Effective at times, and Gyllenhaal shows a new side of her talent, but the main impression is of first-rate performers doing second-rate work.

Any movie that opens with the killing of a pet dog is definitely going to capture your attention. But where do you go from there?

Its view of spiritual healing is closer to Spielberg fantasy than religious insight. Still, its good acting and good intentions will be enough to please many viewers.

The entire enterprise ultimately seems designed to turn Austen into a self-help guru.

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.

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.

The cast is appealing and much of the action is wryly amusing, although Baumbach borrows so many moves from Woody Allen and Francois Truffaut that their names should be in the credits. [5 June 1998]

Unlawful Entry would be an important film if it followed this scene with an intelligent look at the social, political, and institutional problems that lead to such incidents. Unfortunately, the movie isn't serious-minded enough to do this. What could have been an incisive examination of an urgently relevant subject turns into mere melodrama with the usual sex-and-violence twists. [14 July 1992, p.11]

Wargnier chooses a sweeping title and a sweeping topic, then turns everything into half-baked melodrama, heavy on over-the-top emotion but light on subtlety and ideas.

If you don't compare it with the novel, it's one of the season's better films.

Illuminating, if not exactly edifying.

If this was a quintessential Polanski movie, something malign would reside inside its heart: The sitcom would explode its boundaries. The movie is called Carnage, but the carnivores on display are toothless.

Boyle loads his movie with so many snazzy effects that we lose sight of what it all means – if anything. His showoffiness confuses.

Set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II, Ang Lee's uneven new film is a bit like a Chinese variant on Paul Verhoeven's "The Black Book." The sex scenes in this otherwise overly prim period piece are extremely graphic.

Full of fascinating eye-witness accounts.

Just about everything connected to this movie is a tie-in, except for the popcorn. And even then I'm not too sure.

Oka! is a fascinating movie with many free-form charms.

Von Trier sets the action on a theatrical stage, spotlighting the existential isolation that weighs on people who don't seek larger visions of life, individuality, and community. Challenging, dramatic, provocative.

What goes on inside the mind of a terrorist who is willing to blow himself for the cause? The War Within is one of the few films that attempts to deal with this subject in a nonexploitative way.

Good at scenes of high-level nastiness, but there's too much confusing exposition in this "Legacy" and the action scenes, some of them good, are too little and too late.

Blomkamp overdoes even his best effects. (I would have welcomed more vistas of Elysium to break up the grungefest.) If Elysium is an example of how recession-era Hollywood intends to dramatize the rift between the haves and the have-nots, let’s hope the studios don’t also bring back Smell-O-Rama.

Its wasted cast includes Dyan Cannon, Sally Kellerman, Len Cariou, and Brenda Vaccaro, who miraculously manages to give a fine performance in this malarkey.

Along with the lapses of taste that have become standard in pictures aimed at teen audiences, filmmaker John Hughes offers moments of wit and warmth.

Bale is brilliant.

Mangold front-loads the action, but near the end there’s a first-rate fight atop a bullet train between Wolverine/Logan and some especially pesky ninjas. It puts the train fights in the recent “The Lone Ranger” to shame.

The Karate Kid will probably work best for young audiences unaware of its predecessor – or of much of anything else for that matter.

The mixture of humor, suspense, and ominous undertones is effective but rarely inspired.

The characters are stereotypes and the psychology is simplistic, but the movie builds an effective sense of claustrophobic menace that thriller fans may enjoy.