Something is wrong with A Good Woman: The lightning never strikes. It's never quite alive.

As a movie, Spinning Gold is a clumsy effort with a lot wrong with it, except for the real-life story, which never stops being interesting.

Techine doesn't have much of a story to tell, so instead of moving the narrative forward, he expands it laterally.

The last five minutes of Midnight Sky are touching and beautifully acted — if you’re willing to wait for it.

It's a film with impressive elements, though taken as a whole it's pop entertainment that doesn't fully deliver on the entertainment end.

Dark City grabs your eyeballs and squeezes.

The movie, based on the novel by Simon Brett, tries very hard to make a statement about the feelings of a man who has struggled for years and suddenly finds himself over the hill, a shutout at work and at home. But the tale falters on Caine's character. [23 Mar 1990, p.E5]

The story is fluff, but it's mostly appealing.

Astonishing visualizations of the afterlife are coupled with a drawn-out allegory about communication between the living and the dead that becomes something of a trial to sit through.

At least we get Pacino and Hunter. We may not understand why this story appealed to them, except for the fact that it gave them a chance to work together.

Yet here's what's strange: As awful as To Rome With Love is - and the awfulness is unmistakable - it is, as an experience, not unpleasant. You will probably see several better movies this year that you will enjoy less. It's a mess, but it's Rome. It's a mess, but it's Woody Allen.

Rich supplies some eloquent grace notes, and Van Sant uses them to make understated music.

So Freddy's Dead, in the hands of first-time director Rachel Talalay, pretty much tramples incoherently and unscarily across the same old cemeteries of the mind and through the same dark corridors of old, cobwebbed houses. [14 Sept 1991, p.C3]

Osmosis is really an occasion for the brothers to take their culture- debasing scatology to a PG crowd.

Dull but sweet.

The result is mixed bag, an intermittently pleasing but mostly routine effort.

Far too precious and eager to please to really deserve its self-description as a fairy tale.

Has beautiful scenery and some enjoyable moments but leaves the viewer feeling the need to find the book to get the rest of the story.

Doesn't hit its stride until the last 30 minutes, and by then, it's just a little too late.

Not half-bad. It's about three- quarters bad, actually, but what's left offers some goof-off fun.

By the end, everything that was initially serious about the film becomes silly and everything appealing about it turns sour.

The mixed report on La Mission is that writer-director Peter Bratt doesn't really know how to make pictures, but he does know the central character in his movie.

This slight, predictable comedy has appealing moments.

Mostly meets expectations.

A light film, airy, likable and set in Venice.

Sentiment, the kind bordering on schmaltz and easy tears, is found in Shower, a well-meaning generational drama.

Between Two Worlds, written, produced and directed by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, takes on too many worlds and too much politics in what could have been a gripping, straight-up documentary about a crisis in Judaism in the United States.

Although intriguing to look at, Renaissance -- the latest animated film geared to adult audiences -- is undone by a plot that is ridiculously hard to follow and hackneyed.