Carpenter, an old hand at this horror stuff, delivers some convincingly creepy effects, but the narrative lacks any sustained dramatic pulse - its gallery of hallucinogenic scenes doesn't add up to much more than, well, a gallery of hallucinogenic scenes. [03 Feb 1995, p.5]

Those who know Austen novels will recognize how much each character resembles a figure in one of them. Those who do not will enjoy the amusing types. Men, this means you.

It is by turns illuminating, exasperating, sloppy, redundant, a head-spinner, and a headache.

There are big, jaunty gusts of music, and there are big, jaunty gusts of acting: the Heath Ledger-esque Alexander Fehling pumps up his Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with brash, boyish verve and stormy emoting.

The producers of the TV series have managed the near-miraculous feat of putting out a well-written and decently animated episode every day that draws you in without insulting your intelligence. So it shouldn't surprise many people that this may be the best Batman story brought to the big screen so far. [28 Apr 1994, p.D07]

Wild Target is the sort of farce where nothing, essentially, is at stake, even as cars crash (including an original Mini Cooper), bullets rip, and knives get hurled with deadly velocity.

That's kind of the aesthetic that Stanton is going for: over-the-top pulp. But there's something generic about the digitally rendered Martians, and there's a corniness to the dialogue that keeps the audience from any kind of emotional attachment to the Tharks and Zodangans and their ilk.

So many characters to keep track of, so little time!

Funny and not-funny, slapstick and slapdash, Welcome to Collinwood is a seriously uneven caper comedy in which a bunch of really fine character actors get to act really, really silly.

Wanted is head-spinning stuff, and it's easy to get caught up in its masterfully manipulated mayhem. Visually, and viscerally, it's pretty awesome.

Acts more like a primer for newbies unfamiliar with the show's history, giving no real insight into Lorne Michaels' long-running creation.

There are the bare bones of a plot, but the true purpose of this animated feature is to highlight Gibran's poetic essays, recited sonorously by Liam Neeson.

The menagerie of mythological beasties in Narnia don't seem quite genuinely, three-dimensionally real.

Like Kevin's lucky fortune cookie, Lottery Ticket is a sweet treat with a substantive message.

It's the classic odd-couple buddy movie setup, only it'll pull at your heartstrings, whether you want it too or not. And you won't want it to, because it's sap.

Judy Moody has some enjoyable ingredients. The cast, for instance, rocks it, especially young Aussie actress Jordana Beatty as the title character, a bottle rocket with unruly red hair.

This based-on-real-life tale of artistic aspirations and international politics is packed with more corn than an Iowa silo.

Apted's movie puts flesh - and a considerable amount of blood - on problems that usually get lost in the winds of empty political rhetoric. [27 Sept 1996, p.03]

Not as consistently or uproariously funny as "American Pie," but it does have a Zen zaniness that gives it center as well as edge.

Casting herself (as the proprietor of the local cafe) along with a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors, Labaki tries to get across her give-peace-a-chance message with humor, with song, with melodrama.

Somewhat fleeter and more engaging than its predecessor.

A Single Man is like a big coffee table book on grief, loneliness, and loss - and mid-20th-century home design.

Not a great movie, but it's affectionate. It reveals the cuddly side of Mac.

A big, kabooming sequel that plays sleight-of-hand with its audience.

A gorgeous, gory epic, is a blow-your-mind masterpiece about the emperor who ruled more than 2,000 years ago.

Sunshine can be seen as a story about science and religion, about the rational mind and the mad. But at a certain point, like a dying star about to pop into eternal nothingness, the movie can't be seen as anything - it just implodes.

An accomplished feature debut with stunning cinematography (by Elliot Davis), a jambalaya story line and yet another heart-stopping performance by Scarlett Johansson.

The film doesn't hold together in any compelling way.

If Mockingjay - Part 1 was walkier and talkier than its forerunners, Part 2 is pretty much all action - and lesser for it.

This violently comic caper has some spunky charm going for it -- but has a lot of self-consciously hip, studied wackiness going against it.

Nasty stuff. It's xenophobic (message: Americans, steer clear of the Third World); it's photogenic (the Sports Illustrated-likeswimsuit issue beach scenes, the colorful villages, the lush landscapes); it's gruesome (operating table POV shots); and it's violent.

Nerve gives moviegoers everything they'd want from a teen romance. It's a little less successful as a critique of life in the age of Instagram.

There's not much to this movie beyond a slick procession of dark, gleaming violence. But Selene lovers would pay good 3D money to see her fight a parking ticket.

A tale of disaffection, devastation and epiphanies of the catastrophic kind.

Provide more than you ever wanted to know about the reigning kings of geekpop, but he (Priestly) does so without giving you much reason to care.

Best of all is Hoffman, who hasn't had this much obvious fun since he played Hollywood producer Stanley Motss in "Wag the Dog."

Either Campion is the most inspirational director of performers or Winslet the most carnal.

The cast is uniformly good. In the end, though, as Stiller's Stahl does the rounds of the talk shows, plugging his book and his newfound sobriety, Permanent Midnight fails to deliver a true story of redemption, of someone who has come through the dark side and conquered his demons. The guy is still feeling sorry for himself, and the residue of narcissism - the lifeblood of the entertainment industry - is caked all over the place. [18 Sep 1998, p.03]

An upbeat-if-shapeless Canadian comedy about two adorable young women, an artist and an aspiring writer, who fall in love at first sight. [26 Jul 1999, p.C06]

Chris Columbus' relatively faithful and intermittently affecting adaptation boasts the boisterous vitality of its performers, particularly Jesse L. Martin and Wilson Jermaine Heredia as lovers Tom and Angel.

Someone should check Joe Carnahan for performance enhancement drugs. Smokin' Aces, the wild ride of a movie he scripted and directed, is so pumped up, manic and mayhem-packed that it practically shoots sweat off the screen.

I don't think 50 First Dates is a great movie, or a particularly funny one, but I admired its romanticism and its gentle plea for the acceptance of difference. Of how many romantic comedies can you say they are sweet and disturbing?

Fragmented, dreamlike, a whir of memories and misery, We Need to Talk About Kevin is unsettling, but also somehow unnecessary.

Fails to bring Giger to life in any kind of illuminating way.

Anya Taylor-Joy, who delivered a heartrending breakout performance in "The Witch," is entrancing as this exotic being, Morgan.

The American public likes nothing better than a tragedy with a happy ending, William Dean Howells observed. But Marshall so cautiously downplays the tragic elements of his plot that the sweetness and light left a sour taste in my mouth.

Feels less like an epic drama about power and the power of love than an episode of a Masterpiece Theatre mini-series.

The film, which is amiable, undemanding family holiday entertainment, is more a tribute to the astonishing skills of the dog trainers than anything else.

What I most appreciated about the film directed by Matthew O'Callaghan is that it doesn't go for amped-up effects. No bells, whistles, or nudge-nudge, wink-winks to the adults in the audience.

An old-style mob movie based on a real court case and a real character - a colorful character - Find Me Guilty is about loyalty, family, and a bunch of good fellas.

Strip away the video-game visual effects, the endless chases and zero gravity shootouts, and Total Recall comes down to this: What is reality?

With its female heroines and its uncertain, constantly shifting view of reality, The Girl on the Train is a bit like a cubist, feminist episode of "Law & Order." But not much more.

Tai Chi Zero, the first film in a planned trilogy, will leave hard-core fight enthusiasts wanting. But it's a droll, pleasant diversion all the same.

Students of sound design and horror-movie scores should see - or hear - Closer to God, which elicits more creepy scares than its transparent plot warrants, thanks to an unsettling audio mix and pulsing, percolating music from Thomas Nöla.

A whodunit, a whydunit, and an excuse for Adrien Brody to mug it up like nobody's business.

At times solid and suspenseful, at times dopily implausible and woefully familiar.

Forte and company have managed to make crude and lewd dunderheadedness laugh-out-loud funny here and there, and that, I guess, is something of an achievement.

It's larky, snarky fun.

Despite problems of tone and tempo, Steins is appealingly cast.

It touches on serious - and ridiculously complex - ideas but always cuts them down to manageable, middle-brow morsels.

McConaughey tucks into the role like a hungry man gobbling a ham sandwich.

Luckily, Statham is up to the task. Which is a surprise, because he's never, ever done anything like this before.

So powerful and tender are the scenes between Falk and Dukakis that by movie's end, I was wishing that the film had been more about the marriage of Sam and Muriel and less about the father and son.

Sure, there's a witty reference to another, vastly more momentous legal drama (To Kill a Mockingbird, Robert Duvall's film debut). And yes, Farmiga gets to call out Downey, and stay in character, for "that hyper-verbal vocabulary vomit thing that you do." Small pleasures, in a bigger mess.

A frequently amusing exercise in camp horror that misses being wholly satisfying because it has too many people to kill. [21 Apr 1973, p.8]

An inconsistent and endearing sports inspirational that aims to be "Chariots of Fire" for golf.

Picks up speed as it goes along and the finale is frenzied and, well, cartoonish.

Saraband, flat and static both visually and thematically, doesn't begin to approximate the austere beauty of the director's art-house classics.

The first family of black comedy goes at this bawdy burlesque with a broad brush. They get their laughs, but not without a lot of unsightly spillage.

Shameless in every way imaginable, Me Before You milks the pathos for all it's worth, but milks the comedy, too.

Lightweight, likable buppie romantic comedy.

Trade comes off like TV-movie sensationalism, sidetracked by distracting backstories and hard-to-swallow plot twists.

Black Nativity offers a whopping serving of Yuletide emotion. And it's a musical - with plenty of wailing and rapping on the side.

A far sight nimbler than its plodding predecessor, where the Holy Grail turns out to be a Holy Girl. The sequel is a little like CSI: Vatican City.

Elle Macpherson? Not much of an actress, but nobody who goes to see Sirens is likely to notice her thespian endowments. [3 March 1994, p.05]

An enjoyably cheesy teen melodrama with a touch of indie edge.

Chan's signature mix of screwball comedy and gymnastic derring-do landed him his own cartoon series a few years back, and The Medallion -- with its bumbling spies and bounding star -- is about as cartoonish as live action gets.

Gold never settles on a coherent point of view. Is the film supposed to be a critique of capitalism or is it a Horatio Alger story about a self-made man preyed upon by wall street?

It seems sadly apt that the Daddy Warbucks figure played by Jamie Foxx in the new Annie is a cellphone mogul. Because Foxx is pretty much phoning in his performance.

For genre geeks, this can be fun - although nothing in Scream 4 is quite as clever as the filmmakers seem to think it is.

Under Michael Apted's direction, Nell is a pleasingly tranquil experience, its epiphanies as understated as Richardson's and Neeson's low-key performances. [25 Dec 1994, p.G01]

It's a harrowing tale, but one that gets phonied up with unnecessary slo-mos, manipulative soundtrack cues, and unrestrained thespianism.

Almost reflexively, the filmmakers skirt Dan's messier conflicts. But it is the moments when they don't dance around the awkward issue of a brother falling for his brother's girl that Dan is the most poignant.

The Night at the Museum tent pole has played fast and loose with history, and with our knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of the past. But I'm pretty sure a capuchin monkey never urinated on teensy-weensy figures of a cowboy and a Roman emperor as they ran for their lives from a lava flow in ancient Pompeii. That happens in Secret of the Tomb, and it seems like a fitting way to retire the show.

Where My Wife was offbeat and original, Happily Ever After gets bogged down in midlife-crisis cliches.

The best that can be said about Collateral Damage is that it offers a fleeting fantasy of American invincibility at a time when we desperately crave the reality. It functions as a movie narcotic.

Family. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. Little Miss Sunshine, a stormy quasi-comedy destined to polarize audiences, is a perfect specimen of this unsentimental attitude.

It's a pretty nice movie until, like a Ponzi plan, it collapses.

The film's focus on the contest between the two agents does throw the film off-balance.

I'm not sure that the endearing charms of the assorted fogeys and whelps add up to a movie. But I always enjoy how Altman weaves the warp of professional life with the weft of the personal.

Dracula Untold is a movie that gives good trailer. That's not surprising because it's a visually arresting saga. Unfortunately, the story in the final, full version is thicker than blood.

If time and space hooked up and got so hammered that they staggered beyond inebriation into delirium, the result would be Hot Tub Time Machine.

It also smells very much like a movie with money on its mind - not altogether successfully balancing its loftier ideas with a sense of superficial whimsy and Vegas-meets-Wizard of Oz production design.

Gritty and compelling up to a point, but cheaply exploitive as well.

I was shaken, but not stirred, by Babel, a globalist melodrama that careens from Morocco to Mexico like a revved-up "Crash."

Devoting more time to the setup than to the follow-through, Tower Heist doesn't really build suspense so much as it builds impatience - for the thing to be over.

In 50 years, film lovers will look back on 9 as the debut feature of an original talent.

Classy but ultimately unsatisfying film.