Pugach's selfishness, his inability to detach love from gratification, is the key to this crazy story.

It’s a sidewinding but often effective L.A. crime thriller saddled with the wrong leading man.

For the film to be truer to the school’s reputation, it would have had to dig a little deeper.

Natasha Richardson glides through the film version of Patrick McGrath's novel Asylum in various states of fear, desire and undress, a swan among Yorkshire frumps.

Much like Bonello’s previous film, “Yves Saint Laurent,” Nocturama revels in pure experience. But the sum total of its gliding abstractions is a mite brainless.

One of those movies that starts like a house afire, catches you firmly in its narrative grip and then suddenly blows itself out, not really going out with a whimper but with a big, bad, ludicrous bang.

Fred Claus seems a clever installment, not a seasonal classic, a buffet whose many nibbles you sample, move on and quickly forget.

Arnold's interpretation is taciturn, often entirely without dialogue, though it becomes increasingly conventional in its scene structure as it goes and as the actors hand off the key roles. In reality it's a bit of a slog. ... The movie plays like an idea for a 'Wuthering Heights' adaptation.

At its mean, snakelike best, it’s also a brutally assured commercial action picture, unburdened by the moral qualms or unnerving ambiguity of its predecessor.

Team America's strengths are in its musical numbers, especially Kim Jong Il's mournful "I'm So Ronery" (translation: "Lonely"), a heartfelt peek into the dictator's soul.

The whole movie plays like an improbable blend of "Repulsion," "High Noon" and the archetypal low-budget rape/revenge shocker "I Spit on Your Grave." Queasy audiences beware, but midnight-movie bookers take note.

A pleasant, leisurely 71 minutes, frequently beguiling thanks to Gurwitch's soft-sell version of the urbane, Second City-esque female noodge.

It's well-crafted, but I wish the film showed us an additional dimension or two of the central figure, who once said the great challenge in writing, any kind of writing, is "to write the same way you are."

Players is a perfectly fine — occasionally better-than-fine — romantic comedy starring well-known TV actors who know their way around this kind of material. It’s light and bouncy. There’s plenty to like here.

As a whole, though, the movie is much less magnetic or believable than its star.

I liked Death on the Nile a fair bit more than Branagh’s previous Christie film, partly because it’s a less predictable and schematic narrative to begin with, and partly because Branagh the actor has a way of outfoxing his own pedestrian direction.

Vince Vaughn, plainly enjoying himself, plays his casually astonished sergeant, who encourages hazing and beatings of Doss.

By the end, the movie has become a shameless and, yes, effective ode to fathers and sons everywhere.

It's a light, slight premise that seems more suited to a Saturday Night Live sketch than a full-length movie, but it plays pleasantly enough in its video incarnation, where modesty sometimes can be a virtue.

Katyn will not join Wajda's list of masterworks. In its final flashback, however, when we're taken back to the forest and the details of what really happened, we see what we must see, the clear-eyed way we should see it.

A fine, handsome-looking costume drama that works best as a historical account of a brutal era. But as a portrait of the Marquis de Sade, it is not titillating in the over-the-top manner of "Quills."

It's a weird little movie that's amusing enough while you watch it, offering fine acting moments and pungent insights into modern L.A.'s show-biz and media subcultures. But it doesn't leave you with much.

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.

Songwriter bio on Gus Kahn (Danny Thomas); Day is his long-suffering mainstay. [13 Apr 2007, p.C5]

The film's mood and style are pitched somewhere between '60s American indie and French New Wave and, as you watch these people, they seem painfully, amusingly on-target. They may irritate you a little, but that's the right response.

It's amusing but not a comedy, never losing its heart to irony or sarcasm. While Paddleton takes its time to get there, it ultimately reaches a deeply poignant conclusion. If you're patient enough, that alone could be worth the trip.

The ability to subjugate everything to the story is both Avildsen's strength and his weakness. Lean on Me, with its warts-and-all hero, its driving rhythm, its carefully calibrated climaxes, is a finely tuned machine. It also happens to be a steamroller. [3 March 1989, p.Q]

All these good actors and all Crystal's sass and witty candor can't bring back the heyday of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges. Or even, most of the time, their off-days.

The movie leaves us with the image of rich folks frantically dancing the Charleston because if they stop, they'll have nothing. The point is as untrue as it is simplistic.

Guilty by Suspicion isn't a bad movie, but it isn't compelling entertainment either. [15 Mar 1991, p.C]

Many, I suspect, will fall for The Prestige and its blend of one-upsmanship and science fiction. I prefer "The Illusionist," the movie that got here first.

Highway Courtesans carries a feeling of truth, of bravely facing problems that are pressing and real. It's a good, informative piece on the oldest profession--and on how the world differs from what we usually see in the movies.

You know what’s not bad? Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Dumber than a box of lugnuts, but superior to the Michael Bay-directed schlocktaculars that ran as long as 165 minutes. The new “Transformers” movie clocks in at 117 minutes, a lot of them pretty zippy.

Rightly, Jolie didn't want to tell the man's entire life story. But as is, at too-convenient dramatic junctures, the screenplay darts back into flashbacks of Zamperini's childhood or young adulthood, when we should really be sticking with the crisis at hand.

Stupid, predictable and fairly funny.

Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. [20 December 1996, Friday, p.J]

By turns brilliant and simplistic, moving and preposterous, the movie takes one of the ultimate hot-button American issues -- the morality of capital punishment -- and dissolves it into a volatile mix of psychological thriller and socio-political fable.

Despite the actors, the visuals and Forster's directorial swagger, the movie lacks impact.

This Civil War epic romance is exquisitely shot, lovingly designed and populated with talented name actors. In terms of pedigree and sheer, lush filmmaking, the movie has class written all over it. And that's part of the problem.

Our Flick of the Week is The Bedroom Window, which begins as a gripping, Hitchcock-like thriller about an innocent man wrongly accused, but then turns into an unintentional laugh-a-minute with a preposterous conclusion. It's a shame that the film couldn't sustain its tension, because in some ways it is the best traditional thriller since "Jagged Edge." [16 Jan 1987, p.A]

If only Bad Education engaged the heart as much as the head, Almodovar's fractured tale might have risen above its alienating noir conventions.

Roos does an admirable job balancing the tragedy and comedy, but he bogs down every character with so much baggage that it's impossible to render them honestly without the captions.

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

It's a mess, but wow, is it ever a fun, fascinating mess. Those are always so much more thrilling than any of the formulaic superhero movies that parade through multiplexes all year.

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

Both funny and foul, alternately frank and full of it.

Sheridan's ensemble ensures that "Get Rich," the film, comes to life around the edges, if not at its center.

Like a relentlessly charismatic political candidate offering the moon, stars and a viable health-care plan, Bob Roberts promises much but ultimately fails to deliver.

To be clear: The odds are in favor of you hating it. I hated a lot of it when I saw a barely dry work-in-progress print, 163 minutes long, at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s 19 minutes shorter and better now, though “better” is relative when you’re dealing with a whatzahoozy such as this.

While I wish the story and the banter had some snap (Groot had better dialogue, speaking of Vin Diesel movies), and while I wish the electromagnet-derived mayhem in F9 led to a truly magnetic movie, sometimes good enough is enough.

The beauty of the film is undeniable, as is the cruelty of the bull's lives. (This is not a picture for animal-sensitive viewers.)

I admire this film’s craft. And I would’ve appreciated a messier, inner-life impulse to go with it.

Caine and Law may not be playing human beings, but Pinter’s sense of humor is at least more interesting than Shaffer’s. Caine in particular appears to enjoy honing his cold-eyed stare.

It's easy to watch.

Kutcher delivers a credibly serious performance as Evan, and he's surrounded by a skilled supporting cast.

The cast's newcomers mix and mingle with ease with the hardened alums of Disney and Nickelodeon TV series.

Thankfully, Reynolds (bearded, looking a bit like Jason Lee) adds some scrappiness and humor to a series that might otherwise have collapsed under self-parody.

It's not classic horror, but it'll do. [13 Jan 1995, p.18]

James Cagney had his crack at a Huey Long-like character in this overlooked 1953 feature directed by Raoul Walsh; the film suffers from a near-complete lack of originality but Cagney and Walsh, here as always ("The Roaring Twenties," "White Heat"), strike some sparks together. [01 Nov 1992, p.15C]

The animation itself is just OK. And the reworked script, despite some funny one-liners, is pretty much there just to pull the story along to its inevitable conclusion. [19 March 1999, Friday, p. A]

I found the first 30 minutes of Wreck-It Ralph a lot of fun, the second and third 30 minutes progressively more routine.

It's less a western than a loping buddy picture.

Perhaps it's no fun because it's just too real. There's never a moment of wondering what is going on.

This should've been a really good picture, especially with Hillcoat's crack ensemble. Instead it's a stilted battle waged between the material and the interpreters. It's up to you, the thirsty customer, to decide who won.

A blend of the classical and the trite, the beautiful and tawdry, the genuinely moving and the cornball. Oddly, producer-director-star Costner often can't seem to tell the difference.

Smile 2 goes in a newish direction, to frustrating mixed results — but it’s a mixed bag you can respect because it’s not hackwork and it’s trying new things.

It’s a grubby, fairly intriguing genre exercise given a weird, did-it-myself-in-a-hurry visual quality.

Too many scenes in European Vacation peter out about a gag or two short for the film to be as funny as it ought to be. But the basic amiability of the humor is as pleasant as it is surprising.

This is the debut feature for Columbia College graduate Gilio, and it shows great promise.

For the record: Josh Duhamel brings some welcome exuberance to the role of the goofball suitor, Hobart. Like Oh, he's fun to watch. This is something never to be underestimated

It's one of the more authentically moving entries in the genre, powered by a gripping lead performance from "This Is Us" star Chrissy Metz.

A roughly mixed but interestingly plotted offshoot of "Death of a Salesman."

If we strip away the comets raining fire on the earth, this film is about how the ways in which how we treat each other can be a matter of life or death. Even in that darkness, it dares to have a little hope.

Directed, frantically, by Jaume Collet-Serra, written by Brad Ingelsby, Run All Night promises a sprint punctuated by a lot of gunfire, and bleeding, and bodies. Mission accomplished.

It has moments of Guest-like faux earnestness that instantly mark it as one of the smartest and most insightful comedies of the year. But imitation only takes you so far, and by the film's sagging final 30 minutes, it's evident "NBT" isn't quite up to the master's standards.

The character played by Ryder is really the centerpiece of the story, and she is the best part of this slight story...The rest of the movie is a fairly standard portrait of small-town life, with characters in more pain than is typical of such films. [12 Oct 1990, p.C]

It’s a moderately diverting sequel. That means it’s also a distinct drop down from the 2017 origin story.

It's the centrifuge around which the rather uneven film whirls, and Malek keeps it going with his sheer will and talent, aided by a parade of legendary Queen hit singles.

No Man’s Land is an interesting twist on the border drama, daring to depict Mexico as complex and nuanced country: welcoming, fascinating and menacing in equal parts. But the story still centers a white male experience and hero’s journey.

The results fall short of the grown-up comedy about seven-year itches it could've been, asking the Hamlet-like question: to scratch or not to scratch?

It suddenly morphs into one more overly slick, empty show.

At its spiky, intermittent best, Tully is the best work Cody has done in the conventional feature format since “Juno.” And yet I’m all over the place on it.

An emotional and intellectual roller coaster. Moore swings for the fences, as he usually does. But the film, done in Moore's traditionalist maximalist style, is overblown and overstuffed with editorial indulgences. It's clear that stylistically and structurally, less should be more for Moore.

The film's occasional toe-dips into real-world politics, sectarian conflict and the horrors of war are demure and unruffling. What's missing is a point of view beyond Hallstrom's interest in making his actors look as attractive as possible.

It's a real disappointment: too hasty, too scattered and superficial, and, in the end, disappointingly sappy and sentimental.

Pale Rider may be a risk simply because westerns are not in vogue right now at the box office, but fresh and challenging westerns with Clint Eastwood always will be in vogue.

It's reflective of the Ginsburgs' real-life egalitarian marriage, almost never seen in Hollywood films. But the role is so much more than just the typical gender-swapped "spouse on phone" roles most often seen, and Hammer is a delight as the sunny Marty.

The tweaking here feels affectionate, yet you soon suspect that these subjects make for awfully easy pickings.

The material settles for amiably familiar observations about the difficulties of growing old and the glories of being surrounded by beautiful music.

A grim and fairly effective cross between "The Martian" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"?

Fairly inventive and exceedingly manic.

If the romantic comedy Morning Glory clicks with audiences, the McAdams factor surely will be the reason why.

Russian Dolls, like "L'Auberge," has an excellent cast (mostly the same one, in fact) and an impish style and speed that gives it more obvious audience appeal than the average French film.

Notoriety, they won. The revolution, they didn't. That perhaps is the secret message of the film. Dylan was right. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Falls prey to the all-too-contemporary problem of complicating the tale until the ending is not only obvious, but prayed for between yawns. [9 February 1999, Tempo, p.2]

The best thing about the film is Viggo Mortensen’s performance. A stealth talent of many shadings, Mortensen has a way of fitting easily into nearly any period, any milieu.

As is, it's worth seeing, but you may get frustrated at the way Dellal raises provocative questions about ancestry and prejudice, only to lose them in the shuffle of so many mini-portraits of musicians, getting to know each other and each other's foreign yet familiar musical language, on a long 16-city tour.

At its best moments, Romeo Is Bleeding actually is the wickedly funny, violent black comedy it purports to be. [4 Feb 1994, p.C2]