Does it succeed? Sort of. It helps if you don't mind your boxing movies made up of massive granite chunks of previous boxing movies.

Though based on a graphic novel, both movies have the feel of a first person shooter video game. Hemsworth’s physical stature does a lot of the heavy lifting, literally and otherwise, but Tyler is not a character so much as an avatar.

At one point King, as Chisholm, resists the advisors’ pleas to simplify her “messaging” (was that word in circulation 52 years ago?) by saying: “I am not leaving out the nuance!” In “Shirley,” the top-shelf actors aren’t, either. Even if their material does.

Anniversary is a deeply nihilistic film that can’t be described as a cautionary tale — that horse has left the barn. Rather, it’s a hypothetical question as character study, an examination of how this happens, and an assertion that a system like this shows no mercy, not even to its most loyal subjects, despite what we want to believe.

Sweat and good intentions will take you only so far. And they take Bees right up to the threshold of entertaining--but not one step further.

Burton's never been especially good at finding the internal motor or the rhythmic drive within a scene. This, I think, is why Miss Peregrine stalls, again and again, while the bird woman or Samuel L. Jackson's pointy-toothed, fright-wigged Barron tells us what's up with what we just saw, and what'll happen next.

A scenic, well-behaved account of Potter's life and times.

So, as we watch this movie go through its predictable paces, we also watch two actors, one in character and one not. And that is an awful lot to ask an audience to suffer through just to see Russell deliver another dependable piece of work. [3 Feb 1986, p.C2]

What began as a sketch movie ended up like a slightly better than average "SNL" flick, though Odenkirk, Cross and a number of famous and semi-famous friends do get some chuckles out of their story of Ronnie Dobbs, compulsive troublemaker. [16 Sep 2003, p.C3]

Evil Dead offers the core audience for modern horror plenty of reasons to jump, and then settle back, tensely, while awaiting the next idiotic trip down to the cellar beneath the demon-infested cabin in the woods.

At its fizziest, the camaraderie among the principals buoys the picture. Hemsworth and Thompson in particular toss off their lines with throwaway aplomb. Waititi’s heart plainly belongs to the muttered asides and the eccentric details; the action sequences, meanwhile, squeak by, and barely.

The film never gets going. It's too slow and plodding for kids--even too obvious.

At once proudly conservative, passionately idealistic and beautifully assured.

Once you get used to the broad gestures, visual stylings and reach-for-the-sky emotions, you may find yourself luxuriating in this movie's undeniable grandeur.

In some ways it's not a film that surprises us much. But it's a notable directorial debut anyway -- smartly written, very well cast and skillfully done.

Costa-Gavras' powerful, awkward Amen is a dramatically uneven historical thriller.

Hannibal, riding the malicious wit of Hopkins' sophisticated fiend, is a gorgeous, wild, sometimes sick thriller, a feast for enraptured eyes and strong stomachs.

The inescapable problem with this film is that everything is precisely as you expect it. And so, cheated out of anything interesting, you just want "My Life Without Me" to be a movie without you.

In between all the sentimental (i.e. corny) mumbo-jumbo is a potentially fascinating subplot.

Too ambiguous, too meandering to envelop us. It's ambitious work but ultimately cold, distant and difficult to piece together.

You find yourself smiling at some of the bits, wincing through many, many others, and ultimately wondering if the pacing would've improved had either H or K developed a terrible cocaine habit.

It's labeled a "true-ish story," and the results are cheeky fun.

First-time feature director Wes Ball's version of The Maze Runner makes the cliches smell daisy-fresh.

While Lowriders offers an interesting entree into this world, it's unfortunately too formulaic and predictable to leave much of an impact.

A movie like this can handle a large character roster, but it helps if the story retains clean lines and a sense of propulsion. Iron Man 2 sags and wanders in its midsection

A real gem: a deadpan fantasy that turns into one of the best pictures ever about the post-"Star Wars" studio moviemaking era.

Lasseter's sequel smooshes the vehicular ensemble of the first "Cars" into a nefarious James Bond universe, heavy on the missiles and ray guns and Gatling guns and electrocutions. Sound peculiar? It is peculiar.

You don't believe a second of it, but it's easy to enjoy, partly because of the casting of all three leads.

Even when it’s outlining its own ideas more through rhetoric than character, France keeps us on our toes regarding what’s around the corner. Seydoux’s the chief but hardly the only reason to find out.

This is not a film intended for a wide audience. But B-movie fans who find their way to Adam Green's gory schlock extravaganza are going to like it.

Scheinman, whose long list of producer credits includes Stand by Me and Misery, makes his directing debut with a good sense of storytelling and a low-key comic style all too often absent in this kind of entertainment. [30 Jun 1994, p.28]

The movie delivers, in its chosen way. But it’s a soulless way. The violence may be for laughs, and many Neeson fans will likely respond to the larky brutality of Cold Pursuit, which is very different from the star’s previous mid-winter vehicles (“The Grey” is my favorite). But I don’t get much psychic recreation from this sort of action movie.

Despite all the rich elements — the fantastic cast, the wonderfully detailed production and costume design, an oddball family story of black sheep finding each other — there's something missing from The House with a Clock in Its Walls. It's weightless, hop-skipping over necessary story-building, glossing over Lewis' warlock training as well as the personal histories of his guardians.

Easily the wittiest, most ridiculous and best-written comedy of the year.

The Wall may be fictional, but at its occasional, patient best it feels truthfully scary.

The Addams Family doesn't deliver. After a while the ghoulish one-liners and macabre sight gags grow repetitive - the sadistic/masochistic interplay between Morticia and Gomez particularly grows weary - as too much of the humor comes off like unbridled Late Mel Brooks. [22 Nov 1991, p.B]

Completely successful or not, films like Saudade do Futuro are needed. And we need people like the Nordestinos.

Coscarelli, the man behind the long-running "Phantasm" splatter series, can't quite conjure a complete movie out the concept and stretches the material until its humorous conceits repeat ad nauseum.

This is a violent film. It's rougher, in fact, than "The Hunger Games."

Though not originally produced with streaming in mind, Finch absolutely feels like it was designed by algorithm.

A true story, feel-good parable and a respectable, uplifting descendent of "To Sir, With Love" and "Lean On Me."

Although Joffe appears to be making a Brighton version of the seductively natty evil we find stateside in "Boardwalk Empire," this Brighton Rock remains muffled, half-formed pulp fiction.

What it lacks in narrative ambition, it makes up for in dazzling choreography.

The story lines don't intersect in that schematic, "Crash"-y way, which is refreshing. Less refreshing is the neat-and-tidiness of the individual exchanges in Sam Catlin's script.

The finished product feels tonally indistinct and plays as a bit of a grind.

Outlandish weddings aren't much of a satiric target, but Confetti isn't really going for satire; mild-mannered japes are more its style.

The results aren't gothic and bloody, as they were in the Lauren Bacall film "The Fan," or elegant and ironic as in the Bette Davis classic "All About Eve"--though the plot suggests a bit of both.

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

Traveller is a low-key, intelligent examination of some fascinating people who must do plenty of fast talking just to survive. [25 Apr 1997]

A smart, witty, sexy take on the perils of becoming an adult.

It's a corker of a story - a polished yarn full of desire, desperation and despair.

It's a movie that starts off nicely, offers two marvelous performances (by James Coburn and Mick Jagger) and then slowly, unaccountably loses itself.

Wind is a vigorous and colorful piece of filmmaking that never quite shakes free of an embarrassingly trite, formulaic screenplay. [11 Sep 1992, p.H]

Last Chance Harvey is what it is: a pleasant put-up job, held up by world-class pros.

Cleverly structured, Horrible Bosses works in spite of its cruder, scrotum-centric instincts.

The movie struggles to turn the story into a paradoxical easygoing thriller, befitting the age bracket of its key ensemble members.

It is Field's bursting, big-eyed American-ness - a commodity she has carefully banked since her days as TV's "Gidget" - that generates the film's lurid fascination. [11 Jan 1991, p.K]

A romantic comedy/social satire that, on a modest budget, manages to be hip, charming, funny and dressed to kill.

Novie lovers will want more of Winger and more Redford, both separately and together. If they had more scenes, their romance might seem more credible, rather than being simply the movie convention of ''star loves star.'' It`s a close call on Legal Eagles. It`s not a total waste of time.

For any of you who've ever daydreamed of playing hoops with Jordan, Michael Jordan to the Max is almost certainly the closest you'll ever get.

The film, like its lovers, is fond, giddy and poetic about love and death.

As is often the case in Loach's films, all the acting is exemplary. Padilla, who learned English only shortly before making the film, is a natural actress, a smoldering presence.

The movie looks like far more than a million dollars and it offers the kind of smart, picaresque good time you get from books like "The Reivers" and "Huckleberry Finn" and movies like "Bronco Billy" and "Bonnie and Clyde."

Unlike the intrigue and winding switchback of moral mysteries that defined "L.A. Confidential," Dark Blue travels on flat, predictable terrain.

Ambitious but clumsy, it's a movie to appreciate rather than to be engaged by.

It's Complicated isn’t: It’s pretty simple. It’s simply a good time.

A movie that must spend most of its running time explaining its hopelessly complicated premises, which leaves very little room for anything much to happen. [22 Nov 1989, p.C1]

There's something off in its scenes of Arterton's romantically unlucky loner showing up at Arthur's home, in the rain, distraught. If the movie weren't so determined to placate, you'd think you're in for a daring exploration of an affair between a 30-something emotional cripple and a 70-something sexy beast, unchained at last.

Hallstrom gives us a genial interpretation and a supremely good-humored film.

The movie coasts on a blase, easygoing highway of cynicism regarding how America conducts its business of war. Despite all the Martifications and Scorsese-ing, we're left with virtually nothing, except the feeling that a pretty good anecdote has been inflated into a bubble-headed American Dream morality tale.

For an hour or so The Equalizer glides along and works; in the second hour, plus change, it turns into a shameless slaughter contrivance with a flabby sense of pace. I did like one line: "When you pay for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too." Washington's the rain; by the end, the movie is the mud.

An average franchise re-launch.

It's a serious drag to see how Ritchie has turned Holmes and Dr. Watson into a couple of garden-variety thugs.

Moving away from the gag-based comedy of his films with Chong, Marin has discovered a richer humor of character and circumstance, and although old habits surface long enough to permit unfortunate lapses in continuity and consistency, he proves surprisingly adept at his new mode. [24 Aug 1987, p.C5]

Weighed down by the presence of Griffith. She plays her satiric part without much gusto or conviction - as if she were afraid we might believe she really is Honey.

Dark as it is, the humor makes it work, especially Greene's typically witty and compassionate portrayal of Mogie.

Avoid it if you object to seeing people devoured by wolves, but see it if you want to howl at the moon.

Chirpy, bland, slightly maudlin Christmas musical comedy. [21 Dec 2001, p.C5]

His first confrontation with Berenger allows Poitier to display the overwhelming, nearly palpable moral force that was his great strength as a performer, but the balance of the film makes very little use of his special skills. [12 Feb 1988, p.A]

If it's a necessary piece of history, it's a paltry piece of drama, with intentions so grand, they're absolutely deadening. [20 Dec 1996, p.C]

The film, directed by Nancy Savoca (True Love) from a screenplay by Bob Comfort, is one of those sensitive dramas that defines its sensitivity by how brutally it can hammer the audience into feeling pity for its characters. [04 Oct 1991, p.L]

Sophisticated cinephiles aren't likely to go ga-ga over this one, but Opal Dream is a worthwhile family film, graced with an ambivalent, bittersweet ending and just the right touch of cinematic poetry turning on the gemstone in its title.

The Kingdom has a heart and a viewpoint. It’s a thrill ride with a lingering thought or two in its wake. But the explosions, breakneck chases, daredevil escapes and predictability about which side will be victorious remain its foremost mission.

A fair amount of Uncle John puts us behind the wheel or alongside Ashton as he drives, preoccupied with his misdeeds, along country roads lined with cornfields. No dialogue needed; in these transitions, Ashton and his surroundings are enough.

Allen and Gant are principals in Mythgarden, a movie production company that promotes gay and lesbian storytelling, and Save Me makes a respectable showing as an early effort.

It's the simple pleasures that endure, so it would be curmudgeonly not to share Alice's happiness as she innocently sighs, "That Sam is so thoughtful. He promised to slip me a special tube steak."

It’s solid craft, but it’s craft wedded to a style of filmmaking that feels wholly impersonal, even with a top-flight director at the helm.

A well-told story. It pits a compelling central character against a formidable adversary in an intriguing setting while keeping you riveted to the cat-and-mouse strategizing, surprise turns and a few moments of actual warmth.

A lame, overstuffed, yuppie romantic farce about a boorish Wall Streeter who sublets his rent-controlled apartment for two nights each week to two different broken souls, saving three nights for himself and his drunken pals. The strangers (Annabella Sciorra and Matthew Broderick) are drawn to each other, but a misunderstanding occurs and she has an affair with the boor. Strip away the comic material, and this might have been a touching portrait of a woman trapped in a bad marriage. [30 Apr 1993, p.C]

By the time Perfume arrives at its ridiculous mass orgy, staged at the gallows where Grenouille is supposed to meet his end, you really would rather see him meet his end than endure a ridiculous mass orgy.

One of those movies with good things going in one direction, and cheesy things going in the other. The ever-valuable Farmiga is a faceless voice after her sole on-screen appearance, and director Collet-Serra’s frantic, hand-held technique ensures that every supporting player looks as guilty as possible.

By filling in what the story lacks in originality with easy attractions like pretty faces, set to fluffy music, the filmmakers lose the outsider edge the Lizzie McGuire franchise was built on.

At this point, "The Corruptor" looks as if it's going to be just a rehash of an early Dirty Harry movie, but it surprises by taking us inside Chinatown, where we discover just how sinister and elaborate the relationships between the police and the businessmen can be. [12 Mar 1999]

You leave feeling like you've endured a long workout without your pulse ever racing. The exercise ultimately is product placement, with Bond the biggest product of them all.