For all the gorgeous visuals in Brighton and Venice, and the scandalous-for-its-time storyline about a married man carrying on a torrid love affair with another man when being gay was literally a crime, My Policeman never really resonates.

We’re only about 20 minutes into the half-baked, ultra-lightweight, almost instantly forgettable rom-com “Ticket to Paradise” when our hearts start to sink, as we realize this big-screen re-teaming of Julia Roberts and George Clooney is quite likely going to be sideswiped and eventually sunk by a leaden screenplay that doesn’t come close to maximizing their massive respective star power.

I saw it a third time. By then I had moved beyond the immediate shock of the material and was able to focus on what a well-made film it was; how concisely Solondz gets the effects he's after.

The movie is not in any sense a musical featuring this band (which, as nearly as I could tell, does not have a name). The soundtrack has a lot of music, freely selected from pop hits old and new, but the running gag is that the band never gets to play, and so we never get to hear it.

Twins is not a great comedy - it's not up there with Reitman's "Ghostbusters" and DeVito is not as funny as he was in "Ruthless People" and "Wise Guys" - but it is an engaging entertainment with some big laughs and a sort of warm goofiness.

I know Letters to Juliet is a soppy melodrama, and I don’t mind in the least. I know the ending is preordained from the setup. I know the characters are broad and comforting stereotypes. In this case, I simply don’t care. Sometimes we have personal reasons for responding to a film.

The Island runs 136 minutes, but that's not long for a double feature. The first half of Michael Bay's new film is a spare, creepy science fiction parable, and then it shifts into a high-tech action picture. Both halves work.

Right up until an ending straight out of a mediocre rom-com from the early 2000s, You People never feels like more than a series of stitched-together scenes making some legitimate but obvious points about racial differences.

The movie is funny and entertaining in all the usual ways, yes, but I was grateful that it tried for more: that it was actually about something, that it had an original premise, that it used satire and irony and had sly undercurrents.

In the borderline trifling but consistently amusing and wry period piece My Salinger Year, Qualley has the opportunity to carry the story, and she delivers an effortlessly endearing performance in a literary adventure that plays like The Devil Wears Prada meets Can You Ever Forgive Me, only at lower stakes.

The movie is a pleasant, inoffensive comedy. It's indifferently acted, especially by James Hampton in the lead, and it's too talky. It has some success with making its youngest camel cute - although not as cute as Benji by several miles.

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness gets off to an intriguing start. But then the movie loses its way.

Strangely enough, Ralph Nelson's Charly succeeds as a movie for reasons having little to do with the plot. As the story of a personality in crisis, it works. We care about Charly. But the whole scientific hocus-pocus, which causes his crisis, is irrelevant and weakens the movie by distracting us.

Here is an unsuccessful movie with some surprisingly successful scenes. It has moments when it is electrifying and passages where it slows to a walk.

The kind of movie that leaves you with fundamental objections. But that's after it's over. While it's playing, it's surprisingly good.

It's only 76 minutes long, but although kids will like it, their parents will be sneaking looks at their watches.

There is nothing wrong with the performances. All of the actors are professionals, although none have as much fun as Shelley Winters, who is the actor everyone remembers from the 1972 movie.

This is a slick con, all flash and no substance. Now You See Me seems awfully sure of itself, with self-important, intrusive music, sweeping tracking shots and actors chewing up the scenery.

I wonder who the movie was made for. Smaller kids, I'm afraid, will find it both slow and depressing, especially the parts about why God allows bad things to happen.

Funny Farm is kind of a loony, off-center comedy version of Hill's "The World According to Garp," another movie about strange people in bizarre situations.

Airport 1975 is good, exciting, corny escapism and the kind of movie you would not want to watch as an in-flight film.

MacLaine and Cage are really very good here.

The two leads are not inspired. Jake Gyllenhaal could make the cover of a muscle mag, but he plays Dastan as if harboring Spider-Man's doubts and insecurities. I recall Gemma Arterton as resembling a gorgeous still photo in a cosmetics ad.

Dark Skies is a bore that even the most forgiving genre buffs will find difficult to defend or endure.

The one saving grace in Halloween III is Stacey Nelkin, who plays the heroine. She has one of those rich voices that makes you wish she had more to say and in a better role. But watch her, too, in the reaction shots: When she's not talking, she's listening.

Sugar Hill is a dark, bloody family tragedy, told in terms so sad and poetic that it transcends its genre and becomes eloquent drama. [25 Feb 1994, p.33]

Elles has a surprisingly deep performance in a disappointingly shallow movie. The performance, acute and brave, is by Juliette Binoche.

Cowboys & Aliens has without any doubt the most cockamamie plot I've witnessed in many a moon.