Wise, who is noticeably older than the 29-year-old Ruskin was at the time the events occurred in real life, gives a tense, implacable performance, and Fanning is touching. The movie, however, directed by Richard Laxton, could use a lot more oomph.

Moving from the Dark Ages of old Europe to the Lite Ages of new California, this brash comedy pits a Valley Girl against a vampire. Kristy Swanson heads the likable cast, with Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens in standout supporting performances. [31 Jul 1992].

An OK action film, but only the humorless will find it heretical – or educational.

Director Alexandra Lipsitz doesn't do much more than chronicle the noise, but it's intermittently fun stuff.

Dunkirk, with its scaled-to-be-a-masterpiece visual grandiosity, aims to be an epic of the spirit, but there is something weirdly underpowered about it. It’s a series of riveting tableaux, but the human center is lacking.

At times this indie is as repetitive and self-indulgent as its protagonist, but it captures a bit of the madness of being unrequitedly in love.

The filmmakers may be just as clueless as Buddy when it comes to Mavis, who resembles nothing so much as a snooty stalker.

There’s a pretty good movie buried somewhere deep inside the ungainly pastry that is Chef.

The film is meandering and highly uneven, but Robert Downey Jr. is truly oddball as a venomous drama critic, and watching that ball once again roll through Bill Buckner's legs is torture (for Red Sox fans anyway).

For me, there is too much rue that goes unacknowledged by the filmmakers. When great musicians must adulterate their art in order to find an audience, I see no pressing reason to cheer.

It has sharp performances in the title roles, by British actors Tim Roth and Paul Rhys, and its color scheme is so pungent I'm sure the real Van Gogh would applaud it. But it doesn't have the wide-ranging visual imagination of Mr. Altman's best work. [28 Nov 1990, p.14]

In its own coy way, the film celebrates “the slop” it pretends to deride.

No one else in Inglourious Basterds comes close to Landa for sheer charisma.

The rural atmosphere is well wrought and so is the depiction of phony evangelism – but it all devolves into the usual heebie-jeebies by the end.

The filmmakers are smart enough – or cynical enough – to realize that we don't watch movies like Under the Same Moon in order to be surprised. We go to them for a good cry.

The humor is broad, the jokes not of the first freshness, and the cast, especially Bousdoukus, is hammy. And, for the record, the upscale menu, which is supposed to be scrumptious, doesn't look as tasty as the downscale one.

I wish the film had probed more deeply into why anybody would face those odds. George Mallory’s “Because it’s there” has never quite cut it for me.

Schrader’s chief influence here, as in many of his other films, is the great French director Robert Bresson, especially his “Diary of a Country Priest.” But Bresson’s spare stylistics achieved a sublimity while Schrader’s, though intermittently powerful, too often feel schematic.

For the literal-minded, there’s an added bonus: Johnny Cash singing Solitary Man over the opening credits.

The happy endings in "HTYMP," as sweet as they are to experience, seem more engineered than inevitable.

The actors, who portray a reunion that is more sparring match than love fest, strike occasional sparks.

The film is provocative but also scattershot and not nearly as conclusive as it pretends to be. The almost complete absence of naysayers in any of the sections is a tip-off that the game is rigged.

I would rather have seen a documentary about the real women instead of this workmanlike dramatic rendition.

Cloud 9 may not be my idea of a great movie, but it doesn't pretend that old folks are, by definition, sexless. In the movie business, this qualifies as a revolution.

The uneven Nine Lives has an impressive cast, but the best section features the great Mexican actress Elpidio Carrillo as a prison inmate kept from her child.

Your heart goes out to all these kids, but Guggenheim's take on education stacks the deck against them even further by implying that only charters offer a ray of hope. Would that it were that simple.

Lee has always had an affinity for innocence and an abiding affection for outcasts, and both traits serve him well in Taking Woodstock -- but only up to a point. Beyond that point, where sanctification meets reality, the film floats up, up, and away.

Firth is very good at playing racked men of high principle. He’s so well cast as Lomax that, at times, he’s almost too perfect in the role. He’s still the best thing about the movie.

Movies about doubles are, almost by definition, creepy, but Villeneuve, not to be outdone, piles on the weirdness. He’s big on spider imagery, but the web is flimsy.

Even with Gere’s standout work, a little of Norman goes a long way, and this film offers up a lot of Norman.

An oddly discursive documentary that is, ultimately, more about Pierre Bergé, his companion and business partner of 50 years.

So how good/bad is Cars 3? If we’re talking Pixar threepeats here, it’s certainly no “Toy Story 3.” Instead, it’s a reasonably diverting, somewhat sluggish attempt to reinstall the “heart” of the first installment.

It's certainly not a "breakthrough" comedy, unless the breakthrough is that women will flock to slobby, heartfelt romps starring Kristin Wiig instead of Seth Rogen. It's progress, sort of.

Thematically at least, it’s like a John Ford movie with pickup trucks. But everything plays out with a sodden deliberateness, as if something mythic were going on. No such luck.

I must say I felt relieved that the film wasn’t a masterpiece. If it was, we’d have more reason to fear Stewart will leave "The Daily Show.”

Turn the River becomes a standard fatalistic misfits-on-the-run movie with more than its share of improbabilities. It's as if Eigeman didn't realize how good the best parts of his film were, and so went ahead and trashed them.

Seeing it will probably send you back to the original animated movie for refreshment.

The best thing to come out of Sunshine Cleaning is the confirmation that Adams, one of Hollywood's most delightful comediennes, is also capable of piercing drama.

Allen isn’t doing anything terribly deep-dish here, just gussying up the standard crime-movie tropes. To what end? His point, I think, is to demonstrate that human beings, no matter how educated, are capable of justifying the most awful acts.

Ungainly and overly ambitious, The Butler tries to encompass too much history within too narrow a framework.

Most of the love in Feast of Love is unrequited, untapped, or unfulfilled. The fine cast, which includes Jane Alexander, Selma Blair, and Radha Mitchell, is also somewhat underused.

Without the steadfast intelligence of Clooney's performance, Michael Clayton wouldn't work half as well as it does.

Daldry and his screenwriter Eric Roth make the mistake of showing bodies falling from the Twin Towers – it's a mistake because its graphic power seems more exploitative than cathartic – but they otherwise thankfully refrain from pulling out all the stops.

RED is a poisoned valentine to the CIA, and that approach, too, is in keeping with its cold-war sentimentality.

It's all kind of silly and amorphous, but the scenes between Yi and Cera, whether or not they were scripted, have a babes-in-the-wood loveliness.

The action sequences aren’t especially well designed, and the plot, such as it is, is essentially one catastrophe after another.

It's a lot more cornball – i.e., enjoyable – than "The Tree of Life," which tried for some of the same things. Utopia, with its big blue skies and peachy-keen people, may not rank right up there with Shangri-La, but it's close enough.

Moderately entertaining, periodically draggy, Transcendence is not as wacky-visionary as “The Matrix,” or nearly as lyrical as “Her.”

The Great Santini deserves praise for its willingness to look long, hard, and seriously at a realistic family situation -- a willingness too rarely found at a time when most films are obsessed with futile fantasies. [07 Aug 1980, p.19]

Michael Apted's direction veers into listlessness, but there is, at times, a pleasing elegance to the production, too. It doesn't assault you. Small favors are better than none.

Trevorrow and his co-screenwriters (Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Derek Connolly) do bring some nice low-key touches to the thudfest, and action is satisfying, if not galvanizing.

Radcliffe and Kazan have a nice nerds-in-clover rapport. If only the movie wasn’t so satisfied with how cute it is.

If a movie that uses the word "relationship" 7,000 times puts your teeth on edge, stay away.

Taymor's flower-powery phantasmagoria is ambitious but ultimately tiresome.

The movie, starring Rogen as a mall cop with anger management issues, is essentially a goony romp flecked with disturbing eruptions of violence.

A little of Solondz's deadpan creepiness goes a long way with me. Life During Wartime is about how people are not what they seem to be, but most of its characters aren't rich enough to exhibit single, let alone double, lives.

I wish the movie weren’t quite so sappy about the spiritually redemptive powers of fine cuisine. Sometimes a meal is just a meal.

Eastwood gets all noirish for us but, like Jolie's performance, there's a rote quality to it all. Even the mournful little ditties that Eastwood composed for the soundtrack seem canned.

As a testament to positive thinking, 127 Hours will probably stand as a ringing affirmation for reckless survivalists. For those of us not so affirmed, Boyle's paean to heroism – a better title for it might have been "A Farewell to Arm" – is merely the best gross-out music video ever made.

Myers, whose background is in documentaries involving Afghanistan and Iraq War vets, is good at capturing the revealing, offhand moments in this story, but Maggie’s conflicts about motherhood and the military needed a greater psychological scope than this film provides.

A reasonably effective comedy-drama that squarely fits the usual Allen mold. [18 Sept 1992, p.12]

Director Rupert Goold keeps things appropriately creepy, but True Story is no “Capote.” It’s all buildup with little payoff.

Much of the film is wordless, and apparently some of the Merjan ritualism is a concoction of the filmmakers. There's a trancelike quality to its best moments, but too much of it is artfully boring. Silent Souls is at the opposite extreme from Hollywood – it's all mood. Be careful what you wish for.

As the depraved John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, Johnny Depp adds yet another sly sleazoid to his burgeoning portrait gallery.

An actress named Moon Bloodgood, who started out as a hip-hop dancer and Laker Girl before getting into movie and TV work, plays a bush pilot and sometime girlfriend of Jerry's. The role is bland but that name is great.

Harold Pinter's screenplay adds needless touches of melodrama to Margaret Atwood's original novel, but the performances have a lot of conviction, and the story deals with important issues. [16 Mar 1990, p.10]

We are treated to all manner of worshipy recollections from a stable of Thompson's admirers, including, believe it or not, Patrick Buchanan and James Baker. Who said gonzo politics doesn't make for strange bedfellows?

The cast is strong, though, and demonstrates yet again how good acting can carry audiences through movies that otherwise would not be worth the trip.

I suppose it's asking too much of Ratner to impart some kind of visionary flourish to the proceedings. But without it, these comic-book movies all tend to look the same.

Oppenheimer may have thought that by giving these murderers center stage they would expose their bestiality for all to see (except themselves). But what comes across instead is something far more insidious: a showcase for depravity.

Raising Cain will delight cinephiles with keen eyes and strong stomachs, but general audiences may find it more bothersome than brilliant. [10 Aug 1992, p.11]

So free-floating that it floats away.

In its final half-hour, all the stops are pulled. The movie is still wildly implausible but at least it's hurtling forward. The only thing missing from the proceedings is a windmill for John to tilt at.

The result is that the wonderment, with nothing serious at risk, seems lackluster.

This movie is altogether too nice. I prefer sports movies with more sass and snap, like the films Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”) used to make, or even parts of “Moneyball.”

Despite all the heavy artistic artillery Mendes has brought to bear, his movie isn't all that far removed conceptually from "Top Gun" - which was also about military men itching for a chance to rock 'n' roll. The only difference is, "Top Gun" was unabashedly a popcorn movie while Jarhead is a box of unpopped kernels passing itself off as a full meal.

Of course, most of the people who flock to Gremlins 2 are interested in the special-effects fantasy scenes featuring the gremlins themselves, and the nastier the better. Here the filmmakers are at their most energetic and most wearisome, dishing out so many silly-gruesome variations on the crazy-creature theme that you can't help being impressed, even as you feel like ducking under your seat for a moment's relief from the relentlessness of it all.

Uma Thurman looks frumpy in Motherhood. This is the only pressing reason to see it.

Directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg work up a stormy sea-parting finale that is better than anything in “The Ten Commandments.” Again, the trick to enjoying this film is to expect nothing.

As summer franchise superhero flicks go, it's tolerable.

Like much reality TV, sections of American Teen seem patently staged, or coached, for the camera.

Best when it's morphing into seriousness. Too often the comic bits seem like sops to the audience.

For all its pretensions and intermittent power, is essentially high-grade claptrap.

Smith, it should be noted, has compared Neville in interviews to Job. Tone down the highfalutin references. In the end, this is a sci-fi zombie movie, folks.

Washington doesn’t look as if he’s having much fun, and who can blame him? Perhaps he agrees with me: Apocalypse movies, like apocalypse heroes, need some laughs, too.

May be accurate around the edges, but at its heart it's a fairy tale.

The whole thing is piffle, but it moves fast enough to stay entertaining.

Cruise is better than he’s been in a while because he damps down his usual all-intensity-all-the-time MO. He’s best here when his character seems the most scared. And Emily Blunt as a commando legend is indomitable, a credit to her exoskeleton.

There’s something borderline dishonest about the way Rosi intercuts the oblivious, life-goes-on Lampedusans with the harrowing, too-brief footage of Africans inside the immigration center and aboard the rescue ships. His stylistics keep these two groups cruelly apart, but who knows if this is the way things actually play out?

Rush isn’t bad, exactly, but it’s like a standard-issue male action programmer that somehow crept in from an earlier era.

Aside from these two actors (Downey/Rourke), Iron Man 2 isn’t much of a whoop-de-do.

Driver’s low-key charisma in the role rescues it from terminal dullness, and there are a few fine sidelights.

It's not only light, it's thin. It's self-deprecating to a fault. Reynolds is required to practically wink at the audience, as if to say,"I know this looks silly."

It's not "The Odd Couple," despite the nostalgic casting of the male leads, but it has a few laughs, and Matthau carries rubber-faced comedy into a new dimension. [7 Jan 1994]

Hartley is very adept with actors, though – or at least some of them. Posey, for her part, displays a pert quizzical quality that's very charming and very funny. And Goldblum is tailor-made for Hartley's minimalist patter.

Director Francis Lawrence stages the action sequences, both aboveground and underground, with a modicum of flair, and Julianne Moore as rebel leader Coin gives off some sparks – she’s a reformer with a totalitarian streak – but for the most part there is nothing divertingly new or different about this franchise fade-out.

What we're left with is outrage in a vacuum. It's impossible to separate out the stop-loss tactic from the misadventures of the war itself, and that's what this film, to its discredit, accomplishes.

It boasts appealing performances, and it takes a reasonably tasteful approach to its subject, aside from a string of four-letter words that sound strangely out of place in this romantic comedy.