Still, when a director of his pedigree and years brings so much life to the screen, inconsistency hardly seems to matter.

I could see people enjoying Dan in Real Life, I guess -- the scenery is nice and the people are pretty and the songs are cute little emotion substitutes. But Dan? Buddy? It's not all about you.

This final act goes on far too long and devolves into such a miasma of pap that it's clear Stoller had no idea how to wrap things up.

All in all, as products go, The Powerpuff Girls Movie is an honest one, probably better constructed than the trio's lunchbox and a little more reasonably priced than their T-shirts. But it's still a product, not a picture.

Despite the mysteries of the plot, a sitcom-style sense of expectation creeps into Saving Face, which sometimes feels comfortable but mostly serves to spotlight the shortcomings in a script that invents compelling characters but doesn't give them much out of the ordinary to do.

For all Smith's dedication and Mann's abilities, Ali remains a figure too big for even the big screen to contain.

I'd argue that a very good movie could have been great if it had kept to subtler psychological tones.

The word 'samsara' means 'continuous flow of life' in Tibetan, and Fricke and company surely experienced that sensation in making the film, which took them to 25 countries in a span of five years.

It mostly manages the impressive feat of mixing jaw-droppingly gross jokes with characters that are worth caring about.

The increasingly crude plotting and stock dialogue are killers. All the beauty the eye can hold can't, in this case, fool the ear and brain into falling for Coppola's strained tale.

Intriguing, not-terribly-probing documentary.

Tautou is, as ever, radiant and deep and affecting, but a film about such an extraordinary personage as Chanel shouldn’t feel so ordinary and wan.

The performances are uniformly fine, with Perez showing a heavy amount of presence and complexity. It's no wonder the film works best when fixed on his face.

Lumet blatantly, simplistically stacks the decks in favor of the defendants, pitting them against mean, stupid cops and a cartoonishly nasty prosecutor.

Though its characters aren't terribly complex, and its plot holds few surprises, the screenplay (in English, German, and Hebrew) amounts to a worthy treatise on the need to forgo revenge.

The film is tangled but not chaotic, thoughtful but not terribly deep. Still, it's intimate, entertaining, and most impressive, genuine.

It has a dickens of a time telling a story.

The authenticity of its setting and its actors make this effort worth a look.

Raimi does everything extravagantly and swiftly in Darkman. Instead of deriving from a particular comic book, he seems to be creating one -- or creating a film series. Or a TV series. Or two of the three. [24 Aug. 1990, p.R11]

The film is uncommonly evocative. [19 Dec 1990, p.D6]

And that ultimately may be the problem with the Polanski version: by bringing Oliver forward, you push the drama backward.

If Rod Serling had hired Robert Altman to direct a "Twilight Zone" episode, it might have turned out something like this.

In the end, as gay people and other marginalized groups throughout history have shown, the only real solution is to learn not to be agonized or ashamed over differences, but to celebrate them with pride.

Writer-director Patrick Brice is interested only in his male characters; Alex and Kurt work out their issues while their wives serve as support or comic foils. The laughs stop about halfway through, and the 79-minute running time feels about right.

It would make a fine TV after-school special. But after getting to know the thoughtful, funny Chantel from the first half of Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., you may find yourself thinking this terrific character deserves a better movie around her. [07 May 1993, p.AE15]

There's some great fun in the film, and a bit of unexpected wit, and lots of action, much of it ludicrous but some quite engaging.

Idris Elba exudes the requisite militaristic authority as Raleigh's commanding officer, and Rinko Kikuchi is his determined partner in mecha mayhem.

The film's soldiers are more the mom-and-apple-pie, God-fearing lads of World War II movies than the cynical grunts of "Platoon" (1986) and "Full Metal Jacket" (1987).