The Lego Batman Movie offers more mayhem and less funny.

For all the splurch and head-lopping, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is monotonal. It turns its action sequences into a noisy blur.

In its way Campion’s film is a thing of beauty, but its characters’ inner lives must be taken on faith.

The problem may be that Scorsese, arguably America's most gifted and gritty director, is working from a script not written by one of his veteran collaborators, and so the grit is gone. All of the performances are fine. Newman is particularly effective, but he is forced to run a familiar treadmill. And so The Color of Money joins Heartburn as one of the biggest disappointments of 1986.

Maudie works valiantly, and not entirely convincingly, to suggest a happy-ish marriage, all things considered.

As a caper, it’s a breezy hour and 43 minutes of well-done indie filmmaking. And the look and sound of the film (a driving funk-inflected score from Singer that says “heist!”) is right.

The film is a more quiet, wintry contemplation and tortured soul-searching. If not entirely successful, it’s still a fascinating take on how we put rock stars on screen, and a valiant attempt to understand how they make the music that moves us.

Ever Again isn't a subtle film, but then it never pretends to be. More lecture than conversation, it's not designed to delicately challenge opposing viewpoints.

The second half’s a letdown — the audience knows where the movie’s going, and gets there before the movie does. Nonetheless it bodes nicely for longtime horror producer Travis Stevens, here making his feature debut behind the camera.

The themes that are unspoken, gestured at and repressed in “Force Majeure” are drawn out and made broad, obvious and slapstick in Downhill, which spoon-feeds the lessons of the dark-ish comedy and cuts short the plot for the easiest-to-digest ending.

Star Pilar Lopez de Ayala is such a feisty, striking presence, and the film so conventional in its depiction of a jealous and insatiable love, that it is hard to see Juana as anything other than a typical soap opera heroine.

Mission: Impossible does provide enough old-fashioned fireworks for a big-budget summer spectacle. But despite the cinematic bravado, this mission ultimately represents a white flag being waved at the notion of updating the TV show. The movie seems to argue that because the Cold War is over, all the good global-conspiracy plots have become obsolete. The intrigue, instead, must turn in on itself like a snake devouring its own tail. [22 May 1996]

For the majority of the run time, Bugonia is the kind of film you respect more than you enjoy, as the archness and absurdity of Stone’s character is too dissonant with the sincerity of Teddy’s sadness at the core of this story.

The story is full of good feelings, but as one sits there it all seems so predictable that you can't help but ask the point of it all. [27 Aug 1993, p.C]

An uneven but strongly acted debut feature from co-writer and director Sheldon Candis.

The film may be a silly thing, with manic swings from intimate (and pretty rough) violence to abrupt comic relief. But Fahy and Sklenar provide the glue.

For an hour The Rite, as scripted by Michael Petroni, delivers the expected, but with panache.

The role sounds like a sentimental trap, but Penn doesn't fall into it. It's a sensational performance, and he illumines a movie that sometimes seems in danger of descending into modish Hollywood political correctness.

Melodrama triumphs. But here's at least some muted applause for a fine cast and filmmakers trying to confront the real world and its shadows.

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.

For all its dark, Gothic intentions and supernatural twists, it lacks the emotional and intellectual punch of similarly themed films, most notably Alejandro Amenábar's "The Others."

Like many stage-to-screen projects "Moon" loses something in the journey from the planet Theater to the planet High-Def Video. Yet Lepage is such an interesting camera subject, you stick with this dreamy rumination even when the going gets arch.

As horror movies go, this is a pretty good one.

The film is surprisingly easy to sit through, digest and even enjoy. Why? A lot has to do with Hogan's well-documented charisma as a performer.

Disappointingly, X-Men: The Last Stand slides back between the first two episodes. It's not stuporous, and it's not super.

Whatever you think of Gehry's architecture, if you have any interest in art, or the interplay between light and shadow, or the way buildings create space and community, you're likely to enjoy this film.

All too obvious, all too easy, the sort of tongue-in-chic L.A. comedy that mistakes glibness for high style, heartfelt pop choruses for wisdom.

Levine has a strong instinct as a packager of moments, ladling on the alt-rock just so before ladling on another ladle's worth.

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.

After clawing their way into the Olympics, so-called extreme sports deserve respect, but this is no way to get it.

The actors — including Patton as Bobby's DEA colleague and sometime fling — cannot act what is not there. But with Washington, Wahlberg, Olmos and Paxton around jockeying for dominance, the standoffs have their moments.

Takes a fascinating true story and turns it into a conventional cop thriller, hoking up the provocative three-generation saga of the LaMarca family.

Action junkies may enjoy this non-stop barrage, which barely pauses for anything but the most rudimentary (albeit complicated) plot exposition.

More than "Natural Born Killers," it's a real deconstruction of the whole love-on-the-run crime genre: drab, grim but effective.

It's junk, and it's excessively violent, which is a given. Approach it as a Stallone movie (which it is) or as a Hill movie (which it is), but it's more interesting as a Hill movie. If it gets this director back into the hard-driving action game, then it will have done its duty.

Treviño’s effervescent and empathetic performance as Marisol keeps A Man Called Otto on track, both actress and character proving to be the saving grace for this curmudgeonly fellow, and film.

Gives us a lot to enjoy and something most studio movies don't even try for: an attempt at the richness, density and sheer contrariness of life.

Mamet's movie has its moments of wit and warmth, but here he's mostly behind, not ahead of, the curve.

Unfortunately, Operation Finale feels a bit behind the ball when it comes to the dramatic true story.

The Lovers is not about them as individual performers; it's about these actors working in tandem with each other, the script, the director and the other actors. The film works as a whole, not a sum of its parts.

Sweet-tempered, good-looking, goofy and not too sharp. The movie doesn't make much sense and neither does Danny, played by Welsh heartthrob Rhys Ifans.

A fine ensemble, some gorgeous Italian Riviera locales, intermittent flashes of magic amid a more manufactured air of whimsy.

There are scattered pleasures throughout the film due to its two lead performances, which are the equal of the work done in the original. It's just that with a few exceptions, the characters Miyagi and Daniel are forced into conflict with aren't worthy of their time.

Combining cutting-edge computer animation with traditional two-dimensional characters, Treasure Planet pops off the screen, reviving Stevenson's adventure with surprising accuracy.

Won't change your world, but it's attractive and Smith the Elder, lowering his voice to subterranean James Earl Jones levels, delivers a shrewd minimalist performance. His son may get there yet.

The film's context and talking points are more interesting than the film itself, which settles for an earnest (though rarely dull) nudge in its chosen direction: PowerPoint cinema.

The movie A Good Man in Africa contains the book's funniest, saltiest scenes, but it's less controlled and assured. [09 Sep 1994, p.C]

The tone of "Hail, Caesar!" is even and assured, yet the comic inspiration is sporadic.

The movie's far from dull. But first-time feature director Tim Miller's film serves as critique as well an example of what ails the superhero movie industry.

Roughly half the scenes are terrible, nervously edited and predictable. The other half transcend the innate shrugginess of the script. At the end there's a dose of voice-over narration assigned to Johnson that is so, so very Carrie Bradshaw, you half-expect Sarah Jessica Parker to show up with a lawsuit.

A sometimes-funny, dope related comedy with the team of Cheech and Chong trying to survive in the city while having a very high time. [1 Aug 1980, p.4-10]

Although bright, well-acted and thought-provoking, Tuck Everlasting suffers from a laconic pace and a lack of traditional action.

A pleasantly nutty thriller about a crafty, high-end toy, M3GAN exploits a child’s grief for the greater good of the killer-doll genre. That may be enough for 100 minutes of your early January.

The results are visually exacting if ideologically muddled. Biller's trying to find ways to make the old misogyny usefully ironic. But the acting is so amateurish, partly by accident and partly by design, that the film remains confined to an exercise in replicative style.

A mixed bag of four short films done in the style of famous '60s TV show. Two work; two don't. [July 22, 1983]

Noisy, unsubtle, but it gets the job done.

Though one can question the movie's quality as a documentary -- Broomfield is a dogged but often annoying interviewer, and Churchill's photography is sometimes slapdash -- Aileen raises such troubling issues that it stays, hellishly, in your mind.

Director Charles Martin Smith, an accomplished actor, gets some very good performances from his cast, notably from Mark Price as Eddie and Lisa Orgolini as his girl. (Gene Simmons, of the rock group KISS, has a small part as a radio deejay). In his directorial debut, he shows an attractive visual style and a sure hand for both humor and horror. [27 Oct 1986, p.5C]

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.

A hit and miss proposition, with an abundance of laughs and emotional highlights to help brighten the dimly lit corners of cliche-mongering.

With an uneven and overstuffed script you appreciate the corner-of-the-mouth comments as delivered by Steve Buscemi.

The superfast running effects, with Edward dashing up mountains, or rival, evil vampires swooping here and there at amazing speed, look genuinely cheesy, like the guy running the race in the smart-phone ad. I'm surprised Hardwicke and her colleagues couldn't solve this one more effectively. Set pieces such as a vampire baseball game fall flat as well.

Vardalos and Collette have mighty pipes, but it's Collette who moves with the confidence and flair of a musical theater veteran. Watching this film, I found myself caring less and less about the fairly predictable and safe story and waiting impatiently for the next number.

Meadows clearly has a flair for working with actors and for depicting the rough-and-tumble of ordinary provincial lives. If he could go just a bit deeper, the truly great Midlands movie just might surface.

Entertaining and even affecting, Where the Truth Lies is a failure primarily because it doesn't do justice to its originator, Rupert Holmes' dishy 2003 novel, which shared both of the aforementioned characteristics but also was extremely funny. The film, directed by Atom Egoyan, is not.

A movie best suited for a lazy afternoon or a languorous night, particularly if you're a Francophile. Charming, glamorous, emotionally suggestive but slight, it's full of beautiful and colorful people.

I enjoyed seeing Joss Ackland as well. The veteran character actor with the world’s lowest voice plays the diamond company chairman, and when he rumbles out orders, it’s like Sensurround never left us.

For an hour or so, aided by the autumnal glow of Ben Seresin's cinematography, director Hughes maintains a firm handle on the story's turnabouts. Then the script goes a little nuts with coincidence and improbability.

Extracting three generously proportioned films from Tolkien's books made sense. But turning the relatively slim 1937 volume 'The Hobbit' into a trilogy, peddling seven or eight hours of cine-mythology, suggests a better deal for the producers than for audiences.

The film version stars a wonderful Swedish-Icelandic actress named Noomi Rapace as the hacker and Michael Nyqvist as the reporter. They are excellent and subtle and honest.

While sci-fi conceits still permeate the plot (alien DNA, rogue scientists), attention to personal detail float world-weary, superbly-drawn protagonists in a rare movie-a character-driven animated film.

Wildly uneven but nonetheless intriguing and funny.

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

Masterminds still has its riotously funny moments, thanks to the fearless, uninhibited actors and a director who lets them play.

If all you do is look at their performances, the historical drama is worthy of praise. Step back, and the overall production stumbles through writing mistakes, has a drab look and a storytelling structure that puts the main event so deep into the tale it's almost an afterthought.

At its most frantic the cutting and staging here veers perilously close to Baz Luhrmann "Moulin Rouge!" territory for comfort. ... I'd rather have seen Wright's carefully elaborated production on a stage, instead of in a movie partly on a stage.

The music's the best thing ... But it isn't enough to lift this middlebrow, middleweight and middling project ... above its misjudgments and limitations.

Director Marc Webb moves it along, with a rock-solid lead, very well sung, courtesy of Rachel Zegler.

Veber's early stage training serves him well both as an adapter (he wrote the "La Cage aux Folles" screenplay) and as a maker of originals though, truth be told, The Valet isn't especially original.

An uneven special effects extravaganza about a little boy who winds up traveling through world history along with five midgets. Together they meet and frustrate the great and the near-great. Including Napoleon, Robin Hood, and the devil. Unfortunately, there are just too many visits to famous people. The film was created by some of the people responsible for the Monty Python comedies. [25 Dec 1981, p.12]

Mary Reilly is a thinking person's horror movie, done with such obvious intelligence and artistry that it feels strange to watch it and be so unmoved. [23 Feb 1996]

The easiest thing you can say about Silence is that it's a labor of love, made by a valiant soldier for his chosen storytelling medium.

While Stop-Loss doesn’t pack anything like the emotional wallop of her previous film, the movies do share Peirce’s clear-eyed refusal to answer difficult questions with simplistic answers.

Writer-director Lisa Krueger displays some talent in creating the Mary Kay Place character; I expect more daring work from her next time. [30 Aug 1996, p.2]

When you see and hear so many fans of so many backgrounds expounding on what "Firework" means to them, you realize that while a song may or may not be for you, it most certainly is for others.

The movie shoves McCarthy and Sarandon in a car together quickly, without much in the way of expository set-up.

Even though the film shows very little of the rough stuff, it's still fairly traumatizing. By the end you may feel like seeing a documentary about a more fair-minded and evenhanded treatment of a society's citizens.

It's a decent, fast-moving and visually powerful summer action romp for the teenage demographic-the dragons are deliciously evil critters, with a nice retro identity.

Less a pure documentary than it is a fact-finding mission, with the real story waiting to be presented somewhere down the line.

Impresses more than it entertains.

Everyone knows how the battles will turn out. It's what's between them that raises Masters Of The Universe ever so slightly above the mediocre.

Is it fun? Parts, yes, and many will get exactly what they wanted from The Nice Guys.

Resonates and inspires rapid-fire bouts of laughter, perhaps even a few giggles from the author himself, whom posterity has rewarded the last laugh.

Though it's sweet and likable to a fault, it's also a movie that never seems heartfelt or deep.

Jersey Boys the movie is a different, more sedate animal than "Jersey Boys" the Broadway musical.

The movie doesn't really work, but it's fascinating in the ways it doesn't. Then again, I enjoyed the spacey insanity of the Wachowskis' "Speed Racer," which they didn't even like in Asia.

I love Pete Postlethwaite as a rule, but here - as a murderous florist who pulls all the strings - he overacts his key scene so badly it's as if he did it on a dare. Also, Jon Hamm may rule on "Mad Men," but here he's stuck as a rather dimwitted FBI agent who's two beats behind the action, always.

Inner dialogue is a hard sell on screen.