So there you have it, a so-so movie with a lot of good parts. In truth, The Last Full Measure has more good parts than most better movies, but everything connecting those parts feels rote, sometimes ham-fisted.

Valentine isn't scary, but it is unsettling; not ultimately satisfying, but arresting in the moment.

This world of entirely nice people seems like a trite fantasy — trite because the movie never makes you believe it. But it does makes you want to believe it, and so, like a lot of these movies, it takes you halfway there.

“The Legend of Hank” offers a few hints of the wit and wisdom of its predecessor but is mostly content to coast through a familiar story on the accumulated charm of its star-studded cast of voice actors.

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

A melodrama about three cliches in search of a bloodbath.

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.

Is it worth seeing once? Sure.

A little more character dimension would have made these between-the-sheet sessions a lot more charged.

You Kill Me is pretty light, but it's well made, and within the built-in limitations of its story -- a hit man goes to Alcoholics Anonymous -- it's fairly pleasing.

An imperfect, fascinating film about an imperfect, fascinating man.

Handsome and sincere but slightly awkward in its combination of entertainment and evangelical boosterism.

There's valuable information here and some human stories that deserve to be heard.

The writing is funny during individual moments, but the cumulative result is a bit depressing, with a surprising amount of negativity.

A romantic comedy that flirts with something serious but never gets past the flirting stage.

Though predictable, isn't half bad.

The blood-soaked “Inferno” practically ends up a promotional snuff film for deforestation.

Army of Darkness has good moments and shows traces of wit right up to the end, though these moments wind up coming fewer and farther between. [19 Feb 1993, Daily Datebook, p.D1]

The pleasures of Gringo are the pleasures of genre: It’s a fun type of movie, but it’s not a good version of the type.

The title promises a film that never really materializes: something nastier, smellier, more nihilistic than the skittish morality tale at hand.

Incredibles 2 was 14 years in the making, and it feels almost that long watching it.

A pleasant but conventional film.

A meandering, slow journey with a fairly bland leading character. Director Kirsten Tan, who is from Singapore and based in New York, must be admired for the audacity of casting an elephant as a co-star in her feature film debut.

When Bertolucci points his camera out a window, it's like putting on your glasses. Everything is lush, drenched in color and right there for you to touch.

After nearly two hours of A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, anyone who entered the theater on a Wednesday might wish for it to be Thursday, too.

At heart, ridiculous -- ludicrous in its conception and silly in its spectacle.

Never gets the mixture right, lurching between bullet-happy shootouts and overwrought domestic content.

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop has to be the loopiest, most unexpected remake ever.

Law often looks angry and frazzled onscreen. This time he looks angry and sure of himself.

Director Richard Linklater ("Dazed and Confused") should have taken a cue from the music -- the film needs a lot more snap.

It's the lightest of the Batman movies, the most cartoony, the dumbest and the least ambitious. But it holds the audience's attention, brings on a few laughs and never really gets boring.

It's a knock-off of every science-gone-too-far cautionary tale since Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." The Lawnmower Man, for all of its au courant use of virtual reality, is alarmingly similar to a creepy '60s episode of TV's "The Outer Limits."

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

But there’s not enough in “Finch” to sustain an audience’s interest for a full 115 minutes. At 85 minutes, it might have been a touching and eccentric novelty. As it stands, “Finch” is something of a slog. A slog in good company, but a slog all the same.

The story gets away from itself as it barrels forward. The tiny bit of sense it makes at the beginning is quickly sacrificed in a conclusion so facile, illogical and cheap that it could use a dose of NZT itself.

When Pollack admits that he is not a documentary filmmaker and that he knows nothing about architecture, Gehry says that makes him perfect for this project. But the joke does not redeem the frustration Pollack creates by the choppy, restless views he gives us of Gehry's buildings.

Connery's charm and integrity make all his scenes worthwhile, and Lithgow's stiff-backed turn as the classic British imperialist is in good fun.

Abuse of Weakness is 20 minutes of a great movie and another 85 minutes of nothing much.

The pace is quick, very quick by American standards. The script blasts through reams of plot with lightning dialogue, and even if you have a fast eye for subtitles you may come to the end of the movie with no clear idea what happened.

It's more of a burst pinata than a story, a wild, kinetic jumble of images, ideas and flying-candy-bar product placement that would offend if it weren't so forthright.

The most daring thing that Jonze and Eggers have done is make a children's film that might not really be for kids.

A big, juicy bone for canine-focused humans, but much less of a treat for others.

Because he made "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), there will always be high expectations for a new film by Michel Gondry. But while his new movie The We and the I, is intriguing in fits and starts, it isn't in the same league.

Free Guy is an ode to independence, creativity and the nicer aspects of anarchy.

This society makes no sense except as a metaphor. The social layout of Divergent was supposedly devised so as to maintain peace, but putting people into airtight factions guarantees conflict.

Not only is a good look at a man who carved a small but important niche into the folk world but a good record of the turbulent 1960s and what motivated its protesters.

Rosewood is startling, infuriating, painful history played out as a not-very-satisfying, overly ambitious and overlong movie.

It's an endurance test. Though never boring, the movie is a fairly long slog through the snow.

It's a respectable B- movie -- airy, inconsequential and a little too cute at times, but fairly entertaining all the same.

Consenting Adults is well-made, preposterous junk -- the kind of modestly effective thriller that delivers a modicum of thrills but insults its audience, over and over, to achieve that effect. [16 Oct 1992, p.C1]

The laughs do come, but not as readily, not as heartily and not as joyfully as you might expect.

Many scenes in Outrage are crisply filmed and stylish enough, as serial assassinations go. But the film doesn't add up to much.

An overwrought and ultimately silly thriller.

It is so narrowly focused on neurotic obsessions that the quest for finding that fundamental nature of ultimate reality is sidetracked. What kind of approach is that for a Buddhist? Ferrara takes the easy way out.

There are “gotcha” jolts that definitely got me, but for each of those, there must be a half-dozen scares telegraphed in very large letters. I think Annabelle: Creation is suffering from sequelitis.

Harrelson and Olson make a good pair. He’s genial and bewildered and expects the best, while she’s guarded and clear-eyed and expects the worst. They deserve a better movie, but they make Champions more than bearable.

Beat Takeshi fans wouldn't think of missing this one. Moviegoers who hate violence wouldn't be caught dead at it.

A noble try that disappoints.

Though the Jill problem is too insurmountable to ignore, almost everything else in this comedy succeeds.

So quick that the flat moments are rapidly, inevitably chased by a new gag.

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]

Will satisfy its young fan base and is bound to make a ton of money. At this point, though, the series is no longer an artistic pursuit; it's a business deal.

There are people who like movies like this, who like when a movie screen looks like their computer screen and who don’t mind when everything is fake, including the emotions. Artemis Fowl is a genre movie, and as such, it’s an OK version of the thing it is. I just can’t stand the thing it is.

Almost everything that made "The Bourne Identity" refreshing -- the wit, the irony, the suspense, the novelty of its premise -- is gone in The Bourne Supremacy, and what's left is the spectacle of Matt Damon, with perfect posture and senses primed like a cat, making his way through a routine action thriller.

Fortunately, some of the people around Cameron turn out to be more interesting. The best in show is John Gallagher Jr., who brings out both the creepy and comforting sides of “ex-gay” instructor Rick — a seemingly nice guy who’s oblivious to the harm that he’s inflicting on his charges.

A serious weakness for corn isn't Marshall's only problem. She's got a gift for comedy and she brings out the best in many actors, but she's juggling too many elements here -- baseball, a huge cast, a 1940s milieu -- and never finds a consistently satisfying tone or rhythm. [1 July 1992, p.E1]

It serves up a broad humanistic lesson with absurdism and black comedy more sad than barbed.

The glossy ensemble cast is consistently interesting.

It seems naive, almost delusional.

Never takes off, but it never collapses. At times, it becomes frustrating -- for example, about 30 minutes are spent pursuing a lead that goes nowhere.

If only Lars von Trier took into account that audiences might actually want to enjoy Melancholia, rather than endure it, or sift through it, or submit to the director's will, he might have made something extraordinary.

Call it a victory of conviction over substance, but when Argento is onscreen, you look at her - not because she's good, but because she's there in a way nobody else is.

Greg Berlanti’s movie about a teenager’s coming out is nothing if not sincere. More to the point, it’s not very much except sincere.

Unfortunately, for those who do not subscribe to the notion that God's dust smooths a marriage's rough patches, but rather hard work by people do, the message rings hollow.

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.

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.

In This Corner of the World is 129 minutes, an eternity for an animated film, especially one so wispy in look and so sparing in plot.

Wondering what’s real and what’s just a carefully crafted crock doesn’t make Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood a better experience. It makes it a little pointless and frustrating.

The songs and a couple of strong performances are only good enough to make the film watchable, not exceptional.

In spite of its downbeat subjects, Drugstore Cowboy becomes a satisfying drama of redemption. [27 Oct 1989]

Director Stephan Elliott too easily buys into the drag queens' conception of themselves as valiant pursuers of illusion, without ever questioning the value of the illusion being pursued.

Husbands and Wives ultimately reveals itself as an extremely bitter film, with the kind of sour conviction that tries to pass itself off as wisdom. Allen knows how people talk and how they evade really talking. But his jaundiced vision -- as though he just found out that a marriage can't always be like the first month of dating when you're 17, and now he can't believe how crummy it all is -- just makes him seem naive. In the end his perception yields no insight. Old men like young women. Really? [18 Sept 1992, p.C1]

There's nothing about this thriller to prevent it from soon becoming enmeshed in the memory with others in which Michael Douglas wears a starched collar and grits his teeth.

But there's just enough comforting familiarity mixed with refreshing new characters to hold the casserole of a plot together.

Transcendence looks and sounds like a Christopher Nolan film that got attacked by malware.

Like most films in the genre, it's sweet, sincere and predictable.

Well made, but it's a talkfest that wears its stage origins on its sleeve.

At its best, Mermin -- who used an all-female crew -- conveys the sense of an entirely feminine world being created under the beauty school roof, and it's refreshing.

Feels a bit too much like six hours of movie packed into 113 minutes - imagine if New Line had made Peter Jackson cram the entirety of "Lord of the Rings" into one film.

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.

You might need the assistance of a time machine to find a child who is clamoring for a Mr. Peabody & Sherman feature film remake.

It could be a deeply provocative tale, but the director seems reluctant to probe behind his artful facade.

By showing so many examples of his art, the film attests to Giger’s real gift for startling images. But it’s hard not to see, in addition, elements of repetitive adolescent provocation.

The truly shocking thing about the new version is that it's not bloody awful.

This latest adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë novel is careful, respectful and even enjoyable, and yet dry, singularly humorless and played without the lavishness of spirit that makes sense of Gothic melodrama.

Somewhere along the line, someone seems to have thought this was ''Last Tango in Paris'' all over again. It ain't. [19 Aug 1994, p.C3]

The movie is a mess of bits and pieces that try to gel but don't. Still, it is stupidly fun.

Even if the idea of The Desperate Hour makes you uneasy, you will be engrossed by it.