It is probably Kitamura's best film.

They don't get more frustrating than American Rhapsody, a near-great film for about an hour that changes into a self-indulgent mess.

Skids into absurdity, but it never quite gets boring. Movies like this rarely are.

Viewers expecting rip-roaring, chandelier- swinging swordplay adventure are likely to be disappointed by the measured tone and portentous verbal interplay.

The Salvation is one of those movies that deservedly (and desperately) requires a do-over. Unfortunately, what you see is what you get.

Two things hold back Don't Stop Believin' as a documentary. The first is that it presents the world of Journey and the people in it through such a lens of love and light that it begins to seem like a publicity film...The second flaw is that it leaves out vital information. It doesn't, for example, answer the big question, "What happened to Steve?"

The movie has that fatal triptych that is becoming Reiner's romantic-comedy signature: drippy sentiment, zany scenes that trivialize the characters and a horror of adventure.

You might if you have a strong interest in and at least a general familiarity with Buddhism. If not, the film is a crashing bore, and does little to help the novice understand what the religion is all about.

The movie is shamelessly manipulative.

Though the ambitious Outlaw King doesn’t always fire on all cylinders, moviegoers deserve this chance to see it on the big screen, before it starts showing on a laptop near you.

Though it has merit and is recommended for the curious and adventurous, Joe Swanberg's film wears out its welcome about halfway through its 83 minutes. I'd say it doesn't go anywhere, but that's the point of these movies.

Taps into a fear hitherto unexplored by cinema: fear of Bill Gates.

This 1968 William Friedkin comedy set in 1925 New York will be appreciated by those who enjoy the corny humor and bawdy broads of burlesque.

It sets up two or three dozen satirical targets, hits the mark occasionally, but has trouble maintaining an even satirical tone or satisfying pace. Dawber, too, is unappealing in the female lead -- definitely outclassed by Ritter. I'd wager Stay Tuned will die an early death at the box office and find its real life, appropriately enough, in home video. [15 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Teen sex comedies always have more homoerotic moments than you can shake a ... whatever ... at, but Eurotrip seems overly concerned with penises and predatory men. This brand of humor, a time-honored crutch for comedy writers, is both lazy and unseemly.

The film often stumbles in translation, trying to define too many characters in too little time.

Though Carolla and co-filmmaker Kevin Hench devise some funny situations — particularly, the one in which a newly divorced woman insists on coming back to his room — the overall feeling that comes across is one of sadness, and that seems intentional.

Although the acting is uneven and the movie's dead spots make it feel far longer than its running time, the twist in Twist' is certainly clever.

The biggest sequel of the summer has more dinosaurs, better special effects and more action than the original... But the inspiration is gone, and with it most of the fun.

Eventually, though, these scenes get repetitive, and the muddled final act neither builds nor gets scary. Writer-director Peter Strickland is much more interested in the atmospherics, so when Gilderoy plunges into the abyss (or wherever), we are left confused, and not in a satisfying, David Lynch kind of way.

Has a weirdly divided structure that alternates Irwin's nature segments with clumsy dramatic footage set in the CIA.

Child's Play 2, stupid as it is, is a surprisingly tight low-budget production, making effective use of dark settings and rainy nights, and a handful of in-yer-face scare tactics that keep the action pumped up. [10 Nov 1990, p.C3]

Monsoon, an offbeat story about a man’s cultural dislocation in Vietnam, is more of a slow drip than a torrential downpour. It’s a lovely film that suddenly and magically can wash over you, then lose you in its opacities.

The story may be scattered and sagging and the picture may have little emotional impact -- certainly nothing to justify the epic running time -- but Garcia at least succeeds in making Havana in the 1950s seem like a vibrant, special place. He doesn't exactly make the audience care, but he does make the audience understand why he cares, and that's something.

Filmmaker Doris Yeung tries to mix a whodunit with a story of explosive family dynamics, but the effort succumbs to a weak script and a one-note lead performance.

It's watchable and reasonably entertaining, to be sure. Eastwood doesn't make movies that are hard to sit through. But something in the film's point of view is off, not at cross-purposes, not contradictory, but incomplete, irrelevant and ever-so-faintly ridiculous.

Instead we get Knightley, who juts her chin, quakes, shakes and bugs her eyes, but nothing about her pain calls out to us, because nothing in it seems real.

The script is weak, but everyone on the technical side of "Soul Surfer" is a pro. The scenes in the water flow together nicely, and the action is always coherent. Robb's scenes without an arm look seamless throughout the movie.

There are pros and cons to this Green Lantern, a half-campy, half-compelling adaptation of the superheroic DC comic books.

Impeccably mounted, nicely scored and beautifully written.

A strange story. A strange world. And strange characters doing even stranger things.

What should have been 90 zippy minutes of jingling, giggling, winking fakery adds up to only about 20 minutes of fun.

Jindabyne suffers from too many extraneous elements and from a story that doesn't land with enough force or purpose.

As a cold meditation on sex and power, The Lover succeeds. The girl remains invincible behind her youth and vapidity, calmly amazed at her own strength. But as an evocation of the mysterious and universal currents of love and time and passion, ''The Lover'' is inflated but empty. [13 Nov 1992, p.C3]

An odd little concoction, a coming-of-age story that, only in passing, is also a mystery.

The experience of watching Foxcatcher is of constantly waiting for something to happen — and of giving up, long before something actually does.

A movie with an irresistible premise that ultimately collapses around the whole issue of motivation. Until it does, this is a thoroughly entertaining picture.

As a viewing experience, the film is by turns heartrending and stultifying, but mostly stultifying.

From a narrative feature, we want drama and illumination, the truths that go beyond the plain facts. That’s where Mary Shelley comes up a bit short. It’s never less than competent and intelligent, and here and there it’s better than that.

It's middling Allen, which means that fans won't be sorry to see it, while everyone else can wait until the next "Bullets Over Broadway."

The film's real find is D.J. Qualls, who is very funny as a jug-eared nerd who blossoms into a wild man after three days on the road.

Sanctum is by no means a badly made movie, but it has the feel of one of those dramatic re-enactments made exclusively for Imax theaters.

Given the number of real-world cults that have ended in major bloodshed, there's some irony - and no small narrative coquetry - in any drama on the subject that ducks out so pointedly at the finish.

In the end, the whole enterprise comes off as too clever for its own good, a social satire without a clear target. It’s a movie that you admire more than you like.

Somebody I Used to Know comes dangerously close to being interesting. It’s a romantic comedy, but it’s almost a twisted drama about a seriously damaged creep who goes back to her hometown and starts wrecking people’s lives.

In the end, there’s some naughty, voyeuristic fun to be had from Studio 54, but the bottom-line story of the club — assuming that is of value — is still to be told.

Mother is a relationship comedy, like Woody Allen's films, and it screams for the smart, elastic pacing that Allen creates. The situations are funny -- 40- year-old John moves into his old bedroom, goes shopping with Mother, is shocked that she has a boyfriend and occasionally curses and smokes -- but his poor timing flattens most of those scenes.

So Orwell it’s not. But “Mercy” is a cinematic feat of a different kind, even if it begins to fade soon after leaving the theater.

The film is mired in gloom, not just sadness, but heaviness.

Feels like a regifting of previous action adventure favorites, lifting elements from the “Mission: Impossible” series, “Skyfall” and, most of all, “The Incredibles.” It’s fast-moving, entertaining, kinda clever and instantly forgettable.

Emotionally false.

You can be 100 percent in favor of rescuing adorable orphans from war-torn zones and still find The Children of Huang Shi a tough haul.

Falls victim to a fatal lack of narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong for their roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability, cuts the film off from any sustained vitality. The result is something admirable but lifeless.

An interesting movie that doesn’t completely satisfy, but its central character lingers in the mind.

Fraser and Bugs Bunny are the highlights of this pleasant but unoriginal film.

It's a light-hearted comedy about faith, transcendence and American-brand exploitation, and addresses those issues in such goofy, indirect, unhurried fashion that you could easily miss what Schrader has to say.

It’s an innocuous and cuddly film, even with Caine holding forth. It’s hard to tell if he transcends the role as written, or if he merely seized on the one shred of the screenplay worth showcasing. In any case, Caine brings his own shine to this rather dull affair, and shows again that he’s not ready to go gentle into that good night.

For whatever faults she had as a candidate, Chisholm earned her paragraph in the annals of our democracy, and “Shirley” does a conscientious job of fleshing out her story.

There's more than a touch of whimsy in A Touch of Spice, a sentimental Greek offering that's been immensely popular in its home country but doesn't translate well.

Think “Lord of the Flies,” without all the jerks.

It's a violent yet occasionally funny film - thanks to some inventive gags that pop up - and it hits some of the same blood-splashed chords as "Terminator." [17 Jul 1987]

A smirky cleverness infects much of the picture, yet some scenes are so skillfully created that it's hard not to admire them, and Dominique Pinon's sensitive performance as a retired circus man gives the movie a soul. [10 Apr 1992]

Tokyo Decadence is not an action picture, blue or otherwise. Murakami almost batters you with his slow, deliberate style, and in the end the film ventures into puzzling bravura sequences that seem hard to grasp for someone outside Japanese culture. Throughout, Murakami subtly accompanies his work with strains from the introduction to an aria from Verdi's ''Don Carlo'' where the aggrieved King Philip sings ''she never loved me.'' [18 June 1993, p.C12]

To be sure, Censored Voices can hardly be seen as anything but a political document, one that shares Oz’s views.

Awake fails only in the sense that it’s a movie in one note, and thus its story only knows one direction, which is downhill.

The movie is ridiculous.

The film does thoroughly succeed in one important regard: offering a coherent, viewer-friendly account of the life of Jesus Christ.

Insurgent would be a much worse movie if the good parts were all at the beginning. But they are saved for the end, and they leave the viewer with a feeling of, “Well, that was OK,” even though most of it wasn’t.

It's not bad. It's cute.

If The Hidden were less obvious, it might have been a zinger of a sci-fi action flick. But this cinematic presentation, now available on home video, is too predictable, and even though wickedly fun at times, it's only halfway as awesome as it might have been.

Succeeds in its modest way because its stars, Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier, are pleasant to be around.

So the most noticeable thing about the first minutes of Greta Gerwig’s new screen adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic is that the women in Little Women seem just a little bit snooty here, more like privileged actresses from 2019 than like a Northern family living in genteel poverty during the Civil War.

Would have worked better if it had stuck more closely to real estate as the source and target of satire.

A kind of film opera without music.

It lives up to its title, flying by in fast motion. Even the first-wave MTV generation may find the pace exhausting, but this piece of fluff wasn't made for them.

Without the sheer watchability of Johnson, Reynolds and Gadot, Red Notice would have been intolerable. It also would have been pointless. But with them, it’s a pleasantly lousy movie that some people, if they look at the screen and squint really hard, might mistake for something decent.

Often amusing but lacks the necessary bite.

A needlessly complicated and confusing thriller.

Josh Brolin plays the leader of the gangster squad as a kind of dedicated dunce, which is appropriate considering their clumsy antics. Ryan Gosling has more nuance as his right-hand man, but Emma Stone is completely out of her element as a slinky film noir heroine, a walking anachronism.

Those Who Wish Me Dead pretty much works on the gut-level way it was intended, but it gets extra credit for being unintentionally funny.

Two good characters and two good performances go into the old poubelle — or, as we say in English, the garbage bin.

Despite moments of unintentional humor, “The Ritual” has an appealing gravity about it, which probably derives from its adherence to the historical record.

There's a good idea behind Repo Men, not a whole lot of thinking, but at least one whole idea.

At first, The Oath looks as though it will be a study of the soul-corroding effects of twisted ideology, but it emerges as the reverse.

Director David Hackl’s biggest credit is Saw V, and he remains adept at gross torture and keeping a mystery moving. Definitely a B production, Dangerous has aspirations. View that as more of a comfort than a threat.

For a documentary about one of the most prestigious opera institutions in the world, The Paris Opera has, maddeningly, very little opera.

Mr. Woodcock may be a nasty tyrant, but he also knows his domain is small. "For Christ's sake," he tells Farley at one point, "it was just a PE class, you fruitcake."

A movie that moves slower than it should and that keeps us detached for long periods of time. Most of the problems can be traced to the script, which does a poor job of establishing the characters and giving us a sense of how they relate to each other.

The final message is a strong one: Even when the starting forward is one of the best high school players ever, basketball is still a team sport.

It’s a well-made film in many ways but also frustratingly skin-deep for a news junkie like me.

The whole cast is likable and the scenery lovely, making this only the second-worst Shields beach movie, after “The Blue Lagoon.”

The first film seemed a fully formed, lived-in world. The sequel leaves Julie on her own; an interior monologue that Hogg, and Swinton Byrne, can’t quite externalize.

Genre movies like “The Fabulous Four” can only be so good, but it’s pleasing enough to do its job.

The comedy is hit and miss, with good bits interrupted by dead patches. It's a movie to root for more than to enjoy.

“Thank You” is flawed, with a structure and pacing that dull the viewing experience, even as the message drives through. It’s a great discussion starter, but not a great finished product.

For all the filmmaker's good intentions, Fast Food Nation isn't a particularly good movie. It doesn't hold together or grip you the way a documentary might have.

As moving as some parts are, it's muddled by a script that tries to pack in too much. There's sufficient material for a couple of films and a sitcom.

Yet all this work, all this skill, serve as little more than an elaborate setting for a rhinestone. At its core there is no passion, no sincerity of conception, nothing that might have made The Quick and the Dead into anything more than moment-to-moment stimulation. You get lots of clothes here, but no emperor. Or rather, no empress.