The best-case scenario for a movie based on a soft-drink advertisement. It is a disjointed and inconsistent comedy, shoddily filmed at times, while occasionally abandoning storytelling effort altogether.

The Fourth War, which opened yesterday at the Alexandria, is about two knuckleheaded army officers, one American and one Russian. They deserve each other. We don't. [24 Mar 1990, p.C3]

As it stands, her music gets under your skin and makes you feel good - and the movie makes you feel good about Katy Perry.

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

Gritty, bleak and sexy, the movie is also, between the lines, a strong feminist statement.

The performers don't really seem at the top of their game here.

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.

Though the movie drips and aches with good intentions, I do wonder how lesbians may feel about seeing lesbianism presented as a mere traumatized distortion of female heterosexuality.

Fortunately, Arbid didn’t want to make a movie about crazy people or about people going crazy, so she pursued a third option: She made the woman interesting. So “Simple Passion” is a movie about something that, sooner or later, happens to lots of people, but the fun of this story is that it happens to someone we want to watch.

A big-hearted celebration of the we're-all-in-this- together American way.

Falls victim to a fatal lack of narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong for their roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability, cuts the film off from any sustained vitality. The result is something admirable but lifeless.

The stunning and mostly uncompromising visuals more than compensate for the frequent corny turns of phrase.

The experience of Southpaw is rather like seeing the truth behind the cliches, revived in all their pain and power to surprise.

The sequel is even more enjoyable than the first, with action sequences that are as good or better than anything you’ll see at the theater.

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.

For whatever faults she had as a candidate, Chisholm earned her paragraph in the annals of our democracy, and “Shirley” does a conscientious job of fleshing out her story.

Suffused with a golden glow, the movie looks and sounds like a fairy tale.

A Burton film that mines the romantic fable elements of “Edward Scissorhands,” while pushing the disturbing limits of a film that seems to be marketed for small children, even if it isn’t really intended for them.

In every way, Miss Potter is a very beautiful thing.

When you strip away the novelty of it all, we’re left with little more than a kids-meal version of “Scarface.”

Nothing groundbreaking, but there's an easy charm in the movie.

This remake of the 1981 horror classic starts well, but it soon degenerates into tiresome shock gore that overstays its welcome, despite the film's modest run time. Jane Levy as a heroin addict going through withdrawal is the one bright spot.

This is a deluxe French film, longer than usual, with strong performances by French cinema mainstays Catherine Deneuve and Guillaume Canet and a movie-stealing turn from relative newcomer Adele Haenel, who has become a major French actress in just the past couple of years.

Most of Thor: Love and Thunder is a mess, pleased with itself and tonally everywhere. As bad as one of the better “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, but that’s still pretty horrible.

Madagascar isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.

Dreamland has vitality and emotional truth underlying all its interactions. And the young women, Agnes Bruckner and Kelli Garner, are superb.

There's a way to love City of Ghosts, and that's to watch it not as a story that should add up to something, but as a series of little episodes with their own specialness and integrity.

One of the year's sweetest surprises. It sneaks up on you, disarming you with its modesty and tenderness, its remarkable lack of self-infatuation.