Steve Persall

Romantic charm and racy humor in a neatly arranged package anyone can appreciate.

Eat Pray Love is like one of those rich dishes Liz consumes in Italy; robustly flavored and guiltily pleasurable.

Anything men can do women can do dirtier, funnier, fresher, since distaff raunchiness shows no signs of going stale and isn't contained to Melissa McCarthy.

It will mightily preach to the choirs of concerned citizens, and be ignored by anyone else.

A sequel needs to hit the ground running faster than Divergent does. Find more notes for Woodley's elegantly plain face to express.

Muppets Most Wanted is pleasant enough to recommend as family entertainment. But the movie falls short of what immediately preceded it, musically and emotionally.

True Story may someday be used in both acting and journalism classes, the former for what students should do, and the latter for what they shouldn't.

Appropriately, the best jokes in Trainwreck are unprintable, or too winding to describe. Schumer's sexual vocabulary and observational skills get a workout, surrounded by an occasionally surprising cast of foils.

Kingsman is as violently kinetic as anything Vaughn has made, a list including Kick-Ass (the good one) and Craig's U.S. breakthrough, Layer Cake. But Kingsman is also wildly uneven, often slowing its roll to stiff-upper-lip pacing necessary (or not) to create a new British secret agent movie mythology.

King's book isn't hallowed literature, just a little vicious fun, if 1,100 pages can be considered little. This is the spooky, overlong movie It deserves and It deserves that sequel. Float on.

Non-Stop mostly works by being aware of what other jet-in-jeopardy flicks have done before, adding a spin here and there. Nothing Hitchcockian but more ambitious than a Neeson action flick needs to be.

Succeeds where "Thor" didn't and the "Incredible Hulk" hasn't, twice. Unlike those drags, director Joe Johnston keeps things relatively simple and pleasantly stupid.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time.

Gang Related isn't perfect; the plot does get a bit far-fetched at times, bordering on ironic overkill, and the last 10 minutes of bloody revenge is needlessly out-of-synch with the rest of the movie. You walk away from Kouf's movie not entirely happy about what it turned out to be, but overjoyed at what it is not. Sometimes, that's good enough.

22 Jump Street is a mixed bag of clever spoofery and miscalculated outrageousness. The unveiled homoeroticism of practically all interaction between Jenko and Schmidt is amusing to the point when it isn't.

For all of its carnal frivolity, The Wolf of Wall Street lacks passion and purpose, qualities Scorsese at his best has in abundance.

The humor is an underdog's fantasy, tapping the same vein Murray bled dry with self-important camp counselors and military officers; the less cool they are, the harder they'll fall.

Bully is no more incisive than a Dateline NBC segment on the subject, although with a PG-13 rating it now can be a classroom tool for discussion.

The cast is delightful top to bottom, although Arterton's role is chiefly defined by seductive smiles and the rise of her cut-off shorts. Allam and Cooper are standouts, creating hormonally despicable characters getting more of Tamara's attention than they deserve.

Hysteria is a one-joke movie, but when a joke is told this well, it doesn't matter.

It's a movie that grows on you, after grating your nerves while viewing it.

Bridesmaids is a bit of a groundbreaker... Not exactly a banner for feminism but equal time is overdue.

Franco doesn’t ask viewers to reconsider bad art but to respect the artist behind it. Sage advice from someone who, after a few career disasters, can still shape a movie this good.

Fast Five is brawny dumb fun, nothing more but that's enough.

A shocking and outrageous comedy that gets under your skin. Landis doesn't always know the difference between a laugh and a nervous giggle, but you can't just sit there unaffected. [25 Sept 1992, p.10]

If only City Slickers II possessed the heart of the original, a quality it might have recouped at its climax. Yet, instead of a gentle lesson on the true value of life, the screenwriters tack on a Las Vegas epilogue that exists to present one more Palance zinger and a set-up for another sequel. [10 June 1994, p.8]

Technically dazzling but emotionally empty. [22 Oct 1993, p.5]

It's a capable Sunday school lesson with little for anyone to challenge and practically nothing that offends.