Overstuffed, formulaic but very easy to take.

The leap from pointing out the hollow values of advertising to a full-scale attack on capitalism is broad, and in trying to make it, Robinson falls into an abyss of speciousness. Nevertheless, his intensely personal style and vision mark him as one of the most promising filmmakers working in England today. [12 May 1989, p.G]

The best of Laggies, both in the writing and the playing, comes in the square-offs between Knightley and Rockwell.

This is an intoxicatingly amusing blend of cynical urbane comedy, slick detection and breezy romance. [24 Jun 2005, p.C6]

Streep once again unnecessarily proves she’s the best in the business with her performance, delivering more in a single quiet line delivery than most actors can achieve.

The movie is hit-and-miss in an unusually clear-cut way. It's funny for 45-50 minutes. Then it's strained and abrasive and entirely too devoted to action-movie tropes for 45-50 minutes, minus end credits. I can recommend the first half.

Phoenix acts his ass off, often entertainingly, and from the hoariest of ancient dark-comic tactics, Aster pulls off the occasional little miracle here and there, especially when LuPone and Posey are around.

Branagh’s portrayal of a somewhat older and wearier Poirot, muted but carefully calibrated, remains two steps ahead of Branagh’s direction.

Moderately funny though immoderately derivative.

The Signal combines the inconstancy of an omnibus film with the blandness of art by committee. The end result feels less like a blend of distinct styles than an opportunistic hodgepodge, a second-hand premise wedded to an attention-grabbing gimmick.

Clooney remains as game as ever, but the way he and McDormand push the energy here, you feel the strain. Pitt, just floating through, comes off best. He doesn't judge the moron he's playing; he just is.

The actors make it work. Greg Kinnear's Coach Vermeil exudes Southern California good vibrations without a lot of fuss or attitude.

For a movie that begins so intriguingly, Boiler Room becomes boilerplate all too quickly.

It is less a film than a puny trampoline -- an occasion, though a grim one, for this most fervently movie-mad of American directors to show off his love for the various pulp genres mooshed together by the 2003 Dennis Lehane novel.

One of those lurid, macabre, amusingly exaggerated B-horror movies beloved by the psychotronic/Joe Bob Briggs crowds.

Bone Lake offers up an appealing surface, but it’s just too shallow to get very far.

Right in the "Rebel Without a Cause" vein, of course, but grittier and less romantic. [16 Jun 2006, p.C8]

An odd little movie and a good one, worthy for what it is and potentially groundbreaking for how it's being made available.

If "Roll Bounce" and "Boyz n the Hood" fell in love and had a PG-13 baby, it would be ATL.

Schumacher's work in The Lost Boys consists of turning undertones into overtones--of taking the latent, the implied and the mysterious, and turning them into the loud and the obvious. He takes a story and turns it into a bunch of scenes, each of which contains its own payoff and none of which seems to draw on what has come before. And in these days of concept films, a story is a terrible thing to waste. [31 Jul 1987, p.D]

I’d place Thanksgiving halfway between “fair” and “good.” Inevitably, Roth can’t keep his baser storytelling and filmmaking instincts at bay forever.

Youth in Revolt isn't bad -- the cast is too good for it to be bad.

So-so. [23 Jan 1997, p.9B]

As a screenplay Tequila Sunrise is a very impressive piece of work. But as a movie, it's knotty and confused. [2 Dec 1988, p.B]

Visceral and suspenseful, Hotel Mumbai is also deeply humane and moving, anchored by searing performances from Patel, Kher, Boniadi and Hammer.

Porter and his ingratiating actors do all they can to humanize the material. The movie works because a lot of that material is engaging and genuinely humane to begin with.

I prefer my horror with a chaser of wit, and Severance, a modest but very lively British import, serves it up in harsh but high style.

Just because it's true to life doesn't mean it can sing.

Don't expect a lot, and you'll probably enjoy Happy, Texas, as I did -- mostly. At the very least, Steve Zahn will make you laugh.

The actors do most of their best work in between the lines. Krieps, especially, provides a subtle symphony of feeling, even as her role confines her to a prescribed range of narrative support. Director Peck’s work is handsome; what it lacks is a true sense of danger, a feeling of history roiling in the present tense.

Finally, a film to unite movie-mad members of Al Qaeda with your neighbor's kid, the one with the crush on Natalie Portman.

A fast-moving adventure with more than dynamic glitz to recommend it.

The title of Robb Moss' documentary, The Same River Twice, draws directly from Greek philosopher Heraclitus' claim that "It is impossible to step in the same river twice."

Roughly the same as the first in terms of quality and style. It delivers without much visual dynamism, and with a determined emphasis on combat. In the 1951 novel the climactic battle between the good Narnians and the bad Telmarines lasted a few pages. The film version of the same battle feels like "The Longest Day."

Professionalism is both Nothing in Common's greatest strength and its greatest limitation. It's a very finely crafted piece, a product of hard work and careful consideration, yet nothing breaks through the craft--there's no personal drive to it.

Alden Ehrenreich resembles a young, somewhat graver Robert Wagner, though he’s a better actor than the young Robert Wagner was. Ehrenreich’s contained, methodical brand of swagger matches up pretty well with the Han Solo we know from the ’77-’83 Harrison Ford edition.

Spectacular, fast, never boring. But it's also one of the more disappointing movies I've seen recently.

The movie's humor is engaging but odd. The script is pretentious but sweet. And the symbolic use of the flying machine-which pulls you back to "Brewster McCloud"-doesn't work very well. But a flawed film like "Arizona Dream," with its wistfulness and pain, is still twice as interesting as most of the bloated, slick, empty successes that tend to get released here, films that look as if they were dreamed up by used-car salesmen in a desert. [6 Jan 1995, p.L]

It's not without its payoffs; I enjoyed a lot of it. But overall last year's "Avengers" delivered the bombastic goods more efficiently than this year's Marvel.

With an uncredited assist from playwright/screenwriter Howard Korder, Hollywoodland features some tart, lively banter and welcome comedic touches.

Less a movie than a loud, heavy, money machine, a think tank where nobody thinks. The movie seems intended to extract maximum profit with minimum artistry -- and if you like having your pockets picked by experts, this is probably the show to see. [15 Mar 1996, p.C]

Smith's strongest suit is writing dialogue that slips smart insights in between pop-culture references and raunchy language.

Hogan is an appealing performer, and Kozlowski has a brisk charm as his love interest. Indeed, the film functions far better as romantic comedy than it does as social satire, building an entertaining sexual suspense as an unacknowledged attraction builds between the two leads.

If Set It Off had concentrated on easy thrills like that well-filmed drive-through-the-walls robbery climax, it might have qualified as pulpy entertainment. Instead, it's that deadliest of beasts: an exploitation movie with pretensions to social significance. [06 Nov 1996, p.1]

Treats its now-mythic Brooklyn Dodger with respect, reverence and love. But who's in there, underneath the mythology?

For all its glitz and gadgets, is markedly inferior in everything but teen appeal.

Like Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused," Outside Providence reminisces vividly, recalling the era fondly but not with too much sugar.

With its welcome lessons on friendship and self-esteem, is not only appropriate for preschoolers, but it also has enough sophistication for older kids.

The director thinks visually, which sounds redundant until you realize how many monster movies are flat, effects-dependent factory jobs. Edwards knows how to use great heights for great effect.

What Ewing and Grady have accomplished here is remarkable--capturing the visceral humanity, desire and unflagging political will of a religious movement.

Quite a bit darker than most mainstream romantic comedies. As you might not expect, it’s also quite a bit more inventive and far wittier than most mainstream romantic comedies.

There's little doubt that Jacob's Ladder is a failure-it's a messy, unsatisfying and often overreaching film-yet it fails in interesting, ambitious ways. It's a must-see disaster. [2 Nov 1990, p.C]

Both script and performance, however, waver between black comedy and more routine international-thriller concerns.

The best thing I can say about "Prelude to a Kiss" is that it seems fresh, daring its talented performers to play a couple in love. In 1992, that seems very bold. [10 Jul 1992, p.C]

Watching this movie has an almost hypnotic effect, like being carried along on a river past terrains both familiar and inexplicably, maddeningly odd.

It's a gleamingly cracked tale of romance gone mad played out on a moonlit ocean voyage that turns into a bizarre, floating nightmare of slapstick perversion. [08 Apr 1994, p.A]

Based on Glenn Stout’s nonfiction account of the same title, “Young Woman and the Sea” gets by on the careful engineering of clichés, Daisy Ridley and a really good piece of irresistibly rousing history.

I did like seeing the (fakey-looking) sheep take flying neck-high leaps at various human throats, in scenes recalling the killer rabbit in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." And I enjoyed the Kiwi dialects. And I suspect King's next film will be better.

By and large this is an admirably sober, responsible piece of work, one that covers much of the same ground as Dances With Wolves but with far less self-importance and New Age babbling. Kleiser's use of the Alaskan landscapes is stirring without dipping into postcard prettiness, and the animal action (which includes a guest appearance by Bart of The Bear) is smooth and expressive.

Corny as it may sound though, it's all true-except, of course, for that mythical movie last-second championship bit.

The Dying Gaul stays interesting even when it asks more and more--too much, probably--of the audience's disbelief suspension.

On the page Shopgirl was a small but fine Chekhovian thing, coasting along on Martin's omniscient narration and witty prose...The movie version locates roughly half of what worked in the novella.

The horrors of apartheid deserve a better treatment than this.

Whimsy and wit are the saving graces of much British movie comedy, and Saving Grace has a decent measure of both.

It's passable.

Reminiscent of classic old Westerns.

It's hard to focus on the travails when the music is so lively and good.

The ultimate shallowness of this film is reflected in the fact that their key bonding moment occurs when they bungee-jump off a bridge together.

The good news is that Vaughn is back in needling, loosey-goosey mode in Made, which he produced with Favreau. The bad news is that by the end, not only do you find him quite resistible, but you also may wish one of the tough guys of this mob comedy would heave him out a window.

So look for (Francis) at the 2000 games in Sydney, which may provide a more heated ending to this lukewarm story.

Like many horror films, it loses steam as it gets more graphic.

The line between cool and cold is a thin one, however. Cool isn't the word for "Thirteen"; it's just smug.

Taken in isolation from the unsatisfying story, the performances are powerful--Knightley’s vivacious, wounded romantic does a great deal to carry the film on sheer personality, while Fiennes is a subtle master at projecting banked menace through his seeming detached ennui.

It's an ensemble piece with a dark, salty mood that reminded me of Robert Altman and Robert Aldrich, with a touch of Francis Ford Coppola. It's notably non-"gung ho."

The enigma not only remains, but, cloaked in Schrader`s mysticism, seems more impenetrable than ever.

A lot of Beautiful Boy is necessarily hard to take, though the script softens the roughest of Nic’s travails. Is this why the movie’s anguish feels more indicated than inhabited? Still: You can’t fault the performers much. Or Chalamet, at all.

What’s missing is not simply surprise, or the pleasurable shock of a new kind of ghost comedy. It’s the near-complete absence of verbal wit, all the more frustrating since Keaton is ready to play, and he’s hardly alone.

The Keanes' story is one of eventual triumph over adversity for Margaret, but Big Eyes struggles on the page to make much of her as a character. Adams struggles as well; she's acting in one movie, a sincere, often anguished one, while Waltz (mugging up a storm) works in an entirely different key.

A movie whose satire proves as lame as its clunky title.

For all its craft and achievement, The Gift -- which has a script that may have needed more rewriting and deepening -- is a good, minor effort; it has some real conviction, even anguish. And it has Blanchett, whose gift as an actress is sometimes transcendent.

Many will forgive all the contrivances and a muted ending that doesn't quite come off. It is, after all, a submarine picture.

A mild off-season cinematic bid for the young and the restless.

Kaufman wants to be bold in his depiction of lovemaking, but he keeps copping out, cutting away from the deed to such time-worn metaphors as booming bongo drums, pots that boil over on stove tops and African dancers gyrating wildly. Were Kaufman's frankness ever to equal the "passion and honesty" he praises in Miller's work, the film would merit at least an NC-21, if not 41. [05 Oct 1990, p.I]

Any movie with the sense, the wit and the visual instincts to introduce Kong the way this one does is fine with me.

Washington, typically, is rock-solid in front of the camera, conveying ample warmth and sympathy. Behind the camera, he's a relatively straightforward storyteller, strategic in his use of lyrical touches.

Isn't novel entertainment, but adults who accompany kids to it are not likely to feel that it is a form of abuse for either of them.

A shockingly powerful screed against racism that also manages to be so well performed and directed that it is entertaining as well. [30 October 1998, Friday, p.A]

It's a shapeless, derivative-but-funny show with another loony parody plot about super-villain Dr. Evil.

Most of the clues in Veronica Mars pertain either to Internet sex tapes or the various surveillance uses of the latest tablets. Anybody who works in tech support will probably enjoy the film a tad more than I did.

Hysteria, however skillfully maintained, should never be mistaken for art-a caution that applies equally to Stone and his subject. [01 Mar 1991]

This minor relationship picture comes and goes, but her (Carter's) performance lingers.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is surprisingly authentic and fun for this kind of nostalgia-baiting remake material, which is naturally formulaic. It’s the focus on character and allowing the actors to shine that makes this one sing, and it should make a star out of Jones, who, like her character, manages to hold it all together.

While On a Clear Day can claim both a surplus of heart and adequate brains, it comes up lacking in the courage department.

Director Lizzie Borden sticks to the business of trying to elicit natural performances from a cast that includes Off-off Broadway actors, actors with almost no credits and, among the men, some who are not actors at all. To a remarkable degree she has succeeded, particularly in the case of Louise Smith, who plays Molly. [13 Mar 1987, p.D]

The movie is a paean to outsiders and reckless love.

You could say that Seraphim Falls, was no better than the typical Westerns of the 1950s and '60s--which I think underrates it. But those typical Westerns were pretty darn good, and so is Seraphim Falls.

If you have any curiosity at all about how a fellow like George Hamilton became a fellow like George Hamilton, My One and Only answers the question by looking, fondly, at his primary caregiver.

Something to Talk About, which is something to see, makes us a delectable present of its own bright, brawling little world: wisecracks, venomous Charity Leagues, horse shows, last dances, skeleton-filled closets and all. [4 Aug 1995, p.C2]