The life lessons about morals and values are soft-pedaled pretty well and packaged in a mostly funny romp as the trio of mothers’ night-on-the-town turns in all sorts of bizarre and wacky ways.

There is a cool, mannered elegance to the picture that I like, but it's dead at its center.

Besson has a natural gift for plunging into drama with a charged-up visual style.

This is a serviceable, suitably gory and intermittently scary film with some solid action sequences.

The beauty of the Wolfe book was the way it saw through its time and place, dissecting motives and reading minds. The movie sees much, but it doesn't see through.

The Perfect Wave is aimed at a certain audience that will appreciate its message and let slide its deficiencies.

Like "The Godfather," it shows him (Makovski) as a crook with certain standards, surrounded by rats with none.

I admired Intacto more than I liked it, for its ingenious construction and the way it keeps a certain chilly distance between its story and the dangers of popular entertainment.

Kurosawa was a great artist and so even his lesser work is interesting -- just as we would love to find one last lost play, however minor, by his hero Shakespeare.

The visual style is all Zeffirelli, and it is interesting that the opera-within-the-film is not skimped on, as is usually the case in films containing scenes from other productions.

Gardens of Stone is content to be a slice of life, a story that says some of our best young people went to Vietnam and died there, and those who knew them missed them. We knew that already. Perhaps there is nothing else to be said, but this movie seems to give promise of seeing more deeply, and then it doesn't. Every moment is right, and yet the film as a whole is incomplete.

Julie & Julia is not lacking in entertainment value, especially with the Streep performance. But if the men had been portrayed as more high-spirited, it might have taken on intriguing dimensions.

In its use of locations and sets, it's an impressive achievement by director Dean Wright, whose credits include some of the effects on the "Lord of the Rings" films. If it had not hewed so singlemindedly to the Catholic view and included all religions under the banner of religious liberty, I believe it would have been more effective.

While there are some sparks of creativity in the script by Michael Mitnick and some strong performances (most notably from Shannon and Waterston), it fizzles out under the weight of a pompous and meandering storyline that includes cryptic flashbacks to a wartime encounter, and a strange subplot about the advent of the electric chair.

The warmth of the actors makes it surprisingly tender, considering the premise that is blatantly absurd. If you allow yourself to think for one moment of the paradoxes, contradictions and logical difficulties involved, you will be lost. The movie supports no objective thought.

The movie as a whole looks and occasionally plays better than it is.

So the movie probably contains enough laughs to satisfy the weekend audience. Where it falls short is in the characters and relationships.

Here their hearts are in the right place, but the film tries to say too many things for its running time.

While the actors do a yeoman’s job in presenting their characters with aplomb (especially Jesse Metcalfe, as Wesley’s lawyer), the entire film simply comes off as a two-hour, jazzed-up movie version of a sermon.

The Theory of Flying is actually fairly enjoyable. At least it doesn't drown its message in syrup and cornball sentiment.

There's not a song I wouldn't hear again with pleasure, or a clip that might not make me smile, but as a whole, it's not much. Like cotton candy, it's better as a concept than as an experience.

The poems can be read. The film must stand on its own, apart from the poems, and I'm afraid it doesn't. One admires the energy and inventiveness that Holland, Thewlis and DiCaprio put into the film, but one would prefer to be admiring it from afar.

What the film gains at Bakshi’s hand is a very clever bag of animator’s tricks, most of which serve to make Tolkien’s characters palpable after all those years on paper.

But the film is not as amusing as the premise, and there were long stretches when I'd had quite enough of Mrs. Doubtfire.

3-D is a distraction and an annoyance.

This is a story that has been told time and again in the movies, and sometimes the performances overcome the condescension of the formula.

Bad Grandpa obviously is not for everyone, but Johnny Knoxville and “Jackass” fans will eat it up.

It closes a chapter in history, but scarcely brings it to life.

IF never quite soars, never fully grabs our hearts, never fully captivates our imagination.

Not even the star power of Clooney and Pitt can elevate this beyond the level of a passable, disposable thriller.

Observant with mannered edits, Jem Cohen’s modest story delivers a character sketch and a traveler’s essay.

It isn't a successful movie but is sometimes a very interesting one, and there is real charm and comic agility by the two leads.

Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run has some very funny moments, and you'll laugh a lot, but in the last analysis it isn't a very funny movie. It isn't really a movie at all. I suspect it's a list of a lot of things Woody Allen wanted to do in a movie someday, and the sad thing is he did them all at once.

The story is sometimes overwritten, often overwrought, includes an overheard conversation on the "Nancy Drew" level, and yet holds our attention and contains surprises right until the end.

You watch, you are absorbed, and from scene to scene, Henry Fool seems to be adding up, but then your hand closes on air. I am left unsure of my response - of any response.

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.

Honey doesn't have a shred of originality (except for the high-energy choreography), but there's something fundamentally reassuring about a movie that respects ancient formulas; it's like a landmark preservation program.

It's pleasant enough as a date movie, but that's all.

The Host is top-heavy with profound, sonorous conversations, all tending to sound like farewells. The movie is so consistently pitched at the same note, indeed, that the structure robs it of possibilities for dramatic tension.

While I admired it in an abstract way, I felt repelled by the material on a visceral level.

Many of the parts of City Hall are so good that the whole should add up to more, but it doesn't.

It's pleasant and amusing. If I had seen it before I was born, I would have loved it.

Dante's Peak, written by Leslie Bohem and directed by Roger Donaldson, follows the disaster formula so faithfully that if you walk in while the movie is in progress, you can estimate how long the story has to run. That it is skillful is a tribute to the filmmakers.

There has to come a time when inspiration gives way to habit, and I think the Pink Panther series is just about at that point. That's not to say this film isn't funny -- it has moments as good as anything Sellers and Edwards have ever done -- but that it's time for them to move on.

The characters aren’t consistent, and Cliff eventually becomes so unbelievable that we just stop caring. The movie’s ending is an exercise in plot; its beginning and its music deserve better than that.

I found In the Land of Blood and Honey to be moving and involving, but somehow reduced by its melodrama to a minor key. The scale of the ages-old evil and religious hatred in the region seemed to make the fates of these particular characters a matter of dramatic convenience.

The artistry is peaceful and comforting to the eyes but not especially stirring. Given the pictorial extremes that Studio Ghibli has gone to in the past, "Up on Poppy Hill" is weak tea.

Has too much docudrama and not enough soul.

What is best about the movie are the sequences where it permits itself to establish a child's-eye point of view, in which comic books, fantasy and reality are all combined into a terrific adventure.

A high-speed, high-tech kiddie thriller that's kinda cute but sorta relentless.

It is also a film of controlled visual style; Kitano's compositions are like arrangements of bodies in space and time. That said, and with all due respect, I expected a better time.

The movie is flimsy, glib, and occasionally pretty funny.

Wild Mountain Thyme comes close to winning our hearts based on the performances and the lush County Mayo scenery and the sheer romanticism of it all, but writer-director Shanley keeps us at arm’s distance in the climactic sequences, when we should be swept up in the story of Rosemary and Anthony but we’re left exasperated at the forced eccentricity of it all.

The description sounds like a real-life fish-out-of-water tale crossed with a sports movie. But the film wants to be more than that, and I'm on the fence about how well it succeeds.

Did I like the film? Yeah, kinda, but not enough to recommend. The first film arrived with freshness and an unexpected zing, but this one seems too content to follow in its footsteps.

Some misfires are far more interesting than others, and that’s certainly the case with director/co-writer Jeff Baena’s “Spin Me Round,” a restaurant-themed romp that starts off in rom-com land, veers off into territory hinting at the strange and disturbing darkness of a “Midsommar” or an “Eyes Wide Shut,” and winds up somewhere in between, coming across as half-baked and undercooked.

Princess Kaiulani is much remembered in Hawaii, much forgotten on the mainland, and the subject of this interesting but creaky biopic.

Fatman skids and slides and careens between genres and never finds solid footing in any one place, and ultimately winds up as an interesting failed experiment.

It shouldn’t necessarily be the case that a film focusing on the collateral details of the shooting, after the fact, would feel dull and uninvolving, but this writing/directing debut by journalist Peter Landesman does, with the exception of a few particularly interesting revelations.

The message of inspiration is strong and certainly qualifies as solid family entertainment. I only wish there were fewer trite truisms scattered throughout the script and less predictable dialogue for the solid troupe of actors to deliver.

I have no idea if this movie was made stoned. Like its predecessors by Cheech and Chong, it might as well have been.

Joe Bell never quite packs the dramatic punch the real-life story deserves.

Sometimes you see a play and you can imagine it being a movie. Sometimes you see a small movie like this, and you can imagine it working better as an intimate stage play.

It leads to one of those endings where you sit there wishing they'd tried a little harder to think up something better.

We know Kline can play kooky (he won an Oscar as Otto in "A Fish Called Wanda"), and he does it very well, but the effort can become exhausting after a while.

The movie's premise devalues any relationship, makes futile any friendship or romance, and spits, not into the face of destiny, but backward into the maw of time. It even undermines the charm of compound interest.

There is no one in the movie to provide a reasonable reaction to anything; the adults are all demented, evil, or, in the case of Mr. Poe, stunningly lacking in perception, and the kids are plucky enough, but rather dazed by their misfortunes.

Gareth Edwards’ ambitious and visually striking AI parable “The Creator” is a mashup of familiar elements from so many science fiction and war movies that we’re tempted to say it actually could have been written by AI. But I’m not sure artificial intelligence is capable of creating such a shamelessly schmaltzy, cornball script that at times makes Michael Bay’s films feel subtle by comparison.

The speeches reel on and on, talky and redundant, like an essay in a polemical magazine. Eventually we’ve had enough. The movie has everything it needs to be a successful satire on advertising, and more.

Is the film worth seeing? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it is exactly what it is, and no, for the same reason.

I object to the movie not on sociological grounds but because I suspect a real geisha house floated on currents deeper and more subtle than the broad melodrama on display here.

I didn't laugh much. I don't think the Stooges are funny, although perhaps I might once have. Some of the sight gags were clever, but meh. The three leads did an admirable job of impersonation. I think this might be pretty much the movie Stooges fans were looking for.

Chasing Madoff is not a very good documentary, but it's a very devastating one.

A well-made thriller with a lot of good acting, but the death of Elisabeth Campbell is so unnecessarily graphic and gruesome that by the end I felt sort of unclean.

The movie is broad and clumsy, and the dialogue cannot be described as witty, but a kind of grandeur creeps into the screenplay by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson.

Matrix Resurrections is a great-looking film and Reeves and Moss remind us of what an iconic team they made in the trilogy, but the themes of finding one’s identity, free will, taking leaps of faith in order to serve the greater good, humans against machines — we already hashed all that out back in the day, and ultimately this feels more like a warmed-over tribute to the past than a bold and fresh new chapter.

A perfectly acceptable brainless action thriller.

The problem with Code 46 is that the movie, filled with ideas and imagination, is murky in its rules and intentions. I cannot say I understand the hows and whys of this future world, nor do I much care, since it's mostly a clever backdrop to a love affair that would easily teleport to many other genres.

The one element in the movie that is not standard and that does have some energy is the TV show itself, with Dawson's performance as the egotistical, sleaze-bag host.

The idea of the president's daughter being held captive isn't blindingly original (it's an alarmingly dangerous occupation), but placing the story on a space station is a masterstroke, since we're about filled up to here with prison movies set on Earth.

Take out the gangsters, pump up the Shogun role, give Taimak and Vanity a little more screen time, and you'd have a great entertainment instead of simply a great near-miss.

Some of these stories are fascinating and some are heartbreaking, but together they seem too contrived.

Because it is light and stylish and good-hearted, it is quite possible to enjoy, in the right frame of mind. This is more of a movie to see on video, on an empty night when you need something to hurl at the gloom.

It comes to life in the dance sequences, and then drifts away again.

I think Dwayne Johnson has a likable screen presence and is a good choice for an innocuous family entertainment like this.

Suspect is a well-made thriller, but it was spoiled for me by an extraordinary closing scene where Cher, as the defense attorney, solves the case with all of the logic of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

This is a well-meaning film with a good idea that unfortunately stumbles on its way to its less-than-satisfying end.

The problem with "Nicholas and Alexandra" is that it considers the Russian Revolution from, in some ways, the least interesting perspective.

The problems resulting from the switch of identities are fairly predictable, but fun: This is one of the better recent Disney productions.

It's not the idea that people will kill each other for entertainment that makes Series 7 jolting. What the movie correctly perceives is that somewhere along the line we've lost all sense of shame in our society.

Despite the filmmakers’ best attempts, the latest screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragic love story Romeo & Juliet lands with a dull thud.

The good news: Hardy creates two memorable characters, making some bold and always entertaining if not entirely successful choices. The bad news: Somehow, the fictionalized version of the terrifying, violent and twisted Krays manages to be pedestrian and derivative for long stretches.

Some of the bits work and others don't, but no one seems to be keeping score, and that's part of the movie's charm.

The movie, unfortunately, doesn't really work; it's one of those films where the characters always seem to be Behaving, as if ordinary life has to be jacked up into eccentricity.

Has little islands of humor and even perfection, floating in a sea of missed marks and murky intentions.

Sam and Frankie are certainly interesting enough that a film about them coming to grips with this hidden truth would have been justified. It also would probably have been harder to write than this one, so People Like Us marches on with a coy little smile, toying with Frankie and the audience.

[A] basically brainless but intermittently adrenalizing, mostly-just-for-kids reboot.

You cannot do in real life most of the things the characters in these movies do, because of the unfortunate restrictions imposed by Newton's Laws, but what the heck: It's fun to watch.