True to the loose, funky spirit of the artists and their work.

Lawrence's take on pop music success is exactly right, satiric without being absurdist, and therefore a prize worth the effort.

There’s no one to root for, not even the dead girl. Nothing seems important enough.

The film is undeniably energetic, with a lot of good lines written by Shores, but it descends into obvious preachiness, and from this view, the unrelenting wackiness becomes overwhelming. Still, good times are had by all.

“Stories of Surrender” makes no pretense of telling the full Bono story. But it picks its spots with artful precision and with keen cinematic instincts.

Thanks to the three strong performances at its heart — especially that of a wisecracking Samuel L. Jackson (who’s also one of the producers) — The Banker often is as entertaining as it is enlightening. It’s “Hidden Figures” with redlining instead of rocket fuel.

The real problem with This Is 40 is its lack of truth, that Apatow wanted to express something about married life, and it eluded him. After all, no less than Kierkegaard once said that the actual dynamics of marriage are beyond the scope of art, and he was the best movie critic of the 19th century.

Everything that’s good about Cruella can’t obscure the fact that it was a very bad idea. The movie makes gestures toward style. It has first-rate costume design. The soundtrack contains a series of well-loved but mostly irrelevant pop songs from the 1960s and ’70s. But we still end up with a movie that should never have been made.

Underlying the story is sadness, a sense of mystery and a quality of pain. Enjoy the movie for its surface pleasures, but when it's over, it's those subterranean qualities that will keep it lingering in the mind.

Would have been a stronger movie if it didn't require a strong cup of coffee going in.

There's no hiding a hokey love story that undercuts the picture's compelling tennis scenes.

It takes about half the movie, but gradually we realize that we’ve stumbled into something wonderful, that there’s magic happening here, both onscreen and within the lives of the characters.

Family entertainment at its best.

A look at lives and hopes that are part of our American culture.

The film's emotional complexities don't allow for much of the canned sentiment that normally gets dished out in romantic dramas; what emerges instead, over several reels, is endearingly tender and complicated.

By taking the “dark” out of the dark comedy, “The Roses” can’t decide what it wants to be, and becomes as flimsy as its setting: Mendocino is played by a seaside town in Devon, United Kingdom, and it looks more like New England than Northern California.

A wildly entertaining fantasy thriller that propels Russian cinema into the 21st century.

It’s billed as another horror comedy, but when tidbits of humor manifest, it feels forced. There are few notable moments.

A very funny French comedy of a variety that usually doesn't make its way here.

There is a sweet romantic comedy action that sometimes emerges in this bone crunching, bloody spectacle, but only occasionally does it surface.

A film so rich and pleasurable you’d be forgiven if you thought about it each time you have a glass of red.

An intriguing document, and the first significant film ever made about a former U.S. president.

The dreaded question with a film like this is, “Wouldn’t a documentary have been better?” In this case, there’s a double answer. The first half of The Glorias is better told as a drama, because it’s fascinating to see (and not just be told) the obstacles in front of Steinem and how she overcame them. But the second half would have been better as a documentary.

It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress.

Intrusive, excessively brooding and narcissistic.

Doesn't quite overcome its shameless self-promotion, but the film will satisfy the Lynyrd Skynyrd set while providing a decent explanation to those who are baffled by the sport's popularity.

The film’s best moments show the characters bonding as teens, “Breakfast Club”-style, within their new bodies.

The unconventional Joseph Beuys, one of the pillars of the modern art movement, gets an unconventional tribute in Beuys, a zigzagging documentary that is both illuminating and opaque.

The fine cinematography by Giles Nuttgens ("Hallam Foe," "Dom Hemingway") infuses warmth and texture. It conveys the laze of summer and juxtaposes the cold of the hospital with the not-quite-real palette of waking fantasy. However, also like the music, the filmmaking habitually meanders.

Something special about it. It's a formula movie, to be sure, but it's Formula One.

Despite some real virtues, Brian Banks as a whole, is only a break-even experience.

Unabashedly weepy, lyrical in tone, and yet it cuts through the melodrama and stands as an honest depiction of young people who don't know all the answers but have the intellectual capacity to figure them out.

The film offers a fanciful, lush urban setting, unusual for Disney animated features, and a couple of good songs, Once Upon a Time in New York City performed by Huey Lewis and Perfect Isn't Easy sung by Midler.

Steep begins to feel a mite in need of tighter editing. In truth, the film will appeal primarily to skiers, while others may get a bit, well, snow-blind.

The convoluted plot will leave viewers with some unanswered questions, should they pull at its threads, but it’s a good bet they’ll likely leave well enough alone after being so entertained.

The less in control Smith and his co- stars Eva Mendes and Kevin James appear, the better Hitch becomes, until it's rather delightful.

It has an affectionate aura, a warmth to it. But at the same time, the audience is left standing on the outside, almost as though watching a home movie: Clearly, this meant something to the people who made it, but it's hard to say what or why.

A paranoid, prurient sexual nightmare.

Although it has its merits, Operation Finale — which recounts the 1960 extraction of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and his delivery to Jerusalem to stand trial — fails to measure up to the deep historical impact of the events it depicts.

A heartwarming, inspirational tale.

If one can forgive its derivativeness and predictability, Before I Fall is well-acted and directed, and its message of acceptance and responsibility reads as heartfelt.

At once ambitious in its global reach and modest in its simplicity.

It's a strain to poke fun at Dolphin Tale 2. Even more than the very solid first film, this is cynicism-free cinema; a place where snark goes to die. But while the wholesomeness, PG-rating positivity and conservation goals remain a strong selling point, the story simply isn't as good as the first one.

August: Osage County was a three-hour play that felt like two hours. It has been made into a two-hour movie that feels like a month.

It Chapter Two is a messier production that barely seems coherent even with the first film as a primer.

While it's riveting throughout, The Mist is a bit bloated.

Gaffigan is able to do a lot with a little, and the comedian is a perfect fit for Ramsey’s gentle cluelessness. He’s effortlessly charismatic in this kind of role, and the arc of his relationship with Christmas is lovely for all the ways it doesn’t fall into easy, empty melodrama.

A movie can’t just be crazy, lest it go off a cliff and never land. It also needs a human core, and Diesel and Rodriguez are it.

Almost as mindless as "Fantastic Four," but more annoying in that this one has philosophical pretensions.

Boasts a collection of oddball characters, some more sharply written than others.

A harsh and thoroughly unromantic examination of the scarring effects of war.

There's not really a movie there, nothing that sustains itself from scene to scene and nothing that's worth watching from beginning to end.

With outstanding performances by Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the embattled father and daughter, the film is a remarkably mature treatment of conflict in a family whose members are fully involved in the problems of our times. [15 Mar 1991]

The new Footloose does everything it needs to do. It's a vibrant youth musical that will appeal to audiences who haven't seen the 1984 original. And it has enough charm and life to it to compete with the memory of the earlier version.

The character motivations are weak, and the story is poorly structured. But its camera work, possibly intended to distract audiences from the movie’s flaws, only compounds its problems. It distances the audience and makes Jason Bourne a chore to sit through.

A downbeat but oddly affectionate tale.

It starts out with several seemingly separate stories and characters, allows them to tease, overlap and shade one another, and then weaves them into one rich fabric. It's an allegory about American life -- a tough, cynical meditation on race, crime and the futility of human endeavor.

This is an intimate, lyrical yet incendiary film, and it will please fans of both Young and Jarmusch, a filmmaker drawn to the intersection of American popular culture and a profound sense of loneliness.

Disclosure is a frankly adult picture. The seduction scene is protracted and genuinely sexy -- though what this woman sees in Douglas is a mystery. The talk in Disclosure is also frank -- and unusually explicit. People talk about sex in this picture as they would in life.

The story told in Victoria and Abdul is so far-fetched that it really helps to know that it is, in its broad outlines, true.

Perhaps most of the humor just doesn’t translate (the film was a smash hit in Sweden). Whatever the case, the script needed to mine more comedy from the characters, not the clownish plot machinations.

A disappointment, a precious and grotesque exercise reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Delicatessen," only less amusing.

If you want to know years in advance what old-age nostalgia is going to look like for Baby Boomers, look no further than Pirate Radio, in which the sun always shines, the music is great and the sex is available, guilt-free and glorious.

A film made with high aspirations and more than the usual commitment but one that, after an arresting beginning, changes into a passive rumination.

A beautifully shot and edited film that treats its subjects fairly.

Benigni sets out to do the impossible.

Defamation tries to give all sides a full airing, but it's not hard to guess the director's own feeling. At the end, he says, "Putting too much emphasis on the past, as horrific as it has been, is holding us back."

The movie reveals itself as not merely dull, but pointless.

Dark, disturbing and audaciously original in a way only indies are given license to be anymore, the film never telegraphs where it's heading. But you don't need a pathfinder to sense the general direction is toward hell.

Trouble With the Curve has a problem tipping its pitches.

With Hard Candy, the innocent are tortured along with the guilty -- the innocent, in this case, being the audience.

Actor Woody Harrelson is in his full activist mode in this low-key and loose documentary.

It's surprising to see John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell together in such a meandering mess as The Object of Beauty. It's also surprising that their being in it doesn't help. [19 Apr 1991, p.E1]

As a drama - an epic drama, no less, clocking in at 137 minutes - its fascination is diffused, and the movie becomes something of a long slog.

With a movie like this, we know what has to happen. The fun is in seeing how it happens. Ryback is an explosives expert, so there are some delightful bomb interludes. He makes a bomb for the microwave, takes a missile apart and puts it back together and comes up with original ideas, such as rigging a hand grenade to a door so it will explode when the door is opened. Under Siege is a lot like Die Hard moved to a battleship. [09 Oct 1992, p.C3]

The complicated truth is that the Internet’s dangers are entwined with its pleasures, the allure of instant fame, the illusion of contact with masses of people. Nerve is the first movie to capture all that, and the result is a successful and memorable thriller.

It all becomes silly, monotonous and boring. Maybe not as monotonous as being cast out into void, but boring enough to put you to sleep.

Costner’s performance is mostly monotone, but Harrelson has some nice moments portraying Gault as surprisingly reflective.

That none of this seems snarky, but sweetly human, is largely thanks to Rogen, who never makes Herschel ridiculous, but aspirational, as if he has a vision he’s working toward.

That’s all it is, a little bit funny.

The real item under consideration here is the movie itself, and the bottom line is that it lands in a humane place. True, any viewer will go in with a certain curiosity, ghoulish or otherwise, about what it's like to jump off a bridge, and yet the overall effect of the film is broadening. To see it is to dread the bridge jumps and to come away with a feeling of compassion and empathy.

Delightful love story.

Part of what’s missing in The House of Tomorrow is the acerbic punk spirit that inspires its two heroes, which could have been remedied by a sharper script.

Wanders far away from the infectious and propulsive zing that we've come to expect the past nine years.

The Oath is harsh. It’s extreme. It goes to places you don’t expect, and then past those places. It’s the most unpleasant comedy in a long time, and lots of people will absolutely hate it. It’s also one of the best movies of the year.

Doesn't sanitize its tale of African American loss and survival -- the way Steven Spielberg's “The Color Purple'' did -- but delves deeply, heartbreakingly into an American tragedy.

Going into Sisters, the thought is, “It’s Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. How bad can it be?” Going out, the thought is, “Now we know.” It can be downright awful.

When Danny takes off his collar for the last time, Besson's plan becomes clear: You may have paid for an hour and a half of escapist entertainment, but he just provided something much better.

Biutiful exists, at its best and beautifully, in that space that's hard to define, between the outside and the interior, action and thought, body and soul.

The Dictator's over-the-top rant against the rank lunacy of authoritarianism deploys comedy like an act of violence; it's outrageous, quick and leaves us breathless, whether from laughter or shock.

After the heights of "Casino Royale," the series falls back into routine with this above-average thriller, filled with over-the-top action, familiar Bond atmosphere and a story that's impossible to follow - and why bother anyway? Daniel Craig is still the coolest man in the universe. That definitely helps.

Roman is bad at doing good, so when he starts showing promise in the other moral direction, it hardly seems like a tragedy. It seems like a smart career move. Plus, he gets to wear decent suits and finally starts looking like Denzel Washington.

Alas, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life loses steam and grows more perfunctory as it wears on.

A marital comedy as perceptive as it is delectable.

By the way, Danny Collins is inspired by the true story of Steve Tilston, a British musician who received a 1971 letter from John Lennon some 30 years after it was written. The gist of the letter was about the same, but all the characters and circumstances are creations of the filmmaker.

The most shocking thing about Come Play, however, is that it has a pretty good ending after such a long, poorly paced slog through scary movie cliches.

Innocence and joy are threatened by the Boogeyman, and from there the plot comes pretty close to mirroring this summer's "The Avengers" movie. Mostly in a good way.

The last five minutes of Midnight Sky are touching and beautifully acted — if you’re willing to wait for it.