Although Lounguine has a lot to say about Russia's struggle in its transition to global capitalism, his film is strangely uninvolving, lacking dramatic sweep.

Tends to be lugubrious.

It's an imperfect facsimile, guilty of borrowing too many ideas from the earlier film, and then executing them with differing results.

Not entirely successful or appealing - not exactly a delightful evening in the company of scintillating characters - but interesting all the same.

Clocking in at two hours and 20 minutes, it seems intended to have been a crime epic in the vein of Michael Mann’s “Heat,” about two men of talent and spirit who happen to be on opposite sides of the law. And it’s sort of like that, if you can imagine a Michael Mann picture that has been set on fire and dropped from an airplane.

My Fellow Americans is one adjustment away from being a great movie. As it stands it's a pleasing but mediocre film, with a great cast, a great story and a misguided script.

I got tired of Coneheads early on, but I never really got tired of looking at those heads.

A solid bit of fun in the straight-arrow family entertainment genre, Richie Rich, starring Macaulay Culkin, doesn't pretend to be much more than pleasant matinee fodder.

At its best, it captures the last-days-of-Pompei feeling that was in the air at the time — a mix of frenetic celebration, paranoia and despair. But alas, the documentary soon derails into bogus history, specious arguments and a self-blinding variety of political bias.

American Reunion isn't a total wash. Its one saving grace is Eugene Levy as Jim's dad.

In the end, it’s hard to know whether to see the Iran of Desert Dancer in optimistic or pessimistic terms. Young people, especially, want to be free, but the other side has all the power. Having YouTube on your side certainly helps, but an army and some tanks can come in handy, too.

A well-constructed and genuinely tense thriller.

Your Place or Mine has a feeling of old and new about it. It’s an old-fashioned romantic comedy in that it depends almost entirely on the charm of its principal actors, Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, yet it comes up with a new way of telling its story.

The Gray Man gets better as it goes along, and it contains a couple of action sequences that are as imaginative and well-crafted as any that you’ll see all year. So don’t dismiss it. Netflix it.

Gamely tries to capture a vast, twinkling cityscape with not one love story - but 11 little ones, a few of them overlapping.

Think of all the ways “Apartment 7A” could have slyly addressed these times, or, conversely, more fully explored the practices of the Castavets’ cult. Instead, it's just a retread, and that’s why it’s bad. The devil is in the details.

No matter how well made, well acted and well intentioned, Lying Dingbat Procrastinator movies are excruciating to watch. Case in point: People Like Us, a film hell-bent on dragging its protagonist (and, sadly, us) through the LDP narrative playbook.

While the film adopts a sometimes jaunty tone, the fact is that gerrymandering is bad news, assuming you believe that elections should mean something.

It almost works. We almost care about her. A whopper of a plot twist late in the game explains Pippa's transformation as some kind of self-flagellatory penance, but by that point it feels like an afterthought.

Shoot 'Em Up is not only the title of Hollywood's latest descent into nonsensical mayhem but pretty much sums up the entire inane plot as well.

An example of good, clean, incredibly brutal fun. [09 Oct 1990, p.E1]

It's never boring, but it lacks a cumulative impact.

The Miracle Club won’t rock your world, but it’s a nice movie. There’s always a place for nice movies.

Offers a quixotic array of characters and flashbacks that tests patience, but once the viewer understand the movie's cadence and rhythm, the story gets better and better until it builds into a crescendo that's emotional, dramatic and -- best of all, perhaps -- fitting.

Brown, is a good enough actor and director to keep the film afloat for long stretches.

A promising idea turns into nothing, and we're left with a painfully dull kids' picture.

Rotten, pretentious movie full of minimalist dialogue and self-consciously arty cinematography.

Shimizu can't quite pull everything together, trying to get off easy with a bargain-bin twist ending that most of the audience will see coming by the time the pile of corpses reaches double digits.