It's amusing but not a comedy, never losing its heart to irony or sarcasm. While Paddleton takes its time to get there, it ultimately reaches a deeply poignant conclusion. If you're patient enough, that alone could be worth the trip.

The ability to subjugate everything to the story is both Avildsen's strength and his weakness. Lean on Me, with its warts-and-all hero, its driving rhythm, its carefully calibrated climaxes, is a finely tuned machine. It also happens to be a steamroller. [3 March 1989, p.Q]

All these good actors and all Crystal's sass and witty candor can't bring back the heyday of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges. Or even, most of the time, their off-days.

The movie leaves us with the image of rich folks frantically dancing the Charleston because if they stop, they'll have nothing. The point is as untrue as it is simplistic.

Guilty by Suspicion isn't a bad movie, but it isn't compelling entertainment either. [15 Mar 1991, p.C]

Many, I suspect, will fall for The Prestige and its blend of one-upsmanship and science fiction. I prefer "The Illusionist," the movie that got here first.

Highway Courtesans carries a feeling of truth, of bravely facing problems that are pressing and real. It's a good, informative piece on the oldest profession--and on how the world differs from what we usually see in the movies.

You know what’s not bad? Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Dumber than a box of lugnuts, but superior to the Michael Bay-directed schlocktaculars that ran as long as 165 minutes. The new “Transformers” movie clocks in at 117 minutes, a lot of them pretty zippy.

Rightly, Jolie didn't want to tell the man's entire life story. But as is, at too-convenient dramatic junctures, the screenplay darts back into flashbacks of Zamperini's childhood or young adulthood, when we should really be sticking with the crisis at hand.

Stupid, predictable and fairly funny.

Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. [20 December 1996, Friday, p.J]

By turns brilliant and simplistic, moving and preposterous, the movie takes one of the ultimate hot-button American issues -- the morality of capital punishment -- and dissolves it into a volatile mix of psychological thriller and socio-political fable.

Despite the actors, the visuals and Forster's directorial swagger, the movie lacks impact.

This Civil War epic romance is exquisitely shot, lovingly designed and populated with talented name actors. In terms of pedigree and sheer, lush filmmaking, the movie has class written all over it. And that's part of the problem.

Our Flick of the Week is The Bedroom Window, which begins as a gripping, Hitchcock-like thriller about an innocent man wrongly accused, but then turns into an unintentional laugh-a-minute with a preposterous conclusion. It's a shame that the film couldn't sustain its tension, because in some ways it is the best traditional thriller since "Jagged Edge." [16 Jan 1987, p.A]

If only Bad Education engaged the heart as much as the head, Almodovar's fractured tale might have risen above its alienating noir conventions.

Roos does an admirable job balancing the tragedy and comedy, but he bogs down every character with so much baggage that it's impossible to render them honestly without the captions.

While On a Clear Day can claim both a surplus of heart and adequate brains, it comes up lacking in the courage department.

It's a mess, but wow, is it ever a fun, fascinating mess. Those are always so much more thrilling than any of the formulaic superhero movies that parade through multiplexes all year.

For a movie that begins so intriguingly, Boiler Room becomes boilerplate all too quickly.

Both funny and foul, alternately frank and full of it.

Sheridan's ensemble ensures that "Get Rich," the film, comes to life around the edges, if not at its center.

Like a relentlessly charismatic political candidate offering the moon, stars and a viable health-care plan, Bob Roberts promises much but ultimately fails to deliver.

To be clear: The odds are in favor of you hating it. I hated a lot of it when I saw a barely dry work-in-progress print, 163 minutes long, at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s 19 minutes shorter and better now, though “better” is relative when you’re dealing with a whatzahoozy such as this.

While I wish the story and the banter had some snap (Groot had better dialogue, speaking of Vin Diesel movies), and while I wish the electromagnet-derived mayhem in F9 led to a truly magnetic movie, sometimes good enough is enough.

The beauty of the film is undeniable, as is the cruelty of the bull's lives. (This is not a picture for animal-sensitive viewers.)

I admire this film’s craft. And I would’ve appreciated a messier, inner-life impulse to go with it.

Caine and Law may not be playing human beings, but Pinter’s sense of humor is at least more interesting than Shaffer’s. Caine in particular appears to enjoy honing his cold-eyed stare.