The movie has plenty of high-tech power, spinning out action so explosive you'll hardly notice how preposterous the story is or how cardboard-thin the characters are.

Not a great movie, but contains fascinating historical material.

The humor is as crude as the characters, but the picture has energy.

As Sam, the wayward stepsister of Charlie's sardonic friend Patrick (Ezra Miller), Watson doesn't lose her cool, or her warmth, in a role that might easily have devolved into terminal sappiness.

Whatever the case, the film resounds with hyperbolic passion. Hot bubbling currents flow through this film’s constricted veins.

The acting is uneven, but Huston's performance gains eerie intensity as the tale moves from sensationalistic melodrama to humanistic tragedy.

Braff makes a striking directorial debut while leading a superb ensemble cast.

What we have here is a perhaps unanswerable enigma of the sort all too common in the annals of spying.

More of a testimonial than a documentary, but it weaves together a portrait of a remarkable Irish-American friar, who was gay and a recovering alcoholic, and the many lives he inspired.

Writer-director Cao Hamburger works well with child actors and has a spare, unforced style. But too much of this film is desultory and thin.

Among other things, Unforgivable is a free-floating meditation on the distresses and exhilarations of being a parent.

Just in case we don’t register the mismatch, Rogen is outfitted to look especially shlubby, and he sports an unbecoming beard that never comes off. With his crack timing, he still manages to get a few laughs, but he would have gotten a whole lot more if the jokes were any good. Theron, meantime, is photographed in full glamour mode throughout. This is probably just as well, since, as an actress, she doesn’t appear to have a comic bone in her body. Therein lies the true mismatch in this coupling.

Filmed in a leisurely, understated style, this dark comedy is downright entrancing. A spectacular directorial debut.

Shulman was around so long that he even got to weigh in on Frank Gehry's Disney Hall. He was skeptical once but came to love it.

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

Some scenes paint a convincing portrait of Stern as a witty opponent of stuffiness, prudery, and hypocrisy. Others mix gross-out humor with nasty doses of racism, sexism, and homophobia that reveal a dark side to Stern's professional personality.

It has the requisite amount of knockabout silliness.

Imaginatively directed by Bill Duke, and featuring yet another first-rate performance by Larry Fishburne. [19 Jun 1992, p.12]

From scene to scene The Connection is never less than watchable, although it is also never less than predictable.

Pianomania is the thoroughly apt title for a thoroughly enjoyable documentary.

At its best, this entertaining romance blends the zesty dialogue of a classic screwball comedy with the nonstop energy of a Post-Modern pastiche.

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.”

Like Jim Carrey, Ferrell seems to think that the way to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor is to drain himself of everything that audiences love about him.

You may find, as I did, that the lovely twilit moments in this movie stay with one, and that summoning them up in your mind is like slowing down time.

In its own superannuated preppy way, Stillman's comic universe is as singular as Woody Allen's.

The dialogue swings between platitudes and clichés, but the acting is lively and the music will set even lazy toes tapping.

What we do care about, and what “Final Reckoning” finally delivers on after an overly expository first hour, is watching Tom do stuff. Set pieces involving a sunken submarine and buzzing biplanes amply fulfill the franchise’s main selling point.

It's effective but schematic storytelling.