Mick LaSalle

A perfectly OK drama, with a good cast and many good scenes, but it suffers from the usual maladies that films get when they've been out on the ranch too long: all-too-obvious symbolism and a serious case of the longueurs.

A Kiss Before Dying is a thriller without thrills, though it has some of the built-in kicks of a crime movie -- wondering what's going on, wondering why it's happening, wondering how it's going to end. Unfortunately, it ultimately gets so silly that the main thing people in the audience may end up wondering is why they're still sitting there. [26 Apr 1991, p.E1]

The new movie splits the difference between the horrible and the hilarious, with predictably lukewarm results. Still, the story is delicious enough to survive an earnest treatment.

It’s admirable, but it has long stretches of dull, and the tickets aren’t free.

Here and there, particularly in flashback, Bening gets a scene or a moment to invest in and shine, but for truly a surprising length of time, Bening plays a woman who is asleep, literally.

Lucas knows his fans are un-boreable, un-annoyable and inexhaustible. For an artist, that's more a curse than a blessing.

The thinking part of this thriller needs work. It's not nearly as intelligent, thoughtful or penetrating as it promises to be.

The best thing about The Banshees of Inisherin is Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s sister, an intelligent woman with an even temperament and a good sense of humor who finds herself marooned in the wrong part of Ireland and in the wrong half of the 20th century.

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

An intermittently pleasing children's film.

Clearly, the goal was to make a visually opulent Christmas movie, but these visuals end up sucking up much of the film’s life and spirit. It de-emphasizes the human element, and it makes the movie too long.

How one likes Taxi has everything to do with how one responds to the hapless cop character, played by Jimmy Fallon.

The pleasures of Suburbicon are in the moment, and the moments fade before the next moment. There’s no build, just flashes of virtuosity — flashes ultimately in the service of nothing.

The new Ridley Scott movie is fascinating and charming and crammed and overstuffed, and it’s a curious case, too. It gets all the seemingly hard things wonderfully right, but then caves in at points that should have been easy.

Divine cast keeps 'Ya-Ya Sisterhood' from falling flat

At its best, Kajillionaire provides a chance for Rodriguez to play a breezy extrovert and for Wood to play a damaged introvert, and for their characters to alter and deepen through contact with each other. They’re both excellent, but they can’t make the movie any less slow, and July’s relentless whimsicality occasionally sounds some false notes.

Yet there's no getting around one awkward fact. The picture, which turns on a cataclysmic act of terrorism within U.S. borders, was made for a different audience from the one that's about to see it.

The film does have enough visual interest and occasional revelation to allow it to limp with dignity to its conclusion.

Compared with other Jane Austen movies, it isn’t much, but compared with other zombie apocalypse movies, it’s an intelligent, literate effort.

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

What's particularly weird about Godzilla is that for long stretches, all it shows is destruction.

Pleasing but routine British comedy.

In any case, Puzzle ends strangely, in a way that’s not clear what the filmmakers intended or how we’re supposed to feel about it. It’s entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional.

Killing Zoe is another jolly bloodbath about disaffected young people having trouble getting in touch with their feelings, so they go on a spree, killing people, killing everything, tra-la- la-la-la.

It has an affectionate aura, a warmth to it. But at the same time, the audience is left standing on the outside, almost as though watching a home movie: Clearly, this meant something to the people who made it, but it's hard to say what or why.

How could a little story like this get stretched to 124 minutes? It's at least 30 minutes too long.

Young Benny has a nice smile, and she and Jack seem like pleasant people, but in the end (and in the beginning and in the middle) it's hard to get worked up about them.

The results are mixed. Many of the films are too long, and even worse, the collection as a whole doesn't come to grips with the human scale of the tragedy.

The film is engaging but also has a certain creaking familiarity.

The story has its moments, and yet there is something about this tale of a serial killer's patterning his crimes on Poe's most gruesome works that doesn't completely satisfy.

Some of the elements in the film are inexplicable and some are undeveloped, but there are a handful of nicely crafted set pieces.

Even while we’re watching it, a funny feeling sets in. Lots of things happen in American Made, but it’s as if the frenetic pace is to keep us from thinking about what we’re watching.

An intelligent movie that portrays the mighty without reverence.

An American reissue, with a fresh new soundtrack and all the dialogue dubbed.

False Confessions can be admired for its high style and distinct tone, but if you really want to enjoy it, you’ll have to force yourself.

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

It's really not bad... It's a genuine vault at greatness that misses the mark -- but survives.

Nothing in the story feels specific to that California city, or emblematic of it.

To be clear, there are dazzling sequences in The Other Side of the Wind, and virtually every minute has something interesting in it. It’s absolutely worth seeing as a curiosity. But as a work of narrative art it doesn’t sustain itself for its full two-hour running time. After an hour, you might even have to struggle to stay awake.

Within the realm of a mildly good time.

Can't be dismissed. Yet something keeps this movie from being completely satisfying: a disconnect between the plot and the point.

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.

Ezra is an opportunity for Bobby Cannavale to show his abilities as a dramatic actor, but his performance is hampered by one thing: He plays an idiot.

It has scale, spectacle and a cast of good actors who seem to believe in what they’re doing. But the movie springs to life only in spurts.

No doubt this seeming effortlessness was hard-won. Movies this smooth don't happen by accident.

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

Pleasing and occasionally very funny movie that maintains a mild but consistent hold on its audience.

It’s a grand bogus mess passing itself off as a philosophical statement. It has its moments, but they’re few. Often, it’s a beautiful-looking film — but it’s beauty without substance.

An occasionally charming, sometimes amateurish film .

Aloha shows how far a movie can go on charm alone.

The Night We Never Met gets phony but it doesn't get boring, and that's not bad. [30 Apr 1993, p.C5]

Running mainly on adrenaline and a gimmick, it's different from other holiday movies in that it's not ambitious, earnest or overblown, and it obviously wasn't made with one eye on the Oscars.

Gimme Shelter is an attempt at something grand, and though it doesn't get halfway there, it covers some ground.

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

Clearly, this is something rare: a movie that insulates itself against its own rottenness by being lousy by design.

Most of Widows isn’t felt. It’s a cold exercise, and occasionally a ridiculous one, as when McQueen tries to get fancy, with camera angles that make no sense.

Escape Room is an amusement park ride. It has no reason for being beyond that base-level kick, and it doesn’t, as they say, transcend the genre. But there’s something to be said for amusement park rides. People like them for good reason.

There's talent here, but for directing, not writing. If Ritchie wants to last, he's going to have to allow somebody else to write his screenplays.

The likability of Lydia and Emily helps, but writer-director Ben Falcone’s tendency to milk emotion that isn’t there drags down the movie and some of the comic bits feel obvious and pushed.

So, Dogman is a strange case: Great actor, great character, but a story that’s like an overstretched anecdote infused with art-film portent.

In the end, this is not really a World War II movie. It’s just a pretty good action film that borrows the plot from about three or four “Fast and Furious” movies, while stealing riffs from Tarantino.

As a visit to a world and a way of life most of us will never experience, American History X is vivid, and it feels honest. At the very least, it's not typical.

Still, the film's limitations are serious. Pennebaker and Hegedus did not begin their film until Clinton was already nominated, missing out on the big stories of the primary season: Gennifer Flowers, the draft flap and Clinton's knock- down, drag-out with Jerry Brown in the New York primary...With mixed results Pennebaker and Hegedus attempt to sketch in what's missing via unused news footage and out-takes from ''Feed,'' the Kevin Rafferty-James Ridgeway film about the New Hampshire primary. In one example that I picked up on, Pennebaker and Hegedus juggle the time sequence, giving the impression that a scene of Clinton hanging out in a hotel with his handlers in New York occurred in New Hampshire. [30 Dec 1993, p.E1]

There is no diverting from strict chronology, no point the documentary wants to make that requires moving forward and back through time. It just inches ahead, one year to another, sometimes one day to another. By the middle, each time a year changes, it's a relief.

Starts off with a burst of energy but becomes tedious midway through.

A film made with high aspirations and more than the usual commitment but one that, after an arresting beginning, changes into a passive rumination.

Has an oddness and whimsicality about it that can, at first, be confused for authenticity.

Guadagnino has a choice, whether to be an artist or just the maker of artistically rendered, conscientiously realized garbage. It’s time to quit while he’s behind.

In a blind taste test, I couldn't possibly have identified this as a Linklater movie, and he's a filmmaker I generally like. If anything, Bad News Bears shows that Linklater can get in and out of a movie like a cat burglar, without leaving his fingerprints anywhere. OK, he's proven it. He need never do that again.

Amiable though slow-going.

It’s not for people in the midst of their teen years, but for kids who are right on the edge of that social, hormonal discombobulation and are anticipating it with fear and dread. If “To All the Boys” gives courage and reassurance to apprehensive preteens — and is there any other kind? — then it will have served its public service. Still, as a movie, as entertainment … eh, it’s OK.

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.

Eileen builds and builds and builds, and it definitely goes somewhere, but in a way more gimmicky than true — and that leaves us feeling like we were wrong for taking it seriously.

The movie is a fantasy, and the choice is either share the fantasy or don't participate.

The action is difficult to follow.

For all its sensitivity to the horrors of mental illness, The Soloist ends up as a fairly canned piece of work.

Midnight Special is a sincere movie, but sometimes sincerity is half the problem.

The people who made this film -- particularly the ones responsible for the story and the dialogue -- should look no further when trying to understand why In Her Shoes lands with such little impact. The characters seem authentic -- until the chick-flick template distorts them.

The picture is a soggy, all-over-the- place mess.

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.

A fine ensemble piece, but a maddening and unjustified length.

The tone is both satiric and serious, zany but heartfelt, and for a while - maybe 20 minutes - all seems well.

There's no buildup and little shape. Scenes are strong, but the movie as a whole flags.

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.

This is all good movie material, so far as it goes ... but Get on Up can't go any further. Sometimes damaged people stay damaged, and sometimes popular artists make their contribution and then stay in one place forever. It's a big letdown for everybody, but in a biopic, it's poison.

Though Man on the Moon is lost when it comes to Kaufman's inner life and motivations, it offers a detailed account of his career.

A strange good movie, bad in every way but its effect. And it’s an effective woman’s story, not exactly believable, but with another kind of truth, a truth of the heart. If that’s not enough, it’s close.

Thanks to him (Neeson), I not only enjoyed Non-Stop, but I'd watch it again. Particularly on a plane.

The new Vanishing fails on its own terms -- it gradually adopts the conventions of a silly monster movie and loses the emotional impact of a psychological thriller in the process. But what makes this failed effort perplexing is the existence of the earlier film and its successful design. [05 Feb 1993, p.D4]

The film takes a bold, intelligent approach to the explorer's story, providing scenes and images that are not to be forgotten. Then, midway into its journey, the movie sails right off the edge of the universe. [09 Oct 1992, p.C1]

To put it simply, people may be right and people may be wrong, but there are no right races or wrong races. A writer-director who chooses to have characters representing race and not themselves alone paints himself into a corner in which everyone in the movie absolutely must come out all right.

What we’re left with is a movie that has good moments for all the actors, but which, through a series of tonal imprecisions, ends up seeming sour and pointless.

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.

Its virtues can't outweigh the disappointment of a movie that might have been a rousing old-fashioned epic, or better yet a provocative reworking of an old epic, and instead became a muddle.

Revenge is like a movie about two idiots who jump off a cliff hoping gravity will take a holiday. When they hit the ground _ well, that's just too bad. [16 Feb 1990, p.E1]

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]

It’s sincere and intelligent — but it’s weak as a social statement and even weaker as drama.

The name of this documentary is Surviving Progress, but that's only because "The Sky Is Falling and We're All Gonna Die" wouldn't fit on a marquee.

It's fast, snappy and entertaining in a superficial way. But it lacks gravity and authenticity and seems more like a product than an attempt to tell a story.

Linklater never finds a way to sustain a drama from these characters and their situation.

No matter how bad things get, you can always be thankful for this: You're not on trial for murder in Russia.

If anyone wants to watch naked men in the shower, naked men doing erotic dancing, naked men in bed and almost-naked men pumping iron, this is the film to see.

In the end it all seems a little too glib, too easy and not quite true.

An average action film, made slightly better by Cruise, and more bizarre by Herzog, and more watchable by Pike, but still within the average range, a silk purse that still says oink.

It's a slow-moving fable, with enough story and substance to make for one amazing Imax short. Instead the material is stretched beyond its limits into a long, repetitive and often stagnant 127-minute feature film.

Is Little lousy? No. It goes along pleasantly, unimportantly, predictably. Here and there, a mild chuckle might escape your lips. Ten minutes later, a half-hearted titter, or perhaps a knowing chortle. Just don’t expect to guffaw or cachinnate, and forget all about busting a gut. It’s not that kind of comedy.

Snake Eyes collapses in a crosscurrent of conflicting character motives, joyless plot twists and who-cares violence.

It’s true that “Dune 2” is as depressing as watching the news, but that doesn’t make it relevant, because it isn’t the news. It’s more like unnecessary self-torture, like watching a depressing newscast from another planet.

If Species sounds ridiculous, it is -- though as ridiculous science fiction films go, this one has its moments. As usual, these moments come early.

It would be a mildly lovely thing to be able to say the movie isn't bad. But it is.

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.

Cusack should have been half the picture, but the screenplay keeps shoving him offstage for no good reason, and it's a mistake. One of many.

In essence, Sorrentino thought his way up to the middle of The Hand of God and assumed the rest would take care of itself. He started filming too soon. His screenplay needed work.

The movie is equal parts interesting, awful and lovely.

Robert Downey Jr. gets to remind everybody that before this blockbuster turn he was actually a serious actor and may still be again. Stark’s frustration at the rigidity and short-sightedness of his confreres and his anguish at where it all leads are vivid and felt.

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

Would have been a stronger movie if it didn't require a strong cup of coffee going in.

The film is dreadfully slow without much in the way of rewards.

Tetris holds an audience’s attention until the finish, without ever quite commanding it. To some degree, Noah Pink’s screenplay deserves credit for taking an arcane business story and rendering it entertaining. But the story gets so extreme and unlikely in the movie’s last half hour that it becomes easy to separate fact from fiction.

As depicted here, the political story becomes convoluted and dramatically inert.

As in The Florida Project, Baker lingers too long on the atmospherics, and that’s fatal here, because Red Rocket is a comedy and needs a brisk rhythm.

Often the movie seems like a lot of empty-headed blather, with one side hating the First Amendment and the other side unable to find a better use for it but to say the f-word.

Cox does a better than average job — almost everybody bombs when playing Churchill — capturing the leader’s seriousness of purpose and the weight of his responsibility. He gives us Churchill’s irascibility, but he doesn’t convey Churchill’s twinkle, his charm or his wit.

The new John Waters movie, Cry-Baby, which opens today at the Kabuki, isn't daring or even daringly undaring. It's a spoof of those dull, corny musicals from the '50s and early '60s and is just as dull and safe as the kind of movie it mocks. I fell asleep, and I haven't dozed off in a theater since ''Dream Lover,'' a Kristy McNichol effort from 1986. [6 Apr 1990, p.E1]

Worthy but dull.

Its main virtue is that it provides Murphy with a juicy role.

The main event here is Swank, who was a plaintive and sentimental figure in her earliest movies and has only fully come into her strength in youthful middle age. This strength makes Fatale an entertaining diversion and holds out the promise for something deeper and more satisfying in the future.

Has warmth and integrity, but it lacks the urgency of a story that had to be told.

Fails to engage.

A creeping equanimity is taking over the work of John Sayles, a quality that in personal terms might be wise and coolheaded but in terms of drama is absolute death.

For almost an hour, it keeps us off balance. But once we find that balance, the movie seems to coast.

The picture gives the impression of a director in control of his vision, making precisely the film he intends to make. But the vision is a distinctly idiosyncratic one that will appeal only to certain tastes.

Yet Apocalypto has to be respected for the sheer audacity of it, for the commitment and ambition behind it, and for its presentation of a complete other world. It is the furthest thing from a cynical or casual piece of work. It's crazy, and it moves.

What makes Middle of Nowhere a break-even proposition, rather than something to avoid, is that it deals with an aspect of life and with characters rarely seen in movies.

By the end, a sense settles in that Whale Rider could have accomplished as much -- and been considerably more powerful -- as a 25- minute short.

Maher makes Michael Moore look incredibly likable in comparison.

A clever, atmospheric romantic drama that lacks something.

Sibyl is for people who like French movies even when they’re a little ridiculous.

The picture meanders and goes back in time for needless flashbacks, and in the end the comedy mutes whatever punch the dramatic elements might have had.

Unwittingly, Lynch/Oz ends up demonstrating the flimsiness of comparison as a tool of film criticism.

The result is a children's movie that's almost worth seeing even when not accompanied by a child. It's certainly a painless experience, and at times it's quite funny.

A so-so movie you just might want to see more than once. It belongs in a strange category: a film that can’t quite be called a success, that has too many dead spots, that doesn’t quite hang together or satisfy, and that yet is more interesting and occupies more space in the mind than other movies that are ostensibly and even unquestionably better.

For all its surface seriousness, Splice is a regulation monster movie. So however somber it gets, it's never truly thought-provoking, and however outrageous it gets, it's still always 20 minutes behind the audience. It's just too dumb to be serious and too slow to be entertaining. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/03/MVKJ1DOO26.DTL#ixzz0pqYvhKuF

Too bad. The trappings of The Equalizer 2 are first-rate — the star, the director, the central character, the concept — and they make for a movie that’s watchable and intermittently pleasing. But not enough time was spent getting the substance right.

Not for a minute is Mad City anything less than entertaining. Yet it becomes frustrating nonetheless. Its ideas gradually seem to be at cross-purposes -- not complex, not tantalizingly ambiguous, but tangled and undefined.

There is one thing interesting about Alex Cross, and if you miss this, you've missed the whole movie. It's not the story - it's worse than mediocre. It's not the lead actor - nothing wrong with Tyler Perry, but as an action star he's no Vin Diesel. And it's not the dialogue, which has a clunker every other scene. It's the direction. Notice the direction. Alex Cross is a good example of what a seriously talented director can do with a heaping pile of garbage.

Something about Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot keeps it from adding up to a satisfying movie experience. It has the feeling, rather, of a story you might hear about a friend of friend.

Audiences will walk away thinking, "What was that?" But they will walk away thinking.

As the photographer, Baldwin tries to keep his chin up, but he's ultimately sunk by the built-in ludicrousness of the character he plays. But Hopkins -- through wit, luck and imagination -- emerges victorious from the barren wilderness of Mamet's script. He has only himself to thank.

Because “Leave the World Behind” is weak and unconvincing when it comes to character interaction, the film drags in the moment-by-moment, despite its stellar cast.

Has the usual overlong running time, the half-hearted feints in the direction of human feeling and the obligatory action sequences that are big without being either exciting or particularly legible.

If you see the movie, notice how the ending is no ending, and the fact that it even feels like one is entirely a function of Michael Giacchino's musical score.

Neeson is as earnest as ever, but the movie’s tone is arch. Neeson doesn’t think he’s funny, but the director thinks everything is funny, or at the very least, absurd.

Fascinating in its own strange way, not as entertainment but as a cultural document.

Overlong, overplotted and underdrawn.

As a piece of filmmaking, Where to Invade Next gets off to a strong start and then sags in the last half hour, but it makes a lot of interesting points and, in the way it shows other countries, conveys something about the United States.

It’s a mix of comedy that isn’t especially funny — offering something more like general high spirits, rather than laughs — and drama that isn’t really dramatic, except to the people on screen.

Crush is that strange mixed bag -- an otherwise wretched movie in which an actress gets to do some of her best work.

The movie is achingly slow, and by the time it's over, the story is about where it should have been after about 45 minutes. Then it ends just as it gets good, or as it's starting to.

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

Ernest Goes to Jail is a cute picture, good for what it is, which isn't much, but that's OK. [07 Apr 1990, p.C3]

Starts off as a comedy about an unlikely friendship between a white man and a black man who meet over a pick-up basketball game on a Los Angeles playground. Then it switches gears and for a time seems as though it's going to be a more serious look at these men and their world. Finally, it just falls apart completely, and the last hour is a chaotic, meandering mess. [27 Mar 1992, p.D1]

Bigger is not always better. Thor: The Dark World pumps up the action and special effects and loses some of the human element that made the original "Thor" something charming and unexpected. True, this sequel gets better as it goes along, but that's a very steep climb just to arrive at not bad.

It's just a simple thriller whose goal is little more than to keep moving.

Just one big wipeout.

The film holds no surprises. It's strictly by the book, uninspired and only vaguely sincere. But Michael J. Fox is not by the book; he is always genuine. Fox's charm, his comic ease and his genuine good acting manage to keep this mediocre ''vehicle'' afloat, scene by scene, to the end. I believed he was in love with the girl, even though I couldn't figure out why. [1 Oct 1993, p.C3]

The picture is willfully gross, fundamentally stupid and in no way worth the discomfort of watching it. Yet it may be the most well-crafted piece of garbage this year.

It's dull in the precise way that life can be dull. To watch it is like sitting in on a staff meeting, listening to people talk on and on and on. Professors are used to talking nonstop, and in a few cases in At Berkeley it's rather astonishing to hear them repeating the same ideas over and over, instead of just coming to a point and stopping.

As Hunt’s life unravels, so does the movie, though the story maintains a certain baseline of interest just by virtue of being sordid.

Segerstedt's anti-Nazi stand is the only reason to be interested in him, and yet half the movie is about his domestic life.

From moment to moment, Rumours is almost entertaining. But for it to work, you pretty much have to root for it. The movie invites you not to enjoy it so much as to appreciate the effort.

There's something in Ned Kelly' that's lost in the translation from Australia to America, and the overly emotional film score is just a symptom.

For the most part, it's fairly pleasant and interesting enough to be there.

Woo's aggressive, cartoony attack in the film, which makes for its biggest delights, also wipes out whatever chance it might have had of making an emotional impact.

In a way the faults of New Nightmare are the faults of the horror genre as it now exists. Once you get the set-up, the rest of the film is just incidents leading up to the big confrontation. The problem is not in knowing what will happen, but in waiting for it to happen. [14 Oct 1994, p.C3]

For the most part, this film has the disadvantages of Chinese action films, without the advantages. That is, it overdoes the action and it’s short on character, without attaining the manic, wild heights of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early ’90s. Still, it’s nice to see Chan once again in a Chinese environment.

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.

In Elemental, we have a visually splendid and absolutely gorgeous rendering of a half-baked idea. For some of its running time, it can get by on looks. But ultimately, things like story and making sense start to matter, and that’s when the movie takes on water.

Only when it makes the claim for Page as a pivotal figure in American culture does it overstate the case and become tiresome.

Everything in the movie is suffused by a vision of life that is resoundingly and evidently false, but as this vision is not repulsive, but is intended to reassure, the lies don’t produce anger or frustration. No, they bring on the laughs.

It has verve, color and energy, but there's something fundamentally bogus about it.

Inventive and intermittently amusing.

In many ways a beautiful movie, and yet in other ways it’s not very good at all. As an achievement in stop-motion animation, it’s stunning — seamless and detailed, so perfectly done that it’s easy to forget that you’re witnessing skill and not magic.

As Bilbo, Freeman is a pleasure to watch to the extent we get to watch him. His timing is brilliant — he gets the movie’s only laughs. He has tremendous sensitivity and an ability to seem like he’s about to say something — and then convey it without saying it. He could have made a great Bilbo. Instead he’s the one thing that has made this trilogy bearable.

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.

All this makes Zama interesting and unique and something to be respected. But none of this translates into anything resembling a satisfying narrative or even entertainment as we know it. Still, as bleak experiments go, Zama is the real thing.

This is the weird thing, Old Dogs is not that bad.

Clearly, an effort was made to create a serious, thoughtful movie.

Long before the finish, Man From Reno has flat-lined.

Heartfelt but somewhat bloated documentary that's partly an homage and partly a literary mystery.

Ultimately, this is a very predictable picture, made by the director of “The Full Monty,” Peter Cattaneo. Its formula inevitably rises up like a wave and submerges everything Thomas is trying to do. To extend the metaphor, she swims along and doesn’t drown. But unless you love this kind of movie, Military Wives will be, at best, a pleasant diversion and, at worst, a not-so-bad waste of time.

Try as it might, the movie is hardly profound, and the murky atmosphere and the leaden pace drag things down.

A near-miss, but a miss all the same.

In the end, Homeroom lacks impact, taken as a whole, but anyone who sees it will derive something from the experience.

The film is fun and extreme, and though in the end rather pointless, there’s a certain audacity here — a delight in extremity — that’s appealing.

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

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

The film is always at least mildly interesting, because international arms dealing is a fairly compelling issue, but it's never as informative as a good documentary nor as engrossing as a good narrative. It's a hybrid that's frustrating in two distinct ways.

The King’s Daughter has a script that reads like it was written in crayon, by someone using only their thumbs. But two good performances make the film watchable: Pierce Brosnan as King Louis XIV and William Hurt as his adviser and confessor, Pere Francois de La Chaise.

Most of Last Christmas consists of watching this young woman stumble and fumble through life, and thanks to Clarke’s effortless ability to engage a viewer’s sympathy, that’s almost enough.

A frustrating film that feels cobbled together.

Two Night Stand has its moments. But moments are all this movie has — and all its characters are likely to get.

Neither does it help that, despite the wit and literacy of Enough Sad, its form is straight out of a teen romance: A cool kid starts dating someone less cool, and then engages in some elaborate deception that, if found out, will threaten the progress of young love. The funny thing is, if Enough Said were converted wholesale into a high school romance, the characters' behavior might ring more true.

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.

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

An elegant-looking picture, carefully made and beautifully put together, but when the gloss wears off, you're left with an experience that doesn’t quite satisfy. [5 Oct 1990, Daily Datebook, E10]

It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress.

Too labored and cliched to incite passion in an audience.

After a promising opening, with Jason on a rampage and a cold, peculiar bounty hunter (Steven Williams) on Jason's trail, Jason Goes to Hell switches focus midway to the young couple, and from there things go downhill. Still, the film has its moments. [14 Aug 1993, p.F1]

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.

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

In making the movie, writer-director John Ridley had to negotiate with the Hendrix legend — that is, reality had to accommodate audience expectation. In that sense, Jimi: All Is by My Side does a reasonable job.

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

Benefits from Smith and Lawrence's chemistry. As long as they're on screen together, things breeze along. But when they're apart, the movie flounders.

Perhaps because Jenkins can’t translate to the screen the incisiveness and music of Baldwin’s prose, he brings on real music from other sources. Over and over, and increasingly as the movie wears on, Jenkins drowns his film in mirthless jazz and pop interludes to the point that the action feels stuck in cement.

If there's a revelation to be gleaned from these youthful entries, it's that much of what made Hitchcock great was there from the beginning. [18 Feb 2007, p.26]

At the very least the film can be congratulated for being anarchic enough to explore an attraction between the two oldest Brady kids, Marcia and Greg.

One must be very, very, very, very, very interested in Yorkshire, circa 1980, to embrace and enjoy The Red Riding Trilogy. And yet ... there is something to be said for an enterprise this specific and uncompromising.

A Cinderella story with star appeal going for it and everything else against it.

Entertaining, but it's about one notch below being something anybody really needs to see.

With In the Heart of the Sea, director Ron Howard has given us a painstakingly crafted bore, a lovingly rendered snooze, and a very expensive means by which audiences can experience restless leg syndrome before being carted off to the land of happy slumber.

Joy never completely loses its way. But it almost does, and it never quite arrives.

If you’re looking for scenes of big, awful creatures fighting each other and knocking over skyscrapers — and for the spectacle of people scurrying below, running from the huge stomping feet — you will find little to dislike in Godzilla vs. Kong. It does its job. It’s a monster movie.

The terseness of Hosseini's prose has been replaced by the sentimentality of the director's approach.

The story is too slender for its two-hour running time, and the pace is lugubrious, as though everyone in front and behind the camera were depressed. But the biggest obstacle is the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix), who is almost without definition.

A little like spending the holidays with strangers. The spirits are high, the relationships are warm, the personal stories have a shared history, and even though you're on the outside of things, you appreciate the people in a remote and perhaps admiring sort of way. Still, when it's time to leave, you're not sorry.

The most notable thing about Hop is its technical perfection. It puts live action and animation into the same frame so seamlessly that the filmmakers might easily not get credit for it.

The main problem with "Pretty in Pink" today is simply that the entire section involving Jon Cryer, as Ringwald's pompadour-wearing best friend, is excruciating to watch. It must have been equally excruciating to perform. Basically, any time Cryer is onscreen, the story ceases to advance. He is there as comic relief only - or comic filler - but there's nothing funny about either the role or the performance. Still, there's a really good, perceptive 50-minute teenage story buried in this 96-minute movie. And a pretty good time capsule, besides.

The narrative doesn’t generate much interest; the nature of the ultimate ending is discernible from a distance, and the movie’s message about nature and the natural order seems forced. Still, there’s a lot here that’s impressive. Lamb is too vivid and original to forget.

This is a bad film by a good filmmaker. It has the veneer of substantiality, but it’s unsubstantial. It is the product of sincere conviction and artistic confidence, but both were misguided. Every filmmaker needs to take the occasional chance, as Christopher Nolan did with “Tenet.” Not all chances pay off.

Rodman can't act, but his outsized personality fits right in. Van Damme, as always, does his job and looks good doing it. As for Rourke, he's taken the first step. Now he just needs to rinse and repeat.

As a movie about mental illness, Silver Linings Playbook is more lightweight than lighthearted. But thanks to Lawrence, it does one good thing most movies don't do. It actually gets better as it goes along.

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.

The movie is hampered throughout by little inconsistencies.

But let’s be fair: If this were the first cop movie ever made, we’d be grateful for it. It holds interest. It’s never quite boring. And there are worse things you can do with your time than watch Boseman, Miller and Simmons for an hour and a half. Just know that 21 Bridges is the kind of movie you’ll forget five minutes after seeing it.

The enormous, make-or-break things are perfectly in place, and just that is enough for a reasonably enjoyable movie. But plot problems, some comically weak dialogue, repetitious scenes and a non-ending ending keep the experience a little more earthbound than it had to be.

Just another bloody cop thriller.

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

The result is a beautiful void, a structureless emptiness buoyed by some good scenes and performances.

Wild Orchid is a funny movie, an unintentional scream that sets itself up as a journey into the land of eroticism. [28 Apr 1990, p.C3]

For all the movie’s modest but palpable virtues, The Exorcist: Believer has one problem it cannot solve: No one has come up with a new way to do an exorcism.

The picture is also the story of one character in particular, Bobby, and when it comes to Bobby, A Home at the End of the World is sappy and bogus.

A hit- and-miss affair, consistently amusing but not as outrageous or funny as Cho may have intended or as imaginative as one might have hoped.

Despite the title, Ismailos' documentary is not a study of what constitutes great direction. Rather it's a nicely arranged film in which a variety of filmmakers Ismailos likes discuss their inspirations and influences.

The acting is fine. The ensemble is strong. The story moves along. Yet a coating of sleaze clings to the film, like bread dipped in batter.

A hit-and-miss affair, or, to be more precise, a miss (story one), hit (story two) and break even (story three) affair.

The movie is just good enough to make us want more and to understand what's missing.

Best of all is the work of Gillian Jones, who shows up in one scene as "Grandma."

Structurally, this becomes a little monotonous because there's just no denying that some kids are more interesting than others.

Still, no matter how flat “The Lost Daughter” can sometimes seem, there’s always something to hold our attention. The movie is never great, but it’s never exactly dull. There’s always a reason to stick around for the next scene.

When it's good, it's good, and when it fails, it's still clear what Levine was trying to do.

The opening is spectacular, but the rest is fairly routine.

A disappointment, but it's not a disaster, and that's at least something.

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.

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.

The characters are engaging, and writer-director Stella Meghie is able to keep us interested in them for about an hour — and then the drama leaks out of the movie completely.

With Reichardt, you really do feel like you’re actually there. The only problem is that, a lot of the time, you’re really not happy to be there.

More thoughtful and pleasing to the eye than any blockbuster in recent memory, but its epic length comes without an epic reward. It's a slow ride to the same old place, nonstop action, accelerating in scale, culminating in the smirking promise of a sequel.

This is a monster movie -- 92 minutes, lots of action, lots of green legs stomping, get in, get out.

Follows a predictable format.

Mindhunters is as effective as a movie can be and yet still be 100 percent forgettable.

Great trash, one of those mediocre movies that in its own crass way is more enjoyable than most things that get nominated for Oscars.

In terms of story and emotional power, Brave comes up short.

Even apart from the fact that it's not nearly funny enough, Bruce Almighty is a peculiar film.

Perry isn't the only thing wrong with Serving Sara, but he's the thing that takes a pleasantly mediocre movie and turns it into an unpleasantly mediocre one.

There's a dignity about it, and it's only later that we come to realize that this dignity is misplaced, born of a fatal reserve and a lack of complete investment.

Together, the two actors build a rapport that goes beyond the dialogue and justifies where the story ultimately goes. Anyway, that’s the paradox in “The Good Nurse,” which potential viewers must sort out for themselves: The performances are worth seeing, but the movie isn’t.

Violent and nonsensical, with story elements in contradiction, it is lifted up by the efforts of the actors, who try to put a human face on the blockbuster machinery and almost succeed.

The Laundromat finds director Steven Soderbergh in a playful mood, but this time he’s a little too playful, and the result is a scattered and seemingly trivial movie about a serious subject — a lighthearted, jolly expose of international money laundering.