The kids are magnetic.

I like its devotion to the drab outskirts of Sin City, and Buscemi's performance is right up his alley without being entirely predictable.

Brian Banks proceeds non-chronologically, toggling between high school years and Banks’ post-prison life. This helps keep the audience on its toes. But it’s the actors who complicate things most fruitfully.

The movie is dedicated, in a nice touch, to early Farrelly fan Gene Siskel. And Gene was right: The Farrellys are often very funny filmmakers. .

In The Sun is Also a Star, Russo-Young swirls together sun-dappled selfies, luscious skin, urban grittiness and hip-hop beats, the aesthetics perfectly matched to emotion. She creates a heady, knee-buckling mood that nearly conceals the weaknesses in story and performances.

A good third of this overblown movie consists of stunt-filled action sequences that turn a human story into something akin to Cannonball Run. That's too bad, because Goldberg's character is a terrible thing to waste.

Everything in the film is high: high concept, high pressure, high stakes and it often feels bizarrely forced. Nothing makes any sense and is never explained.

I liked the idea of the movie more than the movie itself -- though sections of it are mind-blowing.

Thanks to the actors and the way the movie lets them loose, it's often funny or moving at all the right moments.

The funniest bit in the crude but diverting Soul Men really makes you miss Bernie Mac, who died in August, a few months after completing the picture.

The movie's computer-generated castles, magic visuals and sloppy effects echo a low-budget fantasy movie on cable. It's glossy, shiny candy that tastes oddly familiar yet lacks sugary punch.

And although Schreiber's hip, intelligent eye is a nice match for Foer's hip, intelligent pen, his movie strays from its own history, creating instead a world, as Alex would say, that is "once-removed."

An outrageously unlikely prison action movie made with lots of eye-catching pizzazz and undeserved expertise.

The end product feels less funny than formulaic.

Has its bright spots but is practically blinded by its own privileged perspective of life among the landed gentry of Brooklyn.

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]

If her movie cannot fully resolve the demands of the love story with the horrifying particulars of the context, she's smart and honest enough as a first-time filmmaker to make "Blood and Honey" off-limits for those who prefer easy viewing. Even with a subject such as this.

Bopha!, a movie about emotional and political turbulence tearing apart the family of a black South African police officer, is good, but a little disheartening. Not because of the injustice and misery it reveals-but because you want it to be better.

F1 is a pretty decent summer picture, and if it were half as crisp off the track as it is on the track, we’d really have something.

This is a movie that really has little to offer but performances and ideas. For a while, that's enough.

The tale, while oversimplified, is told with visual style, particularly in the use of the boys' dream sequences, having to do with rescue and the comfort of adult authority. [16 Mar 1990, p.F]

The movie marches in predictable formations as well. But when Biel's rebel pulls over in her hover car and asks Farrell if he'd like a ride, your heart may sing as mine did.

A stylish, nasty, very well-done Belgian horror movie.

The entire project is carefully wrought in visual terms and more than a little familiar. Sometimes even a well-applied pair of jumper cables can't do the trick.

The Gentlemen is so blinkered by its outdated (and often offensive) alpha male perspective that it's blind to the elements that could have made it great.

Its fascination may be limited to those already very familiar with his works and collaborators - and his sensual, highly subjective style.

It’s a lot. Seyfried, who has worked with writer-director Egoyan before on the super-ripe erotic drama “Chloe” (2009), finesses some zig-zaggy tonal swerves confidently and well. The writing, however, wobbles.

Jersey Girl is an oddity, hard to dislike but impossible to buy.

Part “Seven,” part haute-cuisine “Saw,” part reality cooking show, director Mylod’s film finally isn’t sure of how far to push the effrontery. It helps, however, to have Fiennes in the kitchen and a Nordic smokehouse out back.

Loser is anemic.

Jade, like many another recent erotic or techno thriller, is packed with talent, polished and technically dazzling. But, daring as it might seem in its sexual content and exposure of bad behavior among the mighty, it's curiously soft at conveying what these characters really believe. [13 Oct 1995, p.J2]

Naive, decadent, sluggish, dazzling, touchingly sincere in its belief that “a vital conversation” about the state of our nation can save us, even with barbarians at the gates: There’s something to vex everyone in Megalopolis.

An amusing and entertaining animated feature, and it's harmless enough for the elementary-school set.

It's interesting - in its own let-it-all-hang-out, shaky-camera way.

The script’s conflicts and obstacles get their tidy share of the available 90 minutes. I’d love to see a two-hour version of Rose’s film, aired out to some degree, with a more unpredictable rhythm and some conversations allowing us to hang out with these people without worrying about advancing the story.

It zigs when it might zag (unless you’re already familiar with Wynne’s life story), and “The Courier” becomes something much more dark, complex and moving.

Underneath, it's a flashy crock-another piece of self-congratulatory formula wish-fulfillment masquerading as hip. This would-be "inside" comedy about not selling out sells out in virtually every scene.

Night Swim comes from a crafty 2014 short directed by Blackhurst and McGuire, not quite three minutes in length minus end credits. Apples and oranges, I suppose, but the short gets more done in terms of atmosphere and rhythmic wiles than the full-length version. Still: These filmmakers have both a past and a future in evocative horror.

It's a depressing story made even more of a downer by the absence of any Stones-performed music from their prime '60s years.

Strictly a kids' movie--brimming with easy-to-swallow life lessons.

The film should've aimed higher, given all that these people endured to have their story told.

Despite its shortcomings, Girls Can't Swim represents an engaging and intimate first feature by a talented director to watch, and it's a worthy entry in the French coming-of-age genre.

The movie’s not as slapstick-dependent as advertised. It’s a less coarse and more heartfelt project than McCarthy’s disappointing headliner gigs, such as “Tammy” and “The Boss.” (The Paul Feig-directed comedies “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” and “Spy” are far better.) The new movie renders matters of directorial finesse and comic technique essentially irrelevant.

Effectively a demo. It doesn't give you the whole picture, but it lets you know what's possible. It's hard not to wish the ride could have lasted longer.

An amiable adventure illuminated at odd moments by some genuine inventiveness. [21 Dec 1986, p.12C]

The subject of Iraq haunts and divides us so much these days that a film like Laura Poitras' documentary My Country My Country is valuable, no matter its level of achievement.

The actors are more than fine. Demoustier is the key, making her character's shifts in astonishment and perplexity honest and plausible.

Some of this is slick and enjoyable in what I'd characterize as the wrong way, the painlessly bloody, box-office-friendly way.

Muppets from Space has silly gags and cute cosmic fish swimming around in its space. It just doesn't have the right awe and wonder -- except, perhaps, for the children who should be its prime audience. Adults, beware -- at least this time.

Simply photographed and well acted, The Mudge Boy captures "Deliverance"-level disturbing images as it takes an unsentimental approach to its characters.

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

The movie is rich with detail, characters and a specific historical context, even if its narrative is incoherent. But its cheap, gauzy veneer and primitive special effects are fun on their own terms.

The movie tries hard to duplicate the original's mood and story, but, like Gere or Lopez, is too much of a visual knockout to rope us in.

A Foreign Affair's flaws make it even more of an enigma, as graceless as it is endearing.

When the humans have the sense to keep quiet, and the animals are doing their shtick, there's great fun to be had.

A genial "Hangover" for the AARP set, Last Vegas is roughly what you'd expect, or fear, but a little better.

The mordant wit and paradoxical melancholic bounce you find in a great many Eastern European filmmakers informs every joke and rosy sexual encounter in the work of Czech writer-director Jiri Menzel.

Not bad, not great, a little less pushy and grating than the usual.

The film works best once Hanks gets to the island along with love interest Meg Ryan. But it takes too long to get there. A fresh but needlessly drawn-out story. [9 March 1990, p.C2]

There are flashes and occasional whole sequences when Edwards’ directorial eye snaps into focus.

It has terrific moments, but whenever it starts to cruise along nicely, it hits a comedic pothole that forces it to sputter on down the road.

There's much to love about this "Rocky" on horseback, and those laughable blemishes just fold into jokes that Helgeland likely intends audiences to laugh at.

Disturbingly lightweight and emotionally risk-free.

It's a dream of a movie, if only in the literal sense. The film means well; so it seems churlish to mention its total absence of originality. Care Bears poaches shamelessly on everything from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Androcles and the Lion," but its greatest debt is to Lewis Carroll, whose engagingly warped mind would surely recoil at this confection. [07 Aug 1987, p.Q]

It’s ungallant to single out MVPs in this ensemble. Nonetheless: If it weren’t for Moreno’s wizardly comic wiles and Field’s unerring, unforced timing, “80 for Brady” would not be here, there or much of anywhere.

Jolie and Banderas are two hot actors, in many senses of the word, and their scenes together have a lewd excitement.

Flashes of Goodnight Mommy are forceful and blackly funny.

Typically, movies about dogs are unrelenting tear-jerkers, but Tatum and Reid resist sentimentality, resulting in a film that’s refreshingly frank and surprising when the emotional moments do hit (and do they ever).

The whole film, in fact, seems too fast for its own good. It plays like a synopsis, jumping from scene to scene, grief to grief, and it doesn't let us relax into the various worlds it's creating.

A bit of a tweener, neither triumph nor disaster, a war-games fantasy with a use-by date of Nov. 22, when the new "Hunger Games" movie comes out.

The play itself, some felt, was static. The charge I'm afraid will stick to the film version as well. But the acting is considerable compensation.

Partly real and partly, increasingly, fantastic and outlandish in its wishful thinking.

The movie -- directed in such a frenziedly self-conscious style you often wonder whether the camera will topple over on his actors.

An all-too-familiar barfly story that often seems aimless. [25 Oct 1996, p.A]

The performances are pretty good--with the exception of the nauseatingly sweet H. Hunter Hall (the son of the director) as Junior and a one-note scowl from rapper The Game, who plays Meat--and the screenplay, by Hall and Darin Scott, has some genuinely funny moments.

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.

A promising film rather than a fully realized one.

Written by newcomer Melissa K. Stack, The Other Woman offers roughly equal parts wit and witlessness, casual smarts and jokes, lingering and detailed, regarding explosive bowel movements. Based on that ratio, I'd say the screenwriter's future in Hollywood looks pretty good.

I laughed a lot in the first half, before the movie's repetitive jackhammer pacing, which isn't ideal for any kind of comedy, began working against its better instincts.

The acting's strong; in addition to Moretz and Moore, Judy Greer is a welcome presence in the Betty Buckley role of the sympathetic gym instructor. But something's missing from this well-made venture. What's there is more than respectable, while staying this side of surprising.

Too much of the film is a muddle, and it feels like work, not play.

Whatever you do, don't leave before watching the snippets that run during the closing credits--the self-referential, tongue in cheek "outtakes" are quite possibly the funniest part of this movie--a visual stunner that seems to have misplaced its heart.

It’s a fairly engrossing bit of fan service, boasting many clever touches and a few disappointing ones. Director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s picture veers erratically in tone, and the killings are sort of a drag after a while, en route to a rousing vengeance finale.

Jim Jarmusch's underwhelming documentary on the veteran rock group Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Of course the music is fine; a robotic camera could capture that. But Jarmusch gets nothing out of his interview except the band members and manager repeatedly telling us how long and how well the group works together.

Always watchable and cinematically lively, but it never quite engages the emotions -- despite torrents of sentimentality and would-be heart-tugging scenes interspersed with the carnage.

More spirit and grace and less blood and guts may be what Passion needs.

Bird’s rather strenuous sequel lands more in the camp of “Cars 2” and “Monsters University,” mistaking calamity and mayhem for real excitement and wit.

As a document of his history, it's breathtaking, inspiring stuff. As an overlong documentary, it still manages to be inspiring, but also an uphill viewing experience.

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.

It's fitting that a drama trading in classified information would turn out to be such a cryptic bugger.

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

Like a dream, you’re left with thoughts and impressions to mull over for a long time. These sticky images and profound ideas lodge themselves in place, even if you’re not quite sure they all fit together.

The movie's smooth to the point of blandness, but its faces really do tell a story. And having Gere's silverly mane share the same film with Strathairn's is almost too much fabulous hair for one diversion.

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

There's a good movie lurking somewhere in Susan Isaacs' script of her comic murder mystery novel "Compromising Positions" but neither Isaacs nor director Frank Perry has found it. [30 Aug 1985, p.A]

The moody, distinctively San Franciscan Dopamine has other charming little touches -- its humor, its characters, its city life -- that make you want the film to succeed. It doesn't entirely; it's more likable than it is good.

There are two good things to say about The Young Black Stallion" It's beautifully shot, and it's short.

The message stays firmly on spiritual questions about the circle of life, but doesn't educate or leave the audience with a call to action about how to personally act to protect these animals, and that feels like a missed opportunity.