There are scenes that don't even pretend to work. And others that have a sweetness and visual beauty that stops time and simply invites you to share.

Force Ten honors all the obligatory clichés, and then there's a nice twist involving the explosion inside the dam, and then we get the special effects, and then it's over. It doesn't leave much of an impression; a director like Guy Hamilton, a graduate of four of the Bond pictures, can turn out action movies like this in his sleep. This time, alas, that's apparently what he did.

The movie isn't laugh out loud funny, under the circumstances, but it is bittersweet and wistfully amusing; the actors enjoy lachrymosity. We witness the birth of a new genre, the Post-Slasher Movie.

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

It’s not that “The Boys in the Boat” doesn’t have an inspirational impact; it’s that we’re so aware of being pushed in that direction.

Somehow the movie fails to connect with the amazing energy of Hawking's ideas. We're left wanting to know more about either his theories or his life, but what we get is a little of each.

It is not a serious film about its subject, nor is it quite a dark comedy, despite some of Pacino's good lines. The epilogue, indeed, cheats in a way I thought had been left behind in grade school. And yet there are splendid moments.

Since it is by Wong Kar Wai, 2046 is visually stunning. He uses three cinematographers but one style, that tries to evoke mood more than meaning. The movie as a whole, unfortunately, never seems sure of itself. It's like a sketchbook. These are images, tones, dialogue and characters that Wong is sure of, and he practices them, but he does not seem very sure why he is making the movie, or where it should end.

The movie has been produced by Nickelodeon, and will no doubt satisfy its intended audience enormously. It does not cross over into the post-Nickelodeon universe.

You can enjoy the way they create little flashes of wit in the dialogue, which enlivens what is, after all, a formula disaster movie.

The architecture of The Debt has an unfortunate flaw. The younger versions of the characters have scenes that are intrinsically more exciting, but the actors playing the older versions are more interesting. Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds bring along the weight of their many earlier roles. To be sure, the older actors get some excitement of their own, but by then, the plot has lost its way.

The movie isn't set up to tell a story about a boy who was young in the summer of 1942; it insists on presenting itself, instead, as an adult memory of that long-ago summer. We don't learn very much about the boy because the movie's adult point of view refuses to come to terms with him.

We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success.

Baratz doesn't ask any of the obvious questions, preferring to observe uncritically, and if you can do the same, you may find Unmistaken Child worth seeing. I could not, and grew restless.

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.

The Split is the first Hollywood film to deliberately, overtly exploit black-white tensions in American society. On another level, it's a first-rate piece of entertainment.

The performances are often good, including Reno's; he has an interesting, poker-faced way of underplaying scenes that keeps him from being a stereotyped kid.

This put-on-a-happy-face plotline is not nearly as annoying as it sounds. In fact, Swift wisely heads off audience rebellion by having his characters make fun of "Pollyanna" before the viewer can. [24 May 2002, p.13]

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.

The movie seemed the stuff of anecdote, not drama, and as the alleged protagonist, Luca/Franco is too young much of the time to play more than a bystander's role.

Lean on Me wants to be taken as a serious, even noble film about an admirable man. And yet it never honestly looks at Clark for what he really is: a grownup example of the very troublemakers he hates so much, still unable even in adulthood to doubt his right to do what he wants, when he wants, as he wants.

The "Be Kind, Rewind" stickers on patrol car bumper stickers may well address the quick fate of "Two If by Sea," but there will be a lot worse comedies on the rack with greater reputations when that happens. [15 Jan 1996, p.31]

I can't really recommend the film, unless you admire Caine as much as I do, which is certainly possible.

A serviceable if sometimes overwrought biography, with solid performances and the courage to spotlight not only the heroics but the appalling misdeeds committed by the iconic Ms. Mandela.

In the occasionally poignant but ham-handed and only semi-funny Where to Invade Next, Moore is at his shtickiest.

This is a film that moves quietly along but speaks volumes.

Sandler, at the center, is a distraction; he steals scenes, and we want him to give them back.

This is a great-looking movie, a triumph of set design and special effects, creating a fantasy world halfway between suburbia and a prehistoric cartoon.