The movie will play in IMAX theaters and 3-D, which is the best way of seeing it. Director Albert Hughes (yep, the same guy who along with brother Allen did Menace II Society and Dead Presidents) and cinematographer Martin Gschlacht (the recent creep-out Goodnight Mommy) capture and construct some compelling images.

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.

Solo eventually finds its feet, and the movie gets better as it goes, but we feel throughout the tension between conflicting visions of Howard and original directors Lord and Miller.

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]

Based on a novel by Ian McEwan, The Children Act wanders into the tricky space created when what is moral and what is legal diverge, and law is made to suffice.

City Hall also gives us a political drama with engaging moral and ethical dimensions. The movie is a welcome change from the fluff of "The American President" and the self-indulgent freak show that was "Nixon." [16 Feb 1996, p.44]

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 story circles cleverly back on itself, putting an original spin on the familiar tale of the burned-out investigator reckoning with the defining event in a checkered career.

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

A more nuanced Bale portrait of a man enamored of secrecy, strong-arming, militarism, and vigilante impulses can be found in The Dark Knight.

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.

As played by Jackman, he's imperious, self-righteous, and humorless, and it's hard to imagine such a figure capturing the imagination of the public, policy acumen notwithstanding. The movie is better at showing Rice (Sara Paxton) as a woman trampled by the press stampede — ditto Hart's wife Lee, played elegantly by Farmiga.

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]

Sheridan leans toward the lurid, but with the blood is a marrow you don’t get from other movies, where action is increasingly tied to fantasy. Soldado bludgeons its way into touchy border politics, and maybe lucks its way into a story focused on the moral imperative of protecting a single child.

The movie is antic, bouncing frantically from one story element to another, and poor Stevens, looking electrocuted and sleep-deprived, plays Dickens like the Man Who Invented Meth.

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.

Ronan is good (as usual) as the spirited and rather haughty Mary, making the most of what, to be fair, is the plum role.

Goddard provides ample space for his star-studded cast to play, often to great effect, thanks mostly to lesser-known stars like Erivo and Pullman. The production design is similarly engrossing, with the El Royale's endless corridors and secrets making it as much a character in the movie as any of its human players.

In conceptual terms, the movie has more in common with Scream, in that it’s an examination of genre clichés (in this case romantic comedies) that both satirizes and embraces them.

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.

Robert's relationship with Elizabeth is actually one of the film's better features – it is here that Pine's low-key charisma is put to its best use, and his chemistry with Pugh is useful in establishing the emotional foundation of their resilient marriage, which held together during the times of defeat, separation, and victory.

The Jumanji reboot Welcome to the Jungle is a happy surprise — a movie that turns out to be good (almost clean) fun, and is much more interested in character and comedy than special effects.

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.

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.

Victoria & Abdul, though, is Dench’s show. She wrings dignity and humanity (and a good deal of comedy) from Lee Hall’s broadly drawn scenario, much as she did in this movie’s cross-cultural bookend, "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

There are a number of movies about addiction scheduled to be released this fall, and although The Oath isn't mentioned as being among them, maybe it should be.

What does work is Washington’s subtle, authentic, meticulous work as a walled-off, neurodiverse man.

One of the best of the 16 Bond films, thanks to Dalton's athletic, tough and deadly new 007.

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

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

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.

The movie is swimming with ideas, but it values concept over character to a problematic degree. The Cured maps out an increasingly elaborate set of internal rules that govern its characters without defining or deepening them.

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.

His script is good-natured, more genial than funny, though director (and Philadelphian) Charles Stone III does get some good work from star Irving, who proves surprisingly adept at playing low-key comedy.

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

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]

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

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

There is the potential here for an engaging adventure/survival tale, wrapped in a story of a woman finding her self-confidence by drawing on untapped reserves of strength. But Kormákur fails to find any shape in the narrative of Tami’s actual or psychological journey.

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.

It will entertain youngsters, the only people in America who have yet to see more "Rocky" movies than sunsets. [14 Jan 1994, p.50]

But as the increasingly far-fetched plot kicks in, the movie loses its personality, and plods toward a ludicrous conclusion that looks like the end result of a dozen desperate rewrites. [27 Sept 1996, p.04]

Aiello, Headly and Mazursky create memorable, unexpectedly sympathetic characters. Sometime director Mazursky ("Enemies, a Love Story") is especially poignant and brave here, playing a has-been director in a role that calls inevitable attention to his own stalled career. [27 Sept 1996, p.50]

While the movie initially adheres to the Chan brand — emphasizing athleticism over violence — it turns grisly and vicious in the closing scenes.

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.

There are certain lines in certain movies that could be used to warn a certain kind of viewer to stay away. Such as: "We like the same merlot." It tells you everything you need to know about Playing by Heart, an ensemble drama about upper-middle-class people whose characters are defined mostly by their fabulous homes and apartments. [22 Jan 1999, p.47]

A Heathers meets The Purge meets Russ Meyer free-for-all that takes elements of the Salem witch trials and transposes them to the age of the internet. That's a lot to take on, and there are diminishing returns by the time the movie reaches its bloody conclusion.

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.

In essence, it shows that what the “horse soldiers” did was pretty remarkable — efficient, daring, effective.

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

The movie is often whimsical, a tone augmented by clever use of special effects and sudden flourishes of animation. Offbeat soundtrack selections and effective music by composer Andrew Harris help set the mood — ultimately genial and hopeful, and the movie is short and sweet.

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

Jarmusch, in his droll way, both celebrates and subverts the familiar elements of the genre.

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.

It’s a story with too many influences, no cohesion, no apparent narrative purpose.

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.

While Keaton is many things, he is not Jim Carrey. Which, from Keaton's standpoint, is probably a relief. [17 July 1996, p.25]

In some ways the movie’s crazy fictions suit today’s modern mash-up sensibilities, and its cast reflects the patterns of modern migration that are creating a whole new world.

While reviving the "The Phantom" may have seemed like a good idea at the time, it's one comic book superhero that just doesn't translate that well to the screen. [7 June 1996, p.46]

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]

Though fact-based movies are often guilty of bending truth to improve a story, Finding Steve McQueen goes in the other direction, downplaying strange-but-true elements that might have helped its saggy narrative.

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.

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

Not long into Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, it becomes clear that the movie is never going to make what you might call sense.

The movie’s distinguishing feature is its inclination to lurid violence. Every so often, a depraved Russian hit man shows up to murder and torture one of the characters, mostly to allow director Francis Lawrence to show yet another naked and brutalized woman splayed on a shower floor, or in a bathtub red with blood.

While the movie serves as a pleasant piece of nostalgia, it’s not very deeply felt, and mostly serves to remind us of other, better movies that have covered similar territory, like Adventureland.

In the end, a coherent tone eludes Elba, but he shows promise as a scene-setter, and the movie displays an effective use of color.

Branagh the actor finds a nice balance between Poirot’s colorful flourishes and his moral seriousness. Branagh the director gives the movie the same balance, and wants the audience to have as much fun as the actors, which is true more often than not.

Much rides on the actors’ ability to connect as they brush aside the obvious credibility obstacles, and the movie’s pop genericism doesn’t help — half the movie’s running time feels like it’s a pop music montage of the fetching young couple kissing, nuzzling, holding hands, so it often feels less like an ad for Invisaline.

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

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

Although a fact-based period drama set in 16th-century Venice, "Dangerous Beauty" is really an allegory about modern society's puritanical attitudes about sex. [27 Feb 1998, p.F7]

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.

The story is ridiculous, the digressions many, but it’s all intended to be part of the fun. Like Besson’s "The Fifth Element," we’re mainly meant to enjoy the sensation of watching wacky green-screen worlds unfold before us.

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.

A tweak toward conventional drama might have added to the movie’s impact, but it’s scrupulous and straightforward.

This movie has nearly as high a body count as "Us"...Is this satire? Homage? More like the desperation of a director who’s supplanted “vision” for emotion. The story leaves Dumbo without meaningful links to the human characters, and the scattered story of Farrell’s cohering family falls flat.

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.

It's a pretentious, laughable Hollywood-type bomb that touches on police brutality and government cover-ups, but ends up being a movie about hats. [26 Apr 1996, p.54]

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]

Director Wes Ball allows nearly every scene to overstay its welcome.

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]

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]

[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.

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.

Tearful audiences will know they are in safe hands with Shyamalan, and that no matter what happens, at the bottom of each box of tissues is a happy ending with moving narration. [27 Mar 1998, p.F7]

What Sugar Hill lacks is modulation. The entire movie is played at the same high level of dramatic intensity - tragedy piled on tragedy, confrontation piled on confrontation, grand speech upon grand speech. Impassioned though this approach is, it eventually takes on a cumulative feeling of bombast. [25 Feb 1994, p.38]

For a movie set in A.D. 984 to succeed, it needs a handsome, swashbuckling prince or princess. Dragonheart doesn't have one. But it does have the regal voice of Sean Connery coming from the lips of a computer-generated dragon. [31 May 1996, p.46]

Graham has crafted some decent monologues for her characters.... But, even at a hair over an hour and a half, the movie would benefit from a good trim, one that might give the movie’s parallel romantic stories more shape and snap.

While this movie was somehow able to attract solid talent, Jones, Quaid and even character actor David Peymer have too little to work with. Shakur deserved a better memorial, and the other actors deserved a better script. [8 Oct 1997, p.40]

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.

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 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.

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

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

Killing Zoe is the worst kind of bad movie, a violent comedy that's not funny. [14 Sep 1994, p.35]

The Predator suffers from serious tone and pacing issues.