If it’s overstuffed in the way of most sequels, well, at least it’s stuffed with good cheer.

Jacquot's lavish décor and costumes are like the perfume the women use instead of bathing: They may cover up the willful carelessness at the center of the project, but it's still there.

A passable French homage to the American crime epic, The Connection has plenty of visual style to go with stock characters.

In The Life of Chuck, the pieces come together much too obviously. And the takeaways — that a person is the product of experience, and don’t judge a book by its cover — are well-tread to the point of total flatness.

It has a pleasing smallness -- it's cinematic chamber music -- that almost makes you overlook its inability to really explain its subject.

There's little sense of the Carol Channing beneath the overdone makeup - if there is one.

Jealousy has a quiet melancholy that’s very pleasing.

As an addiction memoir, it works well enough; there are a handful of deeply felt moments.

Jon Stewart’s filmmaking debut Rosewater has much in common with “The Daily Show” — it’s blaringly obvious, it’s naive, it plays to the cheap seats and it’s enamored with cheap jokes.

A boldly original undertaking: It's the first movie ever to come up with the idea of remaking "The Truman Show."

Given the rarity of such movies, and such opportunities for an actress like Clarkson, Cairo Time earns some indulgence for a pace that Westerners may find languid.

Damsels contains much that's familiar to fans of previous Stillman films such as 1990's "Metropolitan": looping jokes that build on one another, allusions to art and literature, characters who are proudly out of step with the times.

Running in the footsteps of the last two entries directed by Christopher McQuarrie, “Fallout” and “Dead Reckoning,” No. 8 is another high-voltage, gargantuanly envisioned test of Cruise’s bodily limits. Only this franchise can make wincing fun.

Unlike previous glossy docs such as “The September Issue,” Gospel is far more than a dressed-up Vogue infomercial.

Every aspect — acting, writing, special effects, score — is a notch above its superhero peers. In the best possible sense, you forget you’re watching just another Marvel movie.

It's strange enough to be raised by your aunt. For young John Lennon, things get stranger still when he finds himself dating his mother.

Basically "Jumanji" in outer space -- and even without Robin Williams, this is still a singularly loud, charmless and overbearing family movie that could use a hit or two of Ritalin.

A slow train to Dullsville that makes all local stops. You know a film is in trouble if the most interesting thing in it is the luggage.

Good grief! This painfully sincere animated feature seems aimed less at contemporary kids than nostalgic adults who might buy toys marketed for what is being billed as the 50th anniversary of the Peanuts gang for their children and grandchildren.

A sour, plotless and witless comedy-drama based on the final Mordecai Richler novel, wants to remind you of "Sideways" and its forlorn drink-moistened soul search. Giamatti is an ideal casting choice, but even this talented actor can't sell a lovable-jerk

It's "Saturday Night Fever," Johannesburg-style.

The film slows to a crawl when the topic turns to computer science. The deadpan humor carries it, though, as with the German composer who records the mold’s vibrations and says, “Slime mold is very happy. This is happy melody.”

If they were still making Looney Tunes, they'd look a lot like Over the Hedge.

There's enough wit, intelligence and theatrical intensity at work in Larry Kramer to overcome an occasional tendency toward politically correct smugness.

Perfectly captures the cultural and emotional wasteland that is suburban Jersey.

A head-clearing, mind-blowing blast from the past - one of the year's best.

Though it boasts excellent performances by Anna Friel and Michelle Williams as bosom buddies whose lives meander over three decades, it plods on with a wearying predictability and some truly terrible dialogue.

It would be easy to mock or patronize them. Cinemania does neither. They seem quite satisfied with their lives, which is more than can be said for a lot of people with more conventional lifestyles.