person has to do is say it, and the movie is over and everything's great.

From scene to scene, the tone shifts from supposed sincerity to arch and amused, until the picture begins to seem like some mad, desperate, scattershot attempt to hold an audience's attention from moment to moment, by any means.

To watch Boulevard is to keep circling back, over and over, to the question: Was it merely an actor’s misguided inspiration, to take a repressed character and turn him into a grievously depressed one? Or was Williams simply unable to do it any other way?

The measure of this kind of movie is its seductiveness, not its logic, nor the ways in which it exploits the supernatural angle, and The Lake House is seductive.

The result is a mishmash that is sometimes moving, sometimes absurd and most of the time just oddly off balance.

Eternals is like a movie about a horse race that concentrates all its attention on characters that neither own a horse nor like to gamble.

So The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a misfire, and what a shame, because Andra Day had it in her to be great in this. The movie just didn’t let her bring it out.

If The Next Three Days were just a little more mindless, it might have been more joyful.

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.

The first half of My Worst Nightmare contains some of the best comedy and the biggest laughs of the season, and the second half ... eh.

One doesn’t expect that kind of intensity in a sedate British murder mystery, but Pfeiffer brings it. On her own, she helps Branagh make the case for his remake over the original.

Has a lighter spirit than its predecessor, but it arrives at the same warm and touching place.

A wonderful movie, sincere and inspired, with four terrific performances and a story that doesn't let up. The picture has the gentle, nourishing quality of a fairy tale that you want to believe, and the unsoftened impact of gut-level entertainment. [13 July 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Huppert shows everything to us, and it's fascinating.

An intelligent literary mystery story that holds interest and is intermittently affecting, but it never soars.

Competent but uninspired thriller.

As a movie, Charlie’s Angels has serious problems, but the new Angels trio is promising and shows there’s life yet in the old formula. There’s something going on here. It’s just not quite there yet.

At times, the story seems like a side-show, and at other times, the serious information just seems discordant. However, to the movie’s credit, none of it is boring.

In the end, about the only thing that could have saved “Windfall” was a really good ending. But what we get is something gimmicky that makes no psychological sense and that the actors cannot make work.

If only the explanation and resolution of the action were more compelling, Dark Water might have been a thriller of the first order.

In essence, everything good in Self/less was derived from “Seconds,” and everything bad the writers and the director came up with on their own.

Ghost in the Shell is like an amalgam of 2017 anxieties. Fear of technology. Fear of big business. Fear of being spied upon. Fear of the sacred disappearing, and of the crass, the loud and the empty crowding into every corner of existence — crowding out life itself.

The movie is hampered throughout by little inconsistencies.

Imagine a biopic about Ronald Reagan that leaves out Gorbachev but instead dramatizes his years with Alzheimer's, and you'll get an idea of this film's misplaced focus.

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.

It’s not a question of believing it, exactly. Director Ridley Scott has simply made us want to be there, to wish we really were there, and to accept his illusion as the most ready answer to that desire.

The film's special effects are astonishing, but the most notable and unexpected thing is its tone.

80 for Brady is a good-natured effort, and that good nature keeps it from becoming hateable. But still, it’s fairly awful.

The film is deadly slow and uneventful, with brilliant scenes bursting to life, here and there, like roses in a wasteland.

It is never remotely serious, and yet for the most part it isn’t funny, either.

A particularly strong family drama, and the Icelandic setting helps, adding a touch of the exotic.

That rare thing, an American romantic film that's not a comedy and that's more about love than sex.

Inside 10 minutes, at most 15, Be Kind Rewind reveals itself as an awful mess, and it only gets worse.

Fallen is not perfect, and eventually it even becomes frustrating. Threads remain loose, and the movie doesn't fully exploit its premise. Still, it would be churlish not to appreciate the ride.

Hook never reaches Nirvana. It doesn't grab the audience, fling it into another world and make people forget where they parked their cars. But it does leave the viewer with a glow, and along the way it has magical moments, even if it's not fully magical as a whole. [11 Dec. 1991, p.E1]

Significantly, this hyper-stylization of 300 is limited to its visuals. The performances are played straight, and this combination -- straight performances and stylized visuals -- produces an uncanny effect.

Aside from being vile and repellent, it's mainly dull - old-fashioned in its shock tactics and culminating in a ho-hum climax.

An oddly structured tale about Francisco Goya and the Spain that he lived and worked in.

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.

In Water for Elephants, Waltz plays a circus owner and ringleader during the Great Depression, and when he's onscreen, every eye is on him, no matter who is talking.

Neither resting on formula nor audience goodwill, the “X-Men” series is going deeper and getting better as it goes along.

The film depicts a treasure hunt, only in the sense that the movie has to have a running story. But it doesn't really trade on suspense or adventure, and in the few places Clooney pushes it that way, it doesn't feel right.

Won't go down as an action thriller for the record books, but it's a pretty good one for right now. First of all, the villain is a bank. How's that for timing?

Most of the bits and performances have a hard time making the transition from stage to screen.

The comedy is hit and miss, with good bits interrupted by dead patches. It's a movie to root for more than to enjoy.

Apart from a few lapses, Filomarino is straightforward and gets the job done. Along the way, he taps into everyone’s most paranoid fantasy about foreign travel — where the police and authority figures turn on you, and the Constitution or Bill of Rights are a few thousand miles away.

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

An example of good, clean, incredibly brutal fun. [09 Oct 1990, p.E1]

The funniest film to come along since "South Park," and one that succeeds in a more difficult and satisfying way.

Chalk it all up to prettiness, if you like, but Lane's case has more to do with spirit -- with warmth and emotional readiness, plus a kind of open-book quality that makes her both lovely and comical, usually at the same time.

Safe House is an idea for a movie. It's a few blustery gestures in the direction of a story, with five good actors doing their best, trying to hold up the barest frame of an idea, while investing the surrounding emptiness with all the truth they can muster.

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.

It’s a somber, serious experience that won’t appeal to everybody, but it’s quite smart and will keep you guessing until its last seconds.

RoboCop is no canned remake of the 1987 action film. It's a reimagining that responds to everything that has changed in American life over the past 27 years, addressing new threats and exploiting new anxieties.

Saint Laurent’s designs and working life take a backseat to scenes of him stuffing his face with pills, accidentally poisoning his dog and sleepwalking through sex with a variety of lovers. Two and a half hours of this. Bonello might as well have shown him sleeping eight hours or using the toilet for all that says about the man and his work.

Beautiful Creatures has its metaphysical cosmology worked out, and it gives it to us in doses big enough that we understand its rules and believe in its world, but not so big that it starts to get cute or that we stop caring.

The result is a winning comedy.

The success of this film may ride entirely on the alchemy of these particular actors, but whatever is carrying it, The Intern gets there.

The showcasing of Basinger's body becomes ludicrous. Twice she is shown taking a shower. In another scene she lounges in some very nice designer underwear -- white satin, very becoming. She ends up looking foolish, constantly having to undress in this feminist role. [11 Feb 1994, p.C1]

McCormack at first seems too light of spirit for the role, but she grows into it, and it turns out she's exactly what the movie calls for: Someone too wholesome-looking to be anything but a fine young lady.

Someone should steal this concept and make a decent movie out of it.

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]

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.

Kevin Costner's Robin Hood is big, sometimes exciting, funny in places and occasionally stupid, but it doesn't disappoint. [14 June 1991, p.E1]

Howard and Pratt don’t get to do much besides run like hell, but a movie like this in a way emphasizes rather than obscures the importance of star quality. They’re just so good-looking that it’s a pleasure to watch them -- idealized surrogates for humanity.

They don't get more frustrating than American Rhapsody, a near-great film for about an hour that changes into a self-indulgent mess.

There's great pleasure in watching a movie in which the director has thought out everything beforehand.

Despite some feints in a soulful direction, the picture has none of the interior quality of a multifaceted war film like Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line." Woo is all about elegant surfaces, not inner conflicts.

A film of real beauty, which is surprising, since it's not a movie of beautiful sentiments or settings.

It's one of those self-consciously cute pictures, about as hard to take as a person who stands in front of a mirror and preens all day. [23 Mar 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Smart, fun entertainment.

So there you have it, a so-so movie with a lot of good parts. In truth, The Last Full Measure has more good parts than most better movies, but everything connecting those parts feels rote, sometimes ham-fisted.

Vengeance is unexpected and, in the best way, weird. In his first film as a writer-director, B.J. Novak takes familiar elements, but puts them together in ways that are original and unexpected. Even when the plot turns go off the deep end, it’s impossible not to appreciate Novak’s audacity.

Let's start by admitting three things: that Contraband is a ridiculous movie, that it wasn't meant to be a ridiculous movie, and that it's an enjoyable movie. One of the things that makes it enjoyable is that it's so ridiculous.

Never dull and never loses its audience, but there is, inevitably, a certain sameness to the scenes, with Garfield spending a lot of time just sitting there with a goofy smile on his face.

It's the cinematic equivalent of an all-dessert meal: After the initial jolt, the lack of any real nourishment is apparent, and it becomes a struggle to stay awake.

The film is always a little bit at a distance, almost involving, always good enough to make us root for it, but rarely better than average.

It's a meandering and rather aimless movie that would be considered trite if made by another filmmaker, and yet it has such a family resemblance to other, better Woody Allen movies that it's easy to stick with it and enjoy it.

The comedy never really takes off because it's phony.

How to Be Single is over a half hour before it’s over.

The Net is a scary film that could have been terrifying but for something slightly earnest and plodding in director Irwin Winkler's attack.

The Baxter is just an OK movie, but Showalter's performance is the gem to take from it.

It's a delicate, intelligent movie about modern parenthood and the pressures that children face, and it features a cast of talented actors who were clearly committed to the movie's message.

In the early going "Wild Bill" looks interesting -- an audacious wallow in violence and Western legend. Then 20 minutes in, writer-director Walter Hill puts his cards on the table. It's a dead man's hand.

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.

The effort behind Bird Box was to make something better than a standard horror movie, but the result is dull and half-hearted. It’s not serious enough or important enough to transcend the horror genre, but neither is it visceral enough to hold up as a regulation horror movie.

Black comedies are rare enough. Birthday Girl is a member of an even rarer species, the black romantic comedy.

Mamma Mia! is fun, the music's terrific and the cast is appealing.

Though it is funny - at times, laugh-out-loud funny - this comedy is by and for adults.

Not the usual action movie. It's too odd for that. Based on a true story, it has the weirdness of real life, which is good. But also like real life, it has that funny way of not making much sense or being all that enjoyable.

About one idea short of being an excellent teenage romance. As it stands it's a pleasing but routine effort.

It’s slow getting off the ground, and never completely achieves flight, at least not in the sense of transport. It remains a series of sequences, some terrific and some less so, but at least the movie keeps finding new ways for people to fall off a building while on fire. So there’s that.

John Lennon once said that because he was an artist, if you gave him a tuba, he could get something out of it. The Face of Love presents us with Annette Bening and Ed Harris playing the tuba. They get something out of it - they get everything there is to get and more - but it's not enough.

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

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.

Austin Powers sounded like a silly idea, but it turns out to be one of the best comedies of the year.

North American viewers will have one advantage over their South American brethren — the capacity to be surprised. We knew how “Lincoln” was going to end, but The Liberator is a question mark all the way to the finish.

Finding Amanda is a minor movie for Broderick, but considering where it takes him, it's understandable why he took the role.

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.

Cleaner is a good-not-great thriller in the “Die Hard” mold that gets an extra lift from Campbell’s skillful direction and from Ridley, who is slowly but surely showing herself to be a performer of wide range and appeal.

As presented in "What Just Happened?" the world of Hollywood looks like a very expensive, lethal version of high school, not fun to live in, but lots of fun from a safe distance.

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

The result is a movie that one watches with the sense of pushing it up a hill.

There are a lot of little things wrong with Where’d You Go, Bernadette, but one big thing right: Cate Blanchett. She takes the title role and has a party with it. The little things wrong can’t be summed up in a sentence, but they linger in the mind and intrude on the memory of the movie, once the bedazzlement of Blanchett’s performance starts to wear off.

Unfortunately, “Operation Fortune” doesn’t consist entirely of scenes between Grant and Plaza. There are pockets of genuine life onscreen, followed by long, dull stretches. The movie always gets better, but then it always gets worse. Then gets better again. It’s that kind of experience.

It helps that most of Creation is about the relationships - Darwin's with his wife and with his daughter. Even if we resist it, even if we don't want to be dragged in, the story of Annie becomes quite moving, almost unbearable.

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]

A Man Called Otto is a formula movie, and no matter the nuances, this formula is not that satisfying.

Me Before You is just a little better than it had to be. It’s not so much better that it escapes being what it is, a sort-of romance, liberally sprinkled with moments of corniness and emotional dishonesty. But ultimately, when it matters, it’s truthful — about the people depicted, and who they are, and what they face.

The three films are watchable but resolutely minor works, though each has something to recommend it.

This film is the closest we're going to get to anything new by Williams, and it's a respectable effort.

Much of it is enjoyable and has the aura of a superior action film, but it collapses into a laughable wreck and ultimately reveals itself as a mild waste of two hours.

A movie with the power to freeze the mind and make anyone watching just want to stagger away mumbling nothing but “This is awful,” over and over, until the pain goes away.

Wildly romantic.

An odd little concoction, a coming-of-age story that, only in passing, is also a mystery.

Director Doug Hamilton was given extraordinary access from the very beginning, so that we see Green Day composer and lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong having some of his initial meetings with Broadway director Michael Mayer, who conceived the show.

It's a maddening, satisfying, junky, enjoyable picture.

The problem with Popcorn is that it's just as ridiculous as the horror movies it satirizes. [02 Feb 1991, p.C3]

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

Might have been more effective as a documentary.

It's one thing for a romantic comedy to be predictable - they all end at the same destination, after all. But it's quite another thing to be predictable at every twist and turn of the story.

At heart, ridiculous -- ludicrous in its conception and silly in its spectacle.

That the movie becomes silly isn't necessarily a problem, but it also becomes tiresome, degenerating into a series of martial arts interludes -- everyone unaccountably leaves his guns at home.

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]

Of course, the real problem here isn’t that Ritchie isn’t Noel Coward, but that he’s not clever or funny in his own right. The Gentleman isn’t offensive, and it’s not even good enough to qualify as coarse. If it weren’t mildly annoying, it would be as close to nothing as an experience can be.

Fails to engage.

Begins like a penetrating exploration of love, grief and suffering and ends looking like a highbrow version of "Bride of Chucky."

The Call might not be a classic for the ages, but for a Friday night? For a movie to take people out of themselves? And to make them marvel at the viewing experience that just happened to them? This one is hard to beat.

The film captures the harshness and the sweetness of our time.

Comedy is getting more and more nasty and more and more funny. But it’s hard to imagine any movie more nasty-funny than Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.

Hunnam makes a strong impression as a tough guy in the title role, but there’s something about either him or the filmmaking or the subject matter that allows viewers to resist making his problems our problems.

The film is filled with unintentional laughs and with other moments that are simply jaw-droppingly absurd, either for the histrionic acting, the dated style of writing, the pseudo-science or just the spectacle of evil in pigtails. One could easily make the case that the movie is simply awful. Yet everything dated and peculiar about it is fascinating and does not detract -- it may even enhance -- the fun of the central premise. [05 Sep 2004, p.28]