Fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It has rich material and isn't clear what it thinks about it. It has two performances of Oscar caliber, but do they connect?

It’s no secret that Jason Statham demonstrates remarkable flair when it comes to bone-crunching action-movie mayhem, but he deserves special props for making some of the more outrageous flights of macho fantasy in Wild Card seem credible.

Though directed with great precision by Branagh, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is saddled with a boilerplate script.

An uneven but touching comedy with a cheery score that sounds too much like whistling on the way past the graveyard.

Has a good heart and some fine performances, but is too muddled at the story level to involve us emotionally.

At times Thor: The Dark World does fire on all cylinders, with fine work from the returning cast, a handful of hilarious sight gags and some cool action sequences. But it’s also more than a little bit silly and quite ponderous and overly reliant on special effects that are more confusing than exhilarating.

The edge is missing from Guest's usual style. Maybe it's because his targets are, after all, so harmless.

Does it by the numbers, so efficiently this feels more like a Hollywood wannabe than a French film. Where's the quirkiness, the nuance, the deeper levels?

It has all the necessary girls, gimmicks, subterranean control rooms, uniformed goons and magic wristwatches it can hold, but it doesn't have the wit and it doesn't have the style of the best Bond movies.

Has moments of great imagination.

Elles has a surprisingly deep performance in a disappointingly shallow movie. The performance, acute and brave, is by Juliette Binoche.

The nice thing about Shaft is that it savors the private-eye genre, and takes special delight in wringing new twists out of the traditional relationship between the private eye and the boys down at homicide.

While the animation is quite good and the filmmakers have brought together an excellent group of actors to provide the voice talent, the storyline leaves us with a tale more reminiscent of Saturday morning kids’ programming.

The setup in The Client is done so well, it deserves a better payoff.

Theater of the absurd, masquerading as an action thriller.

The Omen takes all of this terribly seriously, as befits the genre that gave us Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. What Jesus was to the 1950s movie epic, the devil is to the 1970s, and so all of this material is approached with the greatest solemnity, not only in the performances but also in the photography, the music and the very looks on people's faces.

There’s simply too much going on here — too many subplots, too many symbols, too many expendable characters — and certain interesting threads aren’t able to develop fully.

There is much to admire about “Conclave,” but in the end, all of its lofty aspirations come tumbling down due to that poorly constructed Jenga tower of a plot.

The footage on the Paris Island obstacle course is powerful. But Full Metal Jacket is uncertain where to go, and the movie's climax, which Kubrick obviously intends to be a mighty moral revelation, seems phoned in from earlier war pictures.

Venom: The Last Dance is dopey and silly and filled with familiar stock characters and well-worn tropes, but it’s almost never ponderous.

I suspect its audience, which takes these films very seriously indeed, will drink deeply of its blood. The sensational closing sequence cannot be accused of leaving a single loophole, not even some those we didn't know were there.

A film that is beautiful to look at but lacks clear vision.

This is a sumptuous film - extravagantly staged and photographed, perhaps too much so for its own good. There are times when it is not quite clear if we are looking at characters in a story or players on a stage. Productions can sometimes upstage a story, but when the story is as considerable as Anna Karenina, that can be a miscalculation.

The first hour of Protocol is so much fun, and the Goldie Hawn character is such an engaging original, that at first I couldn't believe they were going to throw away all that work by going for a standard Hollywood ending. But they did.

The positive messages involving characters searching for love and purpose in life are well thought out, but presented in a way that is just too genial and even-handed. No one ever gets really angry or passionate, and the result is a film that sometimes feels stilted.

Within Clay Pigeons is a smaller story that might have involved us more, but it's buried by overkill.

It Ends with Us handles the issue of domestic violence with admirable sensitivity and noble intentions, but with a far too long running time of 130 minutes and a plot that depends on not one, not two, but three major coincidences, it isn’t as impactful or resonant as it could have been.

The good news is there still are scenes to peel back the eyelids, beginning with a nighttime stalking and ending with some slambang mano a mano encounters in a warehouse for Mardi Gras floats - the kind of restricted setting of which Woo is a master. But the adrenaline lift, not to mention the deeper dimensions, of such films of his as "The Killer" are missing in action. [20 Aug 1993, p.46]

The movie operates at the level of a literate sitcom, in which the dialogue is smart and the characters are original, but the outcome and most of the stops along the way are preordained.

Wan's movie is very efficient. Bacon, skilled pro that he is, provides the character the movie needs, just as he has in such radically different films as "Where the Truth Lies," "The Woodsman" and "Mystic River."

Meg Ryan does such an effective job of evoking her sexually hungry lonely girl that it might have been better to just follow that line and not distract her and the audience with the distraction of a crime plot.

Madagascar is funny, especially at the beginning, and good-looking in a retro cartoon way, but in a world where the stakes have been raised by "Finding Nemo," "Shrek" and "The Incredibles," it's a throwback to a more conventional kind of animated entertainment. It'll be fun for the smaller kids, but there's not much crossover appeal for their parents.

It’s a brilliant performance by Gyllenhaal in a film that veers from dark satire to tense crime thriller before the tires come off near the end, leaving the entire vehicle just short of worth recommending.

I might have enjoyed Desert Hearts more if it had been more subtle and observant about the two women. It might have been a better movie if it had been about discovery instead of seduction.

Filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller unfortunately adopts the format of prime-time docu-tainment.

The movie is so filled with action that dramatic conflict would be more than we could handle, so all of the characters are nice.

The curious case of two appealing performances surviving a bombardment of schlock.

Puenzo’s initial premise is more promising, though, than her sensational tone.

Too much action brings the movie to a dead standstill. Why don't directors understand that? Why don't they know that wall-to-wall action makes a movie less interesting -- less like drama, more like a repetitive video game?

I liked the movie without loving it. It's not great Woody Allen, like "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Bullets Over Broadway," but it's smart and sly, and the blindness is an audacious idea.

Ordinary Love gets everything right, but there’s almost nothing in the way of a major plot revelation or insightful flashback explaining certain elements from the past.

Unbroken is an ambitious, sometimes moving film that suffers from a little too much self-conscious nobility, and far too many scenes of sadistic brutality.

Without question, this movie does elicit “feel-good” emotions — largely driven by Garner’s ability to exude genuine maternal devotion and the charm of young Kylie Rogers.

The story, having failed to provide itself with character conflicts that can be resolved with drama, turns to melodrama instead.

I could see how, with a rewrite and a better focus, this could have been a film of "Braveheart'' quality instead of basically just a costume swashbuckler.

Adam wraps up their story in too tidy a package, insisting on finding the upbeat in the murky, and missing the chance to be more thoughtful about this challenging situation.

There are two strong stories here, in Africa and Denmark. Either could have made a film. Intercut in this way, they seem too much like self-conscious parables.

The plot of Touch sounds like a comedy. But the experience of seeing the film is subduing; the movie plays in a muted key.

A naturalist comic of inarticulate manners, writer-director Andrew Bujalski attempts the ensemble styles of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest to peer into a micro-culture in Computer Chess.

The interlocking stories are theoretically about people whose lives are associated; that worked in "Crash." Here the connections seem less immediate and significant, and so the movie sometimes seems based on a group of separate short stories.

Never quite lifts off. The elements are here, but not the magic.

Empire of the Sun adds up to a promising idea, a carefully observed production and some interesting performances.

It's only the movie's tendency to repeat itself and to stop for unnecessary scenes of character development that keep it from being a classically pure - which is to say, totally devious - caper movie.

The movie is quick and cheerful, and Spurlock is engaging.

Good fun, especially if you like Leone's way of savoring the last morsel of every scene. (Review of Original Release)

Derailed has a great setup, a good middle passage and some convincing performances. Then it runs off the tracks.

Not a conventional documentary about quantum physics. It's more like a collision in the editing room between talking heads, an impenetrable human parable and a hallucinogenic animated cartoon.

A cheerful comedy with just enough dark moments to create the illusion it's really about something.

You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? Twister works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it.

After the fires, explosions, chase scenes, shootouts, ambushes and dead bodies, the movie's human story seems sort of lonely and forlorn. Maybe there was some kind of satirical purpose in surrounding the people with so much activity. I dunno. But the extra ingredients make a potentially better movie into a confused, overloaded and disjointed one.

Caddyshack never finds a consistent comic note of its own, but it plays host to all sorts of approaches from its stars, who sometimes hardly seem to be occupying the same movie.

The movie is never quite bold enough to point out the contradiction of Muslims and Christians hating one another, even though they both in theory worship the same god.

It’s a competently made, traditional biopic about a man who disdained those terms.

Slight and sweet, not a great high school movie but kinda nice, with appealing performances by Hart and Grenier.

Coppola's teenagers seem trapped inside too many layers of storytelling.

The Coens' Ladykillers, on the other hand, is always wildly signaling for us to notice it. Not content to be funny, it wants to be FUNNY! Have you ever noticed that the more a comedian wears funny hats, the less funny he is?

It's a sometimes entertaining movie, but thin.

Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" is disappointingly lacking in bite and sophistication, the first two qualities we'd expect from the director of "The Apartment" and "The Fortune Cookie."

The story is simple and obvious, but it's told with a lot of energy, and the cast is jammed, with character actors doing their things.

They (the characters) approach the subjects of sex and romance with a naivete so staggering, it must be an embarrassment in the greater world. Inside their hermetically sealed complacency, I suppose it's a little exciting.

Though Light of My Life is a well-filmed and occasionally brutally effective piece of work, Affleck dilutes the power of the story with too many self-indulgent, patience-testing scenes.

The movie therefore offers meager pleasures of character. Where it excels is in staging and cinematography. The running sequences, in races, on city streets and through forests, are very well-handled.

The whole plot smells fishy. It's not that the movie is hiding something, but that when it's revealed, it's been left sitting too long at room temperature. Inside Man goes to much difficulty to arrive at too little.

The first half of License to Drive, which is mostly concerned with taking the lessons and passing the test and getting the license, is very funny. The second half, which is mostly an extended chase scene in which a hapless teenager's grandfather's Cadillac is wrecked by a drunk, is much more predictable.

The charm of The Ring Two, while limited, is real enough; it is based on the film's ability to make absolutely no sense, while nevertheless generating a real enough feeling of tension a good deal of the time.

This intriguing premise, alas, ends as so many movies do these days, with fierce fights and bloodshed.

If I can't quite recommend the movie, it's because so much of the plot is on autopilot. The dialogue spells out too much that doesn't need to be said.

This is a revenge Western we’ve seen dozens of times before, and the villains aren’t nearly as intimidating and pitch-black evil as they need to be. The end result is a passably entertaining shoot-’em-up with very few surprises.

X-Men: First Class is competent weekend entertainment. It is not a great comic book movie, like "Spider-Man 2," or a bad one, like "Thor." It is not in 3-D, which is a mercy.

What Almereyda brings to the film is good control of tone (the movie is ironic, and yet sad about its irony) and an interesting visual style.

This second film is again heartwarming and includes some nice performances from Connick, Gamble and Morgan Freeman.

Both impressive and disappointing. From a technical and craft point of view it is first-rate; from its standing in the canon of the two directors, it is minor.

There's always rationing in wartime. What's rationed in Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime are feelings of hope, kindness and optimism.

The powerfully choreographed dances also address the idea that artistic vision is a potent antidote to repression.

Doesn't really seem necessary.

Tells an engrossing story of a remarkable man, but nevertheless it's underwhelming. Dramatic and romantic tension never coil very tightly, as the film settles into a contented pace.

The cinematography, the set design, the costumes, the overall feel of Loving: all first-rate. Negga and Edgerton are undeniably good. I was impressed. I just wish I’d been more deeply moved.

The result is too much formula and not enough human interest.

This company of actors pulls together and delivers a lot of punch to a pedestrian script inspired by quite an amazing tale.

Julia is the story of a fascinating woman, told from the point of view of someone who hardly knew her. That is, I realize, an unkind judgment against Lillian Hellman, whose wartime memoirs provide the inspiration for the story. But this movie's problems start with its point of view, and it never quite recovers from them.

The origin story is well told, and the characters will not disappoint anyone who values the original comic books. It's in the action scenes that things fall apart.

The result is unconvincing and disorganized. Yes, there are some spectacular stunts and slick special effects sequences. Yes, Jones is right on the money, and Snipes makes a sympathetic fugitive. But it's the story that has to pull this train, and its derailment is about as definitive as the train crash in the earlier film.

Virzi tends to illustrate his ideas rather than dramatically shape them, and what he has to say about money, power and the nature of greed is rarely invigorating.

Because it is slick and classy and good to look at, and the actors are well within their range of competence, you can enjoy the movie on a made-for-TV level, but you wish it had been smarter and tougher.

This is a well-made, well-acted but unexceptional film about one of the most exceptional figures of the last half-century.

War movies used to have dash and color and a certain corny sentimentality; Midway hardly even makes us care.

It is well-made, well-photographed and plausibly acted, and is better than it needs to be.

Writer-director DuVall is a talented filmmaker and she keeps the mostly superficial story humming along at an entertaining pace, and the cast is terrific and gets the maximum value out of the material.