At Middleton is an innocuous romantic comedy.

Non-narrative films can be opaque in deep ways. Visitors slips into pseudo-profundity. That said, I’d see it again.

Superman III is the kind of movie I feared the original "Superman" would be. It's a cinematic comic book, shallow, silly, filled with stunts and action, without much human interest.

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 lot of Murder at 1600 is well -done. Characters are introduced vividly,; there's a sense of realism in the White House scenes, and some of the dialogue by Wayne Beach and David Hodgin hits a nice ironic note. But then the movie kicks into auto - pilot. The last third of the film is a ready-made action movie plug-in.

Romero loses momentum in the closing passages because he has too many loose ends to keep track of. Somewhere within this movie’s two hours or so is hidden an absolutely spellbinding 90-minute thriller.

There's a good story buried somewhere in this melee.

Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva re-creates a youthful road trip with a head trip at the end in Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, more character sketch than psychedelic sojourn.

A fairly competent recycling of familiar ingredients, given an additional interest because of Harrison Ford's personal appeal.

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.

The movie is ambitious, has good energy and is well-acted, but tells a familiar story in a familiar way. The parallels to Brian De Palma's "Scarface" are underlined by scenes from that movie which are watched by the characters in this one.

There is a very good movie named "Before Sunset" that begins more or less where this one ends. Which tells you something right there.

The movie is sort of a sideways version of "Sideways," even down to a scene where the two men join two women for dinner. The difference is, in "Sideways" the guys desperately want to impress the women, and in The Thing About My Folks, they want to impress each other.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang contains a lot of comedy and invention, but doesn't much benefit from its clever style. The characters and plot are so promising that maybe Black should have backed off and told the story deadpan, instead of mugging so shamelessly for laughs.

A smaller picture like this, shot out of the mainstream, has a better chance of being quirky and original. And quirky it is, even if not successful.

All plausibility is gone, we sit back, detached, to watch stunt men and special effects guys take over a movie that promised to be the kind of story audiences could identify with.

There are so many Wes-ian constructs at play here, so many deliberate attempts to keep us at a distance, it’s as if we’re standing on a sidewalk in the rain, looking through a thick window at a painting hanging on a distant wall. We’re too busy thinking about what we’re seeing to feel much of anything at all.

By the end of the film I conceded, yes, there are good performances and the period is well captured, but the movie didn't convince me of the feel and the flavor of its experiences.

Artfully designed to appeal to lovers of romance and books, but by the end of the film I was not convinced it knew much about either.

Ice-T's streetwise humor saves this from an exercise in silliness. [16 Apr 1994, p.24]

Adam Driver (who has now played a French squire and an Italian fashion heir in consecutive Ridley Scott movies) and Lady Gaga have legit chemistry together, and it’s still a kick to see Al Pacino roaring like a lion in winter. But Hayek and Irons are playing cardboard-thin characters, Leto flounders about as if he’s in a movie all his own, and “House of Gucci” feels coldly calculating when it should have been flush and warm with scandalous sensationalism.

Yet again we have a film with a lovely, life-affirming, uplifting message — unfortunately delivered in such a heavy-handed, gooey-sweet manner that audiences will exit the theater in a near-diabetic coma.

The movie has the potential to be a truly great story about communication between alien species; it could have been a space thriller with a mind and a heart. Instead, it gives us an alien that is too human, too familiar. It takes that amazing planet and gives it food, water, gravity and atmosphere that are suitable for both humans and Dracs. It depends on plot gimmicks like the convenient arrival of enemies and the equally convenient arrival of friends to the rescue. It doesn't dare enough.

In drawing out his effects, Amenabar is a little too confident that style can substitute for substance. As our suspense was supposed to be building, our impatience was outstripping it.

There is real wit in Glover's performance. And wit, too, in R. Lee Ermey's performance as the boss, which draws heavily on Ermey's real-life experience as a drill sergeant.

Johnnie To, the director, is highly respected in this genre, and I suppose he does it about as well as you'd want it to be done, unless you wanted acting and more coherence.

I feel something is missing. There had to be dark nights of the soul. Times of grief and rage. The temptation of nihilism. The lure of despair. Can a 13-year-old girl lose an arm and keep right on smiling?

Based on the novel of the same name by M.T. Anderson, the third effort from the talented Finley (“Thoroughbreds,” “Bad Education”) features some impressively staged sequences and terrific performances, but awkwardly straddles the fence between biting social commentary and dark humor, never quite finding its footing and ending on a curiously flat note.