From a narrative feature, we want drama and illumination, the truths that go beyond the plain facts. That’s where Mary Shelley comes up a bit short. It’s never less than competent and intelligent, and here and there it’s better than that.

It's middling Allen, which means that fans won't be sorry to see it, while everyone else can wait until the next "Bullets Over Broadway."

The film's real find is D.J. Qualls, who is very funny as a jug-eared nerd who blossoms into a wild man after three days on the road.

Sanctum is by no means a badly made movie, but it has the feel of one of those dramatic re-enactments made exclusively for Imax theaters.

Given the number of real-world cults that have ended in major bloodshed, there's some irony - and no small narrative coquetry - in any drama on the subject that ducks out so pointedly at the finish.

In the end, the whole enterprise comes off as too clever for its own good, a social satire without a clear target. It’s a movie that you admire more than you like.

Somebody I Used to Know comes dangerously close to being interesting. It’s a romantic comedy, but it’s almost a twisted drama about a seriously damaged creep who goes back to her hometown and starts wrecking people’s lives.

In the end, there’s some naughty, voyeuristic fun to be had from Studio 54, but the bottom-line story of the club — assuming that is of value — is still to be told.

Mother is a relationship comedy, like Woody Allen's films, and it screams for the smart, elastic pacing that Allen creates. The situations are funny -- 40- year-old John moves into his old bedroom, goes shopping with Mother, is shocked that she has a boyfriend and occasionally curses and smokes -- but his poor timing flattens most of those scenes.

So Orwell it’s not. But “Mercy” is a cinematic feat of a different kind, even if it begins to fade soon after leaving the theater.

The film is mired in gloom, not just sadness, but heaviness.

Feels like a regifting of previous action adventure favorites, lifting elements from the “Mission: Impossible” series, “Skyfall” and, most of all, “The Incredibles.” It’s fast-moving, entertaining, kinda clever and instantly forgettable.

Emotionally false.

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.

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.

An interesting movie that doesn’t completely satisfy, but its central character lingers in the mind.

Fraser and Bugs Bunny are the highlights of this pleasant but unoriginal film.

It's a light-hearted comedy about faith, transcendence and American-brand exploitation, and addresses those issues in such goofy, indirect, unhurried fashion that you could easily miss what Schrader has to say.

It’s an innocuous and cuddly film, even with Caine holding forth. It’s hard to tell if he transcends the role as written, or if he merely seized on the one shred of the screenplay worth showcasing. In any case, Caine brings his own shine to this rather dull affair, and shows again that he’s not ready to go gentle into that good night.

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.

There's more than a touch of whimsy in A Touch of Spice, a sentimental Greek offering that's been immensely popular in its home country but doesn't translate well.

Think “Lord of the Flies,” without all the jerks.

It's a violent yet occasionally funny film - thanks to some inventive gags that pop up - and it hits some of the same blood-splashed chords as "Terminator." [17 Jul 1987]

A smirky cleverness infects much of the picture, yet some scenes are so skillfully created that it's hard not to admire them, and Dominique Pinon's sensitive performance as a retired circus man gives the movie a soul. [10 Apr 1992]

Tokyo Decadence is not an action picture, blue or otherwise. Murakami almost batters you with his slow, deliberate style, and in the end the film ventures into puzzling bravura sequences that seem hard to grasp for someone outside Japanese culture. Throughout, Murakami subtly accompanies his work with strains from the introduction to an aria from Verdi's ''Don Carlo'' where the aggrieved King Philip sings ''she never loved me.'' [18 June 1993, p.C12]

To be sure, Censored Voices can hardly be seen as anything but a political document, one that shares Oz’s views.

Awake fails only in the sense that it’s a movie in one note, and thus its story only knows one direction, which is downhill.

The movie is ridiculous.