While there’s no shortage of comedy talent on screen in The House, there’s a dire lack of actual laughs to be found in this strange shell of a movie.

A perfectly adequate action thriller that neither disappoints nor exhilarates. If it doesn't exactly crackle with energy, it lets off a good buzz now and again, and, depending on your mood, it may seem churlish to ask for more than that. [5 June 1992, p.F1]

Unfortunately, with its on-the-nose dialogue, abrupt turns and overuse of fades and dissolves, the film can feel more like a checklist of scenes than a fully plumbed and cohesive work.

A risible misfire of a contemporary war drama, the low-budget “Unfallen” stands as an epic fail on all fronts.

The Little Hours gets freaky, but it never feels truly subversive, or even that titillating.

Half visual essay, half verbal investigation, “Silence” is thoughtful and informative as well as contemplative and restorative.

Under the pretext of offering fun for the whole family, the movie winds up doing almost precisely the opposite; its attempts at grown-up sophistication and cheeky, knowing humor are clueless and hectoring enough to leave any adult in the audience wishing they’d been straight-up ignored.

This Oliver Hirschbiegel-directed German drama tells a fascinating but inevitably grim story, both more interesting and more downbeat than one might anticipate.

The Ornithologist” is both an opaque narrative and a deeply inviting one. Even as the film commences a series of radical formal and dramatic mutations, you are held rapt by the steadiness of the camera’s gaze and the sublime, sun-dappled beauty that it invariably discovers.

Persuasive rather than polemical, it's the unusual issue film that deals in counterintuitive reason rather than barely controlled hysteria.

Funny as it is for a great deal of its length, Hot Shots! does, however, have its share of dull spots, and watching it inevitably makes one yearn for the good old days of "Airplane!"

Most of the jokes in Eddie Murphy Raw are the kind you regale buddies with to show off. Anyone as good as Eddie Murphy should have outgrown that years ago.

Grimly unfunny comedy needs all the help that it can get. It's so bad it doesn't deserve the boost a Hanks nomination for Big may give it.

There's hardly a moment in Three Amigos that isn't silly--make that incredibly, outrageously and breathtakingly silly. Maybe that's why this tale of a trio of inept silent-movie stars turned real-life heroes is such a goofy delight. It's like a cross between a big-budget Three Stooges movie and a Hope-Crosby road picture, with dozens of old cowpoke gags thrown in to spice up the brew.

Weet tries to invest a common horror premise with some original mythology, but unlike films that risk disturbing audiences by tying ghosts to abuse, Darkness Rising treats Madison’s past more as a puzzle to be solved, which drains it of some primal power.

As biopics go, Marie Curie is a beautifully rendered sketch, rather than a fully detailed painting.

The movie itself plays more like a corporate recruitment video — or an extended episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” — than a deep, discerning dive into an American success story.

This is the rare Morris movie that feels led by the personality of its star figure, in this case Dorfman’s wry positivity and love of what she does, rather than his need to probe.

As a brisk, sobering reminder of — if you’re inclined to think this way — where it all went wrong with image over meaningful policy in politics, The Reagan Show may feel like the doc of the moment.

As captured through the ceaselessly unflinching lens of Sharif’s borrowed video camera, Nowhere to Hide offers an uneasy prognosis that is at once graphically gut-wrenching and doggedly life-affirming.

Writer-director Amanda Kernell’s assured first feature has a classic sheen, but with its powerful sense of place and sensitive performances, it’s no fusty museum piece.

Though there are some cool moments, the film lacks the connective tissue to make an audience invest in Xia Tian’s efforts.

It's Whoopi Goldberg, however, who gives you something extraordinary. At the center of all this formula tongue-in-cheek thriller pablum, she keeps sending out weird curves and bent splinters of off-center energy. She's a remarkably empathic actress, and you only hope she'll get a few vehicles that push her to the limit.

With his latest work, Bong has created a heroine for our times, an indelible movie creature, a story that balances heart and head and a movie that engages with the boundaries of technology both on-screen and off.

This is movie craftsmanship and showmanship of a very high order.

The time-travel stoner comedy Ripped blows a potentially funny idea on slapdash filmmaking and lazy storytelling. If much of this overly broad eye-roller wasn’t made up on the fly, it sure looks that way.

The film alternates between triumph and tragedy, but there’s never a moment that doesn’t feel intimate and authentic in its 96-minute running time.

Anyone looking for a definitive survey may want more, but this enjoyable film will undoubtedly score with musicians and cinephiles alike.