Walter Addiego

The film has a good cast, and is competently made in a plain-vanilla way, but its greatest appeal will be to those who share its endorsement of traditional religious values.

In Amigo, a story of the Philippine-American War, veteran filmmaker John Sayles allows his political convictions to get the better of him. The movie is a heavy-handed attack on U.S. imperialism with little to compensate in the way of character interest and genuine drama.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength is the performance by Kwanten, who appears in HBO's "True Blood" and may be familiar from his lead role in the big-screen Aussie thriller "Red Hill." Dermody also does well.

Goes south as a sci-fi film.

Lust on the Grand Prix circuit. [30 Sep 2007, p.N34]

Part of what’s missing in The House of Tomorrow is the acerbic punk spirit that inspires its two heroes, which could have been remedied by a sharper script.

It's a sumptuously mounted melodrama that aims to make a big statement about big themes, but a stilted quality in the filmmaking drags it down.

Don't fault Thirlby, who does as much as she can with the material. Krasinski is pretty good, and DeWitt and Ennenga are outstanding. The direction is decent, and the film is handsome. But it's finally frustrating, enigmatic in a way that suggests emptiness more than mystery.

Although it has its merits, Operation Finale — which recounts the 1960 extraction of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and his delivery to Jerusalem to stand trial — fails to measure up to the deep historical impact of the events it depicts.

This love letter to man's best friend will make dog fanciers roll over and do tricks. It's so warmhearted, you'll want to run out and hug the nearest big, sloppy mutt. And while you're watching it, have your handkerchief ready.

A film that's hard to watch and hard to recommend.

This is middling Woody, at best: For every funny line or sequence, there's at least one misfire.

The new film pokes heavyhanded fun at extreme conservatives and has a "power to the people" sub-theme, but it's full of ultra-violence and is dragged down by standard scare tactics, thin characters and the absurdities of the premise.

Relies on slapstick scenes that are neither essential nor especially clever.

The sum here is less than the parts, which have problems of their own.

By the time the women pull off their climactic stunt, the film's been undone by its ungainly mix of heavy-handed comedy and melodrama.

A weakly performed rehash of master-slave role-reversal tales.

City of Angels will probably work better for some people than it did for a crusty fellow like me. I feel guilty that I don't like this movie more. I think the devil got the better of me.

While the film raises simple but deeply puzzling questions about memory and identity, the hit-or-miss search for answers by the subject and assorted experts, family and friends is finally unsatisfying.

This splatter film is set in Norway, but rest assured, it sticks with the formula. The young people to be killed off are just as obnoxious as their counterparts in American gorefests.

There’s something to be said for simply watching Blanchett at work. Without the contribution of this exceptionally talented actress, Manifesto would be rough going indeed. With it, the film rises — barely — above the category of “enough already.”

Director Abdullah Oguz gives us lots of nice scenery, but the simplistic story and characters strain credibility. What's more, the climactic plot turn is as hokey as it gets.

Most of the time the audience is two steps ahead of the characters.

Demon Knight may be a good career move by director Ernest Dickerson ( "Juice" ), proving that he can work with a reasonably large budget on a genre film. But the picture breaks no ground, and in terms of his own development, it's hardly a step forward.

It has the distinctive look of a Walter Hill picture, but in the end boils down to little more than a Bruce Willis action vehicle.

Two points save "Lousy 2" from the absolute abyss. One is a couple of imaginative touches in the art design: Cori drives an old Citroen, and a couple of Vespa-like motor scooters are briefly glanced. The other is the performance of Frewer, who played the lead in TV's "Max Headroom." He endows the character with more sardonic humor than we have a right to expect from the junky script by TV-oriented director Farhad Mann.

The title is exactly the sort of juvenile joke the entire movie leans on.

The jokes run hot, cold and tepid.

Stupid.

Second-banana material.

The Phantom is a spiritless affair likely to vanish quickly from first-run screens.

If only it wasn't such bloody nonsense.

Legends of the Fall never makes you think too hard; its woes-of-a-proud-family formula takes a back seat to a self-conscious visual style that strains toward the level of myth.

Moretz is an appealing young woman whose star is rising. She'll probably have an exceptional career, but If I Stay won't be a highlight.

No target is too obvious for Salvation Boulevard, a farrago of cheap shots aimed at Christian fundamentalism. It's a blunderbuss satire that criminally wastes a talented cast.

For some, this sort of thinking is a much-needed revolution in human consciousness. For others, it's little more than New Age platitudes and questionable science.

A fall-off in writing is part of the problem, but I think a more important issue is the replacement of Terry Zwigoff (“Crumb”) as director. Zwigoff’s humor is razor-sharp and incisive, qualities missing from Bad Santa 2.

The new version has been speeded up and dumbed down, which does not reflect well on the mouse factory's view of its audience these days.

The bad news is that the characters and situations are platitudes and the story is so heavy-handed that the film is hard to sit through.

The movie equivalent of the fruitcake you get every year from the folks back home. It's brick-heavy and full of nasty bits you don't want to put in your mouth, lovingly wrapped in pink cellophane.

Has more in common with a horror movie than with a genuine political work.

Two hours of senselessness and overkill, decked out in lurid, bad-trip colors.

There are two main obstacles to enjoying The Last Witch Hunter. One is your ability to buy Vin Diesel as an immortal slayer of evildoers plying his trade in today’s Manhattan. You also have to swallow a by-the-numbers plot buried under an avalanche of fast-and-furious but underwhelming CGI effects.

Earnest and well-intentioned, The Identical is based on a "what if" that straddles the line between ingenious and loopy.

So it's hard to know who gets the blame for Payback. I say we cut Mel some slack and put the hex on Helgeland.

A dimwitted, fill-in-the-blanks horror opus that slanders a fine and useful mammal.

About the only time the film emerges from its stupor is when Lewis bares his fangs and shows us that Max has a bilious, acerbic side.

An hour into the picture, Spade offers a pretty funny imitation of belter Neil Diamond, but it's a long 60 minutes for such a pitiful payoff.

A way-below-par golfing comedy.

Maybe there's a real use for Carrie 2 after all. Stand it up against the original, and you have a pretty good lesson in what's happened to the movies in the last couple of decades.

Somehow, the funny stuff gets sucked into a kind of black hole in the center of the satire, along with all the comic debris. What should have been a surreal flight to the planet Lucas crumbles into a harmless collection of cosmic dustballs. [24 Jun 1987, p.52]

Ineptly written and shot like a fashion mag, rings hollow throughout. It's a long, long way from "Jules and Jim."

With the exception of a couple of inspired moments, Mary Reilly is merely a curious variation of an often-told story.

Heavy-handed dialogue, flurries of melodrama and a silly ending make the whole enterprise sink like a stone.

The performers don't really seem at the top of their game here.

For Tim and Eric, what's funny is what's odd, ultra-cheap, pathetic or scurvy - and what's funniest of all is that some people just don't get it.

You can get away with almost anything in a farce except failing to be funny, and that's what kills Death at a Funeral.

An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.

The film is morbid and mawkish, and packed with enough forced whimsy to make you scream.

Otherwise, the movie, which borrows from a dozen pop sources and improves on none of them, is pretty much a washout.

A lightweight and sentimental exercise that succeeds at little except maybe inspiring the viewer to go out and find a decent curry.

It's an assaultive work about an assaultive fellow.

The effort is undermined with crass humor, mugging and slapstick.

A well-intentioned, but all-thumbs down drama.

Despite its sometimes bloody content, the mood of Happy Death Day is remarkably sappy, aimed at the broadest possible audience for a film of its genre. Think of it as “slasher lite” and an acceptable date movie for unadventurous types, and you have the gist of it.

About as close to pure mall fodder as you'll see.

An unbearable exercise in provocation.

This kind of psychological mystery, with its suggestion of fugue states, needs to work by hints and whispers, but Pali Road has pretty low expectations of its audience. It ought to be light on its feet, but it lumbers.

Depressing. So is director Marshall Curry's avowal in the press notes that the film will leave viewers with "a more nuanced view of the world."

Hoodwinked is a computer-animated, "Shrek"-style satire of "Little Red Riding Hood" that offers a few laughs but overall is pretty tired.

A complete misfire.

Home Again is plain vanilla, from start to finish.

Dante's Peak expands the concept of badness in movies.

A lot of noise and nothing to justify it.

So many horror conventions are at work in After.Life that either the filmmakers are parodying them or couldn't come up with anything better. I'm betting on the second choice.

Godawful.

Grumpier Old Men certainly isn't relying on its mawkish and hokey story to put warm bodies in the seats. There's no reason to see the picture - a sequel to their 1993 hit, “Grumpy Old Men" - other than to relish the talents of these two veterans, plus Sophia Loren, a newcomer to the series.