This movie is more risk-prone than the majority of Marvel titles. Yet it frustrates, even beyond a screenplay full of self-competing interests. And as far as MCU fatigue goes — well, at this point, it goes pretty far.

The movie — certainly Daniels’s best since “Precious” — is as turbulent and zigzaggy as Holiday’s life no doubt felt like to the woman who lived it. If this risky movie hits some bum notes, Andra Day cannot be found anywhere in the vicinity.

Though the characters played by Martin and Hawn - a lonely architect and the confidence woman who moves into his country home, claiming to be his wife after a one-night stand - don't have much inside them but sawdust, their surface reactions are entertaining and engaging enough to make Housesitter a winning romantic comedy. [12 June 1992, p.C]

The film's frequent longeurs, compulsive over-explicitness and unshakably morose hero seem like so many insistently ''literary'' qualities, ostentatiously laid over a cute, cartoonish vision that suggests not so much Anne Tyler as the affectionate quirkiness of ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show.'' [6 Jan 1989, Friday, p.A]

Huppert, Poelvoorde and Dussullier are experts all.

The ratings board gets all twisted up about sex and skin, yet it cannot give you or your kids enough ax blades to the cranium. This week's evidence: the remake of the old Wes Craven horror item, The Hills Have Eyes, which should not be rated R. It should be rated NC-17, or ITTS-OW, which stands for Is This Thing Sadistic, Or What?

Midway through a middling film adaptation, like this one, you realize it’s the same old clue-delivery mechanism, in a darker mood but also a less lively one.

Too much of the contrasting comedy in Nanny McPhee Returns is shrill, laden with routine computer-generated effects and pounded into dust by James Newton Howard's shut-up-already musical score.

There are still some astonishingly tender moments, including looks exchanged between Swayze and Moore that seem magically divorced from this summer of exploding jets, severed limbs and homicidal children. [13 July 1990, Friday, p.D]

Johansson’s direction is serviceable if unremarkable, and one has to wonder why this particular script spoke to her as a directorial debut. Though it is morally complex and modest in scope, it doesn’t dive deep enough into the nuance here, opting for surface-level emotional revelations. It’s Squibb’s performance and appealing screen presence that enables this all to work — if it does.

Martin is joyful; Chase seems depressed, and Short comes off as merely happy to be in his first movie.

Absurdly unrealistic at times.

Although the film's ending is a little too neat and happy to be realistic, it does leave you with the feeling of young girls taking charge of their lives.

Possession needs a sharp eye, a wicked tongue, less reverence and much more of its author's voice.

A humane and fantastic work, and it touches us precisely because Konchalovsky shows the reality of both the soldiers and the madhouse inmates. His movie is just what he intended: a nightmare that speaks the truth.

There is a thrill in seeing them wooing and pursuing each other through the streets of New York, a city that here again, for a while, becomes a movie isle of joy.

I wish there were as many big payoffs and clever jokes as there are Bosleys in this movie. But Stewart and company have their fun, and we have a reasonable percentage of theirs.

Just when movie theaters don’t need another one, The Amateur comes along to join the roster of 2025 releases that lack the knack, the juice and exciting reasons for theatergoers to theater-go.

If you can forget about the movie’s general moral vacuousness, the extremely uneven digital photography and the slavish devotion to designer assault weapons...the screenplay by “Watchmen” scribe Alex Tse keeps the shifting alliances and power plays in clever circulation.

Dermot Mulroney takes the largest male role, that of the driven ex-soccer star and patriarch of the onscreen family. From certain angles he looks like a Shue too.

As a sheer ghostly thriller, it's mostly a spell-binder, but I was disappointed at the ending.

Punchline is supposed to be Tom Hanks' big dramatic breakthrough movie, but the script is boring and his character repellant. [30 Sept 1988, p.A]

It's ludicrous, but it's fun. Besson is a filmmaker so in love with his own daffy excesses that he's able to pull us, laughing, right into his world of loony pop. [9 May 1997]

Anyone But You isn’t terrible, or a travesty. It’s eh-notherthing ehltogether.

If you want a list of comics-derived spectacles less successful and worthy than this one, "Suicide Squad" heads the list. And that's the only list it'll ever head.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance might’ve worked better if it had fully embraced the mantle of 21st century comedy of manners. As is, it’s tentative, wanly comic. As the great Russian stripper Anton Chekhov showed us: Without the funny, the serious has a harder go of it.

Laughing at the freaks and then feeling bad about it is the sole reason for the existence of this pale little film.

Despite a few high-spirited sequences, School Daze succumbs to preachiness and choppiness. It's a movie with too much to say and not enough style to say it with. [12 Feb 1988, p.0]

We may know exactly where we're going, but the journey is so much fun, all but the most peevish audience members will find it impossible to complain.

Nicely acted by all and photographed in creepy, cold, under-lit tones.

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.

Meryl Streep excels as Margaret Thatcher. And the movie itself does not work.

Strong, hard, dirty, funny, moving atmospheric and laced with scabrously musical street dialogue.

Manages to wring some originality out of its fairy-tale plot. This freshness compensates for the expected hackneyed qualities in this Cinderella tale.

A bomb? Not quite. Anyone who gets a kick of train thrillers should get knocked off the tracks by this one. [17 July 1995, p.N2]

It's almost always rewarding to watch an underdog triumph--what else could explain why movies exactly like this keep being made?--but Longshots is one underdog that's hard to love and harder still to champion.

How you respond to the totality of Exodus: Gods and Kings will, I suspect, relate directly to how you responded to Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" from 2010. Square, a little heavy on its feet, much of that film held me, even when its bigness trumped its goodness. Same with this one.

Sweeney, however, gives a better account of himself than Sheen in his role. [23 Oct 1987, p.A]

It took J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter-adjacent franchise exactly one film for the shrugs to set in, even with all those fine actors up there amid expensive digital blue flames.

Boasts one moment, perhaps three or four seconds in length, so delightfully intense and uncharacteristically juicy that the rest of the film - most of the rest of the whole series, in fact - looks pretty pale by comparison. Not vampire pale. Paler.

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.

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.

The Last Boy Scout will win no year-end awards, but at least it delivers the goods-which is more that can be said for most of this year's holiday releases.

McKinnon’s apparent improvisations and inventions create a second, better movie in the margins.

The Sea isn't just brooding Scandinavian domestic tragedy, a lesser Bergman-Ibsen pastiche. It's also hilarious and rowdy, and it plays with our sympathies and expectations in such surprising ways, with such brilliant actors, it's easy to see why it won the equivalent of eight Icelandic Oscars.

A well-told, vividly imagined movie that doesn't pretend to be more than it is and doesn't lean on pop-culture references to win over its viewers.

With such a bang-up cast, this setup could at least elicit some tears, but in its 107 minutes, nary a one welled up in my eyes.

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.

The film doesn’t hold together. But it’s the work of a real director, however fantastic his sensibility.

The "Fallen" moviemaking team obviously want to make a thinking person's horror movie. Intermittently, they succeed. But this movie suffers the fate of many recent nightmare thrillers. [16 Jan 1998, p.A]

Hitchcock adapts another Daphne Du Maurier novel -- a tale of pirates and distressed damsels on the Cornish coast -- with less memorable results than either "Rebecca" or "The Birds." But Charles Laughton is a nicely nasty two-faced villain and Maureen O'Hara a staunch heroine. [18 Jun 2000, p.22]

And yet there is enough of a core of sincerity to turn even the most preposterous moments-such as the film's dream-sequence finale-into something moving and true: You buy the feelings, even as the situations degenerate into the ludicrous and absurd. [17 Aug 1990, Friday, p.C]

More than anything Casa de mi Padre is an exercise - and to those who find it more clever than I do, a valid one - in tone-funny, as opposed to joke-funny.

Like the massive shipboard set that is its centerpiece, the film is huge and impressive - though, again like the captain's imposing vessel, it stubbornly and disappointingly remains at anchor. Hook never sets sail.

This is a mixed blessing. For a story replete with open-air combat 300 is strangely claustrophobic. And for a film with lotsa flesh and even more blood, it's light on flesh-and-blood characters.

The action beats are so relentless, no sooner does one chase end than another begins.

There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.

Mother of Tears can't rival the David Lynchian otherworldliness of "Suspiria," but at least you know you're in the hands of a director.

Valentin is cut from the Woody Allen school of movie kids. With oversized black glasses and small-size suits, he is the total know-it-all package, right down to his insightful voice-over.

One can hardly argue with the desire to make a wholesome movie for families that extols honesty and decency, but it all comes too easily, too superficially.

Stands as a successful cinematic experiment and a gripping -- though a little too long -- study of humanity's most primitive instincts.

It's fun to see that charming underreactor Neve Campbell, looking about 20 minutes older, back as Sidney Prescott.

Like "The Notebook," but with an elephant, the unexpectedly good film version of Water for Elephants elevates pure corn to a completely satisfying realm of romantic melodrama.

There are flashes of grim humor interspersed with the murders, but not enough wit to elevate this movie beyond its primary identity: grisly revenge fantasy.

This one’s no gem. It’s simply large, and long (two-and-a-half hours, the usual length lately with these products). I remain unpersuaded and slightly galled by the attempts to interpolate the history, locale and tragic meaning of Auschwitz into what used to be known as popcorn movies.

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.

Clooney's attempt to honor unsung real-life heroes while recapturing the ensemble pleasures of some well-remembered Hollywood war pictures, notably "The Great Escape" and "The Guns of Navarone," comes off as a modestly accomplished forgery at best.

While its globe-trotting itinerary recalls the mad whirl of a "Bourne" picture, nothing about this film's style resembles the second or third "Bourne" outings (which I loved).

The film flies away in 50 directions, leaving only a vague, unctuous impression behind. [22 Jun 1990, p.C]

The Producers on screen, as a musical, does not work. It is not very funny. It doesn't look right. It's depressing.

For its many lighter moments, Critters is careful to balance its laughs with a number of chills. It unabashedly and wittily pays homage to other films. But ultimately it stands firmly on its own, a little bit frightening and a lot of fun. [15 Apr 1986, p.3C]

The film is easy to take and easy to forget, even with Black running around Oaxaca in turquoise wrestling tights.

It's not a ridiculous degree of complexity per se, but screenwriter Matt Cook mistakes solemnity for gravity, and a high body count for dramatic urgency. The cast is terrific, unfortunately.

Aside from its leading lady, what Everything, Everything has going for it is its light, fantastical aesthetic, an unexpected sense of buoyancy and light.

The animated result isn't bad. It's an adequate baby sitter. But where's the allure in telling the truth? Twentieth Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios present "Adequate"?

They trusted their property and, while it may not win them awards for special effects, or a cult following, their trust has paid off in a comedy of cozy appeal.

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

Zucker gives the movie an ebullient spirit, but he also keeps everything at the same loud pitch throughout.

Most definitely a chick flick.

Should please its core audience, which includes anyone who might actually want to win a date with Tad Hamilton. Others may opt to wait for another date with Kate Bosworth -- or Nathan Lane.

A dreary, needlessly violent and ugly comic thriller about a psychic hustler (Michael J. Fox) who gets more than he bargained for with his latest scam. Fox seems to be trying to get hip in the movies, and he's lost his way here.

Director Espinosa shoots virtually everything in tight but wobbly close-up, and the human and vehicular combat often brakes right at the edge of visual incoherence. Just as often the brakes give out completely.

Kate Winslet has such sound and reliable dramatic instincts (That Face doesn't hurt, either) she very nearly makes something of Adele.

This movie comes at you with an idea or two, as well as every available gun blazing.

When classy, pedigreed British actors go hog-wild under the flowering dogwood trees of a Southern Gothic setting, often the results are good. Just as often they're so bad they're good. And sometimes, as is the case with Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson in Beautiful Creatures, they're simply doing the best they can under the circumstances.

A funny movie, but like "Josh" himself, it's too self-absorbed, and maybe too nice, for its own good.

Whatever the film lacks in presentation, it makes up for in laughs and ensemble performances that sing.

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

This is a pro's movie, solid, taut and trim, done mostly with exemplary skill. That's its trouble, perhaps. This Getaway knows the score too well, entertains us too effectively, beguiles us too knowingly. [11 Feb 1994, p.A]

In compositions lustrously lit and creamily colorful as an elegant piece of soft-core porno, the moviemakers guide us through Veronica’s life, from virginity to bawdy fame to sainthood. Reality never intrudes — even though the script obviously wants to set us straight about gender, femininity and political power in 16th Century Venice.

This movie offers four of the best -- and best-looking -- Hollywood stars cavorting together in material so slight and inconsequential it often seems ready to float away like a toy balloon. [16 Oct 1997, p.1]

The actors and director Lemmons accomplish what the screenplay does only partially: make us believe the circumstances and the behavior.

As long as Hughes is content to provide a simple, flexible format for Candy, Uncle Buck is very entertaining. Hughes seems to have relaxed his usual controlling, compulsively tidy style, taking full advantage of the improvisational talents of his star.

It’s pure introductory adventure, meant to immerse readers in Pullman’s richly complicated fantasy universe.

Drawing purely on his technical skills, Reynolds is finally able to get some momentum going in the picture's final half-hour, when a defeated Robin musters the remains of his band and makes a last-ditch attempt on the Sheriff of Nottingham's castle. It seems to be enough to erase memories of the movie's painfully slow start and send the audience out reasonably happy and stimulated. But Robin Hood does not seem to be the defining blockbuster this summer still needs.

It's not a difficult picture to watch. All you want from A Walk in the Woods, honestly, is a chance to enjoy a couple of veteran actors. But the book's comic tone hasn't found a comfortable equivalent for the screen.

I like the new “Jurassic World” movie better than the 2015 edition. Bayona’s direction is considerably more stylish and actively mobile than Colin Trevorrow’s was.

Visually, this is one of the most arresting sports documentaries in years, and it doesn't skimp on the visceral thrills, either.