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.