Steve Davis

While Levi gives you someone to genuinely root for, once the movie reaches Warner’s debut game for the Rams in 1999, all nuance goes out the window as you’re pounded into semi-hysterical submission to cheer for a proverbial win for the gipper.

Contradictions abound in this messy and unfocused drama that purports to believe that family is everything, when all else fails.

It's an occasionally entertaining ride, although one fraught with numerous logical holes.

The premise is ripe for potent melodrama, but director Jacquot (who gets co-screenwriting credit) ultimately doesn’t finesse the situation.

If Tuff Turf had used a little more of Downey's relaxed intelligence and amiability, and a little less teenage angst and sense of violence as retribution, it might have been tough stuff. As it is, it's a lightweight in a genre populated with featherweights.

There's much to enjoy here as long as your expectations aren't too high.

Whatever the case, Foxcatcher provides little insight. Art can shape the truth in ways that resonate beyond the obvious. Regrettably, the truth-shaping here grapples for significance, without any apparent aim. Catch as catch can.

It’s meant to be thrilling fun, but it never takes off in the way imagined.

You can almost smell the desperation in the twisted psychosexuality of Savage Grace.

It's too bad that Gas Food Lodging is as disconnected as it is because there's a real current of feeling here, especially in Balk's sympathetic performance and the film's unflinching depiction of a single woman trying to raise a family on her own. Rather than make a lasting impression, it makes only a passing one, as impermanent as the momentary view of a dying town on the highway.

Despite its best intentions, The Lost City of Z never finds itself, doomed to aimlessly wander to an unsatisfying conclusion of a dream that betrays the best of men.

The temporal jumps between the present and varying points in the past deprive the film of a sense of completeness; the transitions from scene to scene are largely disorienting, leaving you struggling to find your bearings.

In the end, while both of these performers look great together, they really don't seem to belong together. And that's the biggest hitch in Hitch.

There’s an intriguing story to be told here, but there’s a better way to tell it. To borrow from the Bard, the spots in Lady Macbeth simply won’t wash away.

The antithesis of a feel-good movie, Listen Up Philip is a challenging experience, largely because it refuses to compromise its protagonist’s dogged preoccupation with himself.

It’s the subtext of 19th century gender politics that keeps this footnote in Dickens’ life mildly interesting, but it’s a not much upon which to rest an entire movie.

A nagging question persists throughout Darkest Hour: Is Oldman’s compulsively meticulous turn here anything more than a brilliant impersonation? The answer is yes, but it’s a performance that always stands apart from the rest of the film.

Every so often, a spark in Marinelli’s mesmerizing blue-gray eyes flickers and you can imagine the passion that drove the man to his madness. In those moments, Martin Eden subtly flames, if only briefly.

That’s the problem with this well-meaning but ultimately hollow film romance: You don’t see it; you don’t get it.

This is a guy who marched to the beat of his own drum, even one that’s got two spoked wheels and some handlebars.

Frankenheimer resorts to gunfire and explosions to bring the film to its predictable end. It's when things get mundane that you find yourself wishing that Brando would reappear on the screen to make things interesting again.

This is an action flick for those who like form over substance in their popcorn movies which explode onscreen every summer.

It never really rollicks like a good political satire.

It feels like a veiled apology for Babs Johnson and other exercises in bad taste. In my book, the filthiest person alive will always win the prize.

Renaissance man extraordinaire Michelangelo Buonarroti is frequently accused of greed in the incohesive historical drama Sin, but the only real transgression is his pride, whether it’s nurturing his own divine genius or badmouthing the mediocrity of contemporaries like Leonardo and Raphael.

The decibel level in Little Voice ranges from a delicate whisper to seismic bellowing; aurally speaking, it traverses the spectrum of human sounds.

The seen-it-all-before elements of this supernatural thriller directed by the filmmaker who gave us "Saw," however, are more hoary than horrific. It might as well be retitled "The Amityville Exorcist."

It’s Hauser who keeps the movie from tilting over, even though Eastwood and Ray initially seem to patronize the character. The knuckleheaded scene-stealer from "I, Tonya" and "BlacKkKlansman" has the chance here to play a fuller, more rounded character for a change, and he’s unexpectedly up to the task. The performance is an eye-opener. With a little refinement and polish, we may have found our long-awaited Ignatius J. Reilly.