The performances of both Schwarzenegger and O'Brien are labored, the pacing uneven, and maybe only half the gags work, but there's a certain amount of creative energy and audacity mixed in with all the confusion.

This is fairly efficient if you can square efficiency with being twice as long as necessary and overly familiar to boot; at least Jackson and Spacey keep it afloat.

A pleasant, inoffensive, and (quite properly) mindless diversion.

Engagingly corny drama.

Pretty dispensable, though it has one of the best homosexual-panic gags I've ever seen.

Never quite settles on a tone, veering from wacky comedy to earnest sports drama to romantic farce. The results are predictably muddled, if mostly harmless.

There isn't a whole lot of Zen here, barring the opening and closing scenes with a priest, but there's plenty of lively sex, both conventional and otherwise, in this high-spirited porn romp from Hong Kong.

Though it strives for broad humor, pushing cuteness and light irony, this bland 1998 movie isn't exactly a comedy.

A businessman is visited by an otherworldly presence who has the nerve to fall in love with his daughter in this savory, extralong feature, whose obvious plotlines unfold with an almost painful slowness that somehow makes them deeper.

Some pieces of the plot feel dishonest, others contrived, but there are also moments of nicely observed detail and plenty of good messages.

George Lucas produced and Jim Henson (of Muppets fame) directed this heftily budgeted 1986 fantasy, which seems to be a conscious attempt to play on the female coming-of-age themes of classic fairy tales.

The payoff matters at least as much as the setup, and this story's secret is way too easy to guess.

Larry Doyle and John Hamburg's script is full of holes, but this is still pretty damn funny--thanks mostly to Barrymore, who seems to be retracing Lucille Ball's trajectory from sex kitten to comedienne.

This 'heartwarming' thriller refuses to distinguish realism from stylization, and much of the plot is a twisted mess of repetition and unpersuasive motivation.

Friedkin does a superb job of serving up the well-appointed script by James Webb and Stephen Gaghan.

John Boorman's 1981 retelling of the Arthurian legends is a continuation of the thematic thrust and visual plan of his Exorcist II, though the failure of that bold, hallucinatory, and flawed film seems to have put Boorman into partial retreat.

Zuniga's support is winningly low-key.

What's lacking here is a sustained thematic focus -- at least five people worked on the script, including Mann, which may account for the absence of a clear through line -- though the spectacle and characters keep one absorbed.

Where the narrative and characterization work, the visuals are lacking. Director Colin Trevorrow's digital cinematography occasionally resembles a YouTube video in mid-buffer, making the gorgeous and picturesque setting of the Pacific Northwest coastline appear bland and texture-less.

The movie is fairly entertaining, but the high production values and shticky humor invert the dynamic of the show, which was played totally straight despite the fact that the sets were always threatening to fall down.

Allen's conception of character is as banal and shallow as ever, but the lively performances of some of his actors—mainly Davis, Pollack, and Juliette Lewis (as a creative writing student of Allen's who has a brief flirtation with him)—and the novelty of the film's style make this more watchable than many of his features.

Coming-of-age drama is pretty familiar stuff.

Within the limitations of the genre, the film succeeds fairly well, with enough giddy sophomoric humor, stunning fights, titillating sex, and exotic sets and costumes to keep an audience entertained.

Though there's a crime to be solved, a romance to go awry, and lots of trooper-police politics to elaborate on, the strangely drawn out pacing somehow feels fresh rather than oppressive.

Dustin Hoffman is superb as Lenny Bruce, but he gives an actor's performance where a less declamatory, more comedic delivery would have worked better.

Inspired, self-referential animated musical.

This has its moments, but don't expect many fresh insights.