Carey Mulligan is terrific, even when the script calls for Jeanette to make a quick, not entirely plausible transition from a repressed housewife from the Eisenhower era into a diva from an overwrought B-movie. It’s a great performance in an almost-good movie.

For the first 45 minutes or so of this well-filmed and creatively staged production, “The Heretic” flashes the potential to be one of the most memorably insane horror films of the year; unfortunately, it all comes crashing down via some increasingly outrageous, credibility-smashing twists and turns, and a disappointing reliance on well-worn horror movie tropes in the stretch run.

South of Heaven devolves into a rote thriller, with henchmen upon henchmen upon henchmen falling by the wayside until the inevitable showdown — which plays out in underwhelming fashion.

WQhat would it really be like to huddle in a wrecked aircraft for 10 weeks in freezing weather, eating human flesh? I cannot imagine, and frankly this film doesn't much help me.

Perhaps this movie was so close to Egoyan's heart that he was never able to stand back and get a good perspective on it -- that he is as conflicted as his characters, and as confused in the face of shifting points of view.

Ultimately, though, Settlers is more about setting a mood and painting a picture of hopelessness than explaining what happened before the story, what’s happening beyond the borders of the compound and what lies ahead for Remmy. It feels incomplete.

An absolutely superb mounting of a hollow and disappointing production. It shows a technical mastery of filmmaking, and we are dazzled by the performances, the atmosphere, the mood of mounting violence. But by the second hour of the film we've lost our bearings: What is this movie saying about its characters? What does it feel and believe about them? Why was it necessary to tell their stories?

I look at a film like this and must respect it for its ingenuity and love of detail. Then I remember "Amelie" and its heroine played by Audrey Tautou, and I understand what's wrong: There's nobody in the story who much makes us care.

This is one of those curious films before which the viewer is struck dumb. To describe it is to question and praise it - at one and the same time. I enjoyed the time I spent with Moretti, much as I might enjoy sitting next to an interesting stranger on an airplane, and hearing about his life.

All of this makes an interesting, if not gripping, film about the play, the playwright and the lead-up work to a stage production. It also leaves me wanting a great deal more.

Directed by David Yates, who has spent most of the last two decades helming “Harry Potter” movies and prequels and might not be the best fit for this material, Pain Hustlers aims to be a fast-paced, raucous, blunt and slick work a la “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Big Short,” but winds up caught between the worlds of breezy satire and hard-hitting expose.

Brubaker is a grim and depressing drama about prison outrages - a movie that should, given its absolutely realistic vision, have kept us involved from beginning to end. That it doesn't is the result, I think, of a deliberate but unwise decision to focus on the issues involved in the story, instead of on the characters.

Sweet, light entertainment, but could have been more.

Coscarelli knows how to exploit horror/sci-fi tropes and adeptly meld a practical effect with a well-timed gag. Many could depict a man's disembodied moustache with the right degree of farcicality, but few can imbue it with such an oddball credibility.

This perhaps sounds like a hilarious movie. So it could be, in the hands of the masters of classic British comedy. Unfortunately, the director is the Swede Lasse ("Chocolat"), who sees it as a heart-warming romance and doesn't take advantage of the rich eccentricity in the story.

Breathe In is all simmer, no boil, despite an abrupt, overwrought, agonizing emotional climax that’s too much, too late.

This is the kind of movie you sort of like, and yet even while you're liking it, you're thinking how much better these characters and this situation could have been with a little more imagination and daring.

Slam is a fable disguised as a slice of life, and cobbled together out of too many pieces that don't fit smoothly together. It's moving, but not as effective as it could have been.

What I got was a fairly intriguing story and an actual plot that is actually resolved. That doesn't make the movie good enough to recommend, but it makes it better than the ads suggest.

Coup de Torchon left me cold, unmoved and uninvolved. All I could find to admire was the craftsmanship.

Does John Carter get the job done for the weekend action audience? Yes, I suppose it does. The massive city on legs that stomps across the landscape is well-done. The Tharks are ingenious, although I'm not sure why they need tusks. Lynn Collins makes a terrific heroine.

The Wolfman avoids what must have been the temptation to update its famous story. It plants itself securely in period, with a great-looking production set in 1891.

Dr. Furter is played by a British actor named Tim Curry, who bears a certain resemblance to Loretta Young in drag. He's the best thing in the movie, maybe because he seems to be having the most fun.

Watching the film, I felt impatience with these bullheaded men and the women who endure them. That's what Marston intended, I'm sure, but the stupidity of the characters doesn't provide much of an emotional payoff.

Black Widow is an interesting movie struggling to escape from a fatal overload of commercial considerations.

Harmless, brainless, good-natured fun.

Her Majesty is the kind of movie where you start out smiling, and then smile more broadly, and then really smile, and then realize with a sinking heart that the filmmakers are losing it.

I cannot in strict accuracy recommend this film. It's such a jumble of action and motivation, ill-defined characters and action howlers.

If the movie finally doesn't work as well as it should, it may be because the material isn't a good fit for Kitano's hard-edged underlying style.

The reader of a pulp crime thriller might be satisfied simply with the prurient descriptions, and certainly this film visualizes those and has as its victims Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, who embody paperback covers, but the dominant presence in the film is Lou Ford, and there just doesn’t seem to be anybody at home.

The damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it.

But genre fans likely will enjoy Bordello of Blood, which delivers lots of dazzling special effects by Available Light Ltd., including exploding bodies galore.

The fundamental problem is the point of view.

This is a harmless and pleasant Disney comedy and one of only three family movies playing over the holidays.

Friends With Kids is altogether too casual about parenthood, and that supplies a shaky foundation to a plot that's less about human nature and more about clever dialogue.

There’s nothing inherently wrong in leaving some things open-ended, but Happily opts out of giving us answers in such a flippant, off-hand manner that we feel betrayed for investing in the story to that moment.

Airheads has a giddy time living up to its low expectations.

This is a wonderful formula. I love it. The Poseidon Adventure is the kind of movie you know is going to be awful, and yet somehow you gotta see it, right?

These neat little notes are dropped like so many breadcrumbs along the trail and offer some clever hints about the larger storyline, but that brings us to where Biosphere falls short: The Big Picture it is painting remains a bit too fuzzy and frustratingly ambiguous to the end.

Alas, Gran Turismo ultimately feels like a tribute to marketing campaigns and brand ambassadorships more than “Rocky” on the racetrack.

For all of its huge budget, Independence Day is a timid movie when it comes to imagination. The aliens, when we finally see them, are a serious disappointment.

While the lead actors deliver lovely performances, it’s a shame they have to work with material so ham-handed and overbearing.

It's corny in places, and kind of dumb, and its subplot about the romance between the boy and the girl seems plundered from some long-shelved Roddy McDowell script. But The Man from Snowy River has good qualities, too, including some great aerial photography of thundering herds of horses, and the invigorating grandeur of the Australian landscape.

The most that can be said for the characters here is they all seem mighty pleased.

Weighed down by its splendor. There are scenes where the costumes are so sumptuous, the sets so vast, the music so insistent, that we lose sight of the humans behind the dazzle of the production.

Tornatore’s ideas about art, trust and intimacy are curious, even if they do not quite click.

M. Butterfly does not take hold the way the stage play did.

There's a lot to like in "Dennis the Menace." But Switchblade Sam prevents me from recommending it.

For me, Happy Feet Two is pretty thin soup. The animation is bright and attractive, the music gives the characters something to do, but the movie has too much dialogue in the areas of philosophy and analysis.

Lawless is a well-made film about ignorant and violent people. Like the recent "Killer Joe," I can only admire this film's craftsmanship and acting, and regret its failure to rise above them.

What Happened Was... is in many ways an admirable movie, and Noonan and Sillas do a quiet, thorough job of representing these two people who seem on the edge of being walled up inside their own walls. There are many small moments of perfect observation. But I never really felt they were building to anything, or heading anywhere.

All that was needed to pull these elements together was a structure that would clearly define who the characters were, what they stood for and why we should care about them. Unfortunately, that is all that is missing.

I think the screenplay, written by director Isabel Coixet, is shameless in its weepy sentiment. But there is truth here, too, and a convincing portrait of working-class lives.

Since you have probably not seen "Nine Queens," Criminal will be new to you, and I predict you'll like the remake about as much as I liked the original -- three stars' worth. If, however, you've seen "Nine Queens," you may agree that some journeys, however entertaining, need only be taken once.

At times Jimi: All Is By My Side feels pure authentic. More often, though, it’s meandering and melodramatic, with far too many scenes of Hendrix jabbering and squabbling with two key female figures in his life, and not enough of the music.

Ocean's Thirteen proceeds with insouciant dialogue, studied casualness, and a lotta stuff happening, none of which I cared much about because the movie doesn't pause to develop the characters, who are forced to make do with their movie-star personas.

Performance is a bizarre, disconnected attempt to link the inhabitants of two kinds of London underworlds: pop stars and gangsters. It isn’t altogether successful, largely because it tries too hard and doesn’t pace itself to let its effects sink in.

It’s easy to see how an unhappy transition to suburban mommyhood might be enough to unhinge any self-respecting former punk rocker but, even so, it’s a little hard to take the angst-ridden mid-life shenanigans in Kelly & Cal seriously.

At the end I didn't feel engaged. I didn't feel that the hero's attention had been quite focused during his quest for the meaning of life. He didn't seem to be a searcher, but more of a bystander, shoulders thrown back, deadpan expression in place, waiting to see if life could make him care.

Perry tries to be faithful to the play and also to his own boldly and simply told stories, and the two styles don't fit together.

Level Five (1996) is a poetic if occasionally opaque film essay on the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

While the overall concept of the script is pretty creative and original, at several points along the way the storyline gets a bit muddled.

The filmmakers must have known they were not making a good movie, but they didn't use that as an excuse to be boring and lazy. Barb Wire has a high energy level, and a sense of deranged fun.

Words on Bathroom Walls has its moments and its heart is in the right place, but the missteps are too many and too big for the story to carry the day.

While the movie contains delights and inventions without pause and has undeniable charm, while it is always wonderful to watch, while it has the Miyazaki visual wonderment, it's a disappointment, compared to his recent work.

I didn't laugh much during A Very Brady Sequel, but I did smile a lot.

The plot, the pursuit, the quarry, are all forgotten during Hackman's one-man show, and it's a flaw the movie doesn't overcome.

But the problem is, The Deal, like a lot of real-life Wall Street deals, is a labyrinth into which the plot tends to disappear. The ideas in the film are challenging, the level of expertise is high, the performances are convincing, and it's only at the level of story construction and dramatic clarity that the film doesn't succeed.

Generation P appears to be Russian slang for Generation Perestroika and "The Pepsi Generation," which nicely reflects this film's cockamamie spirit, sort of a cross between "Mad Men" and an acid trip.

Adapted with unusual faithfulness from John Guare's much-heralded 1990 play, the movie, directed by Fred Schepisi with a screenplay by the playwright, is nothing if not frenetic. And yet it attempts to explore a slew of profound ideas -- about race, social class, art and the whole nature of experience among a very particular and unusually sophisticated segment of contemporary urban American society. [22 Dec 1993, p.48]

Wan retains his touch for ratcheting up the tension, providing doses of comic relief and then BOOM!, delivering another gotcha moment that will leave audiences jumping in their seats and then giggling at the visceral thrill ride — but the scary moments aren’t as fresh this time around, and with a running time of 2 hours, 13 minutes, The Conjuring 2 is at least a half hour too long. At least.

The premise is intriguing, and for a time it seems that the Date Doctor may indeed know things about women that most men in the movies are not allowed to know, but the third act goes on autopilot just when the Doctor should be in.

There is something repulsive and manipulative about it, and even its best scenes have the flavor of a kid in the school yard, trying to show you pictures you don't feel like looking at.

Well of course he wins the race and gets the girl. You know that to begin with when you go to a movie named Winning that stars Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and is about the Indy 500.

Some stretches are very funny, although the laughter is undermined by the desperation and sadness of the situations.

Kids 6 to 9 years old will probably enjoy this fare, but as a Hollywoodized classic, it doesn't quite wear the crown. [11 Aug 1995, p.41]

De Palma's Untouchables, like the TV series that inspired it, depends more on cliches than on artistic invention.

The movie is lightweight, as it should be.

There's not much wrong with Tony Scott's The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, except that there's not much really right about it.

This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think.

This material is intriguing enough that I wish there had been more of it. Comedy consists of the application of logic to the absurd, and there are many more opportunities here than the screenplay takes advantage of.

When Asante finally closes with a close-up of Belle’s portrait, there’s something in her eyes and her smile that suggests so much more.

Connery labors mightily. There is still the same Bond grin, still the cool humor under fire, still the slight element of satire. But when he puts on his cute little helmet and is strapped into his helicopter, somehow the whole illusion falls apart and what we're left with is a million-dollar playpen in which everything works but nothing does anything.

Gerwig is a magnetic actress, but it feels as if she’s overplaying it here. Even in Brooke’s best moments, she’s not all that charming or interesting.

Tells the kind of story that would feel right at home in a silent film, and I suppose I mean that as a compliment.

On the basis of Gigantic, Matt Aselton can make a fine and original film. This isn't quite it, but it has moments so good, all you wish for is a second draft.

Clive Owen can be a likable actor, but the character is working against him...And please, please, give us a break from the scenes where the ghost of the departed turns up and starts talking as if she's not dead.

Its chief virtue is its lead performance, in which twin brothers are played by a promising new Argentinian actor named Viggo Mortensen.

The movie is forgiving. But the search for happiness is doomed by definition: You must be happy with what you have, not with what you desire, because the cost of the quest is too high.

There are times when this film feels absolutely real and lived-in, as when Paul’s extended family gathers for dinners where everyone talks at once and nobody is listening, and you can feel the tensions but also the enduring and abiding love at the table. Unfortunately, Gray’s central young character isn’t as sympathetic or likable as the talented filmmaker must have intended, and the constant lecturing about white guilt among liberals is delivered in all caps, with exclamation points.

All that could redeem this thoroughly foreseeable unfolding would be colorful characters and good acting. Everybody's Fine comes close, but not close enough.

Good Time is a hallucinatory and often gripping one-night stand of mishaps, mayhem and madness. Ultimately, though, the sometimes clever story runs out of steam and limps across the finish line, and the in-your-face characters and camerawork, not to mention the in-your-ears score, left me not all that involved and a bit exhausted.

The film takes the form but not the feel of a comic thriller. It's quirkier than that.

The movie itself is sort of bland and obvious and comfortable.

Unfortunately, the parts of the movie that are truly good are buried beneath the deadening layers of thriller cliches and an unconvincing love story.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a perfectly typical example of its type, professionally made and competently acted.

I admired the scenes with De Niro so much I'm tempted to give Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a favorable verdict. But it's a near miss. The Creature is on target, but the rest of the film is so frantic, so manic, it doesn't pause to be sure its effects are registered.

Kaprisky, as the young French student, is an unknown in a role too large and complex for her, and there are times when she seems lost in a scene, looking to Gere for guidance. The result is a stylistic exercise without any genuine human concerns we can identify with - and yet, an exercise that does have a command of its style, is good-looking, fun to watch, and develops a certain morbid humor.