Richard Corliss

Doesn't touch (Li's Hong Kong movies). But it is trying something clever.

Until The Raven almost literally loses itself during a chase in the city sewers, it nicely balances its literary gamesmanship with a R-rated thriller's mandatory gross-out tableaux.

This is the rough cut of a good movie, and a splendid opportunity wasted.

The invention is impressive, but there is little indication of the Henson-Oz trademark: a sense of giddy fun.

Laughter trumps political fairness, and Get Hard made me laugh at, and with, situations I hadn’t thought could tickle me. The movie has a warm heart beating under its seemingly scabrous shell.

There's something missing, beyond the iconoclastic theology, in this perfectly OK, blandly underwhelming superproduction. The movie lacks an elevating passion, a cohesive vision, a soul. It's as if The Golden Compass has misplaced its artistic compass. Somebody stole its daemon.

It points out what's missing in his (Oshii) approach: fluidity of character line, the subtlety of expression that brought humanity to a Warner Bros. cartoon duck or rabbit.

The acting ensemble is crucial. Everyone's really fine.

This is cinema reduced or distilled to its purest definition, of movies that move. If you want dewy humanity in your entertainment, watch Lifetime.

With all its boardroom bickering, the plot is a gun that shoots mostly blanks. G3 is too faithful to the deliberate pacing of the first two films: the slow walking into a dark room, the silence surrounding the threats... The film is a slow fuse with a big bang. [24 Dec 1990, p.76]

Morning Glory is a cut above most other recent light fare, but not a prime cut.

It's an efficient thriller, with scare weapons ranging from the primitive (a pitchfork) to the apocalyptic (an A bomb). The acting is only horror-film-functional, and you might wish that our trio of renegades knew a few basic laws of the genre.

At 2 1/2 hours, it all plays like the rough assembly of a 90-min. caper film--an anecdote told at epic length. Grier, foxy lady of '70s blaxploitation, is given little chance to radiate. [22 Dec 1997, p.80]

When Possession finds its true home, lodging in the convulsive certitude of Victorian romance, it does indeed catch fire -- and warms any viewer in the mood for love.

The movie is less to be experienced than to be appreciatively studied, like an insect, a stuffed bird, or the sketch by a gifted artist in the style of an Old Master — in this case, the Master of Suspense. It’s not pure Park or pure Hitchcock but a muted, mildly mesmerizing blend of the two. You might want to take a careful stroll in this Hitchpark.

My advice to Scott and Lindelof is, Try harder - to bring the characters as well as the creatures alive; to extend the grandeur of that music-of-the-sphere scene to an entire movie; to devise new horror-film money shots; and to scare the crap out of me.

Law, sexy and crafty as ever, and here with a flinty innocence, proves again he has the star-quality goods.

The plot becomes landlocked in true-life implausibilities; the characters rarely get a hold on the moviegoer's heart or lapels. What saves this meditation on the vestiges of colonialism is, ironically, its celebration of American star power.

Romantic comedies often make do on flimsy premises, but this one is thinner than Kate Moss and nuttier than an Almond Joy.

For all the energetic milling, Rise of an Empire proves superior to its predecessor by making war a game both sexes can play, on nearly equal terms. In comparison, the R-rated "300" seems as innocent as Adam in the Garden before the delicious complication of Eve — or Eva.

Allen has assembled an attractive cast and given most of them clichés to inhabit. He has also stinted on inventiveness.

Agreeable but never compelling, Silverado proves it takes more than love of the western to make a good one. Maybe the dudes at K-Tell were a mite too slick for the job.

Obvious, though, is the word for Hopper's direction. It amplifies to rock-concert level every pained plosive in Bertie's speech, forces certain characters dangerously close to caricature.

With his round, ruddy face, Tighe always seems on the verge of derisive laughter or flash-fisted rage; it's enjoyable guessing which fever will surface first. The rest of the movie is less entertaining, a righteous homily without the grits.

Payne cannot shape or propel his own good material. He lets things dawdle when briskness would be a boon, and defeats the gung-ho efforts of Dern and other worthy actors. [9 December 1996, p.82]

The Keane story is a rich parable that deserves either a wilder or a more acute telling than Burton provides here.

By the end-credit sequence, when the stars appear in spandex outfits to reprise Dancing Queen, the audience may be singing along as if they'd overdosed on ouzo.

Flouting all rules of the sea but honoring every war-epic cliche about guts under pressure.

Provides the familiar cheap thrills but with a salsa tang.

This is what lifts Seven Pounds above other Smith dramas -- he does tentatively allow another adult onto his solitary planet.

The Lady is still titled away from the churning melodrama of Suu Kyi's country and toward the intimate dilemma of a loving couple forced apart by circumstance.

It is the rare conspiracy thriller that ripens as the villains' organization and motives are gradually revealed.

The film's payoff raises more questions than it answers, which may be Shyamalan's intent in this political parable of fear.

The movie is a little gimpy. But Murray's molto impressive. He drops his voice half an octave; he walks like a golem tailored by Armani; he puts his silky style in the service of menace. It's a whole nother dimension to him. [8 March 1993]

Hanks has a wonderful scene, late in the film, that shows a strong man collapsing into frailty. It hints at the emotional depth the movie might have plundered. The rest of Captain Phillips must rely for its drive on the relentless mechanical agitation of Henry Jackman’s score. It can’t save an overly muscled docudrama that is more pounding that truly gripping.

It should make audiences happy. But then so did most of his earlier movies, and they were lame, gnat-brained pieces of demagogic doo-doo!

Guys and gals from the first film, now thicker and with incipient crow lines, pair up in more or less the same permutations as when they were young and shiny. The movie's message is that the way to face impeding maturity is to embrace your inner teen idiot.

Rumble Fish is the messiest, most provocative inkblot of the year.

Anchorman 2 is more like SNL in the sharper years (1995–2002), when McKay was a writer and Ferrell one of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Expect no more and you should be satisfied. Wine connoisseurs would call this a new Burgundy with an old bouquet.

The Cotton Club is not a bad film, just a bland one; not inept, just inert. Given its garish production history, one rather expected The Cotton Club to sing with hot-jazz desperation. Instead, we get the mediocre craftsmanship of a pit band in Vegas.

There's enough narrative for three fine films. But not enough for The Interpreter. The thriller pieces feel assembled rather than organic.

There's nothing profound going on here; the truisms don't blossom into life-enriching truths. It's more like the person you meet at a bar who, on second glance, is surprisingly attractive. Call Think Like a Man a perfectly satisfactory one-night stand at the movies.

Invigorating and annoying, Lola could use a dose of Ritalin. Best to take this 76-minute riff on alternate destinies as an antidote to Europe's minimalist art-house cinema and to enjoy Potente's sweaty radiance.

Does Solondz feel remorse for libeling his own kind? He might need to if his portraits didn't have the gift of dark wit, the ring of social truth. One makes allowances for a master storyteller.

It's a decent February movie that smartly extends Washington's God-on-the-run character.

The real battle here is between two generations of acting styles: meticulous method vs. star quality.

The Informant! may end up closer to the non-starters. Its lunacy is too deadpan, and its denouement too drawn out, to appeal to those who liked the Bourne movies, or, for that matter, the Gore. But it's worth seeing, and a salutary achievement.

Forman and Weller have created an impressive but strangely lopsided movie.

For all the carnage, Lee's tone is contemplative.

The word "mixed" isn't mixed enough to fit my response to this film.

The Other Woman earns a viewer's respect for the grace notes that director-screenwriter Don Roos finds beneath these familiar tunes, for the unassertive skill with which he paints upper-class life on the Upper East Side, and for the rightness of the performances.

If you take Tykwer's film even half-seriously, it will be like one of those horror movies that you leave, suspecting that the crazy, ingenious super-killer is waiting for you outside. A warning, then, to the susceptible: After seeing The International, don't dare go to an ATM.

A serious film about the gnawing of conscience and the thirst for redemption, but the tone is so dispassionately vile it may leave viewers shaken or sick. [16 Nov 1992, p.95]

In ingenuity and charm, this DreamWorks offering isn't up there with "Kung Fu Panda," which remains the sharpest, fullest film from the studio. You may get the feeling that Megamind was made for, and possibly by, really smart six-year-olds. Nothing wrong with that; audiences of all ages can be tickled by the higher form of preadolescent humor.

It's hard to know whom to blame for the film's choppiness, its mixture of rage and sentimentality, the stridency of some of the acting.

Pfeiffer restores honor to the family drama.

So little wit is expended on the dialogue and so much on the imagination of disaster that you may as well sit back and enjoy the jolting ride.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is no "Fast Five."

Lynch and his film will surely be reviled, but as an experiment in expanding cinema's dramatic and technical vocabulary, Blue Velvet demands respect. [Sept. 22, 1986]

Neither the acting nor the story matters much here; the movie is simply the sum of its 3D effects.

If Hollywood is going to remake a '70s movie, it might as well be Pelham, and it ought to work as competently as this one. But wouldn't it be nice, once in a while, for Hollywood to turn contemporary traumas into vigorous movies instead of hijacking the anxieties of the past?

The film mostly simmers.

This spectacle of strenuous improvising is more stunt than true experiment.

This is a Bond with great body but no soul.

Me, I'm of two minds about a movie that wants to be a nail-ripping thriller and a statement on an artist's unholy communion with her role. It's reminiscent of older, better movies.

It's soppy enough to suit the requirements of the weepie genre...But the movie also has an aching solidity that allows you to surrender to its cuddly-creepy feelings without hating yourself in the morning.

The movie is way too colorful - cute, in a repulsive way, with its crawly special effects - and tame compared with its source.

Picaresque movies often feel longer than they are. For them to work, they need an interior spring with more thrust than Darjeeling's attempt at reconstituted brotherhood. The problem is in Anderson's approach, which is so supercool, it's chilly. Anderson has the attitude for comedy but not the aptitude.

A decent sampler for Americans who've never seen a full-out Bollywood musical, since it goes heavy on the action scenes and light on the big dance numbers.

To accept the film, though, one must first understand its point of view, and that is maddeningly difficult. All we know for certain is that Do the Right Thing is not naturalistic. [July 3, 1989]

The problem with shock comedy is that it works in its purest form only the first time. Where do you go after you've gone too far? No artist can get heads to swivel and stomachs to turn indefinitely.

You may salute Lone Survivor for its desperate intensity; but the film remains pinned down by its military and political dilemma: between gung-ho and F—, no.

Eastwood can earn both laughs and respect just by standing in a crowded elevator and grunting ''Swell'' to his boss. Truth is, this time around, he doesn't get to do much else. [18 July 1988, p.73]

For the uninitiated, The X Files: I Want to Believe may seem as musty and forbidding as one of those dank secrets that Mulder and Scully were forever digging up from some backyard, or fetid swamp, or their own aching hearts.

Lohman's pensive loveliness carries the film.

If the film is to work at all - and it eventually does - the two 27-year-old leads must radiate enough star quality to obviate the ramshackle plot. They just about do.

Non-headline-making but often entertaining docu-travelogue.

Wrath of the Titans, like its predecessor, is a slightly-better-than-OK mashing of one of history's great literary troves: the Greek myths.

At its shambling best, Office Space is like a bracing break at the coffee machine. Some horrible Monday, why not cut work to see it?

In the end, I, Robot is just an assembly-line product of a not very advanced model.

The Secret Life of Bees may not be a "To Kill a Mockingbird" on page or screen, but Fanning is the center of its soul and intelligence. It's Hollywood's job to find strong parts for this precocious genius as she matures into womanhood.

The film has a hectic, sitcom air and a full-of-himself hero who is as likely to grate as to ingratiate.

Lawless tries to be flawless; as a movie, it's often listless - lifeless.

It's a great idea that Niccol can't translate into a great movie.

Howard and Goldsman have efficiently touched all the bases. But they haven't found a way to replicate the book's page-turning urgency.

Sensitive souls in search of wrenching emotion can be guaranteed their Kleenex moments; you will get wet. But aside from that opening scene, you will not be cinematically edified. This is a bad movie.

The film is a lavish, linear, way-too-long (3 hr. 21 min.) storybook of Malcolm's career, the movie equivalent of an authorized biography, a cautious primer for black pride.

Mind you, I don't begrudge the creators of even a junk-food movie like Cloverfield the fun they had demolishing New York one more time.

Ask the Dust is the ghost of a cult novel; it can't bring itself to life.

It’s "Identity Thief" with flying piranhas, or Plains, Trains & Automobiles on foot.

By turns amusing and annoying, Young Adult could be the flip side, plus the sequel, of "Juno."

The joke barrage becomes hit-or-miss, as if the creators — including screenwriter Dan Stewart, working from a story by Rogen and Greenberg — don’t know or care which is which.

That heart comes bursting out of Funny People, Apatow's intermittently engaging, 2 hr. 26 min. essay in schizo-cinemaphrenia.

The film's director, Kevin Macdonald, who did "The Last King of Scotland," is not a flair fellow. The chase scenes interpolated into this version have no special oomph; the encounters no residual kick. Paging Ridley Scott? Oh, sorry, too late. So there it is: another film that can't compete with a TV show.

Even Galifianakis's pervy charm, and a deeply weird cameo by Mike Tyson, can't save The Hangover. Whatever the other critics say, this is a bromance so primitive it's practically Bro-Magnon.

Raimi, who launched his career with the cheapo horror mini-masterpiece "The Evil Dead" before helming the blockbuster "Spider-Man" trilogy, can’t infuse the story with much verve or joy.

The new PG-13 movie is a fairly close adaptation of the Verhoeven, and lacks not just the earlier film's newness but its vigor, density, humor and R-rated juice. It's like the dinner-theater revival of a classic play, whose single asset is to remind those present how good the original was.

Rourke does strong, sensitive work here, which will cheer his old-time admirers and win him new fans...But the movie itself is pretty bad.