The film is well shot and has titillating action without a single persuasive emotion.

The film will have to settle for a bogey rather than a par. Still, some hyperbole is warranted, like "Safest Movie to Take the Entire Family To."

Sweet and insubstantial -- just like the French Christmas cake for which it's named.

A strange movie, in that it has the atmosphere of a comedy and some extreme characters set up to be comical, but there are really no funny scenes.

Kwak is indeed a highly original voice, but you wouldn't know it from Typhoon. It seems as if he's constrained by the conventional material.

Airplane buffs are going to have a particularly good time; each of the planes seems to have an obscure real-life counterpart. And pop-culture junkies will appreciate a few sly nods as well.

Kline, in particular, has the spark and know-how to overcome some awfully belabored writing and situations.

Onward goes on and on, but it barely moves forward. Long before its 114-minute running time has elapsed, it has overstayed its welcome.

Thank God for James Gandolfini.

Let’s get the bad news over with quickly: Captain Marvel is no “Wonder Woman.”

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]

Rich with statistics and snazzy visuals, but it ignores those larger questions and, as a result, feels a tad naïve.

Don’t be misled by the middling rating attached to this review. Midsommar is anything but mediocre. It’s horrible and brilliant, a crashing failure but one with many good moments. What do you say about a movie that’s both a disgusting, tiresome and predictable endurance test and an irrefutable demonstration of real directorial talent? Perhaps, this: Ari Aster is definitely someone who should be making movies. But maybe not this movie.

The unsure approach to rich material (based on a story about a newspaper’s homophobic coverage of a drowned man) mixes the sexy and grotesque — and cancels each other’s good parts out.

Hunter Killer seems old-fashioned. It belongs to a genre that was pretty much exhausted before the Cold War was over. And it threatens us with a world that, from the standpoint of 2018, doesn’t look all that bad. The movie is overlong, at times confusing, and it’s self-important, with a soundtrack that keeps telling us we feel things that we don’t.

Makes an unpersuasive case that humans are to blame for the shrinking ice caps.

For all the movie's richness and dazzle, for all that money dripping off the screen, Batman Returns is a gorgeous failure -- flashy, intermittently appealing but, in the end, a big mess. Batman Returns lacks a coherent story. It lacks a point of view and a focus. And so everything suffers, even the art direction. [19 June 1992, p.D1]

Fallen is not perfect, and eventually it even becomes frustrating. Threads remain loose, and the movie doesn't fully exploit its premise. Still, it would be churlish not to appreciate the ride.

While it’s not always as sharp as it could be, the energy in Jolt never falters, and there are definitely amusing bits.

If you have to watch someone cooking or eating, Juliette Binoche is as good a choice as any, but even she can’t make scintillating entertainment out of chewing, stirring a pot and putting on oven mitts.

The dialogue is so earnest that its lack of humor becomes a source of humor in itself. The acting is so primal that you’ll swear a porn sequence is about to break out.

Some of that emotion inevitably makes its way into our perception of the film, which elevates it somewhat, but only to the level of mediocrity.

Violent Night isn’t terrible, but it’s stuck between parodying something and trying to fit the genre it parodies. And it really should have been funnier.

Romantic comedies can go in all sorts of directions, but they depend on the audience’s believing that a couple should get together and stay together. But in Trainwreck, that belief is hard to come by.

The film is sprinkled with “f” bombs, which fails to disguise that the enterprise is based on a surprisingly dated notion of what’s racy. Also, you simply may not find Bridget quite as adorable as the filmmaker’s clearly believe her to be.

Still Mine is uplifting and heartbreaking, a contradiction that results in the viewer exalting and being let down at the same time.

A loving if fawning documentary.

It's an entertaining movie, which is half the game, but it's not scary, which it should be. Neither is it something to be taken seriously, though it's intended to be.

Pure ham and cheese.

It’s imaginative and even brilliant at times, and then it starts to cave in. But then we think no, maybe not, maybe everything’s going to be made right . . . until it collapses completely. A cynical, smart movie about the dangers of mass culture gives way to a sentimental embrace of the very thing it’s criticizing.

A solid piece of in-the-moment entertainment that fails in its attempt to be something more.

But this soggy, sentimental tour through a rural dreamworld of salt-of- the-earth versus supercharged intelligence never quite gets deep enough to touch the soul -- or to make sense.

Quintana brings a stunning visual flair to his film, and Sheen has a fine moment when he ponders the thin line between miracles and tragedies. But we keep waiting for the film to wash over us, and it never quite does.

Has a certain charm and is sure to appeal to tweens, at least the female variety.

The story doesn’t deliver. The songs are forgettable. And the magic never descends. Supposedly, Mary Poppins returns, but that’s not Mary. Emily Blunt stole somebody’s umbrella.

Undergirding it all is a light but ever present tension between living up to the philosophy the men were taught as teenagers and making their way through the realities and compromises of American adulthood. Tran’s not preachy about that, but the filmmaker’s killer move is showing how his heroes’ souls can be as fragile as their aging bones, yet resilient when the situation demands.

One can almost feel the movie Away We Go might have been, if only we could believe that Verona loves Burt - or understand why Burt loves Verona.

Goes disappointingly soft despite two dynamite lead performances.

Still, for much of “Madame Web,” even when it turns bad, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson in this kind of movie.

It’s summer, weed is legal in California now and laughs are a scarce resource. You could do worse than Rough Night.

Your enjoyment of the movie will depend on whether you can suspend your disbelief — and confusion — and let the magic of misdirection wash over you.

The story is painfully simplistic, and it becomes quickly apparent that the narrative is a crude cement to hold together the carnage.

That its premise is a fundamentally corny one we’ve seen a million times before is a separate matter, but filmmaker Kuosmanen (“The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki”) and his two lead actors camouflage that well in naturalistic behavior and psychological depth.

The filmmaking seems caught between a genuine desire to present life as it’s actually lived and an obligation (self-imposed) to be politically correct at all times. Even so, the filmmakers, here and there, craft scenes that have the ring of truth.

Falls victim to some surfing cliches.

Most of its screenplay is far too vulgar to recount. To paraphrase Mary McCarthy, every word is an obscenity, including "and" and "the."

Brosnan has never been so opened up, so emotional and yet so precise in his work. It's a lovely performance in a film that only sometimes deserves him.

That gift doesn't desert him [Crowe] in Elizabethtown, but he clutters his movie with plot elements that confuse the focus, the central character and, ultimately, I suspect, Crowe himself.

Penguin is the film’s most fleshed-out character. We know the bird’s origin story, but nobody else’s.

This is a pretty good action movie with the added kick of Liam Neeson in the lead role.

The Others is great as a collection of acknowledgments, but a ghost story made of a bunch of ghoulish thank-yous isn't that haunting.

Greta is not just silly but obvious, and without any hint of a larger purpose, beyond hitting the various plot points of the human monster genre. Twenty minutes before the finish, it degenerates into a joke, and not a good one, but just fair enough to see through to the end.

As the film meanders, the powerful moments barely outnumber the ridiculous. And another excellent performance from McAdams isn't quite good enough to mask the distractions.

Preposterous.

Earnest but unconvincing film.

With a handful of blackly humorous jolts and some game performances by a good cast, Thin Ice is a watchable, if not terribly original, piece of Midwestern noir.

Virtually every word and plot turn is insincere, manufactured, unfelt and dishonest, and its portrayal of people demonstrates either an ignorance of human behavior or a disdain for truth.

The Wonder is no fun at all. It’s not even fun in the way it’s not fun. Even for a movie about starvation, it’s not a nourishing experience. The more the audience finds out about what’s actually going on, the less compelling the movie becomes.

Its urban devastation knows no peer. Robots smash into each other with steely ferocity, and the humans - well, they do a fine job providing comic relief.

Mortal Kombat the movie has everything a teenage boy could want: snakes that jut out of a villain's palms, acrobatic kung- fu fighting and a couple of battling babes. Everything, that is, but an interesting plot, decent dialogue and compelling acting

Sniper is the Tom Berenger film that'll be forgotten by this time next week. [30 Jan 1993, p.C3]

Patrik Age 1.5 has a single drawback that can't be overlooked, at least from the standpoint of an American viewer. It's predictable.

The result is a mishmash that is sometimes moving, sometimes absurd and most of the time just oddly off balance.

It’s innovative and exhilarating at times, and then innovative and oppressive and relentless and repetitive and tiresome, but it’s never exactly boring. People will walk out of Climax, not for lack of interest, but for lack of endurance.

That story proves paper thin, and requires believing Amanda is devoid of empathy yet devoted to Lily — concepts too at odds to be plausible together.

The film tastefully yet unenergetically chugs along.

Narrated by Lomborg, the movie uses lecture excerpts, clips of terrified schoolchildren and interviews with (mostly) like-minded scientists to get his points across.

Long before the finish, Possessor descends into ugliness, with grotesque scenes of violence and lots of blood. You may feel creeped out, like you want to take a bath. But no, not in a good way.

The film raises an intriguing issue not generally addressed by science-fiction films: time traveling into the past while white is one thing; time traveling while Black is something else entirely.

The “Happy Death Day” franchise isn’t going to revolutionize filmmaking. But the uplifting vibes — and occasionally absent slasher — haven’t come close to overstaying their welcome.

Isn't quite as boring as it sounds, thanks to writer/director Steve Conrad's strong script and decent performances by John C. Reilly and Seann William Scott.

The film is stylishly shot, although the current action-movie look might be dated in a few years.

But the jury is still out on Romano's future in movies. Hackman blows him off the screen.

It's not just that Pitt's performance is bad. It hurts.

Essentially, “I.S.S.” is a fine movie for what it is, and the only reservation is what it is. It’s a cramped-space movie in which the stakes feel higher to the characters than they do for us.

While still trumpeting human ingenuity, the new movie lacks the subtlety, character development and exceptional ensemble acting of the 1965 version.

For quite of few of The Whole Nine Yards, it appears that the most clever thing in the movie is going to be the opening credits, monstrous close-ups of the morning toothbrushing routine.

It's a weighty and visually interesting movie that unfortunately doesn't have a strong message beyond its overwhelming bleakness.

It is wonderful to see how Sheedy gives shape to this performance -- her eyes, a photographer's eyes, carefully sizing everything up. [18 June 1998, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

There's nothing new here about the conflict, but the film portrays the two sides fairly - both right, both wrong. Overall, The Attack is thought-provoking, even if it doesn't address how to solve the problem. We'll probably never know the answer in our lifetime.

Its weaknesses are clumsy plotting and a less-than-satisfying ending.

It's funny in spots if you can tune out the Farrellys' ultra-crass jokes - along with any memory of the first movie.

This film is too scary for very young children, while older fans are likely to focus on the film not faring well in comparison to the elder Miyazaki's recent work.

Surprisingly pedestrian.

Well-scripted, well-acted and occasionally sexy, but just isn't all that interesting.

It's a far better thing to remember Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close than to watch it. Looking back, much of what is irritating, precious and tiresome about the movie recedes and drops away, while all the movie's virtues, which are considerable, rise to consciousness. There are good things here - just be prepared to blast for them.

The movie has finesse, and the actors have charm, but there are no surprises.

A clever mishmash of Hitchcockian and 1980s and ’90s high school movie sensibilities, the Netflix dark comedy Do Revenge falters when it tries to grow a heart.

Begins like a penetrating exploration of love, grief and suffering and ends looking like a highbrow version of "Bride of Chucky."

The relentlessly downbeat drama American Woman is a star vehicle that lets Sienna Miller (“American Sniper,” HBO’s “The Girl”) really show what she can do. But she does too much.

Jessica Tuck gives an emotionally raw performance as Morgan’s mother, and Amanda Plummer’s turn as a trailer park resident sheds more light on Jordan than all the other scenes combined.

So just showing a glacier breaking off, or a hurricane in full force, doesn’t prove there is climate change. Perhaps if Kossakovsky had provided some context — something to indicate this is happening more frequently, for example — Aquarela might have had more impact. Then it would have been more than just a series of pretty pictures.

Unfortunately, “Operation Fortune” doesn’t consist entirely of scenes between Grant and Plaza. There are pockets of genuine life onscreen, followed by long, dull stretches. The movie always gets better, but then it always gets worse. Then gets better again. It’s that kind of experience.

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.

If Stanley Kubrick filmed an orgy like the one in this film, "Eyes Wide Shut" might have been halfway tolerable.

Male loneliness and insecurity is a thing and the subject of much discussion in media. For me, though, there’s only so much cringe you can binge.

Suffers from long takes, no music score, naturalistic acting and an agenda so stifling it doesn't allow its characters to breathe.

Unfortunately, there’s a gulf between a great idea and competent execution, and this first feature, from writer-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, can’t bridge it.