If your own expectations are not too high, you crave period-costume drama and you’re one of those unfortunate people who refuses to watch anything in glorious black-and-white, this Great Expectations is worth the time and effort.

Although they are no longer together and are living their own separate personal lives, their story, fictionalized but still autobiographical, bonded them for life. Apparently, they are best friends whose dedicated collaboration was the only way they could tell this harrowing story. It's a brave effort any way you slice it.

A middling attempt to peek through a lace curtain for a glimpse of the other Upstairs/Downstairs staff members only leads to too many distracting social functions that fail to relieve the film's otherwise solemn pacing.

This is a movie that’s back-loaded to the extreme: all of its action takes place in the last 20 minutes. Not that Leigh would ever be confused with Tarantino, but it would have been considerably more engaging to have started with the main event and moved backwards to how we got there.

It’s a forgettable film, but what it says about the debilitating effect of technological abuse is sickening enough to make you think twice about upgrading your smartphone.

In this overly familiar and ultimately meandering exercise in tedium, Mr. Burns also plays the lead.

After Words is part adventure, part love story, part travelogue, and all as synthetic as rayon.

It’s a movie that knocks itself cross-eyed trying to be hip, clever and today about acerbic seniors, but instead it only makes you long for old ladies in aprons exclaiming “Land sakes alive, I smell something burning in the oven!”

While Vengeance doesn’t always rise to the level of its ambitions, it is admirable to see Novak spit acid towards the privilege systems that make careers like his possible...But by repeating the same reductive and representational mistakes of the media it so pointedly criticizes, Novak’s film unwittingly becomes yet another part of the problem.

If you have already begun to suspect that Something Borrowed may be something less than the sum of its parts-all of which do indeed seem borrowed from other movies and TV rom-coms too numerous to mention-you are right.

It's a Clint Eastwood role that only proves you can't send a boy to do a man's job.

The generic title In Secret is as uninspired as the movie itself.

Far from the offbeat satire on the American dream gone sour it aims to be, The Brass Teapot is more like a dark flirtation with the American nightmare that backfires.

Admirable and respectable, it engages you while you’re watching it, then leaves you empty and wanting more.

It's when the music stops that we run into problems. For starters, there are so many questions left unanswered.

Godzilla: King of Monsters is a film that seems to paint with sound — sometimes Pop Art, but more often large canvas Jackson Pollock splatter.

It’s not about Peter Pan, but about what happened before Peter Pan. The noise you hear is J. M. Barrie turning over in his grave.

Dirty Girl is a bad movie with no insights that is broadly drawn and genuinely plagued by filthy dialogue. You don't laugh. You just wince, and wonder how the whole thing ever got financed.

Not a masterpiece, perhaps, but technically polished, with inspired performances and enough suspense that by the time Mr. Hamm found the redemption that freed him from his own demons, I was so wired I needed a Valium.

Causeway is a disappointment, but the thing you take home is Jennifer Lawrence’s nuanced performance as she shows every shifting emotion and contrast in the life of a woman soldier searching for definition who doesn’t feel at ease in either world—war or peace.

The entire movie is about as sexy as a root canal.

This is an oddball tale that is well worth telling, but Mr. Carrey simply cannot resist turning it into a Three Stooges routine in drag.

Too small and dark to appeal to a large audience, it's not a movie to cherish.

The result is a well-intentioned but ultimately torpid film, one that feels much more concerned with saying something important than it is the far more noble task of conveying a compelling story worth telling.

Because it’s written and directed by slick slasher king Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel), expect some genuine, well-executed thrills that keep the adrenaline going. This is a good thing, because Keanu Reeves has the adrenaline rush of road kill.

It's a fatiguing, low-key character study that drags along annoyingly and pleads for patience, but stick with it and you'll find the engrossing centerpiece performance by Ms. Theron a captivating reward that is well worth the effort.

There are moments here and there with potentially eloquent points of departure, but they dissolve in the mists of the director's ultimately aimless estheticism. [21 May 1999]

It’s so sincere and admirable that it seems churlish to voice objections, but the fact remains that it isn’t very good.

Believer is a film wherein everyone’s effort — effort to underline a message, effort to deliver a nuanced performance, effort to be visually interesting, effort to shock the audience — is all a little too visible on screen. Intellectually, I can get behind almost all of it, but on a gut level, the level where horror lives and breathes, it does very little for me.

A well-meaning but desultory descent into darkness based on a memoir of the same name by Amy-Jo Albany, daughter of Joe Albany, the great jazz pianist who died in 1988 at age 63. The book, published in 2003, was subtitled Junk, Jazz and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood, and that just about covers it.

This dumb movie turns from dubious to preposterous.

The best thing here is the muted cinematography, which caresses the wet leaves and cloudy purple Tuscan skies like an old Italian master oil painting that comes to life. In the desultory Voice From the Stone, it’s the only thing that does.

James Gray’s Armageddon Time is the kind of movie you get when a talented filmmaker thinks back upon the painful moments of his childhood and then, after close reflection, decides to remake The 400 Blows.

One thing that defies debate: Zac Efron is going places as an actor of value. But he deserves better movies than Charlie St. Cloud.

The movie, which has all the freshness and insight of a Movie of the Week on the Hallmark channel, is a first for the writer-director, which probably accounts for its lack of any definitive style or focus.

My boy Viggo is always fascinating, but the movie is a concept searching for a story.

The point finally arrives when you realize an initially interesting plot ceases to make much sense, the screenplay by Christopher Salmanpour is nothing more than a series of elaborate red herrings, and director Nimród Antal has nothing to do but increase the noise level and blow up as much of downtown Berlin as legally possible.

As the narrative builds, the movie shows how the harassed and impatient Chinese-American finds tolerance, acceptance of others, inner salvation and love. A lot for one movie to negotiate, not always successfully, but the enjoyment factor is obvious.

It’s one damned thing after another in Suncoast, a leaden, melodramatic soap opera with forced comedic elements inserted to drag out the playing time.

With her sweet face, alert eyes, and a tail that forever waves in the air like a maestro’s baton, this is a dog worth following, no matter the breed.

Trevorrow does not add one fresh idea to this franchise. We are simply too far along in this technological revolution to think that the computer generated creatures themselves are enough, no matter how artfully they are arranged.

Oldroyd has found a terrific lead actress on which to hitch his wagon.

The theme is racism, insanity and savage brutality in Texas. Some things never change. I guess it’s a new-fangled old-fashioned western.

The movie doesn’t know if it’s a teen fantasy-romance or a more sophisticated satire that the material can’t support.

It shouldn’t happen to a dog — or to an audience of dog lovers.

All of this furious, empty noise keeps reminding you that you’re watching a cheesy horror film that is not confident enough in the story it’s telling to avoid succumbing to old tricks.

So Breath is not without its pleasures, but it takes longer for the boys to grow up than it does to master Big Smokey. It needs a push, an edge, a reason to care about what happens next.

The sum of Ticket To Paradise is less than its parts, which is a difficult feat when you have two major A-list stars at the helm. That doesn’t diminish the film’s general likability and possibility of becoming a Sunday afternoon comfort watch. If you’re nostalgic for a great rom-com, though, this isn’t it.

This movie is not without its moments of visual interest, but for a more comprehensive study of Baker’s life and career, read James Gavin’s book Deep in a Dream, or better yet, curl up with the real deal and a glass of wine and listen to what used to be.

Sliding down the James Franco hole is not an attractive career goal, but in his (Jonas) new movie Careful What You Wish For, there is evidence that he is at least learning how to act.

The first of Kevin Costner’s monumentally ambitious four-part western cycle, Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter One is a vivid reminder of how rousing an experience it is to see a grandly produced epic in that most American of all genres, while falling well short of actually being that experience.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many thrills and the pace is so slow that I fell asleep from tedium waiting for something that resembled a goose bump.

The new, inferior and totally unnecessary 2017 re-make is a sorry disappointment in which nothing measures up to the Sidney Lumet movie, including the train.

Only masochists try to make movies out of Chekhov. They keep trying, and they never get it right.

Watching Avatar: The Way of Water is like binging a season of television all at once, not because you don’t want to stop, but because you know that if you do stop you’ll never pick it back up again.

It’s an odd and unfortunate shift for the sequel that leaves its action wanting, especially since it’s steeped in the genre of shark-based silliness.

Rarely if ever has a film ostensibly about and informed by cinema been so thoroughly un-cinematic...And un-emotional: that spark of love is also missing in action. Perhaps this is why the film chose to drop the question mark from its title. If it had been posed as a query, the answer would have been, no, not nearly enough.

Given the necessity of finding some new angle on source material that’s been adapted for the big screen roughly a hundred times, a sideways look at what it’s like to work for Dracula isn’t the worst idea. But it’s not the most original take, either, and Renfield is basically (un)dead on arrival.

For the Edgerton brothers and for their protagonists, The Square works on several levels, as it shows how far two people will go for love and profit--in more ways than one.

By the way, for reasons nobody bothers to explain, Las Vegas is played by New Orleans. Go figure.

The only reason to waste money and risk COVID exposure in any theater showing Jungleland is the privilege of seeing Charlie Hunnam and Jack O’Connell, two of the best and most charismatic actors in films today, struggle to turn a turgid, cliché-riddled bore about the underground game of bare-knuckle fighting into something better than it could ever be.

The formulaic cat-and-mouse game played to the death rattle by Michael Douglas’ rich, vicious corporate maniac and Jeremy Irvine’s nice, clean-cut, homespun country boy in Beyond the Reach is so old it’s hairy.

Abigail has an undeniable case of M3GAN envy, and its blood-spattered ballerina is simply no match for horror cinema’s new iconic android.

Nothing seems real, including the fact that the star is playing an allegedly legendary jazz singer without a single indication that she has any talent for the job. Although she looks weary and downbeat for good reason, she is touching and fearless in an underwritten role, and the considerable vocal chops she has displayed onstage in Broadway musicals serve her well, even when the movie doesn’t.

True Story trips and stumbles so much in the telling that you don’t know what to believe, and instead of one man’s irony you end up with two men’s lies.

It’s a preposterous story to follow, but thanks to the expertise of Emma Thompson, it keeps you interested.

It’s a well-meaning idea that never quite succeeds on the levels of either comedy or drama. Call it a noble failure.

The best thing about Super 8, by far, are the kids, all perfectly cast. The script does a much better job making them believable and real than the adults...The rest of the movie steals shamelessly from...

In Downhill, it disintegrates because both parties turn out to be such unsalvageable bores — a misfire, in a feature-length movie, that is worse than stale popcorn.

Young Mr. Eisenberg and a fine cast give Holy Rollers the ballast it otherwise lacks, but we've been down this road so often that there are times when I could only wonder why I was watching it at all.

A good cast and the speed-dial theme of eco-terrorism should really add up to a film of more substantial mind over matter than the dull, talky and ultimately pointless espionage thriller The East.

Halloween addicts just want more — and so do I. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t deliver the goods with any new ideas or fresh suspense. It just lays there, like leftover pumpkin.

Liam Hemsworth, the Ben & Jerry Flavor of the Month, is a sexy Australian centerfold without a trace of an accent who can actually act. His love interest is Teresa Palmer, a fellow Aussie who recently starred in the zombie flick "Warm Bodies." They may be camera-ready smoothies who take their clothes off often enough to keep the teen dweebs drooling.

Not everything from Ireland travels as well as the whiskey. Like mud-thick porridge, Shadow Dancer, another dreary, confusing conspiracy thriller about the Irish “troubles,” is one of them.

The result is not without a few moments of exhilaration, although the overall effect is more like the Bard of Avon meets "Glee."

Diaz and her co-star Jamie Foxx are genuinely charismatic, often delivering lines with a winking sarcasm and likeability. But Back in Action muddles its tone too much to be actually funny, a detriment to the cast’s best efforts.

Directed with a pulsating fervor by Neil Burger, Limitless is absurd but entertaining action-adventure escapism. Bradley Cooper is versatile and virile, and a valiant leading man.

The movie achieves the kind of rhythm of an opera, alternating between arias of animated poetry and the recitative of normal speech.

Stranded is no blockbuster, but it manages to pass the time better than most of them have done in this summer of discontent.

Written by Emma Thompson, it’s literate and respectful, but a dose of lithium in a champagne glass that is too stolid to ever come alive.

One of the least likable characters (Cox) in recent memory--irascible, but with moments of real tenderness--he’s the reason this strange movie takes on a perverse charm that is uniquely its own.

The dependable Australian actor Guy Pearce is always welcome, even in a well-meaning dud like 33 Postcards.

Directed by the accomplished Joshua Marston, who made the riveting "Maria Full of Grace," this one is slick and wonderful to look at but too slight to hold its own weight and too inconsequential to generate much suspense.

You can't fault the theme that life's darkest moments brighten when two people need each other, but there's no drug strong enough to get me through another movie like Love and Other Drugs.

May not appeal to every taste, but it marks an arresting feature debut for Jordan Scott, a director who is well worth watching.

The problem is the movie never gives us a reason to care about Colin in the first place, or even to dislike him that much, if that’s how we’re supposed to feel. Colin is neutral, a kind of empty vessel, and Mr. Cage is his typical aloof self with a "Con Air" accent.

Every good magician knows that the real trick is making the audience care. For all of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’s mind-bending universe jumping, that particular magic never manages to arrive in the theater.

If you don’t fall asleep, there’s plenty to look at, including action scenes crammed with special effects, as well as lush rainforests played by Hawaii, Australia, and — wait for it — Atlanta, Georgia.

This one he (Pattinson) could have skipped. Vile and repulsive, Good Time is just under two hours of pointless toxicity.

Bullets fly, but none of them in the right direction.

Like a stack of silver dollar pancakes at IHOP, Bad Dads is more a collection of episodic situations — one at a school fundraiser, the next at a desert casino — rather than a traditional movie. It’s a structure that reinforces the feeling that you are watching a sitcom that has been fused together rather than a movie.

The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is not Please Don’t Destroy’s answer to Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and it won’t cement them as the next generation’s comedy saviors. They may well have such a masterwork in them, but this isn’t it.

Mostly it’s a misguided mess.

In the same way F9 made no sense but was mostly fun to watch, Uncharted sometimes finds real moments of fast-paced entertainment. It moves quickly and it’s a good diversion, even with the drag of Wahlberg.

The latest in this ossified cornball genre is The Cured, which at least tries for a soupçon of freshness.

It reminded me of everything from "Ten Little Indians" to a low-budget take on Neil Simon’s "Murder by Death" without the laughs. It’s diverting for people who love games, but not for the squeamish.

65 is essentially a big-budget version of a simple, made-for-streaming creature feature, nothing more and nothing less.

It’s diluted, a little flat, but sweet and familiar enough to evoke long ago memories, if not quite strong enough to give you a reason to bother to remember.