Barker and Borten have chosen to retain the documentary’s framing device of the rescue attempt. In the nonfiction film, it served as a propulsive engine, carefully balanced against the interviews that told Vieira de Mello’s story and its tragic conclusion. Here, it feels abstract, disjointed from the scenes with him and Carolina, thus weakening and muddying the story.

If this misleadingly titled movie is meant to be a whimsical Capra-esque fantasy, as the production notes suggest, then why does it make such a show of its topical relevance? If it’s meant to lay bare the realities of the system, as the production notes also suggest, then why does it feel so toothless and inconsequential?

Finnegan offers a vision of domesticity as a soul-sucking grind, done for the benefit of malevolent overlords. His film chills the mind more than the spine.

The Many Saints of Newark might have played better as a limited series rather than a truncated self-contained production, with the potential for a deeper story to unfold over several impending episodes.

The sunny, diverse musical delivers sugary messages of self-affirmation with the shine of a lollipop and the stickiness of a half-eaten sucker. It’s a bold attempt, putting a neo-realist spotlight on a bevvy of first-time and nascent actors, but presented under an obnoxious treacle banner.

Though the film eventually gets to where it needs to go, it feels scattered, stumbling over true crime tropes on the way.

Ultimately, this grueling, overlong picture — think a chamber piece but with multiple characters and locations — never zeroes in on what it wants us to think or feel about Willis or John. But if it’s sympathy, it doesn’t get there.

But you know students. Some rotten Emperor’s New Clothier among them would be bound to point out that “Revolution” is utterly and fatally devoid of a story on which to hang its breathtaking pictures. And they’d have a point.

A picture with possibilities and an attractive star performance from James Garner that's among his best, but Marvin J. Chomsky's blunt, straight-on direction flattens out the film as surely as if it had been run over by the Sherman tank of its title. [28 Aug 1988, p.5]

Even with Arthur Penn as its director, and ingenious casting, it is, sad to say, mainly for connoisseurs of the car chase, European style

Make no mistake about it: Streetwalkin’ (a very hard R) is first and foremost a blood bath.

The satiric idea behind Crazy People deserves a better movie.

We Summon the Darkness is fine throughout; but it peaks in its first third, when nothing much is happening beyond some very good actors recreating the small-town rock ’n’ roll lifestyle of the recent past.

Even illuminated by the unsparing performances of Jack Nicholson as Francis and Meryl Streep as Helen, his companion of nine years and another soul stumbling away from grace, the film becomes becalmed and confusing; it lacks the novel's great unwavering trajectory. [18 Dec 1987, p.1]

While the Nick Peet-directed film has its cheerfully outrageous moments . . . even mild shock value in the time of an epidemic might not be just what the doctor ordered.

While not everything connects in the movie, Hooking Up is saved by the efforts of Snow and Richardson. They make a charming couple, even if the film itself has less allure.

Once the movie shifts gears, it’s less about the working man and more about the human. That sounds like a good thing, but the further Working Man creeps into emotionally over-calibrated basic cable territory, the less real it feels.

Extraction would be better if it just doubled down on being dumb. Instead, although the movie does indeed have some dazzling action sequences, they are interspersed with dramatic scenes that feel increasingly belabored, giving the movie a peculiar stop-start rhythm as it makes its way to a lumbering, extended gun battle final set piece.

Matt Dillon and Andrew McCarthy are engaging, but David Stevens’ overly conventional direction lacks the style to bring freshness and punch to Spencer Eastman’s complicated and drawn-out script.

The gags are often better in theory than practice.

When the focus is on how he made Playboy pop on the page — as backed by archival footage, interviews with Paul and those who worked for him, plus plenty of examples from the issues — director Jennifer Hou Kwong’s movie compels as a portrait of unwavering dedication to aesthetics and breakout creativity.

The film is well-intentioned and rooted in harrowing real-life stories. Unfortunately, it’s made in the style of British television, with cinematic clichés that telegraph outcomes. The heavy-handed use of music, in particular, is intrusive.

Unfortunately, this Australian horse racing film remains a standard underdog narrative that fails to rouse the audience from their seats, despite the best efforts from its cast and a few charming moments.

Yes, it is splendid that anyone would take on so formidable a project as Eco’s 500-page chambered nautilus of a novel. Yes, this certainly feels like a 14th-Century Italian abbey, bleak, drafty and forbidding. Yes, it looks like it too--the 14th-Century as cast by Federico Fellini, every face a grotesque. But no, sad to say, it isn’t a perfectly marvelous film.

It’s an artful piece of work, with some memorable moments where these Texans pick at each other, playing on the weaknesses that are hard to hide in a small town. But the movie is also relentlessly sour, reducing nearly everyone in it (except Joan) to a few immediately observable and mostly unflattering traits.

Perhaps the slickly made documentary overstates the cultural impact of a little-seen and widely disliked film. However, it earns points for scraping at the surface of something rarely discussed in film fandom — homosexuality in horror.

The previous feature, “Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us” (2018), offered an original and relevant story. ”Mewtwo Strikes Back” feels like poké-business as usual.

Despite some exuberant football action, a pair of buoyant rock-sound-track montage scenes and a tidy, uplifting finale, Wildcats is a disappointingly timid fable. It’s refreshing to see a strong-willed female character like McGrath, who’s loaded with grit and determination. But she’s surrounded by so many cardboard figures--her ex-husband is a cowardly worm, her rival football coach a wild-eyed chauvinist--that her triumph has the hollow ring of comic melodrama.

Even if some segments are invigoratingly thought-provoking in the same manner that a young student feels engaging with classical thinkers for the first time, the format’s lack of stimuli beyond cutting between speakers soon turns tedious. In scenes conceived as static frames, Puiu plays with depth of field for slightly more visually layered results.

Both parts of The Dark Red are hit-and-miss. The film’s premise is engaging, regardless of whether Bush and Byrne are using it as a foundation for a moody chamber piece or for a Kill Bill-esque thriller. But the movie suffers from its low budget, which makes its overall scope too limited to suit Sybil’s sprawling story.

It’s a dazzlingly filmed and acted synopsis.

There’s a good movie buried in it, but it stays buried--and, by the end, the annoyances outweigh the pleasures.

The obstacles here soon prove so contrived and the setups so schematic the movie can feel like a not-very-well-oiled, Rube Goldberg-like machine. And a predictable one at that.

Dosed works best as a purely anecdotal, personal chronicle of a friend’s struggle with addiction therapies. It is not recommended as a substitute for scientific conclusions.

The American big-movie sex comedy conventions overwhelm Jordan’s liberating poetry, his wild lyricism.

While nearly everything about The Lost Husband is pat and predictable, the movie’s easy to watch. Credit the charisma and polished professionalism of Bibb and Duhamel.

What results is an emotional appeal that highlights a grave problem but doesn’t give the viewer the scientific, factual foundation to be completely convinced. The film also doesn’t offer solutions.

Pirates has its sly, funny moments, but ironically ends up a work by a sophisticated film maker that may be best left to the least demanding audiences.

Though Logelin’s story of loss and perseverance is touching, there isn’t really anything deep or convincing about grief or parenting in Fatherhood, making this promising tale something more middling and a touch disappointing.

Heavy-handed messaging that mimics a morally didactic PSA drowns the proficiently shot movie in long tirades more noticeable for their vociferousness than for actually delving into any revealing specifics.

The sequel is a stab at world-expanding that veers off the rails as it reaches for dazzle over depth, rounding out the hit film series somewhere between a whimper and a bang.

A few strong moments from its stars brighten the film, but it’s never more than a mildly enjoyable diversion.

It’s not really a bad movie. In some ways, it’s a better directed farce than the current hits “Back to School” or “Legal Eagles.” But it’s erratic, and often weightless or uncentered; the pieces keep flying apart.

There’s merit — and in fact, real present need — for what The Mindfulness Movement is trying to say, but the film often gets in its own way.

The Wrong Missy is a lightweight throwaway, the kind of movie it is difficult to suggest one actually choose to watch, but if your algorithm somehow lands on it provides a certain harmless diversion.

Return to the Blue Lagoon, which was produced and directed by reliable TV veteran William A. Graham, who should know better, might make it with junior high audiences. The Fiji locales are gorgeous and the Basil Pouledouris score unashamedly lush.

Not even Seth's elegance and worldly warmth, nor his short speech about the virtues of his country's culture, is enough to give balance to the film's nearly two-hour portrayal of harassment, inequality and suppression. [11 Jan 1991, p.F1]

The Paper never stops for breath long enough to be dull. But all this tumult also leads to a feeling of shellshock, of having every contrivance not nailed down thrown at the audience. Part of the problem is that many of these subplots, like Henry’s marital difficulties, are no more than Hollywood serious, dealing with adult situations in a bogus way that would be better avoided.

Tanne, who tackled the relationship of a young Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama in “Southside With You,” also hits the physiological explanation of the pain of heartbreak (from which the book and movie draw their titles) pretty hard.

Ron’s Gone Wrong dots its primer on friendship with chase scenes and warnings about Big Tech, with only mixed success.

The film fails to coalesce largely because viewers are left to wonder what joins the couple in the first place.

At a distended two hours, the film becomes a bit of a slog as it deliberately tracks Sobiech’s senior year of high school as he bravely marches — with equal parts humor and sorrow — toward his demise.

The best possible face that can be put on things is that Big and Little Edie (the mother died two years after the film was released, the daughter is still living) made an unconscious, unsavory, mutually advantageous bargain with the filmmakers: Make us famous and we'll return the favor. In retrospect it's clear that both parties lived up to their parts; only the audience got shortchanged. [14 Aug 1998, p.F20]

This single joke rapidly gets pretty tired; you soon wish you could tell Moretti to try slapping on some calamine lotion--and getting on with his life. But stringing us along--with varying effectiveness-- is his life.

The Outpost is a visceral battle picture but little more.

Feste handles the action and horror in Run Sweetheart Run well; and for those who can handle its more preposterous twists there are trashy pulp kicks to be had here. But given that this movie is also trying to say something honest and angry about how the powers that be protect abusive men, its silliness is a setback.

Seeing a movie that doesn’t know the meaning of shameless, that refuses to worry about plausibility, that acts as if subtlety hadn’t been invented yet, does have a very basic kind of intrinsically cinematic pull.

Unfortunately, the movie’s thriller elements amount to pale reflections of many other works.

There is real potential in this premise, and a few flickers of genuine artfulness, but the storytelling is frustratingly abstruse, making for an Exit Plan that’s a real missed opportunity.

The slapstick physical comedy does provide some laughs, and coupled with the toilet humor “Tom & Jerry” will likely appeal to some members of the family audience. Still, if you’re in a mood for this flavor of cartoon violence, you’re better off hunting down the classic shorts or episodes of Tom and Jerry’s past TV shows.

Von Trier is undeniably talented, but Zentropa, which won the 1991 Jury Prize at Cannes, comes across mostly as an exercise in pseudo-profundity. It’s got more metaphors than it knows what to do with.

While the performances ensure that the movie is always watchable, the hesitant storytelling makes it far from compelling, a bad trip about a bummer vacation.

There are a number of sharp political and philosophical points made, but they are undercut by “The 11th Green’s” overload of history, speculation and fantasy that strands it in a narrative Bermuda Triangle.

Without a more probing look into her artistry, it’s hard to think of Olympia as a definitive Dukakis profile — though it’s certainly an unusual celebrity documentary.

It's the younger women's movie, and they acquit themselves admirably, even if most of the creative energy in the film seems to have gone into the costumes and set design. It's too bad, but in a year when female bonding is all over the screen, and uniformly dreadful to watch, Now and Then merely continues the trend. [20 Oct 1995, p.F14]

Perhaps, despite its lack of structure, the film will inspire a new generation to investigate this funny lady who could sing the lights out.

The strength of Foster’s spooky performance makes Nell more effective and worthwhile than it otherwise deserves to be. And it is just because we come to care about that unusual young woman that we wish she were in a better movie, but that was not to be.

How might Crawford have brought cinematic life to pages full of words? No clue. But the director who took up the job simply relies on people who were there to tell us how great it all was. And that keeps Creem trapped in history — a fading memory as opposed to a useful example.

Parents is all leftovers, despite the tasty little tidbits that Quaid and Hurt keep sporadically cooking up: Dad's spotless collars and loopy grin, Mom's brittle Cutex-lacquered claws. [27 Jan 1989, p.7]

A comic thriller with a delectably hard shell and a soft, hollow center.

It takes some big swings at a big subject and almost — not quite — pulls it off.

The writers, and director Miller, an MTV veteran making his feature debut, are never able to mesh the film's contradictory tones. [11 Dec 1998, p.F14]

An unremarkable if far from unpleasant sequel.

The 1966 version of the much-remade Foreign Legion warhorse is more violent, less romantic and less watchable than others -- and its stars (Doug McClure, Telly Savalas) aren't exactly Gary Cooper (who was in the 1939 film) either. [08 Apr 1988, p.16]

While it’s well-acted and slickly made, the movie’s derivative qualities — coupled with its inadvertent reminders of how crummy everything is outside our doors right now — make it less fun than intended. The light-hearted tone is often grating, working against the inherent drama of a world dominated by giant critters.

Slithering along as deliberately as one of Vic’s snails, Deep Water runs hot and cold; it’s sometimes a self-aware hoot and sometimes a disjointed drag.

Fear of a Black Hat is designed to be a rap version of the classic mock rock documentary This Is Spinal Tap, and the idea is so funny that for a long time the film coasts on our good will. But it should be funnier than it is. [03 Jun 1994, p.F4]

“The First” is a zippy 93-minute comedic adventure that embraces all the familiar building blocks of classic “Lupin III” stories: impressive car chases, impeccable disguises, impossible escapes and Lupin taking on an evil organization.

There’s much to like about the road-trip comedy Half Brothers. It’s funny, smart, topical and even touching at times. But it’s hard to overcome the inescapable rot at its center.

Despite a few scattered moments, the team-up action of The 355 never fully comes together.

Blake Edwards’ Skin Deep has a couple of the funniest moments Edwards ever devised; it has John Ritter’s easy-to-take charm, but it ends up living up to its title far too closely.

Is Faith Based the answer to the prayers of comedy-starved movie buffs? Not entirely, but it’s no plague of locusts, either.

Not all of the ancillary characters and their stories are fully developed in the film’s quick 92 minutes, but Dating Amber convincingly channels the angst and awkwardness that can be a part of teenagers’ struggles with their identity.

The Hidden has enough smarts that it doesn’t need to be so total and unrelieved a massacre. The caustic dark humor with which it begins ends up drowning in an ocean of blood.

In the end, what we’re left with is an exceptionally well-acted motion picture that mostly fails to move.

There’s an elegant sheen and sophisticated tone to Dead of Winter, but since it’s neither witty nor ingenious enough to be either genuinely amusing or suspenseful, it seems a bit morbid by default.

Little attention is paid to the vernacular or physicality of the period. The depths of emotions aren’t plumbed.

The film’s themes of extinction and survival are worthy of thoughtful treatment, something that eludes the ambitious movie as it succumbs to a schematic and sentimental telling that overreaches for a grand gesture and obscures the more meaningful ideas.

This would be tough material for anyone to tackle, and the Russos take aesthetic chances that — while admirably bold — flop more often than they fly.

Within the confines of a straight-ahead, handsomely designed and photographed biopic beats the heart of a more adventurous presentation of Holiday’s tragic life. It’s hinted at in Day’s performance, the dreamlike memory sequences and a cheeky, meta-coda that plays out during the end credits but never quite pierces the film’s more varnished surfaces.

The movie’s final act takes too grim a turn, leading up to an ending that’s overly dark and disgusting. But even as it goes way over the top, “Hunter Hunter” stays focused on the fragility of the Mersaults, who want to live by their own rules but discover that nature has its own agenda.

Dylan allows his interviewees to refute some of the more slanderous and/or ill-informed accusations hurled at Soros; but his general approach is to focus more on the accomplishments than the backlash. He’s made a documentary that’s nobly informative, but — given the juicy subject — a tad dry.

While the movie is hit and miss, under the rookie’s direction, several veteran actors still turn in solid work.

A frail little caper movie that’s overawed by its cast.

There are nice things in Medicine Man but it only works perfectly when it leaves its characters up a tree. [07 Feb 1992, p.F10]

Handsomely mounted if never exactly stirring, Louis van Beethoven honors the struggles that gnawed at brilliance but is itself little more than an elegantly tailored time-filler.

I’m wary in general of making any definitive pronouncements about Locked Down, whose charms and irritations (and it has its share of both) are largely a matter of timing and perspective.

On the plus side, this is probably the only film ever made that credits a “Moose Unit.” There are some great shoots of moose.