Fukunaga's images are striking, and his storytelling abilities are strong, but his screenwriting skills rely heavily on sappy formulas that add nothing to our understanding of the border-crossing experience.

Shanghai Triad doesn't feel up to Zhang's usual standards.

Hosking has a keen eye for this type of cringeworthy comedy, as evidenced by every scene going on 30 seconds longer than it should, and enhanced by over-the-top, cartoony violence. But is The Greasy Strangler a contender for cult classic status? I guess that’s a question for the ages.

Josh Brolin has rarely been better than in this role as the team’s leader, Eric Marsh.

Murphy's screentime takes a back seat to Douglas', of course, but from that back seat she makes a very big noise.

At its best, there's an undoubted thrill and wonder to Pom Poko, like the massive parade of phantoms the tanuki conjure up as one of their harebrained schemes. Takahata's misfire at least provides some wonderful sparkles.

The piece is a tribute to the 1992 film "Troll 2" and its many fans, who have dubbed it the "best worst movie" ever made.

A potpourri of issue-oriented drama enlivened by superlative performances and smart dialogue.

A charming, rambling, modern romantic comedy is so sloppy that it should be done in by its excesses, yet the large, excellent ensemble cast manages to make it all work.

Make no mistake: This is a horror film right to its core, although the nightmare comes both from without (the war, the state decrees regarding how Shideh must dress in public, even when fleeing incoming missiles) and within (the unknown but entirely evil Middle Eastern djinn).

Once in a Lifetime's only major failing is the fact that the iconic Pelé is seen only in period footage.

Fast and funny, it makes you wish this would-be American master was more often lightweight.

In short, there are way too many storylines here, especially for a movie that turns stiff whenever it's on the ground. When cascading through the cityscape, Spider-Man 3 still makes us gasp with delight, but on Earth those gasps come solely in reaction to the cynical dreariness of the script.

As lovely as it sometimes is, what this film needs is a little more shape and a little less ambience.

While viewers who expect a conventional suspense film may be disappointed in Lantana overall, it does succeed on a smaller, more intimate scale.

This French import is as casual as the summer afternoons of childhood that it depicts.

Megamind gets existential, but only in blips, and while it is never anything less than vibrant and exceedingly clever, it is also a rather slight thing for such mega-sized proportions.

Kinsey is too tasteful by half, and while it may have its gentle charms, it never thrills.

As pure a summer popcorn overdose as you're likely to find, M:i-2 is breezy, breathless, brainless fun, falling just short of Woo's own "Face/Off" but head and shoulders above anything else out there just now.

Hitchcock and Almodóvar this film isn't, but it's a worthwhile and fairly amusing effort.

Never Goin’ Back and its overworked tropes should, by all rights, be a trifle of a film, but what Frizzell and her two leads deliver is more fun than a floating party boat.

The effect is weird but it, actually, kind of works, illuminating both Shakespeare and the artifice of musicals.

Television is reality, and reality is less than television. And that is, by the end of the 72-minute-long VHYes’ gleefully immersive, intermittently profound “found footage,” a lesson Ralph osmotically absorbs through the VHS viewfinder of his life.

The film offers a familiar structure of family, friends, and experts speaking of O’Brien’s struggle, of the need for more awareness, and of the growing health care crisis that looms in the not too distant future.

As a simple story of a moralizer being brought down by their own bloody instincts, it works; but asides about the catharsis of gore, and the inner evil of humanity not needing horror movies to be seeded, imply the script wanted something deeper.

As a whole, Pecker is enjoyable but also feels scattered and transitory.

What Taylor illustrates in this version of Little Red Riding Hood is a sensitive portrait of guilt, of the difference between people who simply want to bury it and those that are consumed by it.

For all its amazing high points (and this satirically minded takedown of the ludicrousness of the American racist right has many of those) BlacKkKlansman also shows Lee at his weakest. The slight running time drags, a sensation not helped by Terence Blanchard's underwhelming score.