The movie is shamelessly manipulative.

Though the ambitious Outlaw King doesn’t always fire on all cylinders, moviegoers deserve this chance to see it on the big screen, before it starts showing on a laptop near you.

Though it has merit and is recommended for the curious and adventurous, Joe Swanberg's film wears out its welcome about halfway through its 83 minutes. I'd say it doesn't go anywhere, but that's the point of these movies.

Taps into a fear hitherto unexplored by cinema: fear of Bill Gates.

This 1968 William Friedkin comedy set in 1925 New York will be appreciated by those who enjoy the corny humor and bawdy broads of burlesque.

It sets up two or three dozen satirical targets, hits the mark occasionally, but has trouble maintaining an even satirical tone or satisfying pace. Dawber, too, is unappealing in the female lead -- definitely outclassed by Ritter. I'd wager Stay Tuned will die an early death at the box office and find its real life, appropriately enough, in home video. [15 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Teen sex comedies always have more homoerotic moments than you can shake a ... whatever ... at, but Eurotrip seems overly concerned with penises and predatory men. This brand of humor, a time-honored crutch for comedy writers, is both lazy and unseemly.

The film often stumbles in translation, trying to define too many characters in too little time.

Though Carolla and co-filmmaker Kevin Hench devise some funny situations — particularly, the one in which a newly divorced woman insists on coming back to his room — the overall feeling that comes across is one of sadness, and that seems intentional.

Although the acting is uneven and the movie's dead spots make it feel far longer than its running time, the twist in Twist' is certainly clever.

The biggest sequel of the summer has more dinosaurs, better special effects and more action than the original... But the inspiration is gone, and with it most of the fun.

Eventually, though, these scenes get repetitive, and the muddled final act neither builds nor gets scary. Writer-director Peter Strickland is much more interested in the atmospherics, so when Gilderoy plunges into the abyss (or wherever), we are left confused, and not in a satisfying, David Lynch kind of way.

Has a weirdly divided structure that alternates Irwin's nature segments with clumsy dramatic footage set in the CIA.

Child's Play 2, stupid as it is, is a surprisingly tight low-budget production, making effective use of dark settings and rainy nights, and a handful of in-yer-face scare tactics that keep the action pumped up. [10 Nov 1990, p.C3]

Monsoon, an offbeat story about a man’s cultural dislocation in Vietnam, is more of a slow drip than a torrential downpour. It’s a lovely film that suddenly and magically can wash over you, then lose you in its opacities.

The story may be scattered and sagging and the picture may have little emotional impact -- certainly nothing to justify the epic running time -- but Garcia at least succeeds in making Havana in the 1950s seem like a vibrant, special place. He doesn't exactly make the audience care, but he does make the audience understand why he cares, and that's something.

Filmmaker Doris Yeung tries to mix a whodunit with a story of explosive family dynamics, but the effort succumbs to a weak script and a one-note lead performance.

It's watchable and reasonably entertaining, to be sure. Eastwood doesn't make movies that are hard to sit through. But something in the film's point of view is off, not at cross-purposes, not contradictory, but incomplete, irrelevant and ever-so-faintly ridiculous.

Instead we get Knightley, who juts her chin, quakes, shakes and bugs her eyes, but nothing about her pain calls out to us, because nothing in it seems real.

The script is weak, but everyone on the technical side of "Soul Surfer" is a pro. The scenes in the water flow together nicely, and the action is always coherent. Robb's scenes without an arm look seamless throughout the movie.

There are pros and cons to this Green Lantern, a half-campy, half-compelling adaptation of the superheroic DC comic books.

Impeccably mounted, nicely scored and beautifully written.

A strange story. A strange world. And strange characters doing even stranger things.

What should have been 90 zippy minutes of jingling, giggling, winking fakery adds up to only about 20 minutes of fun.

Jindabyne suffers from too many extraneous elements and from a story that doesn't land with enough force or purpose.

As a cold meditation on sex and power, The Lover succeeds. The girl remains invincible behind her youth and vapidity, calmly amazed at her own strength. But as an evocation of the mysterious and universal currents of love and time and passion, ''The Lover'' is inflated but empty. [13 Nov 1992, p.C3]

An odd little concoction, a coming-of-age story that, only in passing, is also a mystery.

The experience of watching Foxcatcher is of constantly waiting for something to happen — and of giving up, long before something actually does.