The movie is in the naughty-but-nice British tradition in which characters walk on the wild side but never seem to do anything else there.

If someone could give you a pill that allowed you to live for 500 years, would you take it? Not me.

This is a good idea for a movie. Unfortunately, in Brainstorm it remains basically an idea. The characters take such a secondary importance to the gadget that we never feel much for them.

Whatever else it may be, Frank Zappa’s “200 Motels” is a joyous, fanatic, slightly weird experiment in the uses of the color videotape process. If there is more that can be done with videotape, I do not want to be there when they do it.

Bad Words is the kind of pitch-black dark comedy that makes you wince even as you give up on stifling the chuckles.

Linda is a truly good woman, and Rachael Harris' performance illuminates Natural Selection.

Even though Uncle Drew is outlandish and predictable and downright corny, I loved the positive energy of this film, I got a kick out of the winning performances from a cast of All-Star comic actors and All-Star, well, All-Stars — and I laughed out loud at a steady diet of inside-basketball jokes.

Although the movie centers on well-made action scenes and contains a couple of tidy surprises, its strength comes from the portrait of this soldier on the edge.

In his press notes, Winterbottom adds: “We didn’t make the moral too obvious, or too heavy-handed.” And they don’t. But the bottom line is unmistakable.

The past traps the present, fate smothers spontaneity, and all of the dialog sounds like Dialog - not what people would say, but what characters would say. The film is depressing for some of the right reasons, and all of the wrong ones.

The film chronicles their criminal career in a low-key, meandering way; we're hanging out with them more than we're being told a story.

Close never steps wrong, never breaks reality. My heart went out to Albert Nobbs, the depth of whose fears are unimaginable. But it is Janet McTeer who brings the film such happiness and life as it has, because the tragedy of Albert Nobbs is that there can be no happiness in her life. The conditions she has chosen make it impossible.

Because the stories are so skillfully threaded together, the movie doesn't feel like an exercise: Each of the stories stands on its own.

Most movie characters are like Greek gods and comic book heroes: We learn their roles and powers at the beginning of the story, and they never change. Here are complex, troubled, flawed people, brave enough to breathe deeply and take one more risk with their lives.

Minghella does a fine job of capturing the essence of the 21st century talent competition show and all its corny, addictive allure.

While Southpaw will surprise almost no one who has seen a fair amount of boxing movies, Fuqua’s direction and the excellent performances keep the action humming.

Instant Family has heart and good intentions. It’s a shame the journey is such a bumpy ride as it takes us all over the map.

While Extraction 2 doesn’t match the original action thriller from 2020 as it embraces so many clichés I lost count, it’s still a rousing international adventure with some incredible battles that will leave you feeling exhausted FOR the actors (and their stunt doubles). This is the kind of movie that leaves it all out there on the field.

A cheerfully twisted horror/comedy/sci-fi mash-up with a surprisingly sweet heart lurking beneath all the bloody-rinse-and-repeat hijinks, which aren’t all that bloody anyway.

Writer-director John Ridley and star Regina King get right to it in the Netflix original film “Shirley,” a no-frills, straightforward and inspirational biopic of the iconic and pioneering Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress and the first Black candidate for a major party nomination for president.

[An] informing if not inflaming documentary.

Above all, it contains characters I care for, played by actors I admire.

This is a messy, confusing, uninvolving mishmash of old-school practical effects and CGI battles that feels … off nearly every misstep of the way. It’s like watching a master musician play a piano he somehow doesn’t realize is out of tune.

Christine is, of course, utterly ridiculous. But I enjoyed it anyway. The movies have a love affair with cars, and at some dumb elemental level we enjoy seeing chases and crashes. In fact, under the right circumstances there is nothing quite so exhilarating as seeing a car crushed, and one of the best scenes in Christine is the one where the car forces itself into an alley that's too narrow for it.

This isn't a strict remake of Sam Raimi's hugely influential 1981 horror classic, but it does include the basic framework and some visual nods to the original. On its own, it's an irredeemable, sadistic torture chamber reveling in the bloody, cringe-inducing deaths of some of the stupidest people ever to spend a rainy night in a remote cabin in the woods.

Thor: Love and Thunder is one of the goofiest and least consequential sagas in MCU history — an allegedly wild and wacky but ultimately disappointing and disjointed chapter in the ongoing story of the God of Thunder, who seems to get more clueless with each passing movie.

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.

This is no piece of pretentious fluff. It’s a grim and nasty but wickedly entertaining bit of business, seasoned with sharp little plot turns before an admittedly ludicrous but dramatically satisfying twist-on-top-of-a-twist ending.