This ambitious and sometimes entertaining Brazilian feature tries to pull off a tricky maneuver but doesn't quite get it done.

Melodramatic take on love and war.

Adams sparkles with quick-mindedness and verbal agility. This is a worthy and underused talent.

Fraser and Hurley are terrifically matched for their interplay, and some of the writing is so smart it outclasses the film's cartoonish feel.

Audiences will walk away thinking, "What was that?" But they will walk away thinking.

The best of the longer segments is "Steve," a piece of Pinter light starring Firth as a passive-aggressive neighbor from hell who repeatedly turns up at the door of a bickering couple (Knightley and Tom Mison) to register a series of baseless complaints.

A relentlessly quirky British comedy-drama that demonstrates why more is not always more.

Director Ben Lewin has crafted a biopic spy thriller, kind of, but the script has neither the character shadings to be a biopic nor the pacing and twist and turns to be a spy thriller.

The new Vanishing fails on its own terms -- it gradually adopts the conventions of a silly monster movie and loses the emotional impact of a psychological thriller in the process. But what makes this failed effort perplexing is the existence of the earlier film and its successful design. [05 Feb 1993, p.D4]

Is Little lousy? No. It goes along pleasantly, unimportantly, predictably. Here and there, a mild chuckle might escape your lips. Ten minutes later, a half-hearted titter, or perhaps a knowing chortle. Just don’t expect to guffaw or cachinnate, and forget all about busting a gut. It’s not that kind of comedy.

Everything connected with the lovers, who are the point of the movie, is either ordinary or unwittingly funny, and the laughs come early.

Whatever its weaknesses, contemporary parents who want a nontoxic Western to show their children could hardly find better than “Spirit Untamed.” It takes the idea at the end of genre master John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”) and virtually rides off in its own, counter-mythic direction with it.

While there's enough to keep the viewer sort of interested and amused, ultimately the whole affair is a trip to nowhere with characters who are more caricature than real. [29 Sep 1990, p.C3]

Ultimately, the film is what Freeman aspires to be: Not a big person making his mark on the world, but a small part of something very big.

Made in America, for the most part, is surprisingly inept -- badly shot, badly lit and badly edited. It's the actors alone, Danson especially, who save it from total disaster. [28 May 1993, p.C1]

Without straining to emphasize the underlying parable, director Harry Hook has brought off a corking adventure that grips the imagination from start to finish. [16 Mar 1990, p.E3]

In the end, it’s left to Shaye to carry the film, and she does so with aplomb. The “Insidious” franchise may be running out of places to go, but Shaye appears to be just getting started.

Like “It Ends with Us,” which was also based on a Colleen Hoover novel, “Reminders of Him” is a movie whose willingness to be deeply unpleasant saves it from becoming a soap opera.

As a grab bag of reminiscences by veteran funny people, bolstered with richly entertaining performance footage, it's boffo.

As uneven as I Think I Love My Wife often is, it still has an emotional resonance lacking in most films about relationships. By dealing with temptation in even a quasi-realistic way, it affirms that, like comedy, monogamy is hard.

Despite the title, Ismailos' documentary is not a study of what constitutes great direction. Rather it's a nicely arranged film in which a variety of filmmakers Ismailos likes discuss their inspirations and influences.

The result isn't a great film, but it's true to the original brutal vision.

This is a movie in search of a finale.

The plotless Dennis the Menace is nonsensical and playful and, in its way, creates a pretty dreamworld that is a foundation of good escapist entertainment. In addition, Walter Matthau takes good-natured grumpiness to new heights as legendary curmudgeon Mr. Wilson, opposite a kid named Mason Gamble, as Dennis, who (another minority opinion) acts circles around Macauley what's-his-name. [25 June 1993, p.C1]

Poetry, lesbian sex and murder might be a killer combination if a deadly pace weren't included in the mix.

Retains the earlier film's ability to delight the viewer with surprise effects and flights of fancy, only now the effects are better.

This is no-holds-barred filmmaking. Some viewers will find it disgusting. Others will call the director's bluff.

Coraci has given us a film that is not only amusing, but well-acted, and not only well-acted, but gorgeous. Micha Klein's animated transitions alone, which are used to signal each change in location, are wondrous and lovely to behold.

The filmmaking is unremarkable, but the obsessiveness of the lead character is infectious enough to make this drama passable entertainment.

Father of the Bride Part II is too long, completely predictable and unabashedly immersed in a posh world that is totally out of reach of most people. It's a comfort to see that riches don't keep some guys from being dithering fools when it comes to life's fundamentals.

The world of The Black Dahlia is beyond bleak, beyond film noir.

If Species sounds ridiculous, it is -- though as ridiculous science fiction films go, this one has its moments. As usual, these moments come early.

Watched today, in light of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump administration, it has an extra intensity, as a possible preview of coming attractions.

A perfectly OK drama, with a good cast and many good scenes, but it suffers from the usual maladies that films get when they've been out on the ranch too long: all-too-obvious symbolism and a serious case of the longueurs.

Knowing what Powell is capable of, it’s not unreasonable to go into this expecting a bigger payoff.

An innocuous, fluffy little nothing of an almost-pleasant movie.

After a devastating opening, the movie gets sluggish here and there, but it remains interesting throughout, not just culturally, but as a piece of drama.

Colorful and visually pleasing, although there is nothing surprising in the rather predictable story.

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.

It is probably Kitamura's best film.

This is the animated children's film equivalent of "Another 48 Hours."

Lister is quite funny and engaging. It's just too bad that some of that screenwriting wit couldn't have been shared with the movie's protagonist.

The Promise is hardly grotesque; and it has good things in it, but by the end, it just feels like a failed manipulation.

The good ol' Jim Carrey we knew and loved is back, rude, crude and unglued.

An intriguing brain-teaser.

CB4 has a good time parodying the rap world, and the mock songs and fake videos featured here are funny and dead-on. But more and more as it goes along CB4 gets bogged down in details. The inspiration goes out of the picture, and the last half hour is just a matter of going through the motions. [12 Mar 1993, p.C1]

While there's a certain staid feeling to the production, it does deliver a solid working-over to the era's gentry.

In the end, though, the movie’s superior craftsmanship can’t overcome its aura of joylessness.

Not very good.

Look Both Ways has a couple of things going for it, namely a compelling premise and the charm of Lili Reinhart (“Riverdale”) in the lead role. But the whole movie is a lie, and once you figure that out, the realization cuts into a lot of the pleasure.

In The Chaperone, Brooks is something of a fixed entity, a fully-formed force of nature already heading toward her peculiar form of glory. She has stuff to do all day — studying by day and partying by night, while Elizabeth McGovern as Norma has time to look inside.

The movie eventually settles into a more relaxed, warmer tone, as veteran TV writer Chad Hodge’s self-aware script acknowledges all the tropes — gay and holiday — while continuing to employ them effectively.

John Lennon once said, "There's a great woman behind every idiot." This time, I'm counting seven of them.

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

30 Minutes or Less is a strange case. Either it goes for a particular tone and doesn't achieve it. Or it does achieve a tone that's not really worth striving for.

To say Venom: Let There Be Carnage is not worth seeing is not enough. It’s not worth admitting into your life, even as an option. You’ve read a review of it. That’s enough. Now, never think of it again for the rest of your life.

Needless to say, Soul Men has a lot to overcome in its effort to be funny.

Silent House feels relentless, suffocatingly tense and almost unbearable. And that's a very good thing.

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.

The movie also benefits from the presence of Anne Heche as Ellis’ wife. Heche doesn’t say much, but she conveys a lot.

If only it weren't based on a true story. It might have been a good movie.

Takes some admirable risks.

It is the Eddie Murphy movie where Eddie Murphy has next to nothing to do. Do little says it all.

A substantial examination of character, morality and destiny.

This is a tour-de-force performance, delivered by an actor at the top of his game, and it's a shame that K-Pax, instead of engaging our imaginations as it promises to, devolves into such a conventional, paint-by- numbers disappointment.

The first half-hour of this movie is sensational, creating an atmosphere of dread that any horror master would envy.

A whimsical modern fairy tale.

To the extent that it's original, The Mechanic is insane, bordering on gloriously insane.

Patrick Stewart needs to work on his interpretation of Darth Vader in “Hamlet: Return of the Siths,” but it’s those little comic diversions interspersed throughout Hunting Elephants that make this Israeli movie a little gem.

There’s really nothing else to say about Gold, beyond one general point: It is illustrative of what’s particularly fun about being a critic in January. For most of the year, bad movies have the same general ailments. But in January, they have exotic diseases. They have things wrong with them that you’ve never seen before.

As a director, Schweighöfer deftly plays around with a few genre conventions, handles action scenes capably if not distinctively, and stages a decent enough Point Break tribute.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength is the performance by Kwanten, who appears in HBO's "True Blood" and may be familiar from his lead role in the big-screen Aussie thriller "Red Hill." Dermody also does well.

Movies go bad in all kinds of ways, but in 7 Days in Entebbe the filmmakers found a brand-new way for their movie to commit suicide.

John Lithgow and Blythe Danner make an offbeat and winning combination, with total belief that they’re in a really good movie. Unfortunately, they’re not.

The Front Room becomes an exercise in psychological torture porn; it’s a movie you endure rather than enjoy.

Well-acted as far as superficial characterizations allow (Costner and Jon Baird share screenplay credit) and impressively mounted for a wide-open-spaces pageant that, quizzically, was not shot in widescreen, “Horizon” is most successful at filling its frames with ambition.

It's a bright and fun movie, but also repetitive and overloaded with plot. A nice enough diversion, but not a necessary one.

Killing Zoe is another jolly bloodbath about disaffected young people having trouble getting in touch with their feelings, so they go on a spree, killing people, killing everything, tra-la- la-la-la.

It doesn’t help matters that the movie seems to end three times before it ends, and none of those ends are satisfying.

It’s marked by a polished balance of humor, searing emotion, all the information about the toy business you’d ever want to know, and cautionary advice concerning investments in something silly like stuffed animals — or, by extension, NFTs.

After the first few minutes, viewers will get the feeling they just emerged from a 14-month coma. Even the non-movie jokes focus on last year's news.

Oldboy is an immersion into pure twistedness. The purity of its twistedness is its saving grace.

It's not just for people who like rap or the rap atmosphere. It's a well-paced, light comedy that can appeal to anybody. [05 Jun 1992, p.D1]

It's about what you'd expect _ a collection of gags, some good, some bad, with the bare suggestion of a story to hang it all on. Chevy Chase, as usual, is a lot better than he has to be and lifts the picture to the point that it's intermittently fun and fairly painless. [1 Dec 1989, p.E1]

Seemingly intended as a celebration of the power of books, it's an occasionally incoherent, sleep-inducing picture that reduces narrative to mere mechanics.

This is pleasant, safe entertainment that ought to appeal to kids younger than 10, especially to girls, with its female-empowerment fantasy.

Succeeds because of the cast's communal vibe of arrogant stupidity.

A lot of the acting is amateurish, and most of the plot feels like a rehash of a rehash. The music, written and performed in the spirit of L7, is small consolation.

Worth seeing.

It's like watching a bad update of an Antonioni film.

This half-baked sci-fi horror film, filled with jerky, washed-out, highlighted, blurred and toned imagery, is a tiresome experience.

What makes Aniston, of all actresses, especially right for Cake is that her comedy has always had a certain ruefulness underlying it, an understanding of life’s limits, a kind of glum acceptance. So the transition into sadness and desolation is a natural step for her.

The Instigators is unremarkable but consistently amusing, and makes you feel like everyone showed up at the set expecting a party.

The overall experience of the movie is of something fresh.

Filled with moments that will make you smile.

It's really, really funny.

You strain to hear mumbled dialogue at times, and there's no sense trying to making sense of it -- but Exorcist III is not half-bad terrible psychological thriller junk entertainment. [18 Aug 1990, p.C3]

It’s long, downright dispiriting, enjoyable only sometimes, and yet there’s a feeling of authenticity. It’s neither bad nor good, but interesting. It might improve with age.