The cast is uniformly excellent, with Ariana DeBose leading the way. For a relatively small-budget film, the visuals and sets are better than good. Ultimately, though, “I.S.S.” runs out of big ideas and sputters across the finish line.

This Carrie comes off like a Lifetime film, adding little new and nothing substantial to improve on DePalma’s classic.

When bodies are buried in cellars and cats are thrown into lighted ovens, the film reveals itself as unworthy of its subject matter.

It’s a sweet and knowing and lovely and funny story, but occasionally the spell of warm nostalgia is broken by painful moments of family heartbreak and cruel bullying.

The argument about whether Sandler is terrible or talented has long been settled. The answer is both.

The Cutting Edge is a marriage of two durable Hollywood genres: It's an Underdog in Training sports film, crossed with that most beloved of all romantic formulas, the Incompatibles in Love. There is essentially not an original moment in the entire film, and yet it's skillfully made and well-acted.

With director Greg Berlanti (“Love, Simon”) skillfully weaving in a myriad of storylines that justify the 132-minute running time, Rose Gilroy delivering a crisp and funny script (based on a story by Bill Kirstein and Kennan Flynn) and Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum igniting the fuse with good old-fashioned, Grade A movie-star chemistry, “Fly Me to the Moon” is a “go” from the get-go.

Justin Timberlake continues to demonstrate that he is a real actor, with screen presence. But after the precise timing and intelligence he brought to "The Social Network," it's a little disappointing to find him in a role that requires less. He has a future in the movies.

A mixed-bag satire with ambitions that veer wildly from sharp political insight to slapstick farce to inspirational semi-autobiography. It never finds solid ground in any of those genres.

In movies with this story structure, all depends on the precise timing of the delay and the revelation, and Bounce misses. Not by a lot, but by enough.

While most band documentaries wade through sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, this one has no sex, no drugs, and the kind of rock 'n' roll that reminds one of their fans of "something I'd hear at a dorm party."

It's a movie without a brain. Charlie's Angels is like the trailer for a video game movie, lacking only the video game, and the movie.

The result of the film is shocking, saddening and frustrating.

I can see what Thomson is getting at and even sort of appreciate it at times; the movie isn't boring, but it meanders and loses track of plot threads. Any feelings we have for the characters is muted because they all richly deserve to die at one another's hands.

Sophisticated in its look and feel on the one hand (the warm hues and tones evoke a warmth that defies the wintry cold), it’s almost too retro for its own good on the other.

Winner should have told us a lot more about his lawman, or a lot less.

Brannigan isn't great, but it's a wellcrafted action movie and, besides, it's got John Wayne in it.

Writer-director-star Katie Holmes perfectly captures those early pandemic days in the occasionally heartbreaking and mostly sweet and lovely romantic drama Alone Together.

There's a high gloss and some nice payoffs, but not quite as much humor as usual; Bond seems to be straying from his tongue-in-cheek origins into the realm of conventional techno-thrillers.

[A] cartoonish, offensive, overblown, clanging, steaming piece of ... cinema.

The story is so-so, in other words, but the pummeling is primo.

It’s the MMA version of Million Dollar Baby meets Rocky in Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised, a well-acted and occasionally involving but overly long, cliché-stuffed sports film that hits all the usual notes and piles on the subplot drama to the point where we’re nearly exhausted by the viewing experience.

[Stern] comes across as a sincere presence who is almost too polite and doesn’t challenge some interviewees who make wildly inaccurate and sometimes racist assertions based on ignorant viewpoints. But it could be argued his gentle, respectful style of an effective tool to get his subjects to reveal their true selves.

The concept is inspired. The execution is lame. Anger Management, a film that might have been one of Adam Sandler's best, becomes one of Jack Nicholson's worst.

Bell and Grammer are wonderful playing off one another. Funny when the moment calls for funny, authentic and believable when the moment calls for substantive drama.

Despite its cast and convincing backdrop, Stonehearst Asylum is a tame entry in today’s roster of horror films.

A tight, taut thriller with a twist.

Begins rather awkwardly, but ends by making a statement that explains a great many things. One question left unasked: Why did we promise to defend Taiwan with nuclear weapons but refuse to recognize it as a sovereign nation?

This movie is, of course, intended as a comedy, and it has some funny moments. But it's just not successful, and I think the reason is that Hamilton never for a second plays Zorro as if he were really playing Zorro... When a movie sets out a create a funny Zorro, that's bringing coals to Newcastle. By playing every scene for laughs, Hamilton has nothing to play against.

Here is a film about African Americans that sidesteps all the usual, hopeful cliches and comments on how one failed generation raises another.

[Del Toro] carries this sometimes convoluted and derivative thriller into three-star territory with an absolutely mesmerizing and authentic performance that conjures up memories of past anti-hero greats such as Bogart and Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Sterling Hayden. It’s authentic, grounded, stunning work.

The moral reasoning in the film is so confusing that only by completely sidestepping it can the plot work at all.

If you want to see a solid movie about Bundy as mostly experienced through the viewpoint of the single mother who fell in love with him without knowing he was a murderer, check out the Netflix feature film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Vile and Evil.

Malice is one of the busiest movies I've ever seen, a film jampacked with characters and incidents and blind alleys and red herrings. Offhand, this is the only movie I can recall in which an entire subplot about a serial killer is thrown in simply for atmosphere.

Feels a little uncertain, as if it's moving from present to past under the demands of a screenplay rather than because it really feels that way. But the growing-up stuff is kind of wonderful.

No better or worse than the movies that inspired it, but that is a compliment, I think.

Ruffalo plays the character with that elusive charm he also revealed in "You Can Count on Me."

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

Whoopi Goldberg is the only original or interesting thing about Jumpin' Jack Flash. And she tries, but she's not enough.

The mother-daughter dynamic in Four Good Days is powerful and lasting and devastating and maybe the thing that will help Molly save her life.

It considers, or pretends to consider, some of the most basic questions of human morality and treats them on the level of "Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Convent."

Casting can be the reason that one movie works and another doesn't. It is the first reason for the success of The Girl From Monaco, the kind of romantic comedy with a twist that used to star Jack Lemmon.

A sweet but inconsequential romantic comedy.

The chemistry between Rockwell and Kendrick drives the movie. They’re fast and wonderful together. But Mr. Right has an abundance of strong supporting performances as well.

Even though it is quite likely the longest romance in movie history in terms of the time period covered, the one-point premise is stretched washi paper-thin over the course of just 92 minutes.

The photography is undeniably beautiful, but there comes a point when we've had too many mountains and too little plot. All that holds the movie together is the screen persona of Eastwood, who is so convincingly tight-lipped that sometimes you have the feeling he knows what's going on and just won't tell.

Three Days of Rain is only a sketch compared to the power of Rodrigo Garcia's "Nine Lives," which continues to grow in my memory.

Even the world-class cast can’t save this one from teetering into the abyss.

The result is that we feel deliberately distanced from the film. It is not so much an exercise in style as an exercise in search of a style. The story doesn't involve us because we can't follow it, and we doubt if the characters can, either.

You can sense the difference between a movie that's a technical exercise ("Resident Evil") and one steamed in the dread cauldrons of the filmmaker's imagination.

The Mothman is singularly ineffective as a threat because it is only vaguely glimpsed, has no nature we can understand, doesn't operate under rules that the story can focus on, and seems to be involved in space-time shifts far beyond its presumed focus. There is also the problem that insects make unsatisfactory villains unless they are very big.

There’s just not enough gristle and gore on the bone of this story to make for a memorably haunting viewer experience.

Writer-director Nathalie Biancheri treats this potentially sensational material with sensitivity and empathy, though Wolf sometimes careens in the direction of a pure horror film and introduces some late elements that border on the grotesque and seem superfluous to the main story. Still, this is an involving and dark fairy tale, with great performances from MacKay and Depp.

As you’d expect, It’s a Wonderful Knife is filled with blood-spattered twists on holiday movie tropes. Unfortunately, there are few surprises and only a handful of genuine scares, and the film suffers from subpar lighting and occasionally clunky editing. It’s a “Knife” in need of some sharpening.

A Little Romance has been described as a movie about the way kids behave when adults aren't looking. I think it's quite the opposite: A movie about the way kids behave when adults are looking - and when adults are writing the dialog and directing the action, too. It gives us two movie kids in a story so unlikely I assume it was intended as a fantasy. And it gives us dialog and situations so relentlessly cute we want to squirm.

After all these years, the land of Zamunda is still the world capital of comedy.

I think more edge is needed, more reality about the racial situation at the time, more insight into how and why R&B and rock ’n’ roll actually did forever transform societies in America and the world.

A little more fury might have been a whole lot better.

If we haven't caught on from earlier films that drug pushing is a thankless persuasion, maybe this is the movie that will pound in the lesson.

This is a movie that knows it is absurd, and does little to deny it.

What I respond to in the movie is its fundamental romantic impulse.

Here is a bad movie into which a great character seems to have dropped from another dimension.

Trap is a well-crafted shell with nothing inside.

As for the murder mystery, some of the supporting players barely get enough screen time or enough of a backstory to be considered serious suspects, but even when “Death on the Nile” skirts the edge of camp, the fastidious and melancholy Poirot is always there to guide us through the rough spots and solve the case in the nick of time.

There are many moments here that are very funny, but the film as a whole is a bit too long.

Wants to make larger points, but succeeds only in being a story of derangement.

It's a funny homage, a nod to the way that some movies are universal in their appeal.

The film is short at 82 minutes, but surprisingly moving, and has a couple of really thrilling sequences.

It’s a shame Eternals devolves into such a run-of-the-mill superhero movie, given it features some groundbreaking and/or relatively unusual elements, including a deaf character, an openly gay character and an actual lovemaking scene between two otherworldly entities (although it’s tamer than what you’d see in a 1950s romance).

While the plot is a bit shaky in parts, the overall effect of creating needed tension and some outright, out-of-your-seat jumps of fright is quite effective.

Andra Day looks and sounds like every inch the movie star in the performance numbers and when Billie enjoys rare moments of peace and happiness offstage — and she is equally, heartbreakingly believable as Billie’s appearance deteriorates and her soul is crushed by years of drug abuse, and a lifetime of being physically and emotionally battered by a series of men who looked at this amazing, glorious, singular star and saw little more than a cash register.

The movie is a competent thriller, but maybe could have been more.

The charm of the movie comes in the performances - in the way Martin and Hawn lie to themselves and each other - and in the dialog, which is endlessly inventive as one lie piles upon another, and the characters test each other with a high-wire act of falsehood.

I've never seen a movie so sad in which there was so much genuine laughter. The Accidental Tourist is one of the best films of the year.

Good performances and an interesting idea are metamorphosed into one of the silliest movies in a long time.

There are few reasons you must see this movie, but absolutely none that you should not.

The movie is almost always good to look at, thanks to Richard MacDonald's sets (he linked together two giant sound stages) and Sven Nykvist's photography. And Nolte and Winger are almost able to make their relationship work, if only it didn't seem scripted out of old country songs and lonely hearts columns.

It is not faulty logic that derails The Hills have Eyes, however, but faulty drama. The movie is a one-trick pony.

Branagh is a world-class actor and a fine director, and he scores stylistic points on both counts here, but this “Orient Express” loses steam just when it should be gaining speed and racing to its putatively shocking conclusion, which isn’t all that surprising — even if you haven’t read the book or seen the 1974 movie

One of the irritations of Ghost is that the Moore character is such a slow study.

It’s a great-looking ride with a few legitimate jump-scares and some suitably chilling imagery, but the finale leaves us frustrated and let down, wondering: Is that all there is?

One of the nicest things about the movie is the way it maintains its note of slightly bewildered innocence.

All great farces need a certain insane focus, an intensity that declares how important they are to themselves. This movie is too confident, too relaxed, too clever to be really funny. And yet, when the cowboys sit around their campfire singing a sad lament and then their horses join in, you see where the movie could have gone.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is a bold but wildly uneven, bloody mess of a film, sunk in large part by the subpar performances by nearly every major character in nearly every major role.

A strange mutant beast, half Nickelodeon movie, half R-rated comedy. It's like kids with potty-mouth playing grownup.

The movie uses the materials of melodrama, but is gentle with them; it's oriented more in the real world, and doesn't jack up every conflict and love story into an overwrought crisis.

LaBute likes people who think themselves into and out of love, and finds the truly passionate (like Blanche) to be the most dangerous. He likes romances that exist out of sight, denied, speculated about, suspected, fought against.

The masterstroke is the use of Bryan Adams, who seems like a joke when he first appears (the movie knows this), but is used by Konchalovsky in such a way that eventually be becomes the embodiment of the ability to imagine and dream--an ability, the movie implies, that's the only thing keeping these crazy people sane.

The plot risks bursting under the strain of its coincidences, as Sara and Jon fly to opposite coasts at the same time and engage in a series of Idiot Plot moves so extreme and wrongheaded that even other characters in the same scene should start shouting helpful suggestions.

He can take a licking and keep on slicing. In the latest Halloween movie, he absorbs a blow from an ax, several knife slashes, a rock pounded on the skull, a fall down a steep hillside and being crushed against a tree by a truck. Whatever he's got, mankind needs it.

The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign.

You can see the big twist coming an hour in advance. And the big epic showdown is resolved in a manner that defies even the most cursory of examinations. There’s something almost depressing about how often this movie takes the easy, lazy way out.

Michael Winterbottom (“The Claim,” “24 Hour Party People,” “Code 46”) is a wonderfully gifted and versatile director, so it comes as no small surprise Greed is such a thudding. one-note takedown of a fictional avaricious fashion mogul.

Superfly succeeds at it what it wants to be: an action-packed, sexy, violent, 21st century blaxploitation crime thriller with a stylish look, a downloadable soundtrack, a great-looking and talented cast, a few slick twists and even some genuinely funny moments.

From the opening graphic with its classic 1950s noir static shot, the sometimes appropriately overwrought music from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans and impeccable production design, “Windfall” quickly settles in as a sometimes tense, often comically absurd and always engrossing game of verbal chess, as the Intruder realizes he has been captured by a security camera and ups his game, demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Husband so he can disappear and start a new life.

Most important, I cared about the Jennifer Connelly character; she is not a horror heroine, but an actress playing a mother faced with horror. There is a difference, and because of that difference, Dark Water works.

Mars Attacks! has the look and feel of a schlocky 1950s science-fiction movie, and if it's not as bad as a Wood film, that's not a plus: A movie like this should be a lot better, or a lot worse.

The problem may be that the movie isn’t nearly tough enough. It needs to be more hard-boiled, more merciless in its dissection of egos, more perceptive about the cutthroat nature of show business.