An infectiously joyful Australian Aboriginal musical.

Beyond the shooting and running around, the film works because Beattie never loses the perspective of Ellie Linton (Caitlin Stasey), through whose eyes the story is told.

Unfortunately, while the swami taught his disciples to explore the depths of their very souls, the film barely scratches the surface of his life and teachings.

Acting (and story) take a back seat to the visual display. Eubank shows confidence with each shot, whether it takes place in a desert vista or a clinical government slab. What's it all mean? It's unclear, except meaning that Eubank is a talent to watch.

It’s more serviceable than inspired, but “Dark Fate” gets by on nostalgia. It’s just nice to see Schwarzenegger and Hamilton together again.

Tucci and Eve command the screen throughout, shifting tone and intensity as they go. It’s fascinating. So is the film, well worth watching and arguing over. Which, in LaBute’s hands, is doubtless the point.

It's wrenching stuff. If bits and pieces feel contrived (and they do), overall the message is strong — and important.

Hotel Transylvania 3 is a harmless enough excuse for a couple hours of air-conditioned entertainment, which is all some people ask of a kid’s film. But there’s something bleak about its banality.

A Single Shot never rises to the level of a great film like “Winter’s Bone,” which digs much deeper in its depiction of life in the hills among the desperate poor. But thanks largely to Rockwell, it’s not bad, either.

It delivers its considerable moments of terror in the same way the original film did. But it does deliver.

The Dead Don’t Die isn’t bad, exactly. It’s just that with all this talent and all this beautiful weirdness at hand, it could have been so much better.

Now this is a scary movie. And, given that it's a horror film, that means it's a good one. [18 Oct 2012]

Carroll purists and freshman English majors may be aghast at the change in story, but for those who watched "Avatar" and marveled at the images but were left wanting by the wooden acting and tired story, "Alice" is a treat.

There are moments of real power and beauty in Ava DuVernay’s film, based on the much-loved Madeleine L’Engle novel. You just have to work too hard to find them.

The Big Year is better when it is examining the obsession of the birders, and Martin, Black and Wilson are enjoyable in toned-down mode.

While Baldoni had a surplus of material and talent to work with, "It Ends with Us" felt flat and uninspiring.

These supremely talented women are put through embarrassing paces by director and co-writer Bill Holderman. It’s meant to be a film about a reawakening of desire, and thus life. It turns out to be a wince-inducing mess.

Even if your veins pump with more popcorn butter than blood, Alita: Battle Angel can get a bit too stupid to bear, like watching a pair of 13-year-old boys play a very expensive video game they designed themselves.

The children may tug at the heartstrings, but it’s the adults who give the film its heart.

Delicacy is not a very good movie. But it is entertaining enough -- barely enough -- to make it worth seeing.

I'm all for directors making audiences think, but ultimately, those thoughts need to lead us somewhere. "To the Wonder" didn't, to my mind. I'm not sure Knight of Cups does, either.

Allen builds to a climax that is ridiculous and a comment on … I don’t know. Fate? Folly? There are plenty of both in Irrational Man, but they’re not often a comfortable mix.

OK, maybe they cut a couple seconds out of that scene where Deadpool gets ripped in half, but the movie's sardonically gruesome sensibility remains intact.

Without an actor like Dafoe at its center (and margins and everywhere else), it would be unwatchable torture. With him, it’s more like watchable torture, easier to admire than enjoy.

How do you end the most iconic franchise of all time? (Don’t panic, there will be more movies, just not a part of this particular universe.) You end it by trying to please everyone. Which can make it hard to please anyone. But Abrams is a crowd-pleaser and a good one. He’s made a film that is unquestionably entertaining and wraps things up in a way that will make fans happy.

For a film about art forgeries, The Art of the Steal is itself something of a forgery, a painstaking, brushstroke-by-brushstroke re-creation of masterworks dreamed up by better artists. And like a good forgery, it's enjoyable on the surface, but loses its charm a bit once you do some digging.

Grunberg and Boyar have a charming, if broad, chemistry. It’s all kind of cheesy, of course, but it’s meant to be. And the effects, when not deliberately silly, aren’t bad.

The story is gripping, compelling. One wonders what De Niro might have done with such a role 30, 35 years ago. De Niro -- whatever happened to him?

An ever-changing obstacle course does sustain its own kind of tension, but it’s not like there’s a real puzzle to solve, nor any arc to the plot. The movie is just a succession of scary stuff happening, haunted-ride-style.

Scott's epic - and it's hard to think of anything this big, this elaborate and, no doubt, this expensive as anything but - is very much an origination story, a prequel, if you will.

It all has the air of a community theater troupe performing in a Disney parade, overeager in the exaggerated artifice. That's well enough for an amusement park, but on film it's embarrassing.

Eventually, the film morphs from a horror movie to a border shootout. It’s not a seamless transition.

Emancipation, Antoine Fuqua’s well-meaning and graphic depiction of an enslaved man who escapes in search of Lincoln’s army and freedom for himself and his family, is a mostly affecting, no-holds-barred look at degradation, inhumanity and, ultimately, inspiration. But at times — too many times — Emancipation also plays like an action-adventure movie.

Ma is one loony little horror film, and Octavia Spencer has a grand old time being the craziest thing in it.

Britt-Marie Was Here succinctly crams in plenty of overwrought tropes but maintains a sentimental heart with its prickly heroine. Is it revolutionary? Not by any means. But is every journey of self-discovery supposed to be?

In fact, the problem with the film is that, despite an excellent cast that includes Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy and Rupert Everett, it doesn't really know what it is. A little of this, a little of that and by the time it's done, it adds up to not much at all.

The best thing about the film is neither the top-notch CGI nor the shallow moral lessons but the performance of Will Poulter ("Son of Rambow") as Lucy and Edmund's insufferable cousin Eustace Scrubb.

The first word that comes to mind when watching Landscape With Invisible Hand is "weird." It’s very weird. But in the most thoughtful way possible. This sci-fi film packs originality in every scene and plot point.

All the glossy, kinetic animation and inventive action sequences get lost in the gag machine. The film throws jokes out like a tennis-ball machine on the fritz: gross humor, slapstick pratfalls, bizarre non sequiturs. The randomness does land a few laughs, but it's also exhausting.

There are too many explosions, too many blaring sonic effects, too many break-ups-and-make-ups, too many villains. And not enough heart.

Roth's tale is fairly twisty, as the behavior of the women grows increasingly violent and more outrageous. The two are not simply nut jobs; Roth presents them as a form of avenging angels who target philandering husbands. That's an interesting premise, but the movie lacks the depth or layers to make that truly compelling.

It's an engaging, accessible documentary that explores the (truly) eternal questions, "Does hell exist? If so, who ends up there, and why?"

The actors are having fun here and, for a while, so will the audience. But the payoff just isn’t there. It’s not-a-stake-through-the-heart disappointment, but the only eternal life Renfield will enjoy is in late-night channel surfing.

Free State of Jones is a well-intentioned slog through a potentially fascinating bit of Civil War history, brought to life only by Matthew McConaughey’s performance, and then only occasionally.

Director Mark Waters manages to wring some charm out of the film, and out of Carrey.

If the cast wasn’t so talented and so committed to doing some heavy lifting, Finding Your Feet would be a gigantic misstep.

The voices are outstanding; the story demands British accents, and with such people as Caine and Smith providing them, so much the better.

It’s too bad The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It isn’t a vampire story, because the filmmakers are bleeding this franchise dry.

It's not a top-shelf Apatow production, and by the end, it's obvious Wanderlust was a lot more fun to make than it is to watch.

The beauty of Kurt Warner’s story is that it’s so unlikely it’s nearly impervious to clichés. The strength of American Underdog, Andrew and Jon Erwin’s film about Warner’s life in football and with his wife, Brenda, is that they realize this and let the story speak for itself.

It’s a weird little genre, the sick-teen romance. “Five Feet Apart” winds up as just a pedestrian entry in it, because it tries way too hard on the melodrama front. Being a teenager is difficult enough. Being a sick teenager is presumably that much harder. Being a teenager in “Five Feet Apart” means suffering from something else, in addition: overkill. And that’s deadly.

There’s nothing wrong with a thriller leaving some loose ends. But Deep Water trips over them too often.

The movie relies on the chemistry between Reynolds and Smith plus nostalgia, but it works well. This might be the best video game-based movie yet. So when it comes to tickets, movie-goers gotta catch 'em all.

Its over-the-top violence is cartoonish at times, menacing at others - which is a good thing. And truly, if one must wander a barren, post-apocalyptic landscape with somebody, who better to wander with than Denzel Washington?

One of the things that pushes Jig beyond what it might have been otherwise is that not everything works out as you might have liked.

The found-footage approach loses its shine quickly.

Sam Levinson’s film is meant to be a harsh, unyielding examination of a relationship, and thanks to stunning performances by Zendaya and John David Washington, it sometimes is.

It’s an interesting film, no question. But too much of the message gets lost in the medium.

There is nothing in the film that will keep you awake at night. Instead, The Awakening works much more subtly, with a profound sense of dread and resignation, a death-obsessed movie given life by Hall's performance.

Writer and director Mark Elijah Rosenberg paces things patiently, which in some cases is a polite way of saying there are boring stretches.

Unfortunately, the plot as a whole is rushed, with character-development shortcuts and one whopping out-of-the-blue development that seems to exist not as a surprise but because the filmmakers had painted themselves into a narrative corner and needed a way out. But there are some scares, and Cooper and especially Guido give authentic-feeling performances — again, with a few shortcuts along the way.

Director Jamie Payne keeps things moving, certainly, and the action is appropriately gruesome. But you can see where a little more time to tell the story would have helped.

Krasinski is likable and Martindale can make the lamest dialogue sound believable. But even they can't make us invest in characters that are nothing more than a collection of stock quirks and tics stuck in wildly contrived situations.

It wants to be oh-so-serious, and it never lets us forget how hard it’s trying.

Comparisons are unfair and inevitable. But even when taken on its own terms, the new Carrie rings hollow, a horror movie that is unsure of itself, with little to offer the uninitiated and less to offer fans of the first film.

The elements are in place for a decent little movie, but Loach overplays everything, offering nothing in the way of surprises. Bobby’s supposed transformation isn’t particularly revelatory, but then, neither is anything else.

Fly Me to the Moon shines when it doesn’t try to just tell a story about the moon landing, but instead examines how those stories get constructed, and why.

Kartheiser brings some zip and smarm to the proceedings as the villain with a million years in his vault, but it's not nearly enough to make In Time worth your time. Or your money.

Gordon is an eclectic director, and he has trouble with the tone here. It’s not that cynicism can’t evolve into something more useful in film. It’s that the reasons should be more convincing.

For an R-rated romance about a young writer's affair with a sultry French siren, 5 to 7 generates all the heat of an Easy-Bake Oven. It aims to sizzle but quickly fizzles.

White House Down aims to be a low-brow slab of mindless summer fun. Most of the time, it comes pretty close to hitting the bull’s eye.

If you have a yen for martial-arts action, Man of Tai Chi could do the trick depending on how seriously you take Reeves’ performance. At the film’s worst, it’s empty yet still attractive (much, it can be argued, like Reeves).

Delving into Argentinian politics, grief and growth, while the film had room to explore these themes, it remains somewhat lighthearted — which is where it falls short.

The film begins with upbeat music and what appears to be a comedy-of-errors setup, but it becomes so much more, bringing us through dark territory with wit, anger and grace, becoming in the end a much fuller tale for it.

Youth on the fun can be a whole lot of fun, but Reckless, by first-time director James Foley, is a particularly dreary affair. [16 Feb 1984, p.81]

There is a hazy, gauzy quality to all of this, which keeps things just out of reach. Certainly, it looks like a lot of fun to be young, beautiful and rich in Naples. But Parthenope is also out of reach, almost an idea as much as a character. What that idea is I’m not quite certain.

Blackhat is a mess of a movie from Michael Mann, a would-be cyberthriller slowed by stupidity and sabotaged by a stunningly silly subplot.

Give credit to Esmail, however, for coming up with an inventive way to tell the story, even if the execution doesn't live up to the idea. He shows great confidence as a director, and the film has a unique look, with heightened reality providing clues that this really is a different world, or worlds, even.

Despite all of the unlikely scenarios and dubious plot developments, Plummer shines. There are moments here when we understand why he took the role, and many more when we are glad he did. But not enough to make Remember a better movie all the way around.

Writer and director Nathalie Biancheri’s film explores the lives of those living as “The Other,” outside society’s norms. It requires commitment on the part of the actors and the audience. It’s a worthwhile investment.

Ultimately Coming 2 America isn’t a sequel that ruins the original. But it doesn’t improve upon it, either.

Insidious: Chapter 3 is almost more a spoof of a classic like "The Exorcist" than it is an homage. It's not scary horror, it's silly horror, and the audience is in on the joke.

Citizen Koch is undisciplined and depressing, yet still strangely worthwhile.

Fast-moving, stylish and gritty, but also predictable. [25 Oct 2012]

Despite his roots as an over-the-top stand-up comedian, Williams long ago proved himself to be one of those rare actors who can truly inhabit a role, and “Boulevard” is no exception. But that’s not always enough to keep the viewer’s eyes glued to the screen.

Eternals isn’t a bad movie. It’s just not a particularly satisfying one, its scale proving untamable, even for Zhao.

It’s mostly a biography of Holiday — nothing wrong with that, certainly when you’ve got a performance as stunning as Andra Day’s in the title role.

There are some things to admire in the film, based on the French movie "Pour Elle," most of which involve developments that would give too much away.

Maggie has some rough edges — what caused the epidemic, for instance? — but it's still a worthwhile effort, especially for a first-time director. And for an old pro like Schwarzenegger, trying something different and succeeding.

It looks nice, but it's not really going anywhere.

The results of her work are predictable yet pleasantly played out.

Eleanor the Great ties all the loose ends up in a neat bow, with the forgiveness of Eleanor. It's one of the types of movies that you'll watch once and not think about again.

Banks' enthusiasm and respect for the history of this franchise takes it from retrograde to fresh within minutes.

Ghost in the Shell sidesteps questions of humanity and the effect of technology on the human spirit and opts instead for boilerplate sci-fi spectacle, eschewing existentialism for predictable plot and the glittery trappings of its 21st-century carapace

Billed as a musical comedy, Magic Mike’s Last Dance should be a lighthearted Valentine’s Day/Super Bowl weekend watch. Unfortunately, it’s not funny in the ways it expects to be.

You come to this movie hoping that Johnson and Hart make you laugh. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. The hit-to-miss ratio is higher than you might expect, and both actors could accurately be described as pleasant, if not especially creative.

No blood, no gore, no hacked-off arms and legs, but plenty of creepy set pieces, quick cuts and blasts of music that will have you both squirming in your seat and jumping out of it. Until the bone-headed part kicks in.

Under the perfectly paced direction of Ry Russo-Young (“Before I Fall”), Shahidi and Melton develop an easy chemistry on the way toward a satisfying denouement that’s neither tear-jerking tragedy nor fairy-tale wish fulfillment.