At times, the story seems like a side-show, and at other times, the serious information just seems discordant. However, to the movie’s credit, none of it is boring.

It lacks a moral center, and at times seems oblivious to the laughable things that are happening on screen. It’s also about 20 minutes too long. And yet SuperFly is entertaining, period. The dialogue is fast and fun, and the sense of fashion is so pervasive that it occasionally distracts from the movie.

Sporadic on-field violence is only a tiny reason that Gracie disappoints, but it's indicative of the film's greater problem. Producers Elisabeth and Andrew Shue seem so intent on creating a hero out of the main character and villains out of almost everyone else, that they've completely distorted reality.

In the end, about the only thing that could have saved “Windfall” was a really good ending. But what we get is something gimmicky that makes no psychological sense and that the actors cannot make work.

If only the explanation and resolution of the action were more compelling, Dark Water might have been a thriller of the first order.

This messy science fiction comedy blows most of its inspired moments because of its mean-spirited, deafening siege mentality, which turns rich promise into a tiresome parade of half-baked skits. Hilarity never seemed so tedious.

What an attempt, and what a work of the imagination. The Fifth Element' will change the look of science fiction and will probably be imitated for years.

Ghost in the Shell is like an amalgam of 2017 anxieties. Fear of technology. Fear of big business. Fear of being spied upon. Fear of the sacred disappearing, and of the crass, the loud and the empty crowding into every corner of existence — crowding out life itself.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance may not be as dirty a delight as the male stripper series’ first two movies. It has other pleasures, though, especially for fans of screwball comedy, musicals and — yikes — serious dance.

A wildly erratic, often annoying but never boring endeavor.

It’s straightforward, it’s pretty funny and it stars two good actors who seem to be trying really hard to leave audiences satisfied.

Taccone can’t find the right mix of comedy and horror in “Over Your Dead Body,” which is a faithful — perhaps too faithful — remake of a 2021 Norwegian film, “The Trip.”

This harmless bit of fluff lacks the element of surprise but is not without random charming moments supplied by its incandescent star.

The movie is hampered throughout by little inconsistencies.

But for now, we have The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which actually was a pretty good idea that just didn’t have enough wind in its sails.

The movie is anything but flawless. There are flourishes that seem plucked from Errol Morris' work but aren't as good, and some re-creations of past events are hokey. It's the film's content that packs a punch.

Imagine a biopic about Ronald Reagan that leaves out Gorbachev but instead dramatizes his years with Alzheimer's, and you'll get an idea of this film's misplaced focus.

Entertaining and pleasing for children and parents, and not in the schizophrenic way of most kid's movies, which toss naughty in-jokes over the kiddies' heads.

Murphy, who started directing movies in his native Australia, does a good job of locomoting Under Siege 2 at a lively, muscular clip.

Leaves you feeling buoyed, but you must endure a level of overacting more suitable for the soaps.

It’s not a question of believing it, exactly. Director Ridley Scott has simply made us want to be there, to wish we really were there, and to accept his illusion as the most ready answer to that desire.

The film's special effects are astonishing, but the most notable and unexpected thing is its tone.

Even if it means blowing more than half the budget on animal wranglers, any movie that profiles Saddam Hussein's eldest son and Iraqi psychopath Uday Hussein is incomplete without the presence of his personal zoo. It's like filming a Michael Jackson biopic and leaving out the chimp, Ferris wheel and kid who played "Webster."

By the time we reach the unsatisfying cliffhanger ending, there’s little to look forward to.

80 for Brady is a good-natured effort, and that good nature keeps it from becoming hateable. But still, it’s fairly awful.

The film is deadly slow and uneventful, with brilliant scenes bursting to life, here and there, like roses in a wasteland.

This Statham exercise, like most, is mainly about body count. While that seems to be what his faithful fans want, it just gets kind of tedious for the rest of us.

The lushly photographed film skids into the gutter. It may have a certain appeal to people who like to talk mean to each other, but beyond that, it's one stupid rubber ducky. [13 Dec 1991, p.F1]

It is never remotely serious, and yet for the most part it isn’t funny, either.

A particularly strong family drama, and the Icelandic setting helps, adding a touch of the exotic.

The emphasis here is less on cuteness and romance and more on the "Raiders of the Lost Ark"-style adventure.

That rare thing, an American romantic film that's not a comedy and that's more about love than sex.

Coming-of-age schmaltz fest.

Writer-director Michael Tully simultaneously pays tribute to his own 1980s childhood and the cliched movies he grew up watching, and the result is one of the most honestly dishonest movies you'll ever watch.

It's a disappointment to see the teen pop star hop in a tour bus. This is a boy who should be traveling across rainbows on the back of a unicorn.

Inside 10 minutes, at most 15, Be Kind Rewind reveals itself as an awful mess, and it only gets worse.

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.

It's really strange, and it's really subtitled.

Hook never reaches Nirvana. It doesn't grab the audience, fling it into another world and make people forget where they parked their cars. But it does leave the viewer with a glow, and along the way it has magical moments, even if it's not fully magical as a whole. [11 Dec. 1991, p.E1]

Significantly, this hyper-stylization of 300 is limited to its visuals. The performances are played straight, and this combination -- straight performances and stylized visuals -- produces an uncanny effect.

Wow, when Disney misses the "reimagining" mark, it really misses.

Features convincing, often soaring, performances by a savvy cast that must have gotten adrenaline shots administered by Stone himself.

Aside from being vile and repellent, it's mainly dull - old-fashioned in its shock tactics and culminating in a ho-hum climax.

An oddly structured tale about Francisco Goya and the Spain that he lived and worked in.

A menage a trois tale that aspires to the breezy screwball comedies of the 1930s -- but more often resembles a hip soap opera.

The plot twists in Little Secrets sustain the movie when it gets a bit too schmaltzy. This excess of cuteness and sentimentality won't be a flaw to moviegoers in the mood for it.

Builds into a shapeless riff on the existentialist misery of company.

Can be enjoyed if you don't mind a little manipulation.

A strange concoction, clever and self-knowing in the extreme and yet operating in primal ways that bypass wit. Something about it feels very modern.

In Water for Elephants, Waltz plays a circus owner and ringleader during the Great Depression, and when he's onscreen, every eye is on him, no matter who is talking.

Neither resting on formula nor audience goodwill, the “X-Men” series is going deeper and getting better as it goes along.

Despicable Me 4 is co-written by Mike White (“Migration”) and has a bit more wit and heart — not to mention a few more laughs — than the recent entries in the “Despicable” series.

The film depicts a treasure hunt, only in the sense that the movie has to have a running story. But it doesn't really trade on suspense or adventure, and in the few places Clooney pushes it that way, it doesn't feel right.

Won't go down as an action thriller for the record books, but it's a pretty good one for right now. First of all, the villain is a bank. How's that for timing?

Ringwald looks stunned most of the time and lacks the sparkle generally associated with a free and independent spirit. But then, so does the script. [22 Jun 1990, p.E3]

What makes this movie work is the charisma of Crudup and that Macy and Co. don’t dwell on the events that led up to the shooting. Rather, they use the son’s death as a launching for Sam’s journey into accepting the loss and getting on with his life.

Most of the bits and performances have a hard time making the transition from stage to screen.

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

Apart from a few lapses, Filomarino is straightforward and gets the job done. Along the way, he taps into everyone’s most paranoid fantasy about foreign travel — where the police and authority figures turn on you, and the Constitution or Bill of Rights are a few thousand miles away.

The Drop can feel like being stuck with someone who has their good qualities, in serious ways, but that you can’t stand.

Triple 9 is terrific melodrama, but it’s melodrama all the same, and shameless.

The designer’s own recollections paint the most vivid pictures throughout the film, as do his sketches and the extraordinary parade of shoes that go by like models pivoting on the runway.

Much of that appeal comes from compelling performances by the two main actors.

Well-polished and well-intentioned, this human-among-the-fairies adventure is filled with plenty of rousing action for short attention spans. But the beautiful visuals are paired with a mediocre script. The pacing is off and scenes become repetitive. While Epic has broad appeal, it's hard to imagine this will be anyone's favorite movie in 5 or 10 or 20 years.

Li is a phenomenon.

The funniest film to come along since "South Park," and one that succeeds in a more difficult and satisfying way.

De Palma seems to be trying too hard to make somebody else's great movie, once again an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Would someone please tell this guy to relax?

[Duhmel] brings surprising nuance to an ostensibly shallow character, a guy who's not really bad, just caught up in his own celebrity.

Seems to want to be a fierce satire of corporate culture. But by hewing so faithfully to their source, the creators don't let the material pursue its own direction, and the result feels dramatically arbitrary.

It's an honest portrayal, but it leaves the audience stranded, without the emotional hook of a character we can care about.

Chalk it all up to prettiness, if you like, but Lane's case has more to do with spirit -- with warmth and emotional readiness, plus a kind of open-book quality that makes her both lovely and comical, usually at the same time.

Smothers whatever merits it may have had in a rush of bells, whistles, bombast and smoke.

Safe House is an idea for a movie. It's a few blustery gestures in the direction of a story, with five good actors doing their best, trying to hold up the barest frame of an idea, while investing the surrounding emptiness with all the truth they can muster.

An absorbing, educational, sad, humorous and ultimately uplifting film that is easily accessible and entertaining even for those not familiar with the grunge rock scene, or with the considerable role that Schemel played in that milieu.

The visuals themselves are inconsistent, but never boring. The sidekicks seem considerably less painstakingly rendered than the leads. A few of the merchants have the unnatural look and jerky movements of Pirates of the Caribbean animatronics.

This is win-win for everybody, but it's too win-win - a setup that short-circuits drama, that shoehorns a situation into a precooked formulation: He's a real prisoner and she's an emotional prisoner, and each offers the other the possibility of freedom.

It’s a somber, serious experience that won’t appeal to everybody, but it’s quite smart and will keep you guessing until its last seconds.

No matter what you think of dumb comedies, The Interview, thanks allegedly to Kim, has gone from disposable to indispensible cinema. It’s a must-see movie in the context of what has happened, and will spark a discussion of, in comedy, how far is too far?

RoboCop is no canned remake of the 1987 action film. It's a reimagining that responds to everything that has changed in American life over the past 27 years, addressing new threats and exploiting new anxieties.

Saint Laurent’s designs and working life take a backseat to scenes of him stuffing his face with pills, accidentally poisoning his dog and sleepwalking through sex with a variety of lovers. Two and a half hours of this. Bonello might as well have shown him sleeping eight hours or using the toilet for all that says about the man and his work.

Leong is a San Francisco native, and the documentary has a strong local feel. Lin's high school basketball coach Peter Diepenbrock and his shooting coach Doc Scheppler are interviewed extensively, as are both parents and Lin's brothers.

Beautiful Creatures has its metaphysical cosmology worked out, and it gives it to us in doses big enough that we understand its rules and believe in its world, but not so big that it starts to get cute or that we stop caring.

It rambles, it's repetitive, but once in a while there's a sparkling moment when someone speaks in a way that conjures the fierce passion of the '60s.

The result is a winning comedy.

The success of this film may ride entirely on the alchemy of these particular actors, but whatever is carrying it, The Intern gets there.

Ultimately, that's all Highwater offers - barely explored concepts and short profiles.

The showcasing of Basinger's body becomes ludicrous. Twice she is shown taking a shower. In another scene she lounges in some very nice designer underwear -- white satin, very becoming. She ends up looking foolish, constantly having to undress in this feminist role. [11 Feb 1994, p.C1]

McCormack at first seems too light of spirit for the role, but she grows into it, and it turns out she's exactly what the movie calls for: Someone too wholesome-looking to be anything but a fine young lady.

Someone should steal this concept and make a decent movie out of it.

Stanley Donen's spouse-swapping comedy is not as naughty as it might have been, but it showcases Mitchum in a good comic role. [11 Jul 1997, p.D1]

Girls of the Sun has an air of authenticity and grit that’s convincing, and Farahani, an Iranian-born actress, makes us care.

It’s easy enough to have problems with Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. It’s not nearly as truthful or as dramatic as it could have been, and it glosses over things that could have added those elements. But it’s hard to argue with a movie-length experience of listening to Whitney Houston’s voice.

Kevin Costner's Robin Hood is big, sometimes exciting, funny in places and occasionally stupid, but it doesn't disappoint. [14 June 1991, p.E1]

So this film feels less like an easy paycheck and more like semi-retirement. Whatever wisdom is coming out of Redford’s mouth as Bryson, it always seems 100 percent clear he pursued the role because the shoot would be beautiful and he could pal around with an old friend.

Howard and Pratt don’t get to do much besides run like hell, but a movie like this in a way emphasizes rather than obscures the importance of star quality. They’re just so good-looking that it’s a pleasure to watch them -- idealized surrogates for humanity.

It's safe, and it's smart, and even though it's lightweight compared to "Boyz" and bound to disappoint a lot of Singleton's admirers, Justice demonstrates that Singleton is more than a one-shot wonder. [23 Jul 1993]

Succeeds as both education and amusement.

It’s a film that feels instantly antiquated, despite its attempts to capture Gen Z angst.