Linda Cardellini can play just about anything, with honesty and delicacy, so it's no surprise she makes even a semi-sweet nothing like Austin Found worth a look.

What's missing most conspicuously from Great Balls of Fire is an interest in the historical and cultural context that made Lewis' career possible - that moment when a dying rural tradition intersected with a booming urban economy to create a whole new kind of music and with it, a whole new America. McBride treats the '50s as a joke - a montage of "Leave It to Beaver" complacency and H-bomb panic. The truth is more complex than that, and a better story. [30 June 1989, p.A]

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.

A documentary that will likely leave Phish diehards hankering for more, and everybody else still wondering what all the fuss is about.

Good, bad or middling, very little of Shyamalan’s works can be described as tightly plotted, well-sprung suspense.

The main problem is the director-star's choice to play so far beneath his intelligence for so long. Stiller lacks the physical gifts and projected sweetness of, say, Jim Carrey in "Dumb and Dumber," and unlike Peter Sellers in the "Pink Panther" movies, he can't keep a straight face.

If it gets people thinking about which light bulbs they buy and their current gas mileage and such, then it's good to have it in the world. It is, however, a panicky blur as documentaries go.

The film itself, while charming and gently funny, is entirely unexceptional.

The problems here, I think, are weirdly simple. The movie takes our knowledge and our interest in the material for granted. It zips from one number to another, throwing a ton of frenetically edited eye candy at the screen, charmlessly.

There's really no other word for what Helen Mirren is doing in certain reaction shots, out of subtle interpretive desperation: mugging. She's mugging. She is a sublimely talented performer, and this is material with fascinating implications, and I doubt there's a moviegoer in the world who doesn't like Helen Mirren. But even the best actors need a director to tell them to tone it down.

I laughed here and there at She's Out of My League, but I sort of hated everything it had to say about nerds and babes and the sliding scale of self-image.

The flaw in Death of a President isn't one of morality. It's one of dramatic interest.

The Boxtrolls remains relentlessly busy up through its final credits, and it's clever in a nattering way. But it's virtually charmless.

It's a shame that this often cute script couldn't have better served, and been better served by, its actors.

It's a clever premise but not one that lends itself to an hour and 42 minutes of high jinks. You get the joke quickly.

The movie as a movie is a letdown, because all it consists of is Eastwood's hoarse, foul-mouthed complaining about today's "softies" and then his leading into battle in Grenada a bunch of rag-tag kids that he has molded into men. This is all material recycled out of films as varied as "The Dirty Dozen" and "Police Academy." [5 Dec 1986, p.A-C]

By the end of Novocaine, it’s as if the filmmakers — who have talent, and who are now off and running in a commercial sense — forgot how their movie started: with Quaid and Midthunder getting the material and the screen time needed to hook an audience’s interest, before the jocular sadism commenced in earnest.

Might have struck a deeper chord with fans who are still looking for the Steve Earle who exists behind the music.

Next Day Air is sort of bracing, though it isn't very good: Its total lack of dramatic and comic bearings, to say nothing of a point, keeps you wondering about the next fatality, in a half-interested way.

Faces the same problem of all sex-themed films, in that cinematic sex is often unsexy.

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.

Hollywood Knights mock of authority, slob heroes and snob villains, and raunchy, gross-out humor invite comparisons to "Animal House" and "Porky's." [11 May 2000, p.6D]

Opus has its moments. But even the surprises aren’t especially surprising.

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.

That narrative change works fine in principle. The larger question is one of rhythm, and the diminishing returns of one jump scare after another.

Sometimes funny, often strained comedy.

Forbidden Fruits can’t reconcile all of its influences and just ends up as a collection of references and high style without much staying power — it’s essentially the fast fashion of girly pop horror.

This isn't the first time Hughes has targeted kids who like reruns, though he does seem to be working his way back age-wise. He's progressed from his original brat-pack teens to a pesky 10-year-old in "Home Alone" to the 5-year-old here. If his next movie is called "Swee'Pea," you've been warned.

Though there is an artist's instinct behind Cadillac Man-an instinct that does surface here and there, with a particularly piercing line of dialogue or powerful gesture-it`s quickly blotted out by the Williams formula.

The slogan for Red Planet could be "In space no one can hear you yawn."

It's more that the plot is incredibly predictable, the score is manipulative and the denouement completely unsatisfying. I can sit through cliched and even offensive (to a point). Just leave me with a little bit of mystery, an iota of suspense. That’s all I ask.

An honorable, evenhanded but curiously flat interpretation of events.

"Songbirds and Snakes” takes its job SUPERseriously, with more solemnity than imaginative excitement.

Scary Movie 2 had seven writers. Seven. That's one writer for every big laugh in its stealthy 82 minutes. More frightening: these jokes are worth waiting for.

This film is so harmless it`s boring.

It's a Hitchockian "wrong man" story, but there's a twist.

Chan and Wilson's easy camaraderie remains eminently watchable, but the rough edges from last time out are missed.

When it comes to storytelling, Zhang Yimou's 19th feature is decidedly backward-looking: A lavish period weepie set against the atrocities of the Nanking Massacre, "Flowers" abounds with well-worn movie archetypes and slathers on schmaltz.

The movie doesn't really work, but the jet boots would be the envy of Iron Man, and they allow our hero, unwisely named Caine Wise, to speedskate through the air, leaving pretty little trails of light over downtown Chicago.

Two gifted co-stars, Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, and the highly imaginative thriller specialist Phillip Noyce lend some luster and credibility to another borderline-absurd scenario.

As visually stunning as it is, "DR9" is also more than two hours and contains, at best, 10 lines of dialogue, an ear-piercing Bjork score and no discernible plot.

Alive represents one of Hollywood's increasingly rare attempts to create a religious drama, but that novelty aside, the film is stiff, overlong and frequently risible. [15 Jan 1993, p.F]

A dark comedy that blows up like an exploding cigar, leaving nothing much behind but smoke, noise and a bad taste.

However poorly the material has aged, Cimino has not come close to tapping its potential. [05 Oct 1990, p.D]

The result is a picture that is baldly manipulative yet weirdly sentimental, and while Considine (a fine actor) can write, he is capable also of writing dialogue you've heard before.

The very strong performances in this low-budget film deserve a better narrative structure to strut their stuff.

The reason basketball is such a great spectator sport isn't because of its opportunities for razzle-dazzle editing and direction. It's because the game is kinetic enough without all that swoosh/zap/wham business.

An average franchise re-launch.

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.

Black and Blue feels imbalanced and overlong, favoring fast and repetitive chase scenes over well-calibrated tension.

The Mission is "The Killing Fields" without Dith Pran, a movie that simply asks the audience to share its moral smugness. It wants us to feel good about feeling bad. [14 Nov 1986, p.AC]

Ernest movies would still seem to be an acquired taste, but this one affords the adult viewer a few unexpected pleasures.

It can't help but fall prey itself to a final deadly genre cliché: Its soundtrack outsparkles the movie.

By using the author's name [Branagh] sets us up for something closer to the text of the Gothic thriller than James Whale's classic 1931 horror film. But Branagh's version is too respectful and ultimately, well, lifeless.

A River Runs Through It emerges as hopelessly middle-brow-the kind of diluted, prettified art traditionally associated with PBS and the Academy Awards. [09 Oct 1992]

In Bright Lights, Big City, director James Bridges ("The Paper Chase," "Urban Cowboy") has made just about the best film imaginable from Jay McInerney's best-selling but fundamentally undramatic novel. Mustering the considerable technical skills at his disposal, Bridges-who took over the project well into shooting when the first director was fired-has turned in a smooth, polished commercial film that at least has the virtue of effectively showcasing Michael J. Fox for his fans. There just isn't much else in the material for Bridges to work with.[1 Apr 1988, p.A]

The script avoids going full-bore as satire. Where it goes instead lacks a purpose, a reason for being, beyond the usual name-checking of "The X-Files" and the like.

Beyond Affleck's, the performances here lack amplitude and dramatic impact.

The script is a mess. It's an object lesson in taking a nonfiction book ("The Feather Men," about a cadre of ex-British Special Air Service operatives) and making a hash of it.

A commendably brave piece, but less focused and powerful than you'd like. In the end, Garapedian might have been better off concentrating her energy on the 1915 Armenian story--which has been told on film various times (for example, in "Forty Days of Musa Dagh" and Atom Egoyan's "Ararat"), but never with the power of, say, "The Pianist" or "Schindler's List."

Secretariat isn't bad but it's precisely what you'd expect.

A big, empty picture full of star turns, artificial energy and jokes that don't quite work, even if stars Willis and Perry do their best to slam them across.

Sometimes it's best to let sleeping divas lie.

Despite the talent involved, and the incredible subject matter, the irritating tendency to over-explain to the audience means there’s very little spark to be found in the enervating Radioactive.

McAvoy does his best with this subpar, heart-tugging material. At times his mix of easy charm and inner demon pulls Rory out from under the tired script, but those pesky dramatic forces keep pushing him back in for every predictable plot development.

John Singleton stumbles badly with a terribly awkward but well-intentioned drama about political correctness and race at a contemporary university. [13 Jan 1995, p.B]

The style and acting of Laundrette is triumphant, and its substance a true but altogether pedestrian cliche.

The heartbreaking thing about Meet Dave...is its occasional funniness amid a sea of pablum. If it were completely rank, it'd be less frustrating.

Some movies run out of gas. This one could use an alternate fuel source.

The Proposal reworks "Two Weeks Notice" with the genders switched.

This sophomoric little gimmick picture -- although at times, serving as no more than a showcase for daredevil snowboarding -- provides enough powder power to keep the audience laughing, even over the rocky parts.

It's probably best to leave talking animal stories in the care of comedic filmmakers.

It is an intriguing subject, though so far all that Morris has brought to it is a combination of the morbid and the cruel; he needs to develop some sympathy, too. [16 Sept 1988]

Though overexplicit and underdeveloped, Clive Barker`s Hellraiser is a horror film with enough personality and ambition to rise slightly above the run of the genre.

The most vivid aspect of The Eye is its poster image, that of a huge female eye with a human hand gripping the lower lid from the inside. The least vivid aspect is the way Jessica Alba delivers a simple line of expository dialogue.

An old-fashioned comedy. And in this case, "old-fashioned" means tired, out of date and so abominably blah that you'll fall asleep in your popcorn.

The actors aren’t the problem with Night School; the material is.

Spectacular, fast, never boring. But it's also one of the more disappointing movies I've seen recently.

Candy is indisputably charming. A master of timing, he also is adept at doing a kind of verbal doubletake after saying the wrong thing, and, like Jackie Gleason, carries his weight with style and grace. The problem is, he can't carry the whole film. [24 May 1991, p.B]

Sets out to answer all sorts of cosmic questions, though the one most frequently asked is more mundane: Is it better than "Reloaded"? The answer is a matter of degree.

Oblivion is odder and less conventional than your average forgettable star vehicle; at times it feels like a five-character play taking place in a digital-effects lab. But there's not much energy to it.

Perhaps the series is simply getting cynical and tired.

The film, for all its pretensions of revelatory, life-altering enlightenment, is actually about as deep as a wading pool, as substantive as cotton candy.

Beautiful, horrifying, exasperating and just plain weird.

There's too much hardware, too little sense. Too much blood, too little flesh. Too much program, too little mind. That's the virus of the contemporary movie techno-thriller.

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 every turn Cote d'Azur settles for tidy, tinny resolutions to seismic family crises--yet, with a message of tolerance and its heart on its sleeve, the film is certainly tolerable in a summer rental-by-the-sea sort of way.

Swanberg may be one of the few American filmmakers who'd benefit from reading one of those "10 Rules for Mediocre Hollywood Screenwriting" how-to books. Many find a kind of truth and life and rough domestic magic in his films. Here and there, now and then, I see what they're talking about.

You know the drill: Seven gates of hell. The walking dead. Blood and spurting eyeballs. Strictly for horror mavens hungry for kitsch. [03 Jul 1998]

An ambitious screenplay (by Andrew Klavan) is done in by wavering direction (by Jan Egleson) in A Shock to the System, an independent feature that is still worth seeing for its well-chosen cast of medium-priced performers, including Michael Caine, Elizabeth McGovern, Peter Riegert, Swoosie Kurtz and Will Patton. [23 Mar 1990, p.H]

Predictably, it descends into a meaningless blur of gravity-defying physics and robotic limbs by the end, where a lot of violence is happening but you’re never sure exactly why or even how.

What's the point of telling Jesse Owens' story if you don't get into what made him tick, and drove his success as an athlete?

A massive and rather tiring showcase for Bollywood action hero Akshay Kumar.

Ploddingly written by Barry Michael Cooper, this shrug-evoking movie has been grimly directed by the numbers by Ichaso, who overlays his production with the obligatory sax music and in-your-viscera violence. [25 Feb 1994, p.A]

Before long in 21 Bridges, the extent of the corruption becomes the top line of a vision test — far too easy to spot from a distance.

Extraordinarily raunchy, occasionally funny.