The History of Sound is even more repressed than its characters, and at over two hours, that’s far from entertaining.

Fast Food Nation has the dramatic flatness and willful lack of personality of some documentaries -- or at least how Linklater thinks a documentary should be. The movie nonetheless feels like both a work of investigative journalism and an immense human-interest story, veering into muckraking, horror, teen comedy, and what passes for "Twilight Zone" science fiction.

The Bad Guys takes the cute kid with a fishing pole in the DreamWorks logo and replaces him with a rather raffish-looking wolf who sneaks his way up onto that crescent moon. Right off the bat, we’re being told to expect irreverence and inventiveness. Those expectations will be met.

There’s no reason a conspiracy this outlandish should work twice. But it’s so hilariously within the realm of plausibility that it does.

The first two-thirds is lively in pace, all of it is amiable in tone and sun-splashed in appearance. The final half hour gets a bit gushy. It’s mostly devoted to Alpert’s blissful second marriage, to singer Lani Hall — they’ve been married nearly 50 years — and his philanthropic largess. But since there’s a lot to gush about, that’s okay.

Sly, oddly sweet, wickedly funny take on violence that's as American as apple pie. [15 Apr 1994, p.91]

Opens itself up to some splendid drive-in philosophizing.

If you've seen "Paris, je t'aime" or "New York Stories," you know the rate of return on these urban omnibuses is variable, and so it is here. Go in expecting minor pleasures and you'll be fine.

A surprisingly effective slice-and-dice cheapie; cool, controlled direction by Jack Sholder, who also wrote the script. [31 Oct 2012, p.G27]

There's a little less hilarity in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult than in the first two films, but there's still enough slapstick firepower to put it across. There's efficiency in Peter Segal's direction, but never real zaniness, and in the gaps between the sight gags lurks the onset of sequelitis. [18 Mar 1994, p.68]

Leaves you questioning its intentions.

It’s an occasionally plodding but rarely dull movie, and one whose stakes outweigh its impact as drama. In the end, the message is both illuminating and disturbing.

It's unbelievably bland.

As much as the director andco-writer, Paolo Virzi, might try, he can't bring any of these people into focus. The movie is shapeless, too.

Ynever seen a documentary quite like this one, and aren't likely to again.

Somewhat sanitized but gorgeous Americana, with another impressive turn by McTeer.

A rigorous and bracingly charming movie about moviemaking.

Despite the Gallic source material, what we truly have in Unfaithful is a tasteful, adult-contemporary ''Fatal Attraction'' redux, right down to the mister's Soho address and the happy family tucked away in the New York hinterlands.

Heartbreaking stories of patients suffering life-shattering illness make Under Our Skin compelling. It would have been an even better movie if the filmmakers had been more diligent in following the money.

Monsters is a genuine curio: a moody, low-budget road-movie romance that takes place against a background of alien invasion.

It's a terrific musical biofilm filled with drive, solid characterizations and - biggest surprise of all - musical performances that jump off the screen. [22 Apr 1994, p.33]

Good Kill is by necessity a grim piece of work, one that fields a powerful and unexpectedly terse performance from Ethan Hawke while stumbling over plot developments that seem increasingly forced. Niccol can be forgiven his outrage even as it leads him to create drama out of agenda instead of the other way around.

I don’t think the movie is looking for answers; it isn’t asking any questions. But by its very nature, this is both an experiment in ontology (do babies know they’re babies?) and existentialism (are they thinking about who to be?).

A triumph of romantic impulse over stylistic indulgence. [21 Oct 1983]

A playful French meta-mystery that's occasionally too proud of its own cleverness.

You may not recognize the Vignelli name, but you certainly recognize their designs.

The movie Bonifacio and Famiglietti have made is much better as a bittersweet family portrait. But those in search of a mirror for their own weight issues will find a deluxe one here.

It's a spectacular ballet of death, lavishing upon us the highest body count of any action movie since "Total Recall," and its cynical panache marks a return to form for kickboxer Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose recent vehicles have sputtered. Not "Hard Target," though, which floors it from start to finish as it sends Van Damme after a vicious gang that rounds up homeless vets to serve as sacrificial victims for rich hunters in New Orleans. [20 Aug 1993, p.43]

The film will resonate with today's alienated workers, whose every brain cell and nerve ending hates the soul-crushing jobs they're told they should be grateful to have.

Ultimately, this film is only scary if you're afraid of artfully self-conscious, grainy cinematography.

An overly constructed little thriller that squeezes a fair amount of suspense out of its far-fetched plot.

Settles for the cliches of American suspense films, right down to an ending that leaves the door open to a possible sequel.

Love hurts in Secretary -- but not too much. It's not impossible to imagine adventurous young couples seeing this movie and rushing home to try out the handcuffs and paddles.

For every line of dialogue that's truly, glitteringly acid, though, there are five that are merely clever, and Lee, likable as he is, never really taps into the misery of the teen misfit.

A bonanza of pop uplift. It wraps the up-from-nothing drama of ''Flashdance'' in the sassy, interracial pep rallying of ''Bring It On'' and the military romance of ''An Officer and a Gentleman.''

It's often corny, but it's never boring, and it'll sweep you up in its momentum if you give it a chance.

A Perfect Getaway may not play fair by the audience but at least it cheats honestly. These days that's something.

This is a ridiculous movie - a thriller so indifferent to suspense, so above mystery that one character literally stabs another in the front.

The first 30 or so minutes of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story condense the entire Hollywood biopic genre into a sweet chewable tablet. It's the Flintstones vitamin of spoofs.

It looks great and the dancing is the kind of stuff that would upstage the average pop star.

Hegedus and Pennebaker do solid work presenting Wise’s arguments. It’s a tricky narrative challenge to shift from inherently compelling wildlife scenes to abstract courtroom debate, but the film manages it capably, even spicing things up with one justice’s admonition that Wise needs to cut his slavery analogies.

The Guilty gets less and less plausible, not least of all in how neatly it ties together various plot elements. For its first 40 minutes or so, the movie shows how much Gyllenhaal and Fuqua can do with little. Confinement becomes a dramatic launching pad. Then melodrama kicks in, and what had been a gripping offbeat thriller becomes a morality tale (including a truly shameless plot twist).

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget isn’t a bad movie; it’s just an unnecessary one. Whoever thought audiences would be clamoring for the sequel to a 23-year-old film with such a satisfying ending to its story must have been out of their clucking mind.

My Cousin Rachel is a well-turned, well-acted literary adaptation that suffers from a built-in problem: The hero is a twit.

Formulaic enough to suggest that franchise would be B level at best, a TV series at worst. But it's also just good enough to make you want to watch it, anyway.

The lack of a deeper dive into its subject’s trials and tribulations is the biggest flaw of “Piece by Piece.” While the concept of making a documentary with Legos is an intriguing one, and it’s well executed, the film itself is a very shallow look at its subject.

The reason to see The Merchant of Venice is Al Pacino.

A mostly lumbering, occasionally rousing epic that walks a bizarre line between historical fact and Hollywood wishful thinking.

From Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Strange, Cumberbatch has excelled at playing oddball heroes. Wain extends that line. As noted, though, things darken once oddball behavior becomes something more than that, and this darkening makes the second half of the movie feel slightly stilted and increasingly grim.

For a movie about serial killings and media sensationalism, Cronicas sure is wimpy.

Visually playful and often good fun, it never settles on a convincing narrative shape.

The film works adequately as a historical drama.

It's done persuasively enough that you wonder how you'd feel under similar circumstances.

Out of the Furnace could have been a starkly powerful human drama or a cheesy, vibrant action film. It splits the difference and ends up playing like a lesser Springsteen song.

Smith’s ambitious film at times resembles “Badlands” (1973) crossed with “Fight Club” (1999) as directed by the Coen brothers. Mostly, though, it founders in the complications of its own excess of themes, interconnected story-lines, and multiple personality disorders sketchily connected by an anti-establishment point of view.

It’s simultaneously silly and progressive, a familiar movie moment reserved for the girl you’d least expect.

Formally, mockumentary is something of a cliché, as is intercutting of news coverage. That’s not great. It’s worse when the clichés aren’t just stylistic.

The series’ many diehard fans will still, and should, flock to their beloved Downton and its denizens. But, as a standalone film, the fatigued period drama goes in one era and out the other with little to add.

It'll make a natural double-feature repertory-house companion to The Player for years to come. It's filled with humor that has paid its dues. [21 Aug 1992, p.38]

Pope Francis: A Man of His Word is an essay in radical humility capable of moving a viewer regardless of his or her religious persuasions, or lack thereof.

So where does that leave this coming-of-age comedy written and directed by Jan Ole Gerster? Somewhere in the middle, lukewarm and inoffensive, trying hard not to be plebeian or pretentious.

The movie's still shameless; the difference is you don't mind.

It's a quietly wrenching eye-opener.

It’s film noir meets Jason Bourne with a dash of John le Carré, and its chief claim to your attention is our reigning lady badass at its center.

Hart is interested in scrambling our sympathies yet not deft enough to manage where they land, and the female buddy movie I’m Your Woman wants to be unintentionally ends up feeling like a story about a Black couple as seen by their less interesting white acquaintance.

"Joshua" is a horror movie that doesn't want to freak you out too much. Vitus freaks you out, but its makers seem to have no idea that it does.

Pedro is what a friend of mine calls a ''macho Iberico," which refers to a certain type of cocky, insensitive Spanish man.

When the cast starts clomping atop a car, their synchronized bodies joining with the booming cross-rhythms, we're sold.

Kleine's film is rambling and unfocused but mostly charming, and it steps into deeper waters almost in spite of itself.

The new film staggers under such a weight of self-conscious visual style that the story never connects with a viewer's emotions. Leo Tolstoy's classic novel has been filmed often, but this is the first time it takes place in a snow globe.

The more intense it gets, the sillier it looks. The only thing worth watching in this wannabe noir is Christian Clemenson's performance as Spader's permanently bummed-out pot-smoking brother. Clemenson alone fills the screen with the kind of individuality that makes you steadily deepen your belief in his character. But he's not enough to keep Bad Influence from degenerating into a ludicrous turn-off. [09 Mar 1990, p.27]

In the intervening years, they've become pretty good actors, too. Now where's the filmmaker who'll give them more to do than pregnancy scares and falls off donkeys?

What makes Cheri’ worth your while is that its true subjects are women and age, and its observations apply to both 19th-century France and the modern film industry.

That it works like a charm - that it mostly keeps its manic energy in check, and that it plays to chick-flick formulas without ever groveling - is due almost entirely to the leads.

Sensationalism and doom are not on screen here; Jacquot offers a relatively peaceful moment in Sade's life.

The story and settings hold interest throughout, but at times the very lack of emotional connection that Yeshi laments in his father seems to hinder the film.

Combines an insider's perspective with what can only be described as gutsy cinematography.

The documentary has a pleasing offhandedness. The same cannot be said of its subject. Christo, who turns 84 on June 13, is precise and highly directed.

There may once have been a good and a bad film fighting for the soul of The Last Exorcism, but in its final moments, cinema's dark forces triumph emphatically.

What's largely missing from It's Kind of a Funny Story: genuine emotional pain. Still, the movie's an often charming example of "Cuckoo's Nest'' Lite.

An amusingly damning portrait of a man trying to impose his will on a world that, really, has better things to do.

Even a fan, however, might prefer the excellent, recently released concert DVD "Pixies: Live at the Paradise in Boston" to this tepid behind-the-scenes experience.

Though it initially shows signs of overcoming its creakiness, “Capital” loses value when its screenwriters try too hard to be clever.

Well intentioned on every level, the movie is successful only on some, and it falls flat when trying to visualize the innards of the poem itself.

In Summer Wars, it's what's old that's made to seem refreshingly new.

The Hunter becomes turgid with corporate conspiracies, hired assassins, and offscreen tragedies, and the appealing leanness of the early scenes gets lost.

After 2½ hours, the movie's become a bowl of trail mix - you're picking out the nuts you don't like and hoping the next bite doesn't contain any craisins. All the carefully crafted misérables turns into a pile of miz.

Depressingly, and in keeping with the stringent rules of bad-boy shock-comedies, all the women here are bimbos, shrews, and slutburgers except for one cool chick -- Cusack’s love interest, played by Lizzy Caplan -- who acts like a guy.

There's something elegiac in Redford's spy who knows he's a dinosaur but still has a few moves left.

Sloppy, crude, pursuing the most far-flung tangents in hopes of a laugh, Anchorman still gave me more stupid giggles than I'd care to admit.

Honors the power and beauty of these beasts even as it underscores the cultured savagery of the men who are crowding them out.

As Changeling strains toward its mawkishly optimistic conclusion, the old-fashioned moviemaking that Eastwood settled into doesn't suit either him or his star. It feels like a corny joke.

Knock at the Cabin unfolds like a good beach novel, one you can’t put down.

First-time director Nick Ryan isn’t entirely up to the challenge in The Summit, but he does deliver some dramatic and visual highs in the attempt.

Devor's sympathy for both the men and the animals is humane, yet his movie is palpably sad. A sense of shame cuts through all the ambiguity. You know less about what you've watched when Zoo is over than you did when it started. And that's what makes the movie so hard to shake.

One of the smartest things Kaplan does, besides getting talented Boston folk singer Catie Curtis to contribute to the soundtrack, is hang around long enough to see how this three-headed relationship plays out.

Watching J.Lo make movie magic for the captive audience on both sides of the screen reminded me why I watch movies, and how revisiting my favorite films has kept me sane and happy in this bitter little world.

The Eamery, as some called it, was highly successful as a business - and, more important, as an exercise in tastemaking. "We wanted to make the best for the most for the least,'' the Eameses like to say.