Tom Russo

Just because a Japanese animated film is screening at the Museum of Fine Arts doesn't mean that you can count on Miyazaki-caliber artistry.

What we’re left with, then, is yet another “Terminator” far easier to appreciate for isolated bits of inspiration than for any stroke of genius it manages overall.

For all of Alita’s she-Pinocchio charm — and her Cameronian estrogen-charged badass-itude — she can’t quite carry the audience all the way across that pesky uncanny valley.

This time, the over-the-top craziness that Spencer slyly serves up fills more than just a pie plate.

It’s a movie content to stay within the show’s comfort zone, changing things up mainly with flashier, 3-D visuals, a couple of which are dazzlers, and a theme that doesn’t connect in any notable way.

The result is sometimes charming and always visually astonishing.

Krasinski infuses The Hollars with familiar wry humor, but he also delivers a film that’s unexpectedly rich with sweetly moving moments.

A hard-R espionage thriller heavy on themes of sexual degradation and graphic, sometimes sadistic violence.

Despite a few diverting moments and some ambitiously dramatic themes, this one is simply too uneventful and too populated by thinly sketched characters to keep its target audience engaged.

Unfortunately, Mann also leans on ill-fitting story elements that he might easily and smartly have avoided, and the movie’s rhythms and credibility pay for it.

Not that the movie’s various shortcomings are all on Moore. British genre director and co-writer Johannes Roberts (“Storage 24”) gives her nothing but trite drama to work with in setting up the story, and an overload of distracting, reductive prattle once she hits the water.

The initial close-up of Thompson - all sourly snaggletoothed and begoggled - is as funny as anything in the original. And just that one quick glimpse would have been perfect.

What’s most entertaining here, ultimately, is the performance that Stewart turns in as outspoken, play-it-loose Sabina, a completely unexpected, who-knew mash-up of sexy and offbeat.

The actors also acquit themselves well singing the film's numerous tunes. Breslin's voice is pleasantly melodic, while Nivola sounds like someone who's been grinding it out on tour for years.

Endearing, if not an A-list classic. [25 Sep 2005]

Elle Fanning is impeccably cast as Jesse, a quiet, sweet-natured ingénue shuttling between sketchy photo shoots and her clichéd newcomer’s digs in a seedy Pasadena motel.

A giant chef character is an icky bit of inspiration (complete with booger humor to soothe any shell-shocked young’uns in the audience), and the monsters are key to an epic-scale third act. If you thought the tale ended when Jack clambered back down from the skies, then you haven’t given it as much thought as Singer.

A wide-ranging new survey of the toy’s global subculture and appeal.

The result is a reworking that feels both unnecessary and uninspired, even if it’s too genial and visually captivating to be flat-out off-putting.

If the freneticism gets repetitious, the target audience won’t mind, at least not judging by a preview crowd’s delirious reaction to a recurring electrified-doorknob gag.

What’s somewhat unique about Jojo Moyes’s weepie, which the writer scripted from her 2012 bestseller, are the provocative dilemmas it explores to coax those tears.

It’s a diverting if slightly undercooked throwback that could offer more genuine intrigue, but that’s still worth it to see the cast gamely chuck out the window manners and vanity.

As it stands, The Expendables 2 is lazily satisfied with repeating the first movie's formula, shortcomings and grisly strengths alike.

The film’s lone strength is the fleeting dramatic scenes offering a little back story — and pathos — on Rafe’s home life with his sweetly understanding single mom (Lauren Graham, who you’d guess wouldn’t have bothered otherwise).

Middling cop thriller, whose attention-grabbing city-on-lockdown premise is undercut by thin plotting and forced performances from the supporting cast.

When the action is at its sharpest, such as with Henry’s mid-chase leap from a detonating truck onto the back of a motorcycle, it’s spectacular.

The movie’s best bits come when Tong’s script eases up on banter and clunky Indy homages and instead simply indulges in random zaniness.

Where we hoped for a narrative rebound, we get instead another pedestrian, overlong post-apocalyptic entry that fails to capitalize on some decent character dynamics.

Stabs at the dramatic don't amount to anything that makes us care, even for Bell, who has been solid on AMC's "The Walking Dead'' and in the chairlift chiller "Frozen.'' But genre fans who have been thirsting for gore via acupuncture needles or a LASIK machine should get their giddy fill.

The film is also packed with enough sharply scripted screwiness from Adam's roommate (Jake Johnson), Emma's roomie (Greta Gerwig), and others to keep viewer impatience to a minimum.

Save for a couple of crisp standalone segments incorporated as tone-setters, Washington’s first-ever sequel is a narratively and visually muddled disappointment, one that regularly confuses numbing brutality with vicariously thrilling righteous vengeance.

At least a plot point about “secret formula” is sort of clever. The rest comes across as gibberish.

Character quirks know no limits in the indie dramedy Boundaries, a multi-generational road-trip movie that gives both Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer richly drawn roles to play.

There are some amusing looks at the elation - and panic - that come with winning big, from the praise-Jesus swooning of Kevin's grandma (underutilized Loretta Devine).

In one amusing bit of dialogue, Stallone and Schwarze-negger kid each other about being smarter than they look. For a little while at least, we thought we might be able to say the same about Escape Plan.

The basic story is identical, and when there are fraught, climactic opportunities for the movie to make a gutsy departure, it passes up the chance.

"Mars" needs Mom more than the filmmakers seem to realize.

Wilson has some fun lampooning ’80s action tropes, but he’s also just doing Dwight Schrute with a twang at times. McBrayer and Garcia barely get to play one-note characters, let alone ones that you’ll remember.

It’s a brutal bit of screen poetry that’s matched too infrequently by the aching human stories director Fedor Bondarchuk is so anxious to tell.

Too glossy to truly immerse audiences in the horrors it depicts.

The laughs here are more about the colorfully zany action than the ho-hum material the cast gets.

An intermittently arresting, mostly standard action entry that deals death noisily more than cleverly - a lot like the original.

A serviceable thriller that might have been something more.

It’s fun in stretches, but also busily forced.

This one has more in common with Scott’s “Thelma & Louise” in the memorable way it escalates, inevitably but also unexpectedly, into a spin through wilder country, and a meditation on bigger themes.

If you're an "Escape From New York" fan, you might have wondered about those rumors about a possible remake...Well, wonder no more. Producer Luc Besson's action factory has beaten everyone to it, stylishly. They're just calling the thing Lockout, and setting it in outer space.

It's a surprise that Stallone is as funny as he is playing a hit man paired with a cop in Bullet to the Head. He's man-cave witty in a way that his "Expendables" movies have strived for but haven't really managed.

As an orphan who dreams of joining the Paris Opera Ballet in the animated feature Leap!, Elle Fanning really hears it about the artistry and precision required to become a prima ballerina. The makers of this cheery but subpar confection probably should have been taking notes in addition to scripting them.

The film feels as if it’s drawing its characterizations far more from the appeal of its stars than from any prose.

Luke Wilson, Eddie Izzard, director Ash Brannon (“Surf’s Up”), and crew combine these ingredients into something that’s uniquely likable, and even unique-looking at times.

You’ll just have to look to your own effects-jazzed inner child to find a kid who’s relatable here.

At its best, the movie is provocative, sleekly assured, and a legit showcase for its intriguingly deep ensemble

A sequel that has some snappy interplay, typically courtesy of Malkovich, but mostly feels like a cast working to manufacture what came naturally the first time.

Seeing Ben Stiller, the late Robin Williams, and their magically roused gang together again, this time in London, is initially all about indulgent, nostalgic smiles rather than new wows. But then comes the movie’s exceptionally clever and fresh final act, which delivers genuine surprise along with many laughs.

It all makes for competent but routine suspense.

Aussie Rosalie Ham’s quirky gothic novel is too tonally erratic to be completely satisfying. But we do get two Kates for the price of one, in a sense, as this crazy quilt of a movie allows her to play both entertainingly vampy and vulnerable.

These promising themes aren’t given much more than surface treatment, making for a movie as conveniently tidy as some coming-home schmaltz on basic cable.

The film can be naggingly vague and patchily written where precision seems called for, but the familiar procession keenly digging into the wistful material does hold interest.

It’s all a fair attempt, but Aselton isn’t going to make anyone forget Kathryn Bigelow.

The filmmakers and a nifty cast give the characters some clever, amusing flourishes — it’s definitely diverting seeing the Addamses rendered in state-of-the-art animation, given their cartoon origins — but it ultimately isn’t enough to keep the mood from turning dull.

After a fast, funny start, the new sequel, Johnny English Reborn, proves to be more of the same.

You could argue that the only thing that’s automatic about A Dame to Kill For, really, is some of the firepower that its hardcases are packing.

Thoroughly vanilla comedy, a movie jammed with well-meaning girl power messages but surprisingly little edge.

Trouble is, the movie’s dopiness isn’t in fact something you can get past. “American Assasinine” is frequently more like it.

The film is quite the showcase for Zoey Deutch (“Before I Fall”), giving her loose-scripted freedom to play brazen, breezy, even soulfully vulnerable. Still, her selectively promiscuous hellion is so off-putting so much of the time — as are most of those around her, and their lurid plots and predicaments — it’s hard to see the point of it all.

Writer-director Burr Steers delivers a screen mash-up that’s generally done in the right, warped spirit. It lampoons Austen cleverly enough at points, without winking any harder than needed.

The movie also plays as an extended reminder of why we love Goldie. It’s enormous fun seeing Hawn up to her old tricks — at 71! — even if they’re tweaked to help sell someone else’s brand of comedy.

What’s ironic — and frustrating — is how precipitously the movie itself eventually goes tumbling down the intelligence scale. In the process, Chiwetel Ejiofor is wasted, along with some potent moments from costars Roberts and Nicole Kidman.

The engaging dynamic between our hero and his gargantuan, computer-generated pal is the movie’s best surprise, with silly and straight bits both working mostly as intended for director Brad Peyton (Johnson’s “Journey 2” and “San Andreas”).

While the movie seems designed to be a breakout for Jang, it's Lee whose work actually makes an impression.