Once Were Brothers could have been a peacemaking gesture, a magnanimous work of reflection and tribute that would gather Robertson some belated goodwill, and the film’s first half makes some moves in that direction. But damned if that hatchet just won’t stay buried.

Babylon is a defecating elephant of a movie: gigantic, often repulsive, but hard to look away from.

The first real Jackie Chan picture crafted for the American market, is a terrific piece of junk filmmaking.

My real problem with Matchstick Men is that it didn't con me well enough: I saw every trick up its sleeve in the first 20 minutes. If everything had been what it seemed--now, that would have been a stunning twist.

This thin, floppy comedy never quite became the high-spirited summer sex romp it clearly set out to be. I haven’t quite figured out yet why The To Do List doesn’t work, when so many elements within it seem to.

Star Maps reveals its larger (and less interesting) social intentions with a downbeat, slap-in-the-face finale, but along the way it has some good domestic grotesquerie and a layered, ironic attitude toward sex.

If you want rich folk-art colors, brainy spectacle, and breezy soap opera, then Frida is the biopic for you.

It's a handsomely mounted spectacle with moments of bravura acting that nonetheless feels labored and dull.

So how did this happen? Who is Cheney? How did he amass such power? What were his motives and goals? Any work about him—a book, film, play, or whatever—needs to deal with these questions. Vice does so shallowly and evasively.

Ocean’s 8 is in many ways a mirror image of its predecessor, but it’s most delightful when it follows its own path toward girly transcendence.

A fine movie, beautifully acted, but it isn't easy to love--or to watch. It's a parade of miseries, made even more miserable by Gore Verbinski's direction.

I just hope Neil Patrick Harris meant what he said when he took his leave of the boys in his Radio City dressing room: "See you in the fourth one."

That's what these sequences feel like -- a sensual uproar. They almost make this small, unresolved little movie feel mythic.

There's something touching, even a little bit noble, about Moore's eternal willingness to serve as our nation's shame-free populist gadfly.

Secretariat is a by-the-numbers sports-hero picture with an inexpressive hero (horses look great in motion, but they can't carry a close-up) and a preordained outcome.

There’s something sour and strained about this movie that’s at odds with the usual Muppet ethos of game, let’s-put-on-a-show cheer. Maybe that’s because of the inordinate amount of screen time spent on the rivalry between two villains who are as uninteresting as they are unpleasant.

Extract seems destined to do minor business at the box office but achieve a kind of immortality as a cult DVD, to be quoted from at parties and passed around to friends. Which may be just fine by its creator--as Beavis and Butt-head have taught us, snickering with your friends in front of the television can is one of life's great joys.

Role Models may not set its sights very high, but it comes by its emotional payoff honestly. And why isn't Paul Rudd in greater demand as a romantic comedy lead?

Superficially respectful but ultimately cruel.

Why remake a crappy movie five years later if it's only going to be marginally less crappy?

This slender, increasingly monotonous stalker plot feels ludicrously overintellectualized-full of hot air.

Stiff, talky, and airless, a textbook example of that not-always-true cliché about the unfilmability of theater.

Lust, Caution is both a cannily constructed spy thriller and a grim kind of love story, but it harbors no illusions about the transformative potential of either revolutionary violence or sexual passion.

The final scene is pure teen wish fulfillment: Imagine making out with your girlfriend on the hood of your sentient Camaro, as your own personal robot bodyguard looks on fondly (all right, that part's a little creepy).

The sum amounts to far less than its parts, but oh, what parts!

The politics of Dogville are on par with a third-rate gangster picture: cheap, opportunistic nihilism, with no enlivening sense of humor.

Thanks to Renner's smart, charismatic performance and a couple of elegant action sequences early on, The Bourne Legacy mostly holds its own as a late-summer thrill ride - but only if you're able to wipe your mind clean of the knowledge that it could have been something more.

Blomkamp proceeds to spend the last two-thirds of his film crashing spaceships into lawns, or staging high-tech fistfights between Elysium’s stolid hero and his even duller arch-nemesis. It’s a waste of a perfectly good dystopia.

If I had a child near Dre's age, I'd drag him or her out of "Marmaduke" and into The Karate Kid--but not before requiring an at-home screening of the still unsurpassed original.

Birds of Prey often leaves you puttering around the edges, being grateful for its modest achievements: fight scenes that are, if not exciting, at least coherently staged, and Robbie’s comic timing, which is so often sharper than the lines she has to deliver.

Apatow answers to no one. His worst enemy as a director is his unwillingness to linger in the dark places from which his comedy springs.

Cianfrance’s gift for allowing his actors to create relationships — with one another, with the camera, and with the stark landscape that surrounds them — makes The Light Between Oceans an unusually captivating romantic drama, at least until that last-act slide into self-sabotaging bathos.

The madcap, sexy, borderline-surrealist film is impossible to summarize, but calling it a fast-and-loose Hollywood fantasia on A Midsummer Night’s Dream would not be totally inaccurate.

The X-Files isn't so much a bad movie as it is a crackerjack piece of television. It's crisply made--not sodden like many of the "Star Trek" pictures. But it's as annoyingly open-ended as the rest of the series' episodes.

Feels more like a series of skits than a movie, though it does tie up several plot threads in a lyrical last scene worthy of vintage Woody Allen.

But there are scenery chewers and there are Michelin-gourmet scenery chewers, and Pacino has a three-star feast.

If Spectre has any saving grace, it’s Craig, who remains the best non-Connery Bond. It is not merely his physical presence, which is formidable enough; he has a unique ability to make peevishness dramatically compelling. And the subtlety of his sense of humor is one of the better aspects of his 007.

It’s an enjoyable and intermittently revelatory documentary that does a fine job of celebrating its subject’s accomplishments while never quite achieving the degree of intimacy that it strives for and occasionally pretends to achieve.

The real reason to see it — as was the case with the original, and with the past two Feig/McCarthy collaborations, "Bridesmaids" and "Spy" —has to do with the universally excellent cast who establish an easy tone of camaraderie and loopy banter.

It’s a good movie for a late-summer legacy sequel, not a candidate for the all-time comedy pantheon. But every new generation of mothers and daughters, as they struggle to balance their love for each other with their quest to discover themselves, deserves a body-swap comedy of their—our—own.

This little movie isn't a fully accomplished farce - it veers toward sentimentality - but the fact that Peretz even gestures in the direction of farce is somehow cheering.

Danny Elfman's swooping orchestral soundtrack only adds to the sense of by-the-numbers familiarity. Elfman's signature sound is so associated with Tim Burton movies that it overwhelms this film's chances of carving out an aesthetic space of its own.

Feels workmanlike at times.

Once you can get past this movie’s reliance on the audience bringing in a prior store of knowledge about, and queasy affection for, its troubled characters, The Many Saints of Newark is a worthy companion to the series and a fascinating watch in itself.

The depiction isn’t remotely believable, but with Ronan endowing her character with both a steel spine and a fresh-faced naïveté (in a performance that makes her the film’s sole great asset), it’s fun, even inspiring.

What emerges from the chaos may be uneven and at times ridiculous, but it's never boring.

There’s a rueful irony to the fact that it’s this supposedly human inspiration for the beloved toy who feels more like a plastic action figure.

Like a drunk on a bender, Notorious seems to have given up even trying to moderate its dependence on cliché.

Fraser’s all-in commitment to playing Charlie—300-pound fatsuit and all—put me in mind of Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in Joker, an act of faith so complete it managed to be the only transcendent element of a thuddingly bad movie. But Fraser’s beautifully judged performance isn’t enough to save this abject wallow through a mire of maudlin clichés about trauma and redemption.

Though it's about a pair of lovers whose passion is strong enough to break down the barriers between life and death, this mildly amusing, sort-of-sweet comedy is strangely sexless and passion-free-these bodies, whether human or zombie, feel room-temperature at best.

Crawl’s virtues, however, remain formidable: It’s fast, efficient, crisply directed, and delivers on the promised alligator thrills. In another year, that might be worth a polite nod. This year, however, those B-movie values feel especially refreshing, and illuminating too.

A slick, not-too-thoughtful love story.

Until its resolution, Bad Times is a fun-enough romp through retro genre pleasures. But when it drags in the real world in its final scenes, it reveals itself to be just as fatuous as most such nostalgic pastiches tend to be.

Tomorrowland is a highly original, occasionally even visionary piece of sci-fi filmmaking, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good movie.

For the most part, Three Thousand Years of Longing reads not as an unintended allegory of contemporary race relations but as a thoughtful, melancholy, and sometimes mordantly funny celebration of the time-and-space-collapsing power of storytelling.

Red simultaneously tries too hard and not hard enough.

It demands to be seen, for Drew Barrymore, who is at once the dizziest and most magically poised comedienne in movies today.

Sometimes I wonder how Mamet can get out of bed, he's so paranoid, let along crank out two-thirds (at least) of a thriller this crackerjack. I hope that next time he leaves out the (booby) prize.

A thriller that isn't kinky isn't much of a thriller. And Cellular has the best kinky phone gimmick since "Sorry, Wrong Number" (1948).

Its structure is repetitive, but each scene begins with a joyous blast of comic energy...A hoot.

This rough-edged parody feels both distinctive and handmade, and for those reasons alone it’s a hard movie to hate, even when it temporarily loses its comic footing. Anyway, as romantic comedies down the ages have taught us, hatred is just a latent form of love.

Natalie might protest the whitewashing of New York by rom-coms, but Isn’t It Romantic trots out multiple supporting characters of color whose sole roles are to make the white protagonist look good.

It more or less works.

It doesn’t help that the plot is tortuous, and the resolution is an inarguable letdown. And yet! Mitchell’s ambitions, observations, and moods make the picture a dippy blast, like a hallucinatory trip that definitely goes on too long but is well worth the insights and surprises.

Hobbs & Shaw is a ridiculous movie, and sometimes it’s in the best way. I laughed at the audacity of its stunts, while shaking my head a little bit at their silliness. But I also despaired a little bit when I checked the time at what felt like it might be the climax and discovered there was still an hour to go.

Lone Survivor’s lack of suspense never works against it. If anything, the fact that the outcome is, at least roughly, known in advance only adds to the film’s sickening tension, the atmosphere of preordained doom through which its characters seem to move.

Levinson must think he's on safe ground morally by keeping Bandits bloodless, as if the absence of carnage somehow makes kidnapping and armed robbery wholesome.

In a late scene in House of Gucci, one character labels another “a triumph of mediocrity.” That paradox and others like it might be applied to the movie itself: It is a glamorous slog, a fabulous bore, a pointlessly bespoke bit of silliness.

It is filmed, perhaps fittingly for the subject matter, like a TV show. But on the heels of a Sorkin movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7, whose women were essentially hippie-styled set dressing, it’s a pleasure to see him putting some of his signature quips in the mouths of female characters, especially one as spiky, complicated, and powerful as Lucille Ball.

The dad minds behind Bad Moms don’t seem to understand, or be terribly curious about, the minds of mothers.

Mamma Mia! is in essence celebrity karaoke night.

The revelation of Hateship Loveship is the casting of Kristen Wiig, who effortlessly makes the shift from comedian to straight dramatic actress in a role full of potential ego traps that she never falls into.

It's like a memorial service with killer special effects.

Aggressively adolescent. It hearkens back to the time in a young man's life when humping monkeys were funny, when a promise didn't count if your fingers were crossed, when debating pointless hypothetical questions held a fascination, and when professional wrestling offered endless, senseless entertainment.

Could call Zemeckis subtle; but his style Well suits the poem's crude and earthy brawn. Comic-Con geeks and cinephiles alike Will gape at the resplendent imagery (But don ye specs, and see it in 3-D).

A more down-to-earth actor would sentimentalize Breakfast on Pluto and make for an awkward fit with its peculiar mix of tones. Murphy's strangeness--his chill estrangement--makes his campy "Kitten" persona more poignant.

There are plenty of pleasures here: The slow birth of the Sandman from a heap of supercharged sand crystals (or something) is a marvel of digital animation, and the chemistry between Dunst and Maguire feels like the dynamic of a real couple, full of subtle shifts and eloquent silences.

At his best (Woo)'s too promiscuous with the slow motion; and once those doves start fluttering in he enters a new dimension in self-parody.

A halfway-smart thriller.

The combined efforts of this fine ensemble cast make Tower Heist go down easier than it otherwise might, but the film's potential as a buddy comedy is sadly wasted.

Rather than having too much pure Tolkien, it offers too much pure Jackson. It may occasionally seem to be aware of its undiluted preposterousness, but that hardly eases the experience of sitting through its endless cartoonish action sequences and overwrought emotional payoffs.

All Is True does not work as a film, but as a memorial to a writer whose shadow we are still working in today, and an expression of yearning to know who he really was, it has an odd vitality that cannot be completely dismissed.

I can't think of too many actors who could bring off Jim Winters. LaPaglia manages to convey, wordlessly, the man's inner struggle.

Flanagan is more faithful to "The Shining" than he was to Shirley Jackson’s "Hill House," but he ends each with a twist that functions as a smug reproach.

It would be imprecise to say that the thrill is gone, because The Lost World recovers from its turgid opening and comes to life, or does so in spasms.

Has a nonsensical twist ending that almost wrecks it, but until then it has enough fast, hyperliterate venality to make it great fun.

Whether unintentionally or by design, the movie never really makes a case either for or against the troubled figure at its center.

But there's still a great deal to love in The Black Cauldron. The untested animators Don Bluth left behind created some amazing sequences, including a dramatic scene of Taran's oracular pig, Hen Wen, being captured by pterodactyl-like gwythaints...For all its flaws, The Black Cauldron was a movie ahead of its time.

As a scare picture, Signs is good enough. As a religious parable, it's scarier -- and I don't mean that as a compliment.

Better than anyone dared hope: bigger, more inventive, and more frolicsome than its predecessor, with a grab bag of scatological gags that are almost as riotous when you think back on them.

Still, the movie’s mores can feel cluelessly retro as the ever-dithering Bridget lurches between one man and another.

I half-admire its exquisite balancing act, squeezing laughs out of its leading lady's wardrobe, vocabulary, gestures, and cretinously oblivious Beverly Hills sense of entitlement, while simultaneously demonstrating her brilliance, sturdy ethics, and unflappable egalitarianism.

Cars 3 is still lower-tier Pixar.

I'm at a loss to account for how OFF this film is -- how a movie can seem so conscientiously earnest yet so creepily exploitive. It's like a Christmas stocking over a crematory.

This is a lovingly assembled tribute to the career of a working band that's still very much, to quote the title of its most iconic hit, "Alive."

Hordes of good actors evidently lined up to appear in Confidence, which wastes Weisz, Guzman, Logue, Forster, and Paul Giamatti, among others. Midway through, a grizzled Andy Garcia shambles in, chewing on a cigar, as an FBI agent; he's so fatuously hammy that his true narrative function is never in doubt.

That neither tale is especially interesting doesn't matter -- the contrast alone is enough to make Sliding Doors an irresistible romantic fantasy.

As for The Drama, it runs out of big ideas—and, seemingly, compassion for its characters—before the audience has had a chance to develop our own rooting interest in, well, the drama.