[An] inept, incoherent and charmless would-be romantic comedy-thriller.

Although Alvart lays on the biblical allegory too heavily at times, the film's pace is brisk enough to maintain our full attention. Antibodies is not so much an art house movie as a well-made, commercial thriller that happens to be in German.

Whatever Proxy lacks in narrative cohesion and psychological realism, it makes up for in its compelling fever-dream quality and its probing questions about the darker side of parenting.

Cinematically and emotionally it’s a mixed bag, a slow-moving visual treatise and occasional vanity piece that requires — but doesn’t always earn — our indulgence.

Director Mélanie Laurent and actors Ben Foster and Elle Fanning bring some seedy poetry to Galveston, a muted crime drama that runs out of plot too soon, but makes up for it with powerhouse performances and a finely shaded sense of place.

A crisp, elegantly resonant film.

Francis Ford Coppola has reworked somewhat and meticulously restored his ambitious 1982 romantic musical fantasy One From the Heart, out of circulation for more than 20 years, but for all his efforts it stubbornly remains a bold experiment in style and technique that doesn't work.

Sensitively directed by Ron Shelton and helped by what just might be the best performance of Kurt Russell's career, Dark Blue is as interesting and successful as it can be within its limits, but those limits make this a more generic film than its makers intended.

The middle sections go a bit slack at times, and things wrap up a little too neat and quickly, but overall Two Men Went to War entertains and recalls the type of British period comedy that more regularly appeared here before everything seemingly began to strive for "Full Monty"-sized box-office returns.

Bread and Roses" hits home when one of Maya's co-workers observes, "When we put on uniforms, we become invisible." It's a truth as uncomfortable as it is undeniable.

Made with such verve and clarity that you don't have to be a basketball fan to enjoy it.

Using all his resources, Hedlund has created Mike Burden whole on screen in all his tormented awkwardness. Confused and conflicted, incapable of doing the right thing without recidivism and backsliding, this is hardly a conventional hero. Siding with the angels can seem like a snap in films, but Burden has the grace to show how difficult and wrenching a choice that can be.

Wants so much to be liked, even with its prickly, difficult hero, that it misses the mark of nonobviousness necessary not only for a patent, but also for a thrilling, original work.

The film is studded with nifty supporting portrayals, with Burns and Ford (in his film debut) especially notable. But it's the rich presence and easy authority of Robinson that brings both a gravitas and a blithe spirit to Brother to Brother.

The film has a weird, surrealistic feel abetted by a lack of conventional structure, keeping the viewer off-balance. On the down side, that means the movie occasionally rambles. The staging tends toward the static, the cast is uneven and the small film is technically limited.

The problem with It's Complicated, a romantic comedy about the menopausal crowd starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, is that it's not nearly complicated enough.

If "Back to the Future" made you bored and querulous, then the tumbling inventiveness in its sequel may come as a pleasant surprise. Of course, if you were among the 92% of the world who loved the ride in Dr. Emmett Brown's diabolical DeLorean back in 1985, then Part II is your oyster. [22 Nov 1989, p.F1]

Above all, it's a testament to the will to live and how that spirit can be found in even the smallest of packages.

It’s an artful, boundary-pushing debut from Radcliff and Wolkstein, with breakthrough performances from Freedson-Jackson, and Pettyfer, perhaps signaling a new direction in his career.

Trainer was MASS MoCA’s founding director of development. Which means that in many ways she’s essentially telling a story about her friends — and often, with friends, it’s easier to avoid uncomfortable questions.

On the face of it, tackling the warring sides of science and the spirit seemed a good fit for the writer-director, who continues to be drawn to existential themes. There are occasional flashes of the exceptional, but the film's dodgy story can't sustain them.

Unfinished Song is a movie so geared toward hitting its spots, it amounts to emotional Muzak rather than something truly played live.

In the exhilarating Casanova, giddy shenanigans effectively set off the dangerous, darker impulses of human nature.

In the end, there’s no outrage in War Dogs — no lacerating insight, no gonzo satiric energy, nothing more than warmed-over cynicism and some mild titters at the spectacle of boys being boys under uniquely deadly circumstances.

A tense thriller that also has more on its mind than the familiar genre constraints it operates under.

There is no shaking the feeling that Branagh and his cast are a kind of an espionage film B team, capable of mild diversion but nothing more.

There's a mystery at the heart of Sherlock Holmes, and it's not the one the great master of detection has been called on to solve. It's how a film that has so many good things going for it has turned out to be solid but not spectacular.

It’s goopy, gross fun, if not entirely terrifying, and if there’s a weak link, it’s the screenplay, which toys with deeper social and sexual themes but skims along the surface and leaves loose ends untied.

Though “Virus” could have lived without the presence of director Goldberg as an on-camera through-line, it is at its best in presenting strong and vivid examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions.

DuVall shows a welcome light touch with tone, easing back and forth between humor and neurosis and never treating her material as the last word on relationships.

An across-the-board winner, an exuberant crowd-pleaser that marks its writer-director-star Cheech Marin's first effort apart from his longtime partner Tommy Chong.

A wrenching, uncompromisingly bleak film, but its stars, who include talented newcomer Noah Watts as Mogie's son and Lois Red Elk as the brothers' staunch aunt, fill the screen with warmth, humor and spiritual yearning in the face of hardship and tragedy.

One of the five most popular films of the year in France, "Wolf" is a cross-cultural hoot that no one should take too seriously.

A fast, furious and funny fusillade of a movie.

The draggiest of the Crosby holiday vehicles. Even the usually manic Danny Kaye is reduced to a kind of nagging Man Friday. There are some good tunes, though (Berlin was in on this one, too). [19 Dec 1991, p.12]

The movie is grisly, illogical, contradictory, borderline tasteless, riddled with plot holes--and at the same time, decently photographed, cleanly edited and crisply directed. All in all, the waste it represents--of talent, of intelligence, of fine craftsmen and of the audience’s good will--is enough to make one howl like a dog.

We’re presented with another movie in the “Mississippi Burning” tradition that focuses on a heroic white person getting his eyes opened about the nature of his own and society’s racism.

Anchored by a lovely performance from Oliver Litondo as Maruge and an exuberant Naomie Harris as Jane Obinchu, the school principal who champions his cause, the result is a tearful, joyful, imperfect, yet nearly irresistible ode to the human spirit.

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.

The core question Settlers asks is who “deserves” to occupy this inhospitable planet. To Rockefeller’s credit, he doesn’t offer any pat answers.

An exceptional family film, arriving just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Directed with sensitivity by "The Full Monty's" Peter Cattaneo, it is the antithesis of the standard synthetic Hollywood family movie, which is all too often weighed down by ludicrously exaggerated special effects and stunts and glazed over by gross humor.

Smith is certainly a worthy advocate for the mainstreaming and acceptance of “outcasts” or “others.” Unfortunately, Zevgetis doesn’t dig deeply enough here.

Due to the movie’s deliberate lack of narrative arc, thematic stance and clear characterizations (the soldiers feel interchangeable and Logaze’s interview style is weak), we’re never always sure what we’re watching — or why.

Sitting through Plan 9 From Outer Space can be torture for film purists, whose cinematic souls well may be soiled by Edward D. Wood Jr.'s banzai extravaganza of bad taste, bad execution and bad results. [24 Sep 1992, p.12]

The film's more heartfelt moments are what ultimately work best.

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.

THE Kingdom has some power but not enough sense. A ripped-from-today's-headlines thriller, it wants us to feel as if we're watching something relevant when what's really going on is a slick excuse for efficient mayhem that's not half as smart as it would like to be.

Perhaps the vapid existence of millennials is precisely the point that co-writers Erik Crary and Steven Piet (who also directs) are driving at, but the film itself proves inarticulate and unsubstantial.

The film mixes horror elements with surreal fantasy and the crushing realism of a serious family drama. It’s metaphorical, vague but also precise in its specificity for the horrific trials these people are to face — their personal hell.

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.

There's goodwill to go around in Dabis' modestly engaging yarn, from its appealing performances to the times it zeroes in on the ways culture, tradition and individuality cause headaches and heartaches as much as comfort.

In general, Stephen Camelio’s script, sensitive and convincing as it is, attempts to pack too much emotion, back story and metaphor into a relatively slender tale. The result is a two-hour film that would have benefited from a judicious trim, a quickened pace and less melodrama.

The overwrought plot mechanics are exasperating, but the lead actresses' exquisitely modulated performances get under the skin.

This is a modest, thoughtful, independent production of exceptional insight and quietly devastating power.

Cute and light and wafer-thin, this film is pleasantly similar to its successful predecessor, "The Brady Bunch Movie."

This is a guaranteed blockbuster that nobody needed except studio accountants and parents. I’ll accept it on those terms because it’s a good thing when any kid-pleaser gets children in the habit of going to the movie theater.

This procedural quality to Escape From Pretoria — combined with an accomplished cast that includes Ian Hart as the anti-apartheid prisoner most opposed to Jenkin’s plan — adds some oomph to a movie that features limited sets, a simple story and none of the Hollywood polish of The Shawshank Redemption.

These references, and the relentless assault of ‘70s needle drops, are fun, to a point, but the movie itself is 87 minutes of pure chaos, a hallucinatory, cacophonous fever dream of nonsensical subplots and Minion gibberish.

Even Phoenix, an actor who can make an incestuous-minded Roman emperor seem sensitive, can't smooth over political nihilism this unsavory.

[A] deft and delightful romantic comedy of errors.

This is a daring and memorable depiction of trauma, compassion and resilience.

What's missing is less a sense of the protagonist's inner nose (which is very well-trammeled) as a sense of his inner life, motivation or desire.

Rising Sun has gotten everything backward. Mystifying when it should be clear and clear when it should be mystifying, it is the murkiest, most unsatisfying of thrillers. And the biggest mystery of all is how a project that appeared to have so much going for it could have gone so determinedly astray.

While it doesn't pay to think too hard about the plot, after four of these films, director Collet-Serra, shooting here on a 30-ton set put together from authentic discarded railroad scrap, is an expert, so to speak, at making this kind of train run on time.

It makes for an unexpectedly welcome form of dramatic escape: the character study breaking free from a hoary old movie genre.

Cleverly structured, with a slam-bam score and style to burn.

The movie, with all its brashness and crassness, can still claim noble motives in encouraging insecure young people to seek the pop diva buried deep within.

If Leaving is a romantic parable, it is a dark and depressing one, emphasizing not the sensuality of attraction but rather the obsessive side of romantic behavior. This is mad love for sure, and that is not usually a pretty picture.

Until being young and gay is a nonissue for everyone everywhere, these kinds of stories will always have their place.

As far as documentaries go, the film is exhaustively researched, interviewed and documented.

Ultimately the documentary falls short of explaining why Vreeland not only made his choice but maintained it.

Kelly, who is credited with Stacey Miller for the screenplay, is shrewd enough to keep the movie from being a dramatized op-ed piece about betrayal, instead making roiling uncertainty, loneliness and melancholy the marquee emotions.

Directors Jonathan Yi and Michael Haertlein put the focus on the standard reality-TV repertoire like "Making the Band." Their repeated disregard for Hioki's pleas to go off the record smacks of opportunism and exploitation rather than revelation.

Visually, by today's standards, The Legend of Hell House is pretty tame, but what it may lack in visual acuity is more than made up for in atmosphere and sheer creepiness. [29 Oct 1992, p.30]

God’s Time has an endearingly scrappy vibe and a talented cast filled with unfamiliar faces. But it also feels cobbled together, as though Antebi had multiple ideas for how to approach this material.

The Corruptor manages to make a meat-and-potatoes action flick into a cunning little meditation on personal loyalty and situational morality. [12 Mar 1999]

Die Another Day is only intermittently entertaining but it's hard not to be a sucker for its charms, or perhaps it's just impossible not to feel nostalgia for movies you grew up with.

There’s a sense of beauty and contemplation in Albertin’s work, and though it seems like danger hangs in the air, there’s an odd lack of tension or suspense, and the film’s pace requires incredible patience. Nevertheless, Nivola’s work is somewhat of a revelation, while Haley proves to be a worthwhile discovery.

An intelligent actor whose sad sack demeanor has often been put to good use by director Wes Anderson, most effectively in "Rushmore," Schwartzman does similarly well by Byington, whose slight portrait (taking its name from the title of an R.E.M. song) might not otherwise sustained its quirky charm without him.

Unfolding elliptically, the new film can feel abrupt and unsatisfying, but it’s filled with sharp commentary on class and servitude, and the actress delivers another extraordinary performance.

As it stands, Dark Blue World -- for all the considerable skills of the Sveraks and their colleagues on both sides of the camera -- occupies that treacherous territory between art film and popular epic.

A breakup worth going through.

To his credit, writer-director Nathan Morlando has crafted a stylishly shot and evocatively designed period piece. But it's the dashing, quietly charismatic Speedman who proves the main draw, holding our attention even when the movie doesn't.

Wilmott’s affecting historical drama “The 24th,” inspired by the Houston riot of 1917, bears both the weight of that history and the filmmaker’s passion for the subject matter.

Take Me to the River is at its most interesting when zeroing in on the back-and-forth between musicians of different eras who rely on unique jam-session skills.

You have to love a movie where a car gets title billing. [30 Nov 2000, p.F16]

Despite any narrative quibbles, the movie deserves praise for its genuine call for compassion. Scarlet’s final encounter with Claudius radiates with the complicated poignancy expected of real, difficult catharsis.

It isn’t good, exactly — as boozy friend-reunion comedies go, it’s no “Girls Trip” or “The World’s End” — but it has its ticklish grace notes, plus some first-rate second and third bananas, despite a script that seems to be working both too hard and not hard enough.

This late-in-the-year gem glows with Levinson's characteristically warm embrace of a wide range of people and his superlative sense of time and place.

Genuinely scary and also highly amusing.

While her previous pictures never shied away from tenderness despite their outré scenarios, her latest is a far more melancholy affair. Sadly, it’s also easily her least accomplished.

It is Weigert's performance that gives the film its mystery and charge. Playing seriously with identity, she draws the viewer ever closer. The way she never reveals everything is electrifying.

Eraser does have a few big-ticket stunts that hold the attention, but director Charles Russell, fresh from "The Mask," isn't able to infuse them with the intensity and believability that James Cameron brought to comparable sequences in "True Lies."

When the plot circles back to those opening moments, the movie finds a momentum that ends spectacularly. And again: Benicio Del Toro is playing Pablo Escobar. What more do you need?

Small and intimate, Game 6 is a meditation on American theater and the Great American Pastime that hovers above the surface of reality but never quite takes off, either.

What seems at first like an ingenious and surprising dramatic strategy feels, by the end, like an evasion on the movie’s part, a refusal to grant its subject the unflinching honesty it deserves. A true story it may be, but no one should mistake it for a truthful one.

While the casually demonstrated prep work isn’t for the squeamish, the film’s aptly timed release should ensure viewers never consider their Thanksgiving turkey the same way again.

Hard Luck Love Song is a happy but gritty marriage of material, filmmaker and star. Much is asked of Dorman, and he delivers all.