In short, Besson builds a dazzling alterna-universe — a bit of Terry Gilliam, a dash of “Blade Runner,” a smidgen of “Star Wars” (which, to be fair, was probably influenced by the original comic), and a lot of extra-strength Besson-ian whimsy. And then he strands us with the two least interesting people there.

Writer-director Djo Tunda Wa Munga deplores the corruption, gunplay, and oversexed misogyny plaguing his country - and he's going to show you as much of it as possible before the end credits roll.

Worth seeing as further proof that Annette Bening can do anything and for a touchingly flummoxed performance by Jamie Bell, once the kid of “Billy Elliot” and now a strapping romantic lead. But if it sends audiences back to explore the filmography of Gloria Grahame, the movie will have truly provided a public service.

Throw out any expectations you might have of coherent narrative structure or directorial control, and you might have a pretty good time.

Avildsen's - and the screenplay's - blatant manipulations make Freeman's job harder. To his credit, Freeman not only sustains the level of fever pitch at which Clark operates throughout, but succeeds in making him seem admirable, if not exactly likable. A well-meaning steamroller is still a steamroller. Are people who question Clark necessarily wrong? And why, for instance, do the students have to be presented with an either-or picture of Mozart and gospel music? Why can't they have both? The script to Lean on Me plays like something written by the Reagan administration. It supplies a rationale for white-controlled governments to ignore the educational needs of largely black school districts that need funding most. With Freeman breathing inspirational fire, Lean on Me is never dull. But it sidesteps some troubling questions. [3 March 1989, p.43]

Basically an addiction thriller in which the thirst is for the acquisition and execution of knowledge. So you need an actor who seems surprised by how smart he is but not afraid to be charmingly intelligent. Cooper turns out to be perfect for the part.

Winkler fills the screen with some first-rate actors doing first-rate work. It's a handsomely crafted film as well as an honorable one. But it's also, on the whole, dramatically flat. [15 Mar 1991, p.41]

It’s a happy task to report that Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is a marked improvement on “Crimes.”

The Danish Gir” wants to introduce us to a woman who helped forge a new way of thinking about what defines a person as a man or a woman. Mostly, though, it’s about the joy of sets.

Between Josh Gad’s charmingly earnest voice-over performance and more of the arthouse gloss that Hallström has drizzled on everything from “The Hundred-Foot Journey” to “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,” it’s a weepie that can be tough to resist.

Good comfort food for most of its running time, thanks to a cast of attractive, unchallenging pros and Ken Kwapis's smooth direction.

Unfolds with an absolute minimum of dramatic highs and lows, and it's so disaffected that it prompts laughter at the wrong moments.

Visually, this translates into thrilling action sequences of lone knife-wielders hewing down ranks of adversaries with balletic precision. If preserving this means sacrificing a scruple or two, it’s worth the trade.

At the very least, Agora finally gives Rachel Weisz a role that almost exactly matches her intense, humorless, but undeniable star charisma.

By the end, we're left with a feeling of depletion rather than resolution, which may have been Gray's intention.

While heartfelt and beautifully crafted, Bringing Out the Dead is too freighted with its protagonist's failed savior complex and is surprisingly lacking in primal impact.

The Daddy Day Care business model appears to be the 1983 Michael Keaton vehicle ''Mr. Mom,'' put on an unstoppable sugar high.

The movie's an easy, engaging watch, even if it's literally all over the map.

A bittersweet musing about the nature of parenthood and about the conflict between nature and nurture, it is as banal and insightful as its title.

Too bad The Kid gets bogged down in its sentimental manipulations. It has more going for it than you might suppose.

The movie is church via the planetarium. It's as if Malick set out to paint the Sistine Chapel and settled for a dome at the Museum of Natural History.

Denys Arcand has satiric fun with the media's way of taking celebrity culture at face value and nothing but. Eventually, though, the film becomes what it's ridiculing.

The results are visually dazzling. The movie as a whole is something less.

It is epic in scope, intimate in detail, and otherworldly in its dimensions, like the Bayeux Tapestry with special effects and a stentorian soundtrack.

There's always something touching about the diligence with which Schwarzenegger soldiers through his assignments. There's a play of intelligence and decency in his eyes that exists quite independently of his bashing. Of the Hollywood tribe of virile fists, he's the one who seems most sensitive. [17 Jun 1988, p.31]

As a consideration of faith and propriety, the movie never managed to boil my blood or break my heart.

As a depiction of extralegal activity, 12 O’Clock Boys is eye-opening but sometimes needlessly ambiguous.

The sharp comic timing and devil-may-care breeziness of the original only return intermittently, and the new film’s emphasis is on family feuds and forgiveness. It’s heavy on the feels. There are hugs.