It's never subtle or clever, but it's big, loud and clear.

Terrific musical numbers and interesting premise.

Though exploring, among other things, fallibility, homosexuality, injustice and loss, the picture seems afraid to really make any kind of strong statement, whether political or psychological.

An intermittently gorgeous and evocative film that's so taken with its trangressively bloody and erotic content, it neglects such fussy niceties as coherent plotting and the creation of characters of middling intelligence, plausible psychology or sympathetic nature.

The plot is like a sudoku puzzle with all but one square filled in.

Willis appears to have finally grown bored of his own shtick, and Malkovich spends most of the movie looking humiliated.

A witless, listless muck-up that sends you reeling from the theater with thoughts of suicide instead of a chipper grin.

The oddball cast, by the way, includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, who is infinitely more convincing speaking Cantonese than she is in her (presumably native) English.

Suffers from the problem that plagues too many romantic comedies: The supporting characters are roughly 1,000 percent more interesting than the main characters.

A pleasant surprise. It's not without its problems, but it's character-driven, funny and, if not dark, then at least a pleasant shade of gray -- with tremendous performances by Hirsch and Olyphant.

The exhibits in this Night at the Museum may still come to life nightly. But their latest movie stays stubbornly inert.

Scratch the surface, and the movie's underpinnings are an insult to women everywhere -- the film is slick stupid propaganda for the myth of The One True Love that wastes the talents of fine actresses.

Now The Matrix Revolutions is here, and a verdict is justified. The death penalty seems a little strong, but can we lock this franchise up and forget where we put the key?

Solid acting, especially from the women, and a few good Colin Farrell jokes make this familiar tale better than it probably should be.

In the Heart of the Sea doesn't trust itself enough to be great.

Performances are for the most part strong, especially Seyfried's, and Kusama uses Fox well, making the most of the actress' blank-eyed arrogance. It's not a performance that suggests a lot of range, but it's fun to watch.

Talky, didactic and essentially free of any real narrative, it views Iraq through the lens of Vietnam, which is fair enough, but ends up making the whole polemic seem like a condescending effort from aging baby boomers to get the younger generation to step up to the plate.

Makes a fine primer on one of today's most intriguingly creative and surreptitiously popular acts.

A limp and annoying picture.

Though there are some funny moments, little in "Red, White and Blonde" is enjoyable.

Moves you with a couple of its grittier dramatic choices, but overall the film feels cheap, tugging a little too hard on the almost instinctual pride you feel when seeing a hero in fireman's outfit.

Ends up feeling like the sort of leisurely man's-man adventure movie you used to be able to catch on Sunday afternoon TV.

The drama is telegraphed and glossy and un-fascinating; the edges have been belt-sanded until any camp value is lost. And it's filmed in that "Moulin Rouge"/"Chicago" style where you see half a dance move before the shot cuts -- which somehow makes a lot of difficult, sexy work seem simultaneously frenetic and boring.

If the title hadn't already been taken by another equally strained recent comedy, the new Kevin Costner vehicle could have been dubbed "Idiocracy."

Rockwell is spectacular here, infusing Victor with a charm that makes you root for him despite the essentially sleazy con-man emptiness of his existence.

There are moments here so out of whack that you almost wonder if David Lynch isn't snickering somewhere at having fooled everyone into thinking someone else made the film.

What it plays like is a trifling story strung out to great length without much narrative drive, tinged with some disturbing racial undertones.

No matter your opinion on where we're headed, this film will give you some crucial information about where we've been.

Stays engaging, chiefly, through the textured, ambiguous performances of Spacey, Moore and Dench.

Overall, Luther does a satisfying job of restoring humanity to a woodcut icon.

It's an intelligent, funny, mature comedy that wears its heart on its sleeve and makes you care about the inner lives of ridiculously privileged human beings.

By film's end, you've enjoyed a middle-of-the-road episode of the series, basically. And as usual, Deputy Trudy and Lt. Dangle are getting the best lines while about one-third of the jokes hit their marks.

Delivers the expected thrills and groans.

Landis keep things moving smoothly as both a director and supervising editor. He too has an uncharacteristic light touch. The film is simply a happy surprise. [26 Apr 1991, p.R13]

Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are back, as is director Martin Campbell, but the result has the all-too-common feel of an expired equine redundantly abused.

The only bright spot is Marsden, a great actor who's always stuck playing the less-desirable romantic rival (see: "The Notebook," "X-Men," "Superman Returns"). He finally gets the fun-guy role for a change and does everything he can to rip it up. He can only do so much.

Too often monochromatic, programmatic and just plain lost.

The only thing unpredictable about The Prince and Me is the plot's basic logic. It's unfortunate, because the young leads are appealing and the issues Paige confronts are important. Why couldn't the movie be half as smart as she?

Scott apparently decided it was a good idea for his subtitles -- much of the film is in Spanish -- to shimmy across the screen, to fade in and out dramatically, and in general do even more to distract us.

Sayles has committed the cardinal sin of putting his politics ahead of his characters, and the result is predictably lame.

By the time of the fabled match -- which you could swear lasts a full 90 minutes -- it's all you can do to keep your skin from crawling off your body and slinking to the safety of another room. Do yourself a favor: Follow it.

The Giver has taken a slow route to the screen, passed by newer, sleecker dystopian novels for young adults. "The Hunger Games" and "Divergent" owe much to Lowry's worldview and style while lacking her depth. What they have is strong female leads and plenty of action, elements absent in the spare parable of The Giver.

Jaa's performance as Tien is mostly wordless and humorless.

After getting off to a decent, somewhat muted start, Skeleton Key just gets sillier and sillier and sillier until it's yet another one of those stupid, noisy thrillers where everyone's running around in a house, yelling and falling down, and you're mostly wondering why nobody bothered to call the cops.

The only reliable smiles come courtesy of Steve Buscemi, a frequent presence in Sandler movies, here voicing an exasperated, over-extended werewolf dad.

It's clear that Fidell meant to craft a nonjudgmental, non-exploitative exploration of this taboo situation. And she deserves credit for avoiding both tawdry melodrama and earnest moralizing. But by refusing to judge or exploit, she ultimately ends up without much of interest to say on the topic.

Worst of all, not once does Mulder answer his cell phone to hear those immortal lines: "It's Scully. There's been another death."

It's something we might mildly enjoy on an airplane (well, not anymore) or on a lazy Sunday TV day when nothing else is on, but in theaters, it's a clunker.

A film of curiosities and asides, it deliberately eschews plot in favor of character quirk, which is fine in theory and even commendable. But the quirks are lame, the ultimate conflation of story lines is clumsy.

Hancock's direction isn't flashy, and the pacing is a little curious...Still, he has the quiet chutzpah to suggest that a man can be both flawed and heroic, cowardly in his personal life and noble in his public one.

Grabs a fistful of hot-button story elements -- race, sex, politics -- and promptly mixes them into the thriller equivalent of tapioca.

Lonely ends up being confused and repetitious. [27 May 1991, p.B08]

It’s offensive, really, this blatant pandering to emotions.

The second half of Pink Cadillac is almost like a perfunctory sequel to a better film. It is slow and aimless, and when it's finally over, the strung-out finale seems especially futile. [26 May 1989, p.F11]

Exploring the possibilities of low-budget digital filmmaking is a worthy endeavor, but November is a little too in love with the grittiness of it all.

The leads are just too good to commit fully to something this baldly formulaic. It's sad.

It's shaping up to be a long, dry summer, at least at the multiplex.

Stunning in its violence and fascinating in its ironbound focus.

Hey Arnold "don't get no respect," it's not half bad, either. Kids will certainly like it. For adults, it's perfectly watchable in a Rugrats sort of way.

The only thing Stratton, a former television actor making his first feature, has going for him is the casting of Jessica Lange.

Aselton is clearly trying to broaden her reach as both actress and director beyond the rumpled indie comedy of "The Freebie," her directing debut, and the concept is there, but a movie like this needs a much more polished execution that Black Rock gets.

Plays like a certain brand of indie film I hadn't seen in a while: the Self-Consciously Odd Journey of Self-Discovery Through the American Southwest, in which people learn Important Life Lessons while encountering "colorful" characters in small-town diners and motels amid the tumbleweeds.

A quite competent and energetic effort that uses live actors. [10 Apr 1992]

Effectively cast and shot with exciting immediacy.

Kudos to the makers Red Tails for paying homage to a remarkable group of men and their genuinely heroic deeds, and a hat-tip as well for the idea that the best way to tell the story was the old-fashioned way. But would that the film's old-school aura felt knowingly retro rather than dutifully rote.

Flirt fails because the basic story isn't very good and its retelling adds only incidental insights. [11 Oct 1996]

Serious Acting Opportunities abound! Unfortunately, sharp dialogue and characters who keep you riveted do not.

It's technically impressive but sluggish, with an uneasy mix of cute and gloom. It occasionally finds an effective balance -- mostly in the scenes that explicitly recall the book -- but inevitably lacks Seussian soul.

The quality of the craft at the best moments of the film is undeniable. But it depends, finally, to how well you can embrace a young man named Horn -- a terrific gamble for a film and a subject of such size.

So shapeless, pointless and witless a film that it can be explained only by surmising that the people who made it were bombed at the time.

This could be the year's smartest romantic comedy.

It's simply an awful, awful film.

The Ringer is appalling.

Turteltaub has a workmanlike touch and an easy sense of humor here, and he and his team do a better-than-expected job of keeping you interested in the story, despite it being yet another Tale of a Reluctant Young Man With A Supernatural Hero's Calling.

The slightly overdone feeling of the photography, the archly evocative acting and Cliff Martinez's music also impart a sly sense of the absurd. Kafka recalls the old joke that reminds us that even paranoids have enemies. [12 Feb. 1992, p.C07]

A comedy that's only kind of funny some of the time.

A misfire, but a misfire from von Trier is still more interesting than a blandly successful Hollywood product.

It's a heap of contradictions that will leave your head spinning.

Unfortunately, the movie is the worst sort of liar: an unfunny one. Its gormless, assertion-free protagonist offends as a role model for idio youths, and, even worse, offends as drama.

There's an all-the-scenery-you-can-eat appearance by the deliciously mad Eva Green, too, who spends most of the movie even more naked (and nuttier) than she was in "300: Rise of an Empire." The ever-wry Joseph Gordon-Levitt also shows up as a cocky gambler, while a simian Josh Brolin takes over from Clive Owen as Dwight.

With a self-plagiarizing premise, lifeless performances and a clunky-to-say-the-least screenplay, this star-studded flop is one of 2010's most egregious wastes of cinematic talent.

An action film without a completely empty head, and these days, that's as rare as Excalibur itself.

A decent second chapter in the tourist horror saga.

The movie's biggest flaw, from a local perspective, is its unconvincing use of Vancouver, B.C., to represent Portland, Oregon.

It is a brisk and sometimes bizarre comedy; funny, yet able to accommodate several sudden deaths comfortably.

"The only thing that matters is the ending," says Rainey toward the end of the movie. He's talking about the writers' craft. Koepp, despite the best efforts of his cast, sends this comment soaring into the ether of irony.

This will personally go down as the flick that really made me realize how much I hate CGI stunts.

It's meant to be funny, but I couldn't help thinking they were figuring out where to plant the pipe bombs.

The movie isn't a complete disaster -- it's got a strong performance at its core from Dakota Johnson, and it looks sleek and modern, like a Beyonce video or a Calvin Klein commercial -- but it's an unpleasant experience with a sleazy stench that sticks in a way that E.L. James' novel doesn't.

It adds up to a chatty film of genuine visual interest and occasionally sharp acting but no visceral appeal or satisfaction. It's a movie that plays like a book -- that is, watching it is more like reading than a thriller should ever be.

Noisy, random and hard on the eyes.

Like his (Carrey) early work, it's not a particularly good film -- insipidly staged, inanely plotted, too weak to withstand the weight of any inquiries into logic or continuity -- but Carrey's energetic mugging, particularly early on, makes it relatively painless.

It has all the raw materials for greatness -- a brilliant concept, a sharp cast, the jokes -- and still doesn't come together. You could do a lot worse than Hollywood Ending, but you could also do better.

What makes Saw so awful is that it starts with a clever premise and then completely blows it.

It's awful. Awful. That's all. Keep walking. For the love of all that's holy. Keep. Walking.

An effective, low-budget horror movie is lurking at the edges of Horns but never gets a chance to reveal itself.

The actors make the trauma in Another Happy Day feel real. But it's too often undercut by directorial fussiness that feels more academic than personal.

It's fun-dumb and definitely not everyone's cup of tea -- I don't want to oversell it -- but Broken Lizard keeps it interesting by refusing to color inside the lines, creating their own silly little universe.