If the script isn't as well-structured as it could be, the dialogue is refreshingly natural. Kutcher is surprisingly well cast as the awkward, somewhat dorky Oliver, and Peet is charming and charismatic without being cloying or artificial.

Not clever or polished enough to be successful as farce, unwilling to supply any reason to care about any of its characters, unable to make the points about the role of fashion in society it thinks it is, "Ready to Wear" is madness without the usual Altman method.

“Golda” feeds that time-honored tradition of watching a virtuoso screen performer vanish behind a famous name and a wall of cinematic artifice.

A raunchy, ploddingly unfunny comedy sequel to 2012’s equally crass but disarmingly endearing “Goon.”

Jakubowicz has aptly said of his film that "the beauty of Secuestro Express is how localized it is. The more local it becomes, the more universal it becomes." The truth of his remark resonates throughout this fast and furious film.

It's not the story that's the story here, it' the film' bravura visual look.

It's a demented kitsch mess (although the smeary digital video does match the muddled narrative), but it's savvy about celebrity and has more guts and energy than much of what will open this year.

A practiced piece of Hollywood hokum, way too calculated and contrived, especially for a film that nominally celebrates the chaos and creativity of the 1960s.

Charlotte Gray, for all Blanchett's radiance and intelligence in the title role, is a bore.

This joyous film, which confronts pain, loss and transgression with love, wisdom and forgiveness amid inspired humor, has it all.

As insistent as it is skillful -- and it is very skillful -- it does all it can to pound you into enjoying yourself. The result is rather like being force-fed a meal of your favorite foods by the Terminator.

A shrewd, pulpy crowd-pleaser.

From time to time its mix of foul-mouthed bro camaraderie and in-your-face violence nods in the direction of modest entertainment value, but the net effect is a whiplash-inducing muddle. The movie is full of noise and energy but devoid of real wit, coherence or impact.

We're No Angels proves that a great ensemble is no guarantee of a great movie -- but it also proves that the misses of the brilliant can still give you something extraordinary. [15 Dec 1989, p.F12]

You can't blame Hunt for perhaps taking on too much — at least she wrote herself a complicated role in this sorry age for front-and-center movie women — but it doesn't always make for a smooth Ride.

The naughty-yet-nurturing tone is certainly unusual, but in working so hard to be the adult who "gets" kids yet lectures them at the same time, he's ended up with a colorful but superficial mess.

Decoding Deepak does not feel, as it might, like an indictment of those messages but rather a straightforward portrait of someone working hard to present the product he is selling.

The "Blue Velvet" of high school horror pictures...Certainly, it's not on the deeply personal, highly idiosyncratic artistic level of the David Lynch film, but it is a splendid example of what imagination can do with formula genre material.

A few shades brighter than its predecessor, and the action bits certainly closer to the full-throttle "Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" mode director Guy Ritchie didn't quite capture the first time.

In the end, Switch isn’t a top-grade Edwards movie--though it shares with his best, a sparkling directorial panache and charm, a charge of risque humanism, a wizardly delight in body language.

Far more diverting and well crafted than its promotion-free release campaign might suggest. Then again, for a film largely based on the notion that "nothing is what it seems," such lowered expectations may actually work in its favor.

Anna’s interactions with Moody and Rembrandt are ultimately a double-edged sword: They give facets to Anna that show she is not just a means to connect the various (impressive) action scenes. But that makes you want more for Anna and Q than the cliched backstory the movie ultimately delivers

Except for a couple of bright patches of dialogue by screenwriter William Goldman and a sharp performance by Peter MacNicol, this new Reynolds vehicle never builds up heat--or momentum. It’s just another bumpy, tedious ride through the seamy Vegas streets, which serve as home court for a bitter, lonely guy’s battle with an oafish gang of high-rolling thugs.

Tokyo Decadence is likely to stay with you long after the theater lights come up.

So many phrases out of characters' mouths are as overused and flavorless as a thrice-steeped tea bag, and yet a sturdy narrative structure, increasing thematic complexity and finely detailed performances from Aidan Quinn and Taylor Schilling make writer-director Wiebke von Carolsfeld's sophomore effort an agreeably pensive experience.

It’s a potentially intriguing bit of fiction that plays out in, at best, serviceable ways.

Even though this is supposed to be a kindlier Van Damme vehicle, his movies couldn't exist without his trademark ability to deliver the kind of accurate, powerful kicks any World Cup team would envy. All his soulful glances notwithstanding, Timecop still depends too much on violence to make it appealing to the uninitiated or the unwary.

It's too thin to be satisfying. It consistently sparkles and moves along gracefully, but at a mere 81 minutes it leaves you unsatisfied. Although trimmed from an R to a PG-13, reportedly in light of the AIDS scare, you're nevertheless left with the feeling that more than sex ended up on the cutting-room floor. [19 Sept 1987, p.9]

By interweaving a very contemporary love story into these themes, DiCillo has at least given it all a fresh spin.

It's a terrific little film worthy of discovery.

The action unwinds with the mechanical artifice of a creaky play, though Nadda creates a few strikingly cinematic moments.

It's satisfying, charming and surprising — a film that keeps its supernatural elements grounded in reality, with the focus on the spirituality of true love.

In its loose, hallucinatory narrative, we gain a sense of the nightmares caused by a loss of spirituality and physical connection. It may leave you questioning if the Mayans were right all along.

Roddy and Bereen in particular give fully fleshed-out performances, playing agents of a religious institution they both disrespect in subtle and blatant ways. Clarke and company inject some old-fashioned scares into the context of a deeper moral rot.

Inspired by a 1978 New West magazine article by David Barry, this fine little 1981 film suggests that continual participation in these races represents a refusal to grow up. Dennis Hopper is a long-ago racer desperate for a comeback; it's as if he's the same kid in Rebel Without a Cause, surviving those chicken runs in that film only to grow middle-aged without growing up. [18 Aug 1985, p.5]

It's not a bad idea, and it has the right cast and the right look. But, sad to say, it lacks the pace and energy to make it come alive and therefore remains more of a literary conceit than a movie.

In its first two-thirds, My First Mister, which marks Christine Lahti's feature directorial debut, looks to be a winner. But it takes a disastrously wrong turn toward the end that all but destroys the good work that's come before.

Does have a satisfying ending and it's nice to see a G-rated film without bathroom humor, but there is too much formula and not enough reason to pay attention here.

Only partially convincing.

For the show's rabid viewership, these testimonials are probably integral to a celebratory experience like the "Glee" live show. To everyone else, it's all gonna be Gleek to you.

Bottom line, those in the "Saw" factory know their audience and have brought along the appropriate buckets and bibs. Even devotees, however, may note pacing problems and tire of Jigsaw's selective omnipotence.

The hint at disagreement among the performers about who can and cannot call themselves Muslim is particularly provocative — a debate that would have been better off played out on-screen rather than summarized after the fact.

While Ted 2 is absurd and occasionally disgusting, it is also wickedly funny.

Holmes’ helming is unremarkable — unlike her and Owens’ acting, which is excellent.

It's an acceptable, play-it-safe version of the first volume in the hugely popular Veronica Roth-written trilogy.

The film's mostly about one grown woman’s lingering regrets over that one dumb adolescent mistake, although Egerton doesn’t let his more serious themes get in the way of scaring the bejesus out of his audience. The result is a movie that’s a much better riff on the Slender Man urban legend than the terrible 2018 thriller of the same name.

The Greatest Showman, for all its celebratory razzle-dazzle, in the end feels curiously lacking in conviction. Its pleasures, namely those Pasek-Paul songs, could be removed and repurposed for another story entirely, with no discernible loss in enjoyment or meaning...Its failures are rooted in something deeper: a dispiriting lack of faith in the audience’s intelligence, and a dawning awareness of its own aesthetic hypocrisy. You’ve rarely seen a more straight-laced musical about the joys of letting your freak flag fly.

It's to Coiro's credit that no one emerges as a villain — and that, however painful, on the other side lies hope.

More than any of the sequels, “Ravager” upholds the mind-bending originality and emotional depth of the first “Phantasm.” From the surprise cameos by old characters to the constant twisting of dreams and reality, it’s suffused with the feeling of people trying to regain control of their lives, to get back what they’ve lost.

The enchanting setting becomes a backdrop to action that’s dispiritingly mundane.

Unfortunately, absent a more objective context, Trudell's gnomic utterances do little to support those sentiments. By preaching so relentlessly to the choir, this film misses an opportunity to show what got them to sing in the first place.

By sticking closely to a heroine who's skating on the edge of sanity, the film keeps the audience properly disoriented. Darkness runs deep in "The Lullaby," rooted in the never-ending conflict between mothers and daughters.

Based on the 1920 hit play by John Galsworthy, the creaky drama revolves around two neighboring families living in the picturesque British countryside. [02 Feb 2007, p.E12]

Writer-director Steven Silver (with an able assist from cinematographer Miroslaw Baszak) captures this brutal time - which led to the country's first free, multiracial elections in 1994 and the end of apartheid - in vivid, often bold, but never overpowering strokes.

The filmmakers and Hardy sharply capture a particular type: the performative rebel, laser-focused on pushing other people’s buttons even while fleeing a demon.

Frustrating though it can be, Spanglish still proves to be as resilient as its characters.

The blurring of fact and fiction has been a part of the Amityville saga since it became public, but for Lutz there's no gray area in his memories, whose power is undiminished.

The film clearly comes from a place of deep knowledge about the intricacies of schizophrenia but has an unfortunate tendency to overexplain itself.

Flat jokes, uneven performances, and a predictable romance help make Bounty Killer a lot less fun than it should be — a killer shame, given its boldly gonzo premise.

Has the hit-machine aura of something whipped together by L.A. studio execs over avocado sandwiches and banana smoothies.

Lightly reflective and consistently entertaining, Lucky Break is an easy-to-take diversion.

Has a certain stiffness and awkwardness at the start, but this deeply personal work steadily grows more powerful and eloquent, creating a tragic vision of the plight of illegal aliens that transcends its melodramatic elements.

A pleasure to look at. It's filled with fine, imaginative moves and an overarching sense of visual freedom, a feeling of play that entices us into enjoyment. But, when it comes to dialogue and story, this Sinbad apparently used up all its initiative changing its hero's ethnicity to generic Greco-Roman.

Has nothing going for it -- and much going against it.

May make you weep, but not in the way anyone intended. Handsomely made, well-meaning but finally frustrating and unsatisfying, this perplexing film is an example of a previously unseen hybrid, the socially conscious, humanitarian action movie. It doesn't appear to be a genre with much of a future.

Chomsky deserves a more thoughtful documentary than Power and Terror, and in fact he got it in 1993's "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" --The film's main flaw is the absence of other voices -- From a cinematic point of view, two sides of an issue are always better than one.

The film's repetitious, episodic structure seems to unnecessarily alleviate the building tension, making it a far less frightening film than it might have been.

What makes this intriguing, yet woefully uneven film so relatable is that there is nothing about Ned's experience that seems extreme.

Despite the considerable physicality of the movie, with its impressive cinematography and Radcliffe’s believable, all-in disintegration, it’s more earthbound slog than psychological deep-dive.

McCarthy has not done himself or his reputation any favors with this original.

The movie is an album-sleeve-thin romance steeped in a self-congratulatory Williamsburg, Brooklyn, vibe.

Based on the quality of the screenplay alone, “Demon Knight” is strictly a direct-to-video affair; with “Tales From the Crypt” tacked to the title, the budget expands exponentially to accommodate state-of-the-art special effects--most of them featuring dismemberment, naturally.

Joyride is a jalopy of a film. This Irish-set story of a brand-new single mother and a precocious 13-year-old boy who end up on the road together is so scattershot and far-fetched it overwhelms its better intentions — of which there are many.

In truth, the film fizzles as much as it fumes.

Solomon Kane succeeds by embracing its identity as a straightforward genre exercise, complete with bone-crunching and blood-spurting action. By not aiming for more, it hits its target.

The refreshing element is that the story resists normative fantasies of sex or romance — in Paris Can Wait, Coppola focuses on the relationship to the self.

The movie is a polished, well-made affair (Depp’s smallpox pustules look scarily state-of-the-art) but also a disappointingly juiceless one, with little of the messy go-for-broke filmmaking energy that Maïwenn has brought to better, rougher works like “Polisse.”

Parker Posey, the queen of the indies, is a stylish actress, but there's not much she can do with the flat, trite sex comedy The Oh in Ohio, written by Adam Wierzbianski and directed by Billy Kent without a trace of imagination or originality.

Its emergence from the dark waters of studio oblivion is far from unwelcome: It’s solid enough by the diminished standards of January, when the multiplex becomes a cinematic dumping ground, and it’s visually slicker and more sophisticated than its setup would seem to warrant.

A mash-up of indie-film tropes.

Less than terrific technically; focus and sound levels waver. Luckily, these flaws are not inconsistent with the film's raw, unvarnished tone and they do not diminish the effect of Leary's performance or that of Davis.

Amusingly subversive, thanks to sharp writing and direction, by Mandy Nelson and Francine McDougall, respectively.

Some of what happens feels real, a lot doesn't, but even when the screenplay groans with clichés, the four lead actresses play their parts with truckloads of heart.

Feels out of shape and self-satisfied, as if it knew it didn't have to try very hard.

While undeniably silly and violent in a cartoon-like manner, is by and large a hilarious skewering of the clichés of teen pix.

The film's colorblindness does not make up for its latent sexism.

Although this horror flick is somewhat absurd and seemingly forgettable when viewed in a vacuum, its coincidentally contemporaneous release with "Blue Is the Warmest Color" urges immediate reconsideration.

Imitating the Bourne capers rather than establishing an identity of its own, “The Take” is a strictly by-the-numbers political thriller that fails to capitalize on Idris Elba’s formidable screen presence.

Although James' muted performance comes across as a bit lifeless alongside Kingsley's more colorful, masterfully modulated turn, the characterizations nevertheless allow for satisfyingly complex, real-world renderings of conventional heroes and villains.

MFKZ is obviously modeled on Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s “Akira” and Taiyô Matsumoto’s “Tekkonkinkreet,” but it lacks the gritty brilliance of the former and the underdog poignancy of the latter.

The film is unapologetically “low art” … yet fun, in its own way.

Most of the first half of director Ellie Callahan’s supernatural thriller Head Count feel like a waste of time, made all the more frustrating once the movie starts to improve.

To be sure, there's plenty of humor to offset serious matters, and Mayron reveals both terrific rapport with youngsters and ability in maintaining a gentle flow to material that is inherently episodic when there are so many characters' stories to tell. [18 Aug 1995, p.F8]

Rifkin has spun a pitch-black fable of show business at its sleaziest and most ephemeral.

Though “Seven Kings Must Die” suffers some from the gray palette, dim lighting and general somberness that weighs heavy on a lot of modern television, the movie delivers viscerally exciting fight scenes and a strong sense of what life was like in an ancient, unsettled world.

If you ignore the slicker aspects of the dialogue (and with a little effort you mostly can), it's satisfying to find a film that is as innocent and as much visual fun as this one is.

It’s a mostly fun, logic-be-damned ride if you just stay in the moment and don’t think too deeply as the going gets tough — which is soon enough.

The war crimes and romance stories theoretically run on parallel tracks, but the overall pacing is ragged and the dialogue frequently out of step with the characters we've met.