Despite the revival of narrative vigor accompanying Licence to Kill, you will perhaps sense that I find it too sane, too engineered. Preposterousness seems an integral part of the James Bond universe, which I'd hate to think was turning rational, falling into step with the '80s by abandoning fancifulness. Mercifully, Licence to Kill isn't altogether stripped of excess. [14 July 1989, p.65]

It's a slow, moderately involving descent into the inevitable, with Pearce gamely trying to figure what's going on. Better him than me.

The film is arriving on these shores in the wake of such successful foodie nonfictions as “Jiro Dreams of Shushi,” a 2012 art-house hit about an 85-year-old master of raw fish. Like that film, Ramen Heads reaches for the lyrical with slow-motion shots of roiling broth and soaring classical music on the soundtrack. Unlike the earlier movie, it goes so far overboard in ladling out praise that viewers might wonder if they’re being sold a bill of goods.

The downside is that "The Hobbit" no longer looks like a movie at all. It looks like a video.

The journey is not very exciting, but the destinations are inspired.

It’s a movie made for the kind of audiences who feel that movies aren’t made for them anymore — you know who you are. If you go, you might want to bring a raincoat.

An unremarkable comedy-drama.

Despite its lush photography, Green Card has the texture of peanut butter. It's more romantic than comedic, but there isn't an abundance of either. [11 Jan 1991]

This is an easy movie to watch. If only Julie Bertuccelli had more trust in her most interesting stuff.

The film casts Annette Bening as the vain, aging stage actress Irina Arkadina, Saoirse Ronan as the naive country beauty Nina, and Elisabeth Moss as bitter Masha, dressed in black “in mourning for my life.” Those are three excellent reasons to see the movie, and the filmmaking fights them almost every step of the way.

City of Ember lacks the vision and scope of "WALL-E," but it's based on a pretty good kids' book and it makes a pretty good "Twilight Zone" episode, with hope dangling at the end rather than one of Rod Serling's cosmic black jokes.

The pre-Thanksgiving release of Jonathan Levine’s The Night Before celebrates those Christmas blessings that are beloved by all: scatological humor, smarmy sentimentality, and gross product placement.

High-concept, low-budget, proudly set-bound, Hotel Artemis shouldn’t work at all. Somehow, miraculously, it does.

There are moments when Hill and Giler dare to turn Undisputed into an episode of ''Oz'' - albeit an insipid, belligerence-, and sex-free episode.

What goes on when Li isn't fighting the bad guys isn't worth discussing; it's that stupid.

Gross and tasteless...this high-school romp mixes the gross and tasteless with sentimental mush.

Satisfyingly, May also turns out to be lowdown genre fun, a film that nearly makes up in slacker wit and high-spirited gore what it lacks in budget and elegance.

The film Soderbergh's made is about promiscuous stargazing. And you don't need a brain for that, just two eyes and a mammoth appetite for heavenly bodies.

An attempt to turn the 2005 nonfiction bestseller into a high-energy docu-romp, Freakonomics is a misconceived botch.

In tone and plotting, Away We Go feels like a fairy tale built on an aggravating collection of attitudes. It's condescending, judgmental, righteous, yet sincerely searching.

Escape From Tomorrow, Moore’s sometimes surreal, sometimes sophomoric, black comic phantasmagoria, makes for a bumpy theme park ride.

This is a movie you could watch in your sleep.

If you enjoy laughing at a movie, rather than with it, then you might get a few chuckles. [18 Dec 1980, p.1]

All the animals are computer-generated, not that you’d know it by looking at them. Their interactions with the human characters are seamless — and, it must be said, at times the animal characters come across as less cartoony than the human ones.

A sweet-natured, terribly unthreatening drama about redemption and renewal, and it may matter more to the man who made it than the audiences who see it.

Fascinating but frustrating.

We’ve been here before and many, many times, and Monday, newly available on demand, doesn’t give us enough reason to be here again.

A humane alternative that makes the phrase family values mean something. [14 July 1995, p.33]