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.

Beautiful Something Left Behind, which won the documentary award at last year’s South by Southwest Film Festival when the film was called “An Elephant in the Room,” serves as a snapshot of kids in emotional crises, but sadly, little more.

Rourke and Johnson are worthy of better, as is Australian director Simon Wincer, best known for his Emmy-winning direction of the miniseries Lonesome Dove.

Everyone involved with Bloody Hell is doing their jobs with creativity and gusto, even if it’s hard to discern any larger point.

The problem with Passenger 57 is that in fact the flight does not turn out to be all that interesting. Neither in the air nor in a pointless stopover on the ground does anything happen that arouses more than an entry-level of excitement. [06 Nov 1992, p.F1]

It’s not that Dogfight doesn’t have any story. In fact it has two, but neither one has anything like the weight of a feature, and the connection between the two is too tenuous for even a director as capable as Nancy Savoca (making her first film since the much-lauded True Love) to bridge.

Nothing about the foolishness and outrageousness of what the movie shows us — no matter how virtuosically sliced and diced by McKay’s characteristically jittery editor, Hank Corwin — can really compete with the horrors of our real-world American idiocracy.

Throughout the film Rudolph is working hard to put this thing over, mixing in slow-motion and shock cuts. But his heart is not really in it. His technique is both too good and not enough for this material, and it doesn't sit right. He's trying to glamorize dread. [19 Apr 1991, p.F1]

Not good enough to be remembered past next week, not bad enough to get worked up about, “Point” is a factory product pure and simple, something to throw onto the screen until the next something comes along.

So even at 96 minutes (and padded out with pointless, uncredited cameos by Garry and Penny Marshall) “Hocus” feels thin and undernourished from an adult point of view.

As a curdled storybook, Bad Tales is highly watchable. The problem is that the brothers aren’t telling stories fueled by powerful characters; they’re staging awkward cruelties as if for a gallery show.

There is potential to say so much more about sex, love, partnership, feminism and shifting sexual mores across cultures, but Simple Passion lets the bodies do the talking, and after a while, they run out of things to say.

Movies about political corruption generally bog down in moralistic quicksands. Few American films have the courage to take their cynicism to the limit, and True Colors is no exception. This Capra-corny reliance on the ultimate sagacity of The People doesn’t jibe with the film’s fine edge of avarice. Tim is righteousness incarnate, and Spader can’t seem to pull a performance out of all that goodness. He is uncomfortably upstanding in the role. He looks as though he would rather swap roles with Cusack.

Though some of the chase sequences aren't bad, it's pretty silly. [27 Jun 2002, p.22]

It's a comedy about maniacs: a tasteful murder-comedy, which isn't that laudable a goal.

This much can be said for Roman Polanski's carnal hoot-fest Bitter Moon -- it keeps you wondering from scene to scene if the director has gone bonkers. No doubt a lot of the lunacy is intentional, but it's still lunacy. And not terribly enjoyable lunacy either. The film plays like a dirty joke that somehow got lost in the translation.[18 Mar 1994, p.F1]

Bana is, as always, a very watchable screen presence; the film is not bad. But there’s a spark missing that could make the story burn, and the film’s abrupt ending will leave viewers high and “Dry.”

The film’s higher aims never take hold. The breeziness feels at odds with implied gravitas.

There’s a lot to like in The Violent Heart, with Adepo at the top of the list. But Sanga errs by giving his movie the deterministic structure of a potboiler and the muted tone of a slice-of-life indie drama.

Overbroad, underdone.

The Lover is easy to watch and even easier to forget. A pleasant enough piece of commercial sensuality from French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, its selling point is its very pretty, clothing-optional sex scenes. Their effectiveness, however, is undercut by an air of self-congratulatory pomposity that the film is way too insubstantial to support.

Though it’s basically a kids’ movie with a cartoonish structure, it’s laced with lewd innuendo: jokes that suggest teen-age sex, homosexuality and even pedophilia. The core of the humor is raunchy, but the tone is sunny and even-tempered. It even tries to go for a few inspirational moments: feminist statements or sermonettes about overcoming fear and realizing potential.

Had Baudelaire knocked out 20 or so minutes and leaned less into the vérité of it all, he might have had something more special — and less patience-testing.

Burger presupposes all the right questions (and anxieties) about the realities of climate change-induced space migration; it’s just that as a film, Voyagers feels like a role-playing game rather than a character-driven story.

The second half, picking up 10 years after Eddie was institutionalized, is pure screwball comedy. It's as if Cassavetes had written the first half for himself to direct, and the second for Carl Reiner. [29 Aug 1997, p.F10]

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

Between the forced artistry and the confused tones, it leaves this well-intentioned tale of transgressive imagination and transactional humanity more temporary in its effect than permanent.

Pink Cadillac has a strong visual design and lots of juicy, self-confident acting. But it doesn’t transcend its star vehicle trappings or chemistry. The construction of the story is so soft, you get the impression that if the driver and navigator were replaced, the movie might turn rattletrap and fall apart.

While Williams and Faith do a fine job of capturing the frustrating powerlessness of a low-wage-earning woman in a sexist and classist society, The Power never generates much in the way of shocks or excitement.

A somewhat diverting but finally disappointing thriller, it is characterized by a premise even Pat Buchanan could love: If you so much as think about straying from the marital straight and narrow, all heck is sure to break loose.

The simplicity of the story Eastwood is telling would seem to suit his unvarnished, unfussy style, though frankly, a bit more fuss — a few more takes to smooth out a wobbly performance, an extra light bulb or two in the interior shots — wouldn’t have gone awry. But “Cry Macho,” with its attractive but not indulgent landscapes (shot in New Mexico) backed by a spare, twangy Mark Mancina score, takes pains to reject anything that might smack of falsity or pretense.

While the cast is great, the milieu is vivid, the images are polished and the atmosphere is effectively moody, Things Heard & Seen fails to connect on a visceral level.

One is given to wonder what it is exactly that the filmmaker himself lends to this film other than a completely ordinary commercial veneer.

For all its questionable creative choices, Moby Doc is at least more personal and daring than the typical music documentary. This is the movie equivalent of Moby’s discography, with highs and lows tied directly to its creator’s own embarrassing slip-ups and sublime moments of grace.

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]

It’s possible to enjoy White Sands from moment to moment because the actors are avid and the New Mexico locations are delicately beautiful. Still, there’s something disconcerting about this anything-for-effect style of filmmaking. It doesn’t add up to anything satisfying.

Burnette handles the genre film and the art film pieces of Silo fairly well but shortchanges them both by not committing fully to either.

The cast is fine; Alda’s casts invariably are, but this collection has only stick figures to play.

Despite a high-powered cast and a zany/trendy concept, hardly anyone’s home in Housesitter. The result is much ado about too little, an occasionally amusing screwball farce made by people whose screws are barely loose at all.

Oberli and Ziesche, who’ve divided the story into three chapters plus an epilogue (the less said about the plot the better to protect a few solid twists), attempt to lay bare the thorny issue of outsourcing care work to migrants but don’t layer in enough heft or context to make a wholly satisfying statement.

This film offers a flurry of provocations and up-to-the-minute cultural references that never fully connect. It keeps coming to the brink of saying something clearly and furiously about sex, power and class before retreating back to the simpler path of raw shock value.

From a purely technical viewpoint, Lorentzen’s one-side-only methodology makes Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution and Islam a lopsided viewing experience, one that seems tailor made for viewers predisposed to agreeing with Ateş’s critical opinions on Muslims, and no one else.

Shotgun Wedding peters out down the stretch, as the explosions and gunfire overwhelm the banter. But the middle hour is snappy, helped by the chemistry of Lopez and Duhamel, playing two over-analytical, over-prepared types who have different ideas on how to thwart their attackers.

Old grabs you right away, starts losing you at the half-hour mark, pulls you back in with some agreeably bonkers set-pieces, drags you through a tedious closing stretch and finally leaves you in an oddly charitable mood: Say, that wasn’t so bad, except when it was terrible.

As rambling as a Keystone Kops comedy (which it resembles in many ways), it's slapstick to the max, and thus likely to be a bit tedious except to dedicated martial arts fans. [20 Dec 1993, p.F5]

Period re-creation is decent (the interiors-heavy film was shot entirely in Puerto Rico), Polish effectively peppers in bits of archival footage, and the story is often involving despite its missteps. Still, it’s hard not to wonder where the picture might have landed with a more skillful, charismatic lead and a subtler retelling.

The film lacks slam-bang, signature action sequences that would make it more memorable.

Momoa can believably howl in anguish and throw a devastating punch, but he can’t carry a script this muddled.

Though it is faithful, Where the Crawdads Sing is lacking the essential character and storytelling connective tissue that makes a story like this work — an adaptation such as this cannot survive on plot alone.

There are some effective group scenes with Darius and Nina and their friends, but Witcher's dialogue and direction more often show the craft than the naturalism he's after. [14 Mar 1997, p.F1]

Fathom presumably gets its name from both the watery depths and the attempt to understand these mysterious aquatic mammals, but it doesn’t delve deeply enough into either the science or the scientists.

That “Catch the Fair One” can’t imagine more for its characters, for the world it shapes, is its most glaring fault, and one that will likely leave many taking a deep breath as the credits roll.

What keeps Les Nôtres from being effective, however, is that it rarely makes the transition from coolly observed case study to compellingly messy, resonant human drama.

Vice Versa may be a better film than Like Father, Like Son, largely because of the direction and Savage’s performance, but it’s still a disappointment.

The filmmakers are so driven to show us Mr. Jones as a harrowing free spirit that they don’t put much faith in his redemption. They’re as hooked on Jones the high-flyer as Libbie is.

For an extreme sports documentary, Super Frenchie, tracking the increasingly dangerous exploits of gonzo skier/BASE jumper Matthias Giraud, can’t help but feel benignly pedestrian.

Wading through blood is too much of a price to pay for Sugar Hill’s pluses, and it’s a shame the movie business has made it difficult for them to be experienced any other way.

De Palma clearly did not want to do a conventional thriller, and so his considerable prowess in that area is only occasionally brought to bear. As a result, despite a few finely creepy moments that remind us of his talent, the shocking parts of Raising Cain feel lethargic and lacking in purpose.

Most of The Big Scary ‘S’ Word is about the past. But like a lot of calls to action, the film is most effective when it focuses on what’s happening now.

Saville too often skims the surfaces of his characters, substituting traumatic concepts and plot devices for narrative logic and truly authentic, compelling emotion.

“All the Streets” feels niche to a fault.

A glib, slick and shallow slice of Japanophile action entertainment that offers a very bright, shiny surface but has absolutely no interest in revealing anything beyond that.

The result is a cinematic curio in search of a more conclusive theme and emotional payoff.

Surely the truth (or something close to it) of who these men and women were must have been more fascinating, and more worth mythologizing, than what transpires in this strained mashup.

Clockwatchers opens with fresh, quirky panache, but by film's end, those most closely consulting their watches may be those in the audience. [15 May 1988, p.F8]

How to Deter a Robber is a mildly likable dark comedy that never finds a steady groove. It’s neither dark enough nor comic enough; and it never really settles on whether it wants to be a breezy spoof of home-invasion thrillers or an earnest story about teenagers realizing they need to grow up in a hurry.

Schweighöfer does have a memorable screen presence, and this film is well made, as formulaic pictures so often are. But this one never fully justifies its existence, or its expense. It’s a big movie with skimpy ideas.

The script by Bean and Tolkin is potentially more interesting than what’s been made of it.

The research is there, certainly, but it is presented as if it were just that, without thought for the ways it could be presented in a more expressive form. There is a sense here that film is at most a communicative tool to simply transmit this information, rather than a way to enliven and reactivate new ways of thinking about this galvanizing figure’s past and the resonance of their work in our present. This is a shame. Murray deserves nothing less than a history in full color.

The more fanciful qualities of Freaks vs. the Reich work fairly well. Mainetti has a gifted cast and a talented special effects department, so the scenes of these X-Men-like outcasts fighting fascism do look fantastic. But the film’s exhausting length is a challenge, as is Mainetti’s failure to use his historical setting meaningfully.

There is a little whimsy, or perhaps a touch of blarney, in “Belfast,” though you can sense Branagh hard at work, straining to keep every impulse toward cutesiness in check. The tone is stringently measured.

It’s fun to see [Rodriguez] color in new shades of film genre, but the script and performances in “Hypnotic” are too laughably absurd to take seriously.

Fascinatingly muddled.

A timid, far-from-revelatory film, authorized by the three surviving Zeppelin vets and graced by their presence in new interviews that give off the faint scent of impatience.

Encounter has its moments, but it suffers from multiple storytelling approaches that don’t mesh.

Odom, surely one of the busiest actors working today, gives a committed performance but lacks chemistry with either of his onscreen wives. A sense of lightness, of fun, of the alchemy between two people is missing, though it would seem crucial to drive the story.

After a while all the tasteful images of undulating waves and pulsating jellyfish can’t help but underscore the inescapable naval-gazing that goes with the territory.

The movie is also notable for featuring not just one but two unconvincing romantic dynamics.

Opera, while undeniably entertaining, winds up overwhelming its suspense with morbidity. [13 Jun 1990, p.F6]

"Mustangs,” which was shot in California, Wyoming, Texas, Colorado and elsewhere, is a lovely, essential portrait that’s also a little dull. It sometimes feels more like a promotional film than penetrating documentary.

Director Bill Condon has a sense of style but a heavy hand with actors -- you can all but hear them telling themselves to hit their marks and punch out their lines. [20 Mar 1995, p.F2]

While it gets mileage out of its two fine lead performances and the story has deep emotional roots for the filmmakers, its journey fails to capture the imagination.

The strongest asset is the film's setting, a splendid re-creation of Buffalo Bill's famous tent show. [26 Feb 1989, p.4]

This film turns out to revolve around a whole series of whopper coincidences, even one of which would be difficult to swallow. Not even a film this accomplished can work up enough suspension of disbelief to enable audiences to ingest them all, and just making the attempt is painful. [05 Nov 1993, p.F1]