After seeing No Reservations you'll be hungry for a really top-flight meal. And, to go with it, a better film.

Ultimately, this talking dog don't hunt.

It's a perfectly competent film, but the title quantity is the one thing this dry and earnest movie hasn't got.

Ashes of Time Redux remains a hermetic and rather frustrating work, dotted by lonely, windblown figures dwarfed by the sand dunes of western China.

The movie expresses honest concern for the plight of so many newcomers to America, legal or illegal. What it lacks is moment-to-moment credibility.

I found nothing likable or funny about either of these characters, who both deserve a pie in the face. (One of them even gets it.)

Kline took on Douglas Fairbanks in Richard Attenborough's "Chaplin" and Cole Porter in Irwin Winkler's "De-Lovely"; he's the go-to biopic ace for roles requiring some fizz, a certain droll elevation and hair parted and slicked-back just so.

It's ridiculous but fun, as it careens from Havana to Berlin and icy, terrorist-ridden Russia played by Iceland, and a spit-ton of medium-grade digital effects. But the second hour gets to be a real drag, and not the racing kind.

A sweet, effective installment, an often bright and efficient repository for the slapstick laughs and cutesy sentiments so beloved by this age group.

The movie's own brand of charm has its subset of smarm.

In his fastidious, exacting, extraordinarily blinkered creation, writer-director Anderson this time has driven straight into a cul-de-sac, stranding every sort of good and great actor in the cinematic equivalent of a design meeting.

Aubrey Plaza is so deadpan she's undeadpan, and not just in her new zombie movie.

In her (Audrey Tautou) latest film, a quest for romantic and religious fulfillment called God Is Great, I'm Not, she stretches her range to encompass one more personality trait: annoying.

Fast-moving shocker, but it's a dull shocker, so morally dead that it deadens you to watch it. After a while you couldn't care less if anyone is slaughtered or raped -- including the heroines.

The acting’s uniformly strong, and the script is distressingly weak.

I hope Green one day finds a way to bridge the style and rhythm of his early pictures (the ones that didn't make money) and the bumper-car approach of The Sitter.

The generic bulk of Divergent hits its marks and moves on.

Rife with wrong people in major jobs, which leads to a movie that lacks the requisite verve to make to it sparkle.

Striving for low-key character comedy, Diminished Capacity ends up diminishing its returns.

The teaming of Robinson and Rudd periodically gets Friendship in gear. But the film’s primary comic impulse equates to the sound of gears grinding, in an attempt to shift from second to third.

They graduated but didn't really grow up. Most of the less than lovable troupe from the first movie are back, including Steve Guttenberg, and so is the low level of comedy. This time, at least, director Jerry Paris from the old Dick Van Dyke show is on hand to improve the timing and pace. [05 Apr 1985, p.C]

Cocaine Cowboys would be a great one-hour television piece. Unfortunately, it's a two-hour long documentary that recalls, in scrupulous, unnecessary detail, the rise and fall of Miami's role as the cocaine capital of America.

If the film's diffidence is its greatest charm, it is also, in the end, its greatest limitation-it's a movie that seems afraid to declare itself, to make the big move that might propel it from the pleasant to the memorable. [03 Aug 1990]

Shifting her "Silence of the Lambs" accent a bit westward, the always-reliable Foster is given little to do except react and smile enigmatically, while the always-wooden Gere is all grins and charm, coming across less as a shadowy protagonist than a State Farm agent. [05 Feb 1993, p.B]

Instead of cashing in on barely healed wounds, Ladder 49 could have taken a different cue from pornography and gone the way of "Boogie Nights," a fascinating, difficult and honest glimpse into another storied profession.

The "comedy" part of Sex is Comedy comes intentionally from cast-crew interaction.

Writer-director Silver, who trained in documentaries, appears flummoxed by the challenges of getting the audience inside the heads of these young men.

The new film does little but repeat the gags and situations of the first movie, with a slight change of venue. [20 Nov 1992, p.A]

Kaufman wants to be bold in his depiction of lovemaking, but he keeps copping out, cutting away from the deed to such time-worn metaphors as booming bongo drums, pots that boil over on stove tops and African dancers gyrating wildly. Were Kaufman's frankness ever to equal the "passion and honesty" he praises in Miller's work, the film would merit at least an NC-21, if not 41. [05 Oct 1990, p.I]

The script for Spiderhead makes a rookie mistake: It lets the audience get too far out ahead of the Teller character’s moral and narrative awakening. Hemsworth has some icy, rascally fun with his scenes; when Teller and Smollett get some time together, on their own, the story flickers to something like life. But even at 100 minutes minus end credits, the film’s stretch marks are undeniable.

Though Stealth's strengths are obvious -- high-tech marvels and a good cast -- so are its flaws. At its worst moments, a mad robot seems to have taken over the movie, too.

The film's triple thesis is that elections are run badly, Democrats are often clueless and Republicans are clever. Maybe--but that still leaves too many unanswered questions.

Cast against type as a sleazy psychopath in John Schlesinger's Pacific Heights, Michael Keaton seems to be having a very good time - a much better time, probably, than the ticket-buying public will have. [28 Sept 1990, p.C]

But once the action wanders off the playing field, "The Program" shows all the cleverness, originality and depth of the Chicago Bears' offense.

Uruguayan-born Fede Alvarez (“Don’t Breathe,” the recent “Evil Dead” reboot) handles the action breathlessly and well enough. The movie’s acted with serious conviction. But I kind of hate it.

Turns out to be nothing special. Well, the music is. The storytelling is not.

The very elements of Eat Pray Love that helped make it a success in 40 languages -- the breezy prose, the relentless sorting-through of dissatisfactions, a steady stream of intriguing sights -- turn the film into a travelogue with a little spiritual questing on the side.

Legendary is so intent on paying heartfelt tribute to dogged young athletes that it neglects basic story needs.

By the two-hour mark the fun had oozed out of the movie for me. It's long. Or feels it.

Though the episodes are monumentally predictable, there's something in the dedication of the cast that maintains a minimal interest. [11 Mar 1988, p.L]

Too often Tolkien lumbers up to its big moments, such as the preposterous climax involving the title character scrambling around the western front, calling out his schoolmate’s name. Fact or fiction isn’t the issue. Either way it plays like hokum.

To work, it has to make us feel crazy with love, like "Vertigo" did. Instead, it often just makes us feel crazy for believing any of it.

The only people humiliated, really, are older people and heavy people and nerds and vegans and black people and mothers who breast-feed their 4-year-olds. Everybody else gets a pass.

It's one of those fast, slick, half-smart shows that can't decide whether to pay its debts to action or reality -- and winds up cheating both.

Weathers turns out to be a disappointingly weak lead whose low-key likability doesn't make up for his lack of anger and drive-crucial attributes for any action hero. And Baxley is surprisingly stingy with his action sequences.

Very little sense of the performers' humanity emerges from behind their stage roles, perhaps because Bogdanovich has directed the supposedly spontaneous dialogue to sound just as forced and theatrical as the scripted lines. [20 March 1992, p.2]

Proceed with caution to "Warcraft," but there is entertainment to be found here. It's certainly more absorbing than the lazily assembled "Alice Through the Looking Glass," because Jones' exertion and drive behind the film is palpable, if a bit sweaty.

Although Scream 3 is often clever in the way it interweaves the worlds of "Scream," "Stab" and life outside the theater, it's not exactly groundbreaking.

Though the movie is pretty stereotypical and sometimes crude, it also has a sweet laid-back temper. It has amusing moments.

At one point Rourke delivers a monologue about his time in Bosnia, and the conviction the actor brings to the occasion throws the movie completely out of whack. What's actual acting doing in a movie like this?

It's a baffling, unconvincing experience, though it has a few moments of mild charm.

The ending is very different from the novella, and I was surprised at its shameless, ruthless emotional effectiveness.

Now You See Me 2 is more fun than "Now You See Me," which says something, I guess. It fits snugly in the long list of easygoing nothings, the narrative equivalent of a Fruit Roll-Up, designed to be forgotten in as many minutes as they took to watch.

A muddy, dreamlike Portuguese offering.

May try to revive the eerie spirit of the Gothic novel, but, unless you're suffering from amnesia yourself, it probably won't surprise or thrill you.

Screen chemistry between two individuals isn't really a pass/fail proposition. There are degrees involved. But let's pretend otherwise and say yes, Smith and Robbie pass, barely, with less than flying colors and in a pretty dull movie.

Duchovny and Moore have their moments; they're like two preening sharks working on commission.

Dawson, though, burrows into his role with all the zeal of a perennial second banana recognizing the opportunity of a lifetime. It's the one naturalistic performance in this cartoonish film, carrying with it the implicit authority of years of firsthand experience shaped, perhaps, by some late-night introspection. [13 Nov 1987, p.B]

The main problem with the movie is the by now shopworn nature of its setting. Been there, snipped it. Though dating from venerable material, The Salon turns out to be one haircut too many.

Just a vehicle for Carrey to do his hyperactive shtick. He has some entertaining bits, such as his rain-drenched meltdown in which he victimizes some stunned innocents, but he’s working so strenuously that at times he’s hard to watch.

Bold, experimental, off-the-wall kicky and utterly exasperating.

When a movie runs 134 minutes, it's best to keep something in reserve; Lumet does not, and Q&A expires long before it ends. [27 Apr 1990, p.C]

Logan is deadly serious, and while its gamer-style killing sprees are meant to be excitingly brutal, I found them numbing and, in the climax, borderline offensive.

All in all? A curious preachment yarn for peace, one which makes you wonder if the filmmakers couldn't wait to get to the climactic aerial dogfights.

Walken is an odd choice for a D.C. power player, wasting his creepiness on this straight, respectable role.

Seyfried's a good actress, but all the art direction in the world can't make this version of events the stuff either of dreams or of nightmares.

Even with Levy and O'Hara and Shandling adding what they can, you can only enjoy the voices behind the critters so much when the images fall so short.

Lawrence and Zahn generate enough comic tension and mayhem to jump-start this mass of action-comedy cliches into a fairly amusing show.

As much as the film may try to peddle warmth and solidarity, it remains disturbingly cold and impersonal, limited by the formulaic writing of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and stymied by Ortega's apparent distance from his cast. [10 Apr 1992]

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.

Strives to be nothing more than easygoing and heartwarming.

Remains watchable when it's not hitting you like a baseball bat with poignancy. But by the time you've endured all of the shamelessly manipulative plot turns and heart-yanking speeches that close out the movie, all you can do is cry foul.

A surer hand behind the camera might’ve finessed the jokes more effectively, or established a consistent and satisfying tone.

The enigma not only remains, but, cloaked in Schrader`s mysticism, seems more impenetrable than ever.

A major sticking point is that none of these characters have been developed into people who are interesting enough to carry what is ultimately an exceedingly thin story, and the lack of intrigue becomes a glaring issue.

I never lost awareness that I was watching actors speaking lines, not real people --a problem I didn't have in the more unreal "Life Is Beautiful."

Disclosure is pure and simple trash masquerading as significance. [9 Dec 1994, p.B]

See No Evil, Hear No Evil is a strange concoction - a bad taste comedy with a big, beating heart. [12 May 1989, p.B]

A dramatic true story has been made into a diffident biopic.

Foster and McGillis never quite make the transition from ideological mouthpieces to fully developed dramatic figures. [14 Oct 1988, p.C]

Some of LaGravenese's dialogue crackles, but it's a dry crackle, a hollow cough. And that's despite Leary-and in spite of Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey, two of the best actors around these days.

The cast is not the limitation here. The limitation, and I found it to be a drag on this aggressively audience-pleasing indie, relates directly to its premise.

Hysteria, however skillfully maintained, should never be mistaken for art-a caution that applies equally to Stone and his subject. [01 Mar 1991]

In the end, about all Arachnophobia has going for it is the irrational fear the title refers to: a pre-existing fear Marshall does little more than exploit. It doesn't take a lot of skill to make people jump when you shove a spider at them. Nor does it really seem fair.

The film shows very little of the nar-rative assurance that has character-ized Jordan's previous work. [21 Nov 1988, p.2C]

This film, which tries to use chaos creatively-by shaping it and sculpting it-finally seems little more than a well-filmed mess. [4 Dec 1987, p.B]

In his thoughtfully paced, well-acted film, Hoge doesn't set out to solve the "why" of Leland's ghastly crime. He's more interested in examining the reason why society needs to create and interpret a reason for horror.

There are some affecting inner child healing moments here, but without details and specifics, this is a big, bold swing, but a beautiful miss.

Why Paltrow, who was accepting a best actress Oscar four years ago, would take this clumsily written role is anyone's guess.

Dumb film; smart comedienne.

The film has its momentary diversions, a few good throwaway jokes amid a tremendous amount of PG-13 maiming and destruction.

The movie’s partially redeemed by Seyfried, who makes her character more than a repository for audience sympathy. (Her make-out scene with Fox is handled with more suspense and care than anything else in the movie.)

It's fairly entertaining--but not the second coming of indie comedy some notices might lead you to expect.

This material, though, is damn thin. Like so many films derived from the pictures and words of a graphic novel, The Kitchen feels perfunctory and sterile and under-detailed.

Outside the bedroom, the wartime swirl of intrigue never develops beyond postcard imagery, however. This is one of the major disappointments of the film-going year.

Only resonates when he (Brooks) strips it all away and focuses on parent and child.

Throughout, Williams seems hampered, hand-tied and almost mind-controlled, as if afraid of letting his hyperkinetic style take off. That`s too bad, because without it, Club Paradise is amiable, amusing and effortless, words that are good news when the subject is bittersweet comedy and disaster when the intention was clearly slapstick.

Director John Wells dices the action, even the simplest conversation, into five harried shots when one would suffice. The many food-prep montages are cut and paced to the same numbing rhythm.