Even if you haven’t seen The Intouchables, you have a pretty good idea where the drama is headed. Still, The Upside nonetheless does an amiable job of taking you there, thanks to hard work by the two leads.

Hotel Mumbai sometimes surrenders to melodrama and action-genre imperatives, and it mixes actual people like Oberoi with fictional composites in a way that strays from the stringent just-the-facts discipline of a docudrama like United 93. But there is value, too, in its subjective approach.

There’s too much convoluted plot...and the movie at times feels big and ponderous, like Ant-Man when his malfunctioning suit does the opposite of its normal effect.... There are also too few jokes, and though Rudd and Peña work like mad to get laughs, they come up well short of optimal levels achieved in Thor: Ragnarok.

There is a lot of plot in those final minutes, and don’t bother trying to outguess the magician. He pulls a rabbit out of a hat, just to distract you from the next rabbit.

Meyers-Shyer loves movies as much as the young men in Home Again and the best scenes reflect that.

It's a bold and borderline eccentric performance by Mulligan.

Your fear that the movie will never end is the most palpable fear offered by Chapter Two, which substitutes spectacle for the creeping, escalating dread the story is meant to have, and that the first movie had in modest amounts.

Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral) has been brought in to class up the dialogue, and add some one-liners.... In addition, director Parker does some clever things visually.

First Knight manages to fill the screen with enough swashbuckling to keep things interesting for a while. [07 Jul 1995, p.29]

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, The Swan Princess is dripping with appreciation for Disney cartoons. [18 Nov 1994, p.54]

Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't throw itself into the tale of the band with anything approaching the abandon of the boldly unconventional 1975 smash hit that gives the movie its name. Instead, Bohemian Rhapsody plays it safe in a manner that's often cliched and always predictable — but not entirely unsatisfying.

The movie sticks to formula, and spells everything out.

Although the sci-fi trappings of Downsizing make it seem like a big departure from Payne’s previous work — The Descendants, Sideways, About Schmidt — it is the same in important ways. It’s a movie about a man suddenly separated from people he’s loved, trying to learn how to live again.

The movie mainly rides on the chemistry and charm of its two leads, and writer Kaling has given Thompson a substantial character to play.

Linklater is a naturally empathetic filmmaker, and you can feel him trying to find something he can latch onto in the Desperate Housewives cat-fighting that dominates the movie in the early going. He’s helped ultimately by the story, and by the performances of Blanchett and Wiig, who are given room to embellish their characters and relationships.

Neil Jordan gives us a fancier version of the Lifetime staple in Greta.

There is enough space for Bell and Bening to do some good work, particularly Bell, who has more to chew on here than anything he’s done since Billy Elliot.

Bening is great fun to watch here, even when she’s just watching.

This glossy, handsomely budgeted musical deploys topflight talent throughout, from casting to choreography to songwriting to animation and modern digital effects, and though it achieves a Poppins-like level of hyper-competence, it lacks the most elusive attribute we associate with Mary — magic.

Gudegast is using the Heat homage the way a magician uses a flourish — to distract you from the other story he’s telling. I confess to getting a kick out of watching it play out.

The foster-care comedy Instant Family has more heart than laughs, but enough of the former to squeak by.

The Predator suffers from serious tone and pacing issues.

Though mired in arcane subject matter, the movie is always lucid and reasonably engaging.

It comes off as fairly organic, at least until the ending, when the device is undercut by an outrageous narrative coincidence that works against both the feeling of spontaneity and the admirable nuance that defines most of the movie.

Though it’s been many years in development, it remains a timely look at the dangers of our increasingly outsourced, privatized military-intelligence network.

The goal for director Stahelski is escalating violence and bloody chaos, pushed to the point of the preposterous and beyond.

It’s a quietly inspiring portrait of selflessness, although not always a stirring one. The movie has a muted tone that tamps down emotions, and the acting is intentionally low-key throughout.

[Washington] portrays McCall as a penitent, a fellow making up for past sins by helping the powerless, the abused (the movies could stand to be less invested in the grisly spectacle of this abuse). He’s advocating in others the kind of personal reform he seeks in himself.

The movie is actually not bad, until it goes full Lifetime Channel crazy in the third act.

A movie that succeeds as a tearjerker, if you can withstand those pushy moments (and there are a few) when it kind of makes you want to hate kindness.

The direction by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, is competent and efficient, if not especially stylish or ambitious, and the squeamish should know the movie is backloaded with stabby, graphic, slasher-movie content.

Williams and Plummer are fine, yet for all their efforts the movie endures a strangely listless first hour. The kidnapping and subsequent investigation feel under-plotted, highlighting Wahlberg’s curiously inert presence in the movie.

The sheer number of monsters in the movie serves as a stand-in for its weak plot — a retread of the first film, in which Stine's monsters attack a small town in Delaware.

With a tighter script, Set It Off could have been a good film. Instead, it's just a mediocre one. [06 Nov 1996, p.49]

As we watch this safely-under-the-speed-limit parade of lumpen suburban regularness, though, we begin to wonder if director Greg Berlanti (TV’s Arrow and Riverdale) has emphasized sexuality at the expense of personality. This kid makes Ferris Bueller look like a dangerous radical.

The idea that “little” Jordan’s response to attractive older men is guided by her inner adult yields some creepy-funny laughs that many will find mostly creepy.

Ultimately, Reiner's attempt at an inspiring story of a black woman and a white man working together to further the cause of racial justice ends up being overwhelmed by the looming specter of impossibly complex racial politics. [03 Jan 1997, p.04]

The movie needs an editor, or a bartender, to remind the director when he’s hit the two-hour mark: Last orders, Mr. Vaughn.

Jenkins does something daring with the story's resolution – conceptually brilliant, but you may think that it pays a small dividend on a large emotional investment.

If you're a great fan of either Hopkins or Baldwin, or a wilderness aficionado, The Edge may prove to be entertaining. But for everyone else, it's a pretty long walk in the woods. [26 Sep 1997, p.F10]

Courtney and James have good chemistry, and the sexual candor of their scenes together comes as a bit of a surprise, given the costume-drama, art-house tone of the production, though perhaps this is just the residue of James’ "Downton Abbey" days.

Necessary Roughness has the right kind of rambunctious spirit for this kind of picture -- even if it's not quite as inventive as similar movies like the recent baseball send-up, Major League.

Damsel is designed to be a deliberately out-of-joint comedy about a woman forced to endure an exasperating ordeal. After two hours, I could relate.

Dunst is playing it straight here, but there is enough arch in Kidman’s eyebrow to signal that Coppola is having fun around the edges of this Southern gothic, with its formal compositions and deliberate pacing (as usual, a little too deliberate for my taste).

Yes, Tolkien is a little on-the-nose. But there is also an undeniable appeal to the life-art allusions that drive this earnest movie, which is handsomely mounted, well-cast, and well-acted.

The movie is at its best when the women are focused on the common enemy: getting older.

The most engaging passages in the scattershot Fahrenheit 11/9 address the water scandal in Flint.

The movie's best window into Foley comes via his music, played expressively by Dickey, whose performance finds humor in Foley's rather sad life.

Bacon is menacing enough, but his character, as written, lacks the shading and substance that made the villains of past Hanson films so interesting. Without the complexities, The River Wild is a so-so waterborne melodrama that compares unfavorably to Deliverance and even Cape Fear. [30 Sep 1994, p.47]

What stands out, though, is the dynamic between Dana and Ali. It’s been some time since I’ve seen sisters drawn this well and this convincingly.

The doggedly serious Disobedience might have been a more engaging movie if it had allowed itself to be governed by its own melodramatic passions.

The opening sections has a feel of a competent if familiar effects movie, but the film changes mood and tone when story movies the foreboding castle — perhaps a nod to Mary Shelley, among the first to warn us of the hazards of scientists who interfere with the natural order.

What keeps the movie watchable, for the most part, are the one-off flourishes built around incidental characters.

Isaac and Kingsley are game, and their scenes have decent dramatic tension, but of course the outcome is never in doubt, and in the end, Weitz is left to rely on more contrived thriller elements to give the movie a finishing kick, which feels nonetheless like a letdown.

The movie clocks in at just under two hours and feels considerably longer. As it ticks on, it achieves an unlikely and perhaps not entirely unintentional feat: It makes Grace Jones kind of boring.

The movie was (apparently) shot guerrilla style by director Weinstein, though the filmmakers have been coy as to which scenes were captured stealthily and which are dramatized. This leads to questions about tact and voyeurism that go unanswered and frankly made me a little queasy.

Although Baldwin helps add substance to this frequently flippant movie with his earnest (when called for) performance, The Shadow isn't as grave or as chilling as the old radio serial. Here, the Shadow is resurrected in the service of tongue-in-cheek summer escapism. [01 Jul 1994, p.29]

At least Aquaman has a different palette, and new shapes to work with. It’s still ultimately silly and dreary, and will test the endurance of fans who then must withstand an even longer credit sequence to get a whiff of the next DC story wrinkle.

I wonder if Noe is familiar with the work of Three Dog Night, and their 1970 rumination on a party gone bad, “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Its lyrics apply here: “I’ve seen so many things I ain’t never seen before. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want to see no more.”

Cowriter and director Dee Rees (Pariah, Bessie) does a skillful job making us feel these inequities as they take place over time and become the fabric of lives, the basis of the assumptions people make about race and culture — the way things are.

The movie also trumpets hometown values, and makes fun of the way Liam’s wealth and fame have insulated him from simple pleasures of small-town life (underlined by director Bethany Ashton Wolf’s cozy visual presentation). The movie pokes fun at his materialism, when it’s not indulging in it.

The Glass Castle is an unfortunately flat and messy adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir about growing up with extreme poverty and with parents who both inspired and damaged her.

I give Goodbye Christopher Robin credit for presenting audiences with a Pooh origins story they might not want to see, but having settled on this subject, the movie seems uncertain how to proceed.

There are also Photoshopped aggregations of Bergen, Fonda, Keaton and Steenburgen, and though they were never actually grouped together when young, they register reasonably well here as lifelong friends. The movie rides entirely on their charm, not so much on the strength of the writing or the jokes.

Bay makes a lot of familiar moves here.

When the creatively blocked Giacometti stares at his canvas, cursing. He is literally watching paint dry, and so are we.

In an effort to work all of these characters into the plot, the movie has become incomprehensible, though I doubt anyone will care, since the movie is one big blizzard of karate chops, and that seems to be the point. [23 Dec 1994, p.33]

Romeo Is Bleeding appears to be another misfired attempt to re-create the darkly comic, genre-sendup zing of "Reservoir Dogs." The extravagant violence, luridly colorful visuals and corny hard-boiled dialogue are there. Missing is a coherent story supported by internal logic. In other words, a reason to pay attention. Other than lingerie, I mean. [4 Feb 1994, p.51]

Performances are good, the period details accurate, but the script is an artificial hybrid of better-known movies in the genre, borrowing whole scenes and story lines from Stand by Me and even Home Alone. [20 Oct 1995, p.52]

Chemistry among the women is smooth, maybe excessively so. In movies about hustlers and confidence games, there is usually the scent of underlying treachery, the possibility of dishonor among thieves. In The Sting, for instance, we wonder: Is Redford conning Newman? Is the movie conning us? That kind of tension is missing here.

The movie, by German directing legend Wim Wenders, is a sequel to his imaginative, winsome "Wings of Desire," and maybe that's the problem. The second time around, Wenders' ideas just don't seem so imaginative. [04 Feb 1994, p.46]

It finds the right harmonized note of melancholy and humor in its closing moments.

It all adds up to a bicultural comedy that is good-natured if not especially or consistently well-written. The movie takes too long to get moving, stays a tad too long, and efforts to retrofit the movie as a vehicle for Derbez come at the expense of Faris, a talented comedian who has very little to do here.

This is the culmination of DeMonaco’s seething Purge scenarios, which have become increasingly focused on polarization and rage.

And yet, the focus of the movie remains fixed on the men, which makes this Ode to Strong Women seem a little patronizing. Or expedient. The director's long-time girlfriend, co-star Bahns, has the most flattering female role. Bahns had no acting experience when she was cast in the low-budget "Brothers McMullen." She still doesn't. Watching her her in "She's the One," you realize that it must be love. [23 Aug 1996, p.45]

A wishy-washy exploitation movie, which doesn’t show any real verve until the climax.

All of this is in Hart's wheelhouse, and Night School might have fared better if it had surrendered completely to random comedy one-offs. It keeps coming back, though, to the desultory story of Teddy's strained romance, the least-compelling feature of the movie.

In its last moments...Aardvark finds a groove.

The animators have figured out horses and falcons and snakes, but human body movements are stiff, awkward, and mechanical.

The problem isn’t that the humor is inappropriate, it’s that after almost two decades, it isn’t as funny.

Fast Color is disciplined and restrained, yet feels a few tweaks away from being the rousing origin story it aspires to be.

A bawdy, bloody but only sporadically funny spy spoof and buddy comedy.

Kin positions itself as a B-movie cobbled together from sci-fi favorites of the past, and so we grant the movie wide latitude to be goofy. It's meant to be out there. Even by those lax standards, though, Kin tries the patience.

As Knightley and Skarsgard wrestle with this material and each other, the movie around them goes plot crazy.

The movie works reasonably well as a thriller but falls apart in other areas.

As a symbiote, Brock/Venom is sometimes funny, and for a while the movie finds a rhythm that seems to suit director Ruben Fleischer, best known for Zombieland.

The remake, directed by Twilight’s Catherine Hardwicke, makes substantial changes — taking the bare bones of the story and turning into a sort action-fable about female empowerment, starring Jane the Virgin headliner Gina Rodriguez.

If HGTV and Lifetime had a TV channel baby, it would produce movies like The Intruder.

Something to Talk About goes wrong when it allows its agenda to interfere with the integrity of its characters. Duvall, Roberts and Quaid strive to humanize their characters, only to be undone with narrative detours that strain credibility. Kyra Sedgwick has a more rewarding, better defined role as Grace's smart-aleck sister. The movie also falters when it turns away from relationships and toward a limp subplot about a show-jumping contest. It ain't exactly "Rocky," but it does introduce us to the movie's only sympathetic male character. A gelding. [4 Aug 1995, p.37]

The movie seems even longer – replacing Argento's splashy colors with dull, chilly greys, and lengthening the story (Argento clocked in at 96 minutes) with layers that feel over overwrought and overthought.

There’s nothing especially striking about the movie’s visual presentation – the Artemis is threadbare and creaky, a purposely anachronistic blend of the future tech and throwback furnishings. The actions is competent, the performers game.

Greenfield makes an ambitious attempt to tie all of these things together as symptoms of capitalism gone wrong in Generation Wealth, although her thesis is weakly argued, and thinly sourced – the movie often turns out to be a curiously insular polling of family, friends, and high school and college classmates.

Fans can best enjoy the movie the way the bad moms make the best of the holiday: lots of alcohol, lots of forgiveness.

Little Big League is wholesome, safe, reassuringly familiar. On the other hand, Little Big League is a recycling project that lacks an original or exciting moment. [29 Jun 1994, p.31]

OK, so it’s ridiculous, but slightly ridiculous action movies are Johnson’s brand (they’re actually making a sequel to San Andreas), and what fans want in the context of that silliness are reasonably competent action and suspense.

Plummer and Farmiga seem like a potential dream team, but the pairing instantly feels wrong – they don’t scan as father and daughter, and Plummer’s continental bearing seems ill-suited to his character’s backstory.

No neuralizers needed for Men In Black: International — you’ll forget you’ve seen it not long after walking out.

The setup may seem recyclable, but really it’s disposable.