By bringing the story into Iraq, Grant Heslov courts tastelessness. Gooniness and Gitmo don't mix.

It’s essentially a buddy-cop romp with the usual assortment pack of graphic gruesomeness.

Not infrequently the movie is as mediocre as its target. The great Steve Coogan movie has yet to be made.

Amy Adams is such a likable actress that she makes the romantic comedy Leap Year worth watching even though we’ve seen it all before.

Patrice Leconte has directed excellent serious films such as "Monsieur Hire" and "Man on the Train," but when it comes to humor he loses his bearings. His latest attempt at seriocomedy, My Best Friend, is a premise in search of a film.

The only grace note in this otherwise determinedly graceless movie is the classy way Walker’s exit is handled.

The problem is that there is very little chemistry between the actresses, and Haynes and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy are far too studied in their depiction of passion. The most impressive performance in the movie is given by Blanchett’s elaborately coiffed, cast-iron hairdo.

Overall, Diggers is like an Ed Burns movie -- but with fishing gear.

The law of diminishing returns is no more apparent than in the movie world. A sequel, with rare exceptions, is worse than the film it follows, and sequels of sequels fare even worse. Such is the case with Shrek the Third.

Once around the block with these folks is more than enough.

He's a mishmash of cultural opposites, and his motormouth swagger is fitfully amusing. So is his backhand.

Most of it plays out as sub-medium-grade farce, but Carrey has some funny calisthenic bits where he appears to have the pliability of a rubber toy.

This time the feelings don't build much momentum, though, and the action is generally slack. Robert Altman directed, showing his usual healthy disdain for standard storytelling styles, but never quite getting a handle on his characters or their bizarre situation. [6 Dec 1985]

Compared with, say, Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," which featured this sort of stuff in practically every frame, Marshall's film is downright Disneyish.

The film benefits greatly from Rahim's subtle, effective performance.

The romantic comedy 27 Dresses will work best for people who have never seen a romantic comedy. If you have, you might find it amusing to tally up the steals – I mean, homages.

Although Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che may have an epic running time of almost 4-1/2 hours, its scope is surprisingly narrow.

There are moments of real humor and real emotion in this otherwise frivolous sex comedy about a married man smitten with a glamorous model.

The best I can say is that it’s another tour de force for Gyllenhaal, although his intensity isn’t matched by the movie itself, which sacrifices much of its power by too often settling for easy, nut-brain effects.

It’s an only-in-America success story worth recounting.

Lee is very good at creating a sense of free-floating dread, but he, and his screenwriter Mark Protosevich, don’t have a real flair for pulp.

Only Rebecca Hall comes through with a genuineness that rises above Holofcener’s doodlings. Her scenes with Guilbert resonate because, in the end, Rebecca is the only character in the movie who seems to care about anything other than his or her own – take your pick – bank account, complexion, weight, guilt. In this company, she’s practically a saint.

The overlong Trainwreck would have been better if it had derailed more often.

Safe Haven is a species of Gothic chick flick.

Their 40-year marriage seems like more of a trial than this overweening, lightly likable movie acknowledges.

Not awful, not wonderful, Jack the Giant Slayer is a midrange fairy tale epic that’s a lot more ho-hum than fee-fi-fo-fum.

An actor making his directorial debut, Parker, who plays Turner and also co-wrote the script with Jean McGianni Celestin, has taken hold of an incendiary subject and coarsened its complexities into agitprop.

A dash – only a dash – of Tim Burton ghoulishness might have helped.

Very broad, very brash ''film noir'' satire...The action is fast, flashy, sometimes funny, always loud. [13 June 1986, p.25]

Draggy Italian epic that's big on production values but skimpy on inspiration.

If the movie accomplishes nothing else, though, I hope it inspires the curious to actually sit down and finally read “Moby-Dick.” It’s an extraordinary yarn. Really.

Mortal Thoughts has strong moments, but fails to keep you riveted to the end.

A few of the supporting players, including Kim Dickens, as a suspicious local cop, and Carrie Coon, as Nick’s twin sister, move beyond the formulaic, which is more than can be said for the movie.

Whatever brought Greene down was far more complex than this film allows for.

It's a showpiece for that Belgian city's medieval splendor. You may want to book vacation reservations upon leaving the theater, although the memory of this underwhelming movie may tarnish the sightseeing.

Despite its arty veneer and its ostensibly political edge, Circumstance seems more interested in titillation than revelation.

Amalric throws in flashbacks and flash-forwards between bedroom and courthouse (yes, there’s a murder), and I was reminded again why I prefer my noirs in the hardboiled American style rather than tricked up with all this faux Alain Resnais-style filigree.

It’s nice to see oldsters cavorting in kaboom movies, but a little of this stuff goes a long way.

I prefer the goofier approach, which is why, even though Hemsworth isn't going to be cast in "King Lear" anytime soon, he's the best thing about Thor.

De Niro, in what amounts to an extended cameo, is radically miscast. That's still no excuse for his nonperformance, which is beyond lackluster.

In a supporting role as Giacometti’s beleaguered wife, who endures her husband’s penchant for prostitutes, the great, undervalued French actress Sylvie Testud strikes the film’s most resonant note.

The film somehow manages to be both a turn-on and a turnoff.

Were it not for Anne Hathaway's Catwoman-ish Selina Kyle, there wouldn't be a single character in "Rises" who cracks a smile. I'm not arguing that "Rises" should be "Singin' in the Rain." But its Wagnerian ambitions are not matched by its material. It hasn't earned its darkness.

The trouble with pet projects is that too often they are unduly do-goody, and so it is here.

For most of the way this ecofriendly fantasy is pleasantly clunky, and Reeves, whose expressive range here is slim to none, is perfectly cast as the alien.

One dramatic ploy that doesn't work is the casting of Demi Moore as Tracy Edward, a homicide detective intent on capturing the Thumbprint Killer. Moore gave a rare good performance as the washed up diva in "Bobby," but her stridency here is grating.

Lanthimos doesn’t have the directorial energy to stir this thick allegorical stew. Lacking any of the conventional action-thriller movie skills, his deadpan style may be the only one available to him.

I hope this won’t be his last acting job. He’s too vital to go in for such a soggy send-off.

Even a subpar James Bond movie is worth seeing because, well, it’s James Bond. But if one of the most successful and long-running franchises in movie history wants to keep pumping, it’s once again time to change the formula.

Rudd is amusing enough; Segel, who towers over Rudd, is amusing, too, though the role seems to have been written for Owen Wilson. Maybe Wilson was busy. Lucky him.

If Abrams had stuck with the kids and cut way back on all the sci-fi hoo-ha, his film might have stood a fighting chance of being charming. Big is not always better, even when it comes to fantasies.

Do we really need another Hulk movie? I was one of the few critics who actually liked Ang Lee's 2003 "Hulk," but it didn't exactly ring the cash registers or clamor for a continuation.

Sometimes, oftentimes, trailers showcase only the good stuff. The actual movie is a pale substitute. Such is the case here.

Gyllenhaal is one of the most gifted actors of his generation and, along with Joaquin Phoenix, he takes more chances than just about any of them. He deserves a movie that risks as much as he does.

It’s all meant to be funnier than it is.

Actually, it's hard to have any thoughts while watching Jonah Hex – the cranium-crushing soundtrack takes care of that.

Mostly a snooze. Maybe if Buscemi himself had starred in it things would have turned out better.

True love beckons in the guise of a dingbat played by Julianne Moore and all is right with the world. As Jon’s father, a man whose lifeblood is yelling, Tony Danza is very funny. He makes you understand what his son is escaping from.

Blithely entertaining but almost completely devoid of rigor.

Jackman, sporting a distracting, Hart-like brown hairpiece, seems miscast. He doesn’t convincingly convey this politician’s swagger and slickness, and Reitman’s attempts to mimic a loose-limbed political movie in the style of, say, Robert Altman’s “Tanner '88” series or “The Candidate” are rather leaden. It’s a film that’s less interesting to watch than to discuss afterward.

One of the few open-minded Hollywood movies about Christian fundamentalism, but the mind isn't sufficiently exploratory.

Sometimes a film is best utilized as a travelogue. Such is the case with the comedy-drama The Girl From Monaco, which isn't much of a movie but offers scrumptious views.

Gandolfini, though, is a standout as the old-school father who can't abide his new-style son (but loves him anyway).

The bad guys, who specialize in funny beards, funny accents, and shaved heads, would feel right at home in an "Austin Powers" movie.

It must be said that the filmmakers, who profess to be as surprised as we are about how things play out, are being disingenuous at best and underhanded at worst.

It’s an indication of how much this film needed a bright break in all the grim oppressiveness that when Mary-Louise Parker shows up in a giddy cameo as a foul-mouthed boozer, the audience suddenly lit up with laughter.

As unlikely as it seems, Mr. Dalton actually appears to be growing in the Bond role, which is potentially stifling because its own popularity has so rigidly defined it.

It's technically impressive, but most of the better aspects of Sanctum would be almost – maybe exactly – as effective viewed the old-fashioned way.

Playing a cantankerous, beer-swigging human wreck of a man for the umpteenth time, Nolte is very good but very familiar.

This documentary about the evangelical belief in biblical prophecy is both overly ambitious and skimpy.

It's a rather lifeless re-telling of the Nativity, with greeting-card imagery and stiff performances.

It's difficult to imagine the target audience for this film. Gangbangers, perhaps?

Ultimately, forgettable, but for most of the way it's a pleasant little vacation of a movie.

The sole bright spot is Christopher Walken playing a benevolent Mafia don.

Easy Virtue has aspirations to be much more than a comedy. It wants to flay, if only with a penknife, the entire British class system.

I haven't heard this much shouting in a movie since the first hour of "Full Metal Jacket."

It's kind of fun, and Australians apparently love it, buying enough tickets to make it their country's all-time champ at the box office. But anybody much older than Star Wars - the movie that definitively replaced horses and six-shooters with rockets and ray guns - has seen it all a million times before. [03 Feb 1983, p.18]

It's not only Phoebe whose daydreams go out of control. Daniel Barnz, the writer-director, also goes a bit flooey. There's a lot more perspiration than inspiration.

Even the "surprise" appearance of Keith Richards, as the scurvy father of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, has already been hyped to death in the advance press.

Even the humor is played too broadly – another notch and we'd be in "Monty Python" territory, though not half as witty.

See the film, if you must, for Mara, who will be starring in the upcoming Hollywood remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." She's a sharp, vigilant actress whose career bears watching.

The movie keeps up for a while, then falls into a slump, dwelling too long on the tangled emotions in the heroin's tangled marriage. Since the musical numbers aren't especially lively, either, the energy level sags dangerously low. In its best scenes, though, Yentl entertains with its crisp performances and invigorates with its sturdy feminist perspective. [22 Dec 1983, p.19]

The Iron Lady is too bland to be controversial, too antiquated to speak to the present.

The film is gracefully directed around the edges, but the core story, a kind of existential murder mystery, is swallowed up by a series of increasingly outlandish plot devices involving drug runners and Tarantino-esque shootouts.

It's a moderately enjoyable escapade that isn't quite clever enough for adults and not quite imaginative enough for children.

A few of the performances, especially Nicole Kidman’s, as the lady in charge, and Kirsten Dunst’s, as the teacher pining to flee with the corporal, have some bite, but not enough to make much of an imprint in this brittle, vaporous chamber piece.

There is barely a whiff of genuine transcendence in this grand-scale extravaganza. The special effects are courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, but the magic here is largely industrial.

When a great movie subject results in a middling movie, the loss is double.

It's a well-meaning picture, but it doesn't have enough imagination to become as involving as it would like. [22 Jan 1993, p.11]

It has its modicum of suspense, and Brendon Fraser, who stars as intrepid professor Trevor Anderson – who does indeed journey to the center of the Earth – is his usual heroically affable self.

Cruise gives his energetic all to the role, but he, too, doesn’t seem to be quite aware that Seal was morally compromised far beyond the shallow confines of this film.

Director and co-writer John Krokidas doesn’t have a very fluent gift for period re-creation – everything seems stagy – and most of the actors, playing divas of various stripes, overact.

If writer-director Marc Lawrence had stuck with Alex's faded glory, Music and Lyrics could have been terrific. It could have been about something. Instead, he's confected a curdled valentine.

Ritchie is so adept that the film is compulsively watchable, but it’s watchable in the same way as a massive train wreck or the slow-motion demolition of a high-rise.

Despite some occasional moments of real sadness and terror, the turmoil in this movie is decidedly on the upbeat.

Director Chris Wedge falls into the common animator’s trap of making the “human” characters a lot duller than the nonhuman creepy-crawlies.

Beautiful geishas flit and whoosh through the equally beautiful scenery. Their kimonos are artworks-in-motion. So why is the film so boring? It could be because director Rob Marshall is so transfixed by all the ritualistic hoo-ha that he never brings the story down to earth.

This is one of those radical change-your-image performances that tries too hard to defy our expectations. Kidman has indeed proved in the past to be quite versatile, but this muddled, scabrous, neo-noir procedural does her no great favors.