It is a yarn. But it's so full of passion, poetry, and humor that it becomes, for the time, quite real.

Crazy funny.

RoboCop is a solid near-future action pic that poses moral questions about artificial intelligence and remote-control combat systems without getting too preachy or ponderous about it.

Dreamy and impressionistic, full of debauchery, drugs, disco, and dazzling couture, Saint Laurent is a biopic that picks its moments, leaving backstory behind.

Beautiful Creatures tries terribly hard to establish its own mythology of magic and witchcraft and Southern-fried adolescent angst. This isn't Hogwarts, though, and it's not even Forks High from Twilight, but boy, you know Warner Bros., the studio behind Beautiful Creatures, wants it to be!

However refreshing it is to see a movie about the secretary rather than the lawyer -- there is a long wait for the light at the end of the Haiku Tunnel.

There'd be a lot less strife and starvation, disease and dread, if Nancy Meyers ruled the world.

The Getaway isn't going to bore anybody, but it's not going to do anything else either. [11 Feb 1994, p.03]

Dangerous Beauty, by any name, embodies no such thing. [27 Feb 1998, p.12]

Sadly, director Lee Toland Krieger's offering, a weak wanna-be Jean Cocteau-esque fable with magical realist pretensions, does great disservice to Lively and her remarkably accomplished costars.

If Weitz's Golden Compass feels, at times, too crammed with exposition and big set pieces, the film nonetheless works far more successfully than the first Potter pic - the leaden "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" - did translating its source material.

Tunney, brimming with coltish, neurotic energy, holds the screen like a true star. She brings the role, and the movie, to life.

While I don't always have the stomach for Woo's viscera or the heart for his pure, angelic heroes and impure, diabolical villains, I found myself responding to the context and subtext of Windtalkers while closing my eyes through what one might call its text. It's two-thirds of a great film.

Portrayed by a mesmerizing Elle Fanning (Maleficent, Trumbo) in a magnificent, heart-stopping star turn.

A big comedown from "The Fighter," Contraband finds Wahlberg in default mode: With his Popeye biceps and broody stares, the actor can do a character like Chris without even thinking about it - and that's what he does here.

If The Brothers Grimm flies apart like a badly designed airplane (and it does), it still has more going for it than most of the movie fare this summer.

All manner of subplots weave their way through the film, which teems with "colorful" characters and saccharine cliches. But, like the first film, it's next to impossible not to find diversion in the company of such stalwarts as Dench and Nighy and Smith. And George Thorogood is, happily, never heard from again.

As a meditation on the vicissitudes of love, on the need for people to connect, and the struggles that come by both making and missing those connections, the movie is wading-pool deep.

Has an empty, soulless feel.

I winced more than laughed at this movie, which has almost as many broken bones as punch lines.

The execution may not be there, but at least it has good intentions. Then again, you know what they say about the road to hell.

The performances in Girl, Interrupted resonate, but the movie does not.

Despite Angela's skills - and Bullock's charms - director Irwin Winkler's film is so pedestrian that his movie has all the thrills of a school crossing.

No great shakes, The Baxter nonetheless has a quiet loopiness going for it. And it has the absence of a laugh track going for it, too.

Mighty Joe Young is a movie only an 8-year-old could love. How cheesy is it? Well, it leaves the ooze of Velveeta in its wake. [25 Dec 1998, p.4]

Peter Jackson devotees may not like to hear this, but Jack the Giant Slayer is far more accomplished, visually speaking, than The Hobbit: An Unexpected Snooze, I mean, Journey.

Verdict? Mixed. Loved the slapstick, winced at the toilet humor, and mourned that the female performers were given so little to do. Funeral is funnier the second time around.

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