Individual scenes feel authentic, but the story tries to build bridges between loose ends.

The problem with "FD3" is since it is clear to everyone who must die and in what order, the drama is reduced to a formula in which ominous events accumulate while the teenagers remain oblivious.

Thanks in large part to the beautiful work by Daisy Edgar-Jones and the consistently stunning visuals, Where the Crawdads Sing provides just enough marshland entertainment to carry the day.

Dante's Peak, written by Leslie Bohem and directed by Roger Donaldson, follows the disaster formula so faithfully that if you walk in while the movie is in progress, you can estimate how long the story has to run. That it is skillful is a tribute to the filmmakers.

The twist on top of the twist was so amateurish, so hacky, so insulting to the viewer, I’m already thinking about apologizing to you guys for just the one-star demerit.

Needful Things is yet another one of those films based on a Stephen King story that inspires you to wonder why his stories don't make better films. The movie only has one note, which it plays over and over, sort of a Satanic water torture. It's not funny and it's not scary and it's all sort of depressing.

Violet & Daisy won’t be everyone’s cup of tea... But view this as a modern comic book/fairy tale, and it’s easier to accept this saga of girls with guns and the life lessons they eventually confront.

Is there another great modern writer so hard to translate successfully into cinema? Saul Bellow? Again, it's all in the language. The only thing Saul and Gabo have in common is the Nobel Prize. Now that's interesting.

The movie contains elements that make it very good, and a lot of other elements besides. Less is more.

It's the most lugubrious and soppy love story in many a moon, a step backward for director Sam Raimi after "A Simple Plan."

Although the movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene, it has a sweetness that is impossible to discount, and it is often very funny.

Emily Browning's face helps The Uninvited work so well...She makes you fear for her, and that's half the battle. Yet she's so fresh she's ready for a Jane Austen role.

The movie has good special effects and suitably gruesome characters, but it's bloodless.

This is a revenge Western we’ve seen dozens of times before, and the villains aren’t nearly as intimidating and pitch-black evil as they need to be. The end result is a passably entertaining shoot-’em-up with very few surprises.

The film is like a crossword puzzle. It keeps your interest until you solve it. Then it's just a worthless scrap with the spaces filled in.

From the moment Rachael and Stefan look into each other’s eyes while we roll OUR eyes, The Aftermath is a runaway train of cornball cliches.

There’s wit, rudeness, satire, lust and pathos, all effortlessly rolled up together. "Skin Deep" is sort of a filmmaker’s triathalon, and if Edwards doesn’t set any new records, he enters every event.

True Colors requires more than the willing suspension of disbelief; it demands a willful abandonment of incredulity.

True crime procedurals can have a certain fascination, but not when they're jumbled glimpses of what might or might not have happened involving a lot of empty people whose main claim to fame is that they're dead.

It is an assault on all the senses, including common. Walking out, I had the impression I had just seen the video game and was still waiting for the movie.

He seems fueled more by anger and ego than spirituality and essentially abandons his family to play with his guns. It's intriguing, however, how well Butler enlists our sympathy for the character.

If there's anything worse than a movie hammered together out of pieces of bad screenplays, it's a movie made from the scraps of good ones.

The Forgotten is not a good movie, but at least it supplies a credible victim (Moore).

We’re halfway through the movie when the villain’s identity becomes painfully obvious. Spoiler alert: We’re not wrong. The dialogue is often so painful, it’s almost entertaining on some level.

This is one of the most irritating movies of the year.

I liked a lot of it myself, and with me, a few broadswords and leather jerkins go a long way.

It's chirpy, it's bright, there are pretty locations and lots happens. This is the kind of movie that can briefly hold the attention of a cat.

Despite the frequent verbal confrontation scenes in which characters lash out at one another, soap opera style, for lying or serving their selfish interests, Dark Phoenix doesn’t come close to carrying the emotional impact of so many Marvel Universe films where the characters come across as complicated, relatable and three-dimensional.