For every thing that Stage Beauty does right, it fumbles at least one other element, resulting in a movie-going experience that is of the glass half-full/half-empty variety.

After a promising beginning, this movie crashes and burns.

It's a solid performance from Leonardo DiCaprio, who has grown into this sort of "gritty" role and is more believable after having been seen dancing on the dark side in "The Departed."

Freedom Writers delivers the expected messages about hope and the ability to change one's destiny, and does it in a manner that it is emotionally and intellectually satisfying.

The film's first 15 minutes are by far the most fun (and could be the best quarter-hour of any movie released this year), with Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock letting it all hang out.

Although Gladiator II is an engaging diversion, it never feels like the epic one expects nor does it truly escape the shadow cast by the earlier chapter.

The film is not riotous, but it is sporadically amusing.

The movie contains the same dry humor that infused the John Wick films. Although the action is in earnest and generates a fair degree of tension during the most intense sequences, the film’s breezy tone is a tonic for those who don’t like to feel wrung-out after violent, edge-of-the-seat confrontations.

As disaster movies go, Greenland is neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally bad.

Kinds of Kindness may not offer the kind of full experience provided by Poor Things but it is a reminder of the responses a movie can engender when the director doesn’t play by the rules.

Spielberg has invested massive creative capital into Ready Player One and the resulting production has all the ingredients viewers expect from potential blockbusters. Whether it achieves the level experienced by Spielberg’s biggest successes remains to be seen, but it is without a question one of the year’s most energetic, visually rewarding, and ultimately exhausting motion pictures.

The best Star Trek stories are allegorical - in addition to telling an involving story, they're about something other than going into space and blowing up enemy ships. Insurrection continues that tradition.

The material is intellectual, but the treatment is not. Proof is a stirring motion picture that challenges our views on a great many things about life, some of which we take for granted. And, by opening up the play, Madden has made it less talky and more cinematic without losing the quintessential elements that made it such a success on stage.

Thematically rich, impeccably crafted, and intellectually stimulating, the only area where this movie falls a little short is in its emotional impact.

Although The Muppet Christmas Carol doesn’t really work as an adaptation of the beloved Dickens novel or as a Muppet movie, it nevertheless works on its own terms for a niche audience. It’s the kind of high concept family film that can be carted out every Christmas season and enjoyed in the same way as “Frosty the Snowman”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, or “The Year without a Santa Claus.”

Unlike last year's disastrous "Pinocchio" with Roberto Benigni, this movie proves worth the time, effort, and money to get the whole family to a theater.

For a movie that features so much naked flesh, it’s surprising how thoroughly un-erotic Nymphomaniac is. If intent is a defining characteristic of pornography, then this could be described as “anti-porn.”

The average thriller, even if it's set in a faraway or futuristic world, tends to offer visceral, ephemeral excitement, and not much else. However, while Gattaca has the energy and tautness to compare with the best of those, its thought-provoking script and thematic richness elevate it to the next level.

Robots is more than a load of spare parts, but there are some sprockets and rivets missing.

Mehta has created a pair of memorable characters who are easy to empathize with, and who gratifyingly are never transformed from flesh-and-blood individuals into mere symbols.

Hanks’ script is an example of economical storytelling and the end result is a thrilling 75 minutes of the kinds of things one expects from well-made submarine movies.

It's a muddled, meandering affair without a thesis or a point to prove.

So jam-packed with self-referential humor, pop culture cameos, and nods to some of the greatest moments in animation, that it's almost impossible not to like it.

A major misstep and a disappointment of significant proportions. It may not be a failure for Eastwood the actor, but it's a big one for Eastwood the director.

The Nutty Professor aims for guffaws at the lowest level -- anyone with a double-digit IQ will get every joke. Whether you laugh at them or not is often more of a matter of taste than a question of having a sense of humor.

Wonderfully romantic and romantically bittersweet. It's not about forever; it's about now.

With some surprisingly strong character interaction, there's a lot to like about this movie, at least for those willing to look beyond all the bloodshed.

Although Shortbus doesn't work as porn (and I don't believe it's intended to), it also doesn't work as a serious drama. The storyline is juvenile and the characters remain poorly developed and incomplete.

There's an almost poetic quality to the way things develop, with characters becoming increasingly introspective.

One of the great frustrations associated with Fast Food Nation is the way it drops subplots.

The movie’s narrative twists are neither surprising nor interesting and the emotional weight of the story and characters is feather-light. It is, however, engaging in a disposable fashion, offering occasionally entertaining instances (such as the aforementioned Tarantino homage) and an animation style that seems less plastic than many of today’s generic offerings.

All of Alpert’s hits are present and accounted for and there are also a few lesser-known tracks.

While the idea sounds fertile, the execution is uneven, and the comedy sporadic at best.

To date, "The Insider" probably represents the most compelling whistleblower story to make it to the big screen and, although the subject matter is different, Official Secrets generates in the viewer the same sense of outrage.

It's a cobbled together mess of clichés that fails to surprise at any of its turns.

The good points about Unfaithful can't overcome the movie's eventual downward spiral.

Although the plot rarely excels, the actors bring enough to their roles to transform this motion picture into a satisfying weeper.

The film's central flaw is that the characters are haphazardly developed, and don't come across as more interesting than the props.

Monsters works not because of its representation of alien creatures or its somewhat derivative back story but because of the atypical manner in which it approaches the character-based narrative.

The action is genuinely exciting and, perhaps most importantly, the concept of “Artificial Intelligence” is given more than lip service. It is addressed in an intelligent, penetrating fashion rather than being thrown in as a plot point.

The problem is, the characters don't grab me, and the story meanders too much.

While there's no denying that young actress Lindsay Lohan has spunk, she's not terribly effective in the dual role. Her performance is awkward and unsubtle -- she relies on an unconvincing British accent to cue us in to which girl she's playing at any given moment.

Without the elegant technique of John Woo, Hard Target could have been a real dud. It is not a good alternative to more intelligent thrillers such as In the Line of Fire and as The Fugitive, but that's not the market it's aimed at. However, those who enter a darkened theater showing this film with a reasonable idea of what they're getting themselves into, are likely to emerge satisfied.

Has enough genuine laughs to eliminate the potential twitters and snickers, and it treats Edward and Lee as people. We end up caring about what happens to these two individuals, even as we smile and laugh at their antics.

Because the script is smart enough not to insult us and to develop a group of interesting characters, the act of watching the film is an entertaining experience rather than a tedious exercise.

It's difficult to overstate how much of a rare find this movie is. Colombani and her cast remind us that the best thrillers are built upon superb writing and strong acting.

Disappointing, but barely watchable.

Just a run-of-the-mill slasher/thriller.

For those who enjoy the saturation style of humor and appreciate the way in which parody is not pushed too far into the absurd, Walk Hard is not without merit.

Writer/director Jeremy Leven takes pleasure in clouding the division between what's real and what isn't, but he never stretches matters to such an extreme that Don Juan DeMarco is reduced to a mindless farce.

With impeccable period detail, strong character development, superior acting, and a surprisingly fast pace, this film represents welcome counterprogramming to the typical loud and vacuous summertime multiplex fare.

In the best tradition of mystery thrillers of this sort, it satisfies enough on an emotional level that we're willing to forgive any intellectual, procedural, and logical shortcomings.

Intriguing but ultimately unfulfilling.

Kingdom of Heaven may have problems, but it delivers.

The film will likely find a receptive audience among those who enjoy blood-soaked B movies. It has enough gory elements to enhance the overpowering mood.

I could easily list a half-dozen movies about famous artists/authors that fall into the same general category as this one. Excepting Cumberbatch’s performance and the strong visual sense, there’s not a lot to separate this from any of them.

Boasts a strong ensemble of performances. Martin Freeman is the perfect choice for an ordinary, unheroic Earth guy.

The performances are universally strong - not that one would expect anything else considering the quality of the cast.

Out of the Furnace features some nice performances and is deliciously atmospheric but it never achieves its goal of being a compelling meditation about how the economic erosion of a community influences the lives of those trapped within it.

Guy Ritchie’s name not withstanding, there’s little here with strong mass appeal – not enough mind-numbing action; too much dwelling on a recent, tragic, failed war; and a muted catharsis. It’s also one of the best things Ritchie has done since his early years (only Lock, Stock is unequivocally better) and deserves a viewing when MGM brings it to streaming.

Regardless of whatever ephemeral entertainment this production may offer to some, it is not by any reasonable definition a good movie. It is badly written, inexpertly directed, poorly acted, erratically paced, and features music of dubious worth.

The movie is at times funny, at times blistering, and at times insightful, but it lacks consistency, thereby arguing that perhaps the short film that provided its basis offered a better length.

A New Era offers the kind of comfortable, comforting experience that Downton Abbey aficionados have been awaiting since before the term COVID was coined.

As it's unspooling on screen, the film is hugely entertaining, but there are several significant plot holes that grow wider the more closely they're investigated.

The story is pure exploitation but the style bespeaks a more artistic bent. The film can be enjoyed (to the degree it can be enjoyed) for its excesses, perverse humor, and excursions into blood, barbarism, and violence, but the narrative doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The end result is an unremarkable, unmemorable movie that deserves neither praise nor approbation.

The result, while at times a little too visually chaotic, is bracing.

The best thing that can be said about Wright's immersion into the world of Tolstoy is that it's interesting - a quality not always true of Anna Karenina adaptations. The movie also doesn't feel rushed, successfully capturing more of the novel's secondary stories into its fabric.

As chick flicks go, this is one men can attend with the expectation that they might just enjoy experiencing two hours alongside these down-to-earth, appealing characters.

A respectable and satisfying historical romantic melodrama.

Unchallenging but easy to like. There's not enough here to capture the interest of those indifferent to romantic comedies, but fans - even of the casual variety - will find this to be a pleasant mid-summer diversion.

While Muriel's Wedding has its moments of exhilarating humor, it is, as often as not, downbeat and even mean-spirited.

The humor avoids becoming too outrageous. This is like an indie version of Olivia Wilde’s "Booksmart," which was filmed after Banana Split despite being released earlier. Both films offer complex perspectives of high school-oriented female friendships without demanding a happy ending for the happy ending.

The Last Exorcism is one of those rare films where the marketing campaign is more interesting than the film it publicizes.

Has its share of bitingly funny moments, and some of the comedy is quite inventive.

Whether this is an accurate depiction of how things are in real life, I cannot say, but it's almost always how they are in the movies.

The Hunter works best as a travelogue and a thought-piece about the ugly, shadowy side of resurrecting dead species.

Les Miserables understandably cuts some of the stage production's numbers, but all of the major anthems are intact and wonderfully presented.

A lot of what's intended to be funny falls flat, in part because it's too obvious and in part because director Steve Pink is clumsy when it comes to comedic timing.

It's hard to say whether Anchorman is the funniest movie of the year - it has enough offbeat and gut-busting moments to make it worth consideration in that category.

While Straczynski should be commended for remaining reasonably true to the historical record, this results in an open-ended conclusion that isn't entirely satisfying.

Although there are occasions when individual set pieces are effective (such as a short bit involving a locked bathroom door), the film as a whole seems more like a series of missed opportunities than a “return to form” for director M. Night Shyamalan, who continues to trade on a name he made two decades ago.

Rocky Balboa is not as good as "Rocky," but it allows us to forget the other four sequels, none of which was memorable.

Oozes atmosphere. The humor keeps it from becoming too creepy, but there are still a few chills to be had.

Damon's prior appearances as Jason Bourne make him credible in this role.

This is another movie where politics trump the narrative.

The movie develops in two pieces - one dealing with the quest for the hidden riches and once concentrating on the relationship between father and daughter. The latter works; the former doesn't.

A fun, fantastic adventure, but, watching it, I had the sense that it could have been even better than it is. I was diverted and entertained, but never truly absorbed.

An atmospheric period-piece murder mystery, The Limehouse Golem combines elements of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper into a Victorian-era gothic stew that, although perhaps not as ultimately satisfying as it might have been, nevertheless provides for an unsettling two hours.

As thrillers go, The River Wild is a cut below a "white-knuckler," but it still has its share of spills and chills.

There's a fine line between wit and absurdity, and this particular movie too often falls on the wrong side.

Although the ending is generic and needlessly protracted, the production as a whole is suspenseful – full of diabolical little twists as it ventures deep into an uncomfortable territory using the trail blazed by "Misery."

Adams shines brightly, reinforcing the image she projected in Junebug and enhanced in Enchanted and Charlie Wilson's War. At this time of the year, it's tough to find a more diverting way to spend 90 minutes in a multiplex.

Although there is violence and danger, this is less about the chase than it is about the relationship between the siblings.

A compulsively watchable thriller that represents a calling card for the Ramsay brothers for the movie industry.

Beautifully photographed and tightly paced with a spate of solid performances, this latest Kipling-inspired motion picture is an enjoyable and exuberant film-going experience.

The equation of "drugs+booze+sex=happy ending" applies. Then along comes Harmony Korine with Spring Breakers and subverts an entire genre.

Although engaging at times, Fingernails is ultimately frustrating.