As is appropriate in a well-crafted and meticulous movie, the acting is strong down the line.

It earns respect through good writing and some unexpectedly terrific performances. Viewers may walk away surprised, thinking that this film is more satisfying than it seemed at first.

An energetic young cast, consisting of a mix of professional dancers and actors who do convincing imitations of Arthur Murray graduates, is positively inspired in numbers combining traditional ballroom steps with hip-hop.

So the situation is fraught, without being clear-cut; in other words, interesting.

If Party Girl weren't so contrived, and if Posey didn't exude such cold hauteur, all of that might have worked.

When You're Strange is a remedial Doors class, taught by a professor who sounds as if he's doing voiceovers for car commercials.

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever goes a long way toward humanizing the Venmo multimillionaire best known for pumping his teenage son’s blood plasma into his own veins.

I didn't think there was a drop left in this formula, but Sylvester Stallone has reached down, gone into the well, pulled himself up from the mat and found the strength within to come back with one last Rocky movie that's better than all the other sequels and almost as good as the original. [16 Nov 1990, p.E1]

Lacks even mild drama.

Much of the success of Little Pink House comes from the casting and the performance of Catherine Keener, an actress that has, simultaneously, an aura of glumness and an atmosphere of fun about her.

Floats along on the strength of its writing and supporting cast.

The Current War is even better than it has to be. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung give the film a swooping elegance, so that shots that start as close-ups gracefully glide into medium shots, and medium shots give way to vistas. The camera is always moving in a way that suggests grace and flow.

The film may be intended to launch the movie careers of Patrick Stewart and the gang from ''Star Trek: The Next Generation,'' but any vibrancy, any emotional power it has derives from William Shatner as Kirk. And it's not even his movie. [18 Nov. 1994, p.C1]

It's all pleasant but fairly unimportant, and then -- POW -- comes the great scene, almost out of nowhere.

It's precisely that fear that Redford sets out to explore. The Conspirator is all about the un-American things Americans can do when feeling collectively threatened.

Lego Ninjago is still nowhere near bad “Alvin and the Chipmunks” sequel territory. But at this rate, we may be only one or two movies away.

The upshot is a film that is stunning to look at, even inspiring at times, but dramatically bizarre. Obviously, this technology has its place, but it makes too strong a statement to be casually used in remakes.

There is simply too much going on, in these separate storylines, for too long. There is a literal “meanwhile, back at the farm” quality to the movie, because it becomes so involved with subplots that you only remember Max and Rooster at the farm when the action shifts back to it.

Richly inventive.

It becomes somewhat pleasantly watchable because the muddled script and dangling story lines are delivered and explored by truly charismatic actors who can, at least for a while, breathe life into something where none should exist...Even if they’re moping in a corner.

The Astronaut Farmer's goofy quality makes it totally endearing. It's also super entertaining. Critics are fond of referring to movies as a "great ride." With this one, the words couldn't be more apt.

Crazy plot aside, Tusk offers some thought-chewing ideas on human duality, both good/evil and man/beast.

Harry Brown has more to say, about aging, about old-school courtesy in collision with blind stupid violence, and about how sometimes pensioners on a fixed income get stuck in neighborhoods that turn dangerous.

A strange but oddly memorable film.

An elegiac, visually hypnotic film about love, honor, reverence for nature and the loss of tradition.

Dull but sweet.

Unabashedly sentimental, it's meant to touch our hearts in profound and important ways, but misses the mark by drawing too deeply from a pool of schmaltz.

Poignant and carefully observed, the Italian drama Facing Windows portrays two consuming, illicit romances: one in the present, the other kept alive in faulty memory. The long-ago relationship holds far more intrigue.

The big screen -- with that 3-D depth charge -- captures the strange magic of the "big top" Cirque in visual gulps.

As a film it plays like a heavy-handed morality tale one might come across on a middling cable network.

There's talent here, but for directing, not writing. If Ritchie wants to last, he's going to have to allow somebody else to write his screenplays.

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

The problem with “The Tiger’s Apprentice” is it sacrifices character and story for the repetitive mind-numbing action we have come to expect from such fantasy and superhero films.

In color, style and humor — even in its graphics and editing — it’s very much like a Godard film from the mid-1960s. Thus, the experience is like watching an actual Godard film — the first great Godard film since “Masculin Féminin” in 1966.

Can't be dismissed. Yet something keeps this movie from being completely satisfying: a disconnect between the plot and the point.

Attempts something startlingly original by melding light opera with soap opera.

Nostalgia for the groves of academe weighs heavily on Liberal Arts, which both exploits and undermines romanticized memories of campus life.

The back and forth, the listening and reacting between Mirren and McKellen, as each of their characters gauges the other and as we mark the incremental shifts and exchanges of power, is pure pleasure.

Cruise's undeniable star voltage makes it all palatable, and the film is gorgeous to behold and even to listen to, from the rolling green hills to the galloping horses to the "Lohengrin"-like theme music on the sound track.

You could blast for it, and you still won't find 30 uninterrupted seconds of truth in Baby Mama. The characters are lies. Their emotional workings are lies. The jokes are based on lies about human behavior.

Song to Song is Terrence Malick’s first truly awful film. In it, he does all the things that Malick does, except for all the great things that Malick does.

Showalter’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which credits the documentary as its inspiration, recreates some of the doc’s scenes almost verbatim. But while imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, Abe Sylvia’s ambitious but shallow script has something spiritually missing — namely, a point to it all.

The brilliance of what Iñárritu does here is that, if you watch any scene in “Bardo” for 30 seconds, you will keep watching. But you have to be willing to give him those 30 seconds at the start of each scene. You have to work with him a little.

That Pride ultimately gets to you is more of a surprise than the outcome because it's not very well-constructed.

A ludicrous, yet oddly engaging documentary.

If there’s a weakness to The D Train, it’s only in the filmmakers’ ultimate choice to stop the pain right before the finish, as if any good might really come to the characters they’ve created. Perhaps the assumption was that, by then, audiences will have suffered enough. But some misery you really can’t get enough of, especially when it’s happening to other people.

This novelty film is little more than a strung-together product reel of animation pieces put to the 3-D and IMAX test.

It would have been enough that Singleton raise these difficult questions without trying to wrap them up, too, in the last five minutes.

Fans of Nijinsky will savor every minute of Cox's work. Those unfamiliar with Nijinsky but who are curious enough to see this film may find themselves frustrated by its nontraditional documentary style.

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.

Yes, the movie's watchable, and there are about six good laughs in it, but six good (not great) laughs in 90 minutes is pretty paltry for a comedy.

The beauty of The Joneses is that the salesmen are as much the victims as the people they're deceiving.

A few things make The Adam Project a little better than bearable.

Typical of some of the absurd moments in this film is a long drawn-out fist fight between the hero and Frank, who almost kill each other because Frank is too proud to try on the magic dark glasses. It is completely stupid. [5 Nov 1988]

Wang deals out absurdist humor with a deft hand, especially in scenes where Ethnos and its corporate videos extoll the so-called joys of whiteness.

If Idlewild had something beyond OutKast's songwriting, it would make a swell musical.

Manages somehow to be gritty, delicate, in your face and nuanced at the same time. It's a beautiful, compelling, sometimes harrowing family drama, with excellent performances across the board.

An absorbing look at emotional tyranny, with a great screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

Even the brilliant Juliette Binoche, a welcome presence in any film, is reduced to whipping up empanadas and looking wistfully beyond a fence — basically standing there and doing nothing. And this is one of the most developed characters in the movie.

The good news about Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the Fitzgerald masterpiece is that he doesn't use the novel as a mere pretext for his own visual invention, but genuinely tries to capture the Fitzgeraldian spirit, and for the most part, despite some vulgar lapses, he succeeds.

A mostly amusing, appealing family comedy about going from pretender to contender, in life as well as pingpong.

When you walk out of the theater feeling more empathy for the tortured monster than his Bride, the experiment has failed.

It blends an intriguing concept with a suspenseful plot, and the result is a gripping 103 minutes at the movies.

The saving grace of Old School is that it has about a dozen funny moments. These moments aren't mildly funny or chuckle funny but really funny.

An odd hybrid but a successful one. It marries the lyricism and heavy atmosphere of a European art film with the soaring spirit of a Hollywood love story.

The movie is achingly slow, and by the time it's over, the story is about where it should have been after about 45 minutes. Then it ends just as it gets good, or as it's starting to.

What's impressive about Clooney in The Men Who Stare at Goats is how he marries his goofy, comic side with his dramatic side.

Higher Learning says nothing new or challenging and is too naive to inspire controversy.

Dunston Checks In is a fast- moving, well-done farce that both kids and adults will enjoy.

Perhaps the movie's use of the past is more than cosmetic in this one regard: Watching Woody Allen revisit his old themes and obsessions already feels like a nostalgic experience. Actually setting the movie back in time deflects this and makes a virtue of a shortcoming.

More thoughtful and pleasing to the eye than any blockbuster in recent memory, but its epic length comes without an epic reward. It's a slow ride to the same old place, nonstop action, accelerating in scale, culminating in the smirking promise of a sequel.

Needless to say, the actors are better than the material.

Assassination Nation won’t get any points for narrative cohesion or character development, but it’s a timely, visually arresting statement about how pandemonium in this country threatens to become the new norm.

With its fake-looking technology and empty characters, Volcano eventually becomes as obvious as its what-if premise.

Yet here's what's strange: As awful as To Rome With Love is - and the awfulness is unmistakable - it is, as an experience, not unpleasant. You will probably see several better movies this year that you will enjoy less. It's a mess, but it's Rome. It's a mess, but it's Woody Allen.

Epic in sweep and scale and packs in enough incident to cover two "Godfather" movies.

Has an impressive cast and captures some of that era's fuzzy rebelliousness and humanism, but taken on its own the picture is finally thin stuff.

Requires us to repress any thoughts about stale material and keep Caine's heartfelt performance front and center.

Has a goofy enthusiasm for itself that's contagious.

Isn't some sober history lesson that bogs down in long speeches and tedious facts. It's about style, it's about fashion, it's about rock 'n' roll busting out in medieval France.

One of the few big-fish horror films that still has the power to surprise.

Neither funny nor outrageous nor horrifying nor conventionally affecting.

The plot turns distasteful and shrill before its tidy resolution at the close.

If the movie ends too abruptly, it still gives plenty of screen time to its nicely screwed-up central character. And it's still a solid, assured feature debut from the latest brothers to watch.

If, while watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, you start wondering why Ben Stiller is acting strange, the answer comes during the closing credits: "Directed by Ben Stiller."

Cute little fellow, but unfortunately, the film in which he stars is little more than catnip.

A relentlessly earnest teen film.

Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

A complete bust, but the ways in which it fails are interesting.

The attempt to be clever is transparent.

We get a lot of hapless victims in an expensive endeavor that is surprisingly lifeless.

Oslo ultimately acknowledges that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is anything but resolved, and shows why even this first, limited step toward settling it was so immensely difficult. Whether we’re in the mood to find it entertaining right now remains in dispute.

Bigger is not always better. Thor: The Dark World pumps up the action and special effects and loses some of the human element that made the original "Thor" something charming and unexpected. True, this sequel gets better as it goes along, but that's a very steep climb just to arrive at not bad.

The movie’s midsection, by far its most effective part, offers its share of heart-pounding moments.

The picture meanders and goes back in time for needless flashbacks, and in the end the comedy mutes whatever punch the dramatic elements might have had.

One reason why “The Conjuring: Last Rites” is so uninteresting is it takes one hour, 21 minutes for the Warrens to agree to enter the haunted house that we all know they’re going to enter from minute one.

Well-intentioned but lifeless.

The movie equivalent of an idiot who, to avoid scorn, starts acting like an even bigger idiot, so as to get in on the joke, too...It takes everything and nothing seriously, depending on what the filmmakers think they can get away with at any given moment, and the result, while not painful to watch, is ridiculous.