Refn's version was successful enough to inspire two sequels; at its best, this effort will push Coyle's career a little further along in the U.S.

If characters talking to dogs and dog reaction shots are some of your favorite things, add some stars to this review.

African Cats, while often adorable and at times gripping, is more of a TV-ready experience.

Kurt Cobain, TicketMaster and the tragic concert in Roskilde, Denmark, are addressed through plentiful backstage footage. If only it was about something other than rockers almost irked they got famous.

An oblique, by-design and frustrating drama, Claire Denis’ film about a man’s mysterious suicide and its repercussions is creepy, but finally too vague.

Barrymore is a delicious opportunity to watch the great Christopher Plummer perform the role that won him a second Tony Award. But it's also a lesson in the pitfalls of personality-based minimalism. While Plummer acts his heart out, the script becomes one punchline after another.

It's like torture, though Body of Lies has nothing to spill.

Statham could do these movies in his sleep by now, so he gets credit for offering up so much dry wit. In fact, while Rudakova makes a painful acting debut, Statham appears more engaged than he has in a while.

The result isn't deadly dull, but it does turn what should have been a most dangerous game into a basic scenery-chewing contest.

It’s all too much. Frankie & Alice has multiple problems it can’t get past.

If director Rob Reiner’s AARP-aimed comedy stumbles on several fronts, at least it provides a stage for some seasoned pros to strut their stuff.

Long before your 140 minutes are up, you may wish you went to see "Sparkle" instead.

The Giver was ahead of its time as a book. But as a movie, it’s too late.

Comes upon a few quirky solutions and movie-ripoff scares before settling into a kind of coma.

There's noise and movement, an all-out war, and the usual happy ending, but no real blood, no real life. And not much fun.

An earnest but undeniably eye-rolling documentary about the denizens of this odd pocket of show business.

While Messina and Ireland are fine company, writer-director Matt Ross' conceit tires you out.

You know how sometimes you have to listen to the boring problems of acquaintances you don't really like? And all the while, you're silently wondering if you remembered to pay your rent? Well, writer/director Alan Hruska has very kindly recreated that experience for us all.

The actors are in good form, but McFarland, USA can’t find its footing.

How many times do these guys need to hear that crime doesn’t pay?

The movie devolves into a series of clichéd bits, none of which are that funny.

Apocalyptic visions are no longer enough to shock us. By this point, if you want to imagine the end of the world, you really need to say something new about it.

Inside the endlessly dull, oh-so-serious All I See Is You there’s a short, fun, trashy movie dying to get out. And dying. And dying.

The CGI — mostly Evans transforming into fightin’ bats — look muddy and cheap, but the weapons, Turkish helmets and Romanian interiors are all gorgeous. If only the rest of this “Lord of the Rings” wanna-be were at the same level.

This dull thriller wastes the potential of Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth.

The movie may critique its antihero, but it also offers just one more venue in which he's allowed to wallow - while we pay his way.

As an acting symposium, this is 83 minutes of Tucci exercises; never a bad thing. The wooden Eve does her best, but director/writer Neil LaBute unfortunately underwrote her character — by design, it would seem, given all that transpires.

Schaeffer thickens the general air of narcissism by directing Parker's Lucy essentially as a female version of himself, with the same puckish sense of humor and undertone of self-pity. Stiller's Bwick is an entertaining invention, an art-world variation on The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince though he, too, turns out to be mainly a foil to Joe's wonderfulness. Clearly, Eric Schaeffer has at least one really big fan. [8 March 1996, p.40]