Giamatti is a superb expressionist of emotional flotsam, with a Golden Globe for his effort.

Well-acted and lovingly designed, Marsh's movie falls far short of the genius it attempts to celebrate.

It's the only chance for small children to drag parents to the movies until November, so knock yourself out, kiddies.

Even the smuttiest jokes about rape, torture and genitals have a more polished edge, sliding by without causing much offense. Watching actors portray alarm at Cohen's antics isn't as hilarious as civilians doing it for real.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is an elegant scandal almost devoid of true passion, no matter how many times the nude lovers artfully mingle.

Just like Will Stoneman himself, it crosses the finish line battered and wobbly, but a winner nonetheless. [14 Jan 1994, p.7]

What Bay has really done is slice Beverly Hills Cop in two; Eddie Murphy's sandpaper personality in Lawrence and his silky style in Smith. [7 April 1995, p.7]

A fitfully entertaining movie in an awkward position; too arty for the action crowd yet too unsubtle for more refined tastes.

For a good portion of Black's film, all this mayhem is great fun, since Russell Crowe is obviously funnier than he has ever allowed himself to appear, and Ryan Gosling is funnier than he has already proven. Together they form a deliciously dumb action duo; one brawn, the other sort of has a brain.

Not as funny as you might expect but, like Reitman's political comedy Dave, it has a genuine affection for its institutional subject. [23 Nov 1994, p.8C]

The sermons are subtle, raising the film's chances of crossing over to secular audiences. Soul Surfer is so clean that it squeaks, but sometimes that's a nice change of pace.

Will they, won't they? A bolder movie wouldn't settle for maybe.

The standout in Win Win is Alex Shaffer, a former New Jersey state champion cast as Kyle.

Burton's manner is changed, not drastically or consistently but more controlled, making strangeness the story's accessory rather than its purpose. He seems inspired by this material for the first time in years, in a creative vein where he finds the most satisfaction.

Movies don't come any brawnier than Safe House, and all that chaotic mayhem eventually beats the plot to a pulp.

Paramount prefers to think of Star Trek: Generations as the first of a new film series, rather than the seventh act of the old, but prior knowledge of the saga definitely is a necessity. It's a movie filled with punchlines that depend on the audience knowing the set-ups. [18 Nov. 1994, p.3]

Writer-director Martin McDonagh's followup to his more cohesive "In Bruges" is a middle finger to cliches "Pulp Fiction" wrought, while garishly reveling in the same hyper-ironic, pop referenced ultraviolence it lampoons.

What Sirens does have is a refreshingly uninhibited attitude toward sex and the human body, tastefully embodied by supermodel Elle MacPherson and others. Sirens is consistently enjoyable, but one-sided political views, live-action pictorials and feathery jokes make it no better than a decent issue of Playboy - eye-catching and ultimately disposable. [29 March 1994, p.6B]

The movie is airy, predictable and ultimately inconsequential. Yet, there are moments in She's All That when the filmmakers create something close to artfulness, a rare trait in a teen-dream movie. It's a minor, reassuring cure for those Varsity Blues. [29 Jan 1999]

Imagination is the key element that Conviction lacks.

The rest are hit-and-miss propositions with occasional flashes of wit, and a few standout performances. It's always good to see Judy Davis exchanging barbs with Allen, like when he boasts of having an IQ of 160.

It's an amusing geriatric uprising that might just as well be titled "Gray."

Keanu is raucous enough to satisfy the Hangover crowd, yet when compared to Key and Peele's trenchant tomfoolery on television, it needs focused anger, funnier tension. Or perhaps simply more kitty cat.

The pleasant surprises in Larry Crowne come from its side characters.

Robinson's screenplay covers all of its bases by the midway point, and then a framing device of Marston being interrogated by a cultural watchdog (Connie Britton) hammers his theories flat.

When director Joseph Kosinski flips the switch on action, TRON: Legacy is entertaining enough. Especially in 3D IMAX, with a mega-audio system booming Deft Punk's droning Xbox-ready musical score, nearly drowning out the collisions.

The Substitute is loud, dumb and sort of fun, but it'll be best viewed on your neighbor's cable TV, so you don't have to pay the bill. [19 Apr 1996, p.2B]

The third act of Scardino's movie is very funny, and its finale featuring the exposure of an impossibly successful illusion is flat-out brilliant. It's just too bad that the movie's opening act is so sleight of humor, damaging the movie's potential. Now you see it. Then you don't.

Ghostbusters is back, it's not bad, get used to it.

Although The Croods has lazy patches throughout, the conclusion is exciting and, lo and behold, surprising.

The Jumanji sequel nobody demanded is fun. Kind of. Sort of. It’s a close call.

The appeal of The Rugrats Movie sits squarely on the shoulders of its vast cast of characters, each of whom has one characteristic, but collectively sketch an amusing perspective of childhood. [20 Nov 1998, p.3]

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is boldly dull in protest to modern movie tastes, and that alone may earn it more praise than it deserves.

The Tourist is less likely to be remembered for its cat-and-mouse machinations than for the beautiful people carrying them out.

In the end, this is a pleasant parable, brimming with Rockwellian visuals and homespun decency. Harder hearts will dismiss it as corny and manipulative, which it is. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with that.

Always lovely to observe, Wonderstruck never entirely grasps the magic of the coincidences it requires. Themes are emotional yet Haynes’ obsession with visual detailing can drain their meaning.

In a holiday season when family movie entertainment is in short supply, Annie is bubbly enough to suit the purpose while irritating purists wonder where their orphan went. At times it's actually a lot of fun, and leapin' lizards the sun really does come out tomorrow. Right after the helicopter chase.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ends on a perfectly appropriate note, recapturing a childish sense of wonder and an earnest approach to Lewis' religious allegory.

Rock of Ages is nothing but a good time and sometimes less, slogging through the knee-deep hoopla of 1980s nostalgia at a jukebox pace.

Next to Swinton's excellent portrayal of a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, the movie belongs to the two Kevins, young actors with matching arched eyebrows and sullen expressions.

Above the Law is action trash. But it's great action trash, running fast and furious from the first frame to the last. It's entirely possible - in fact, advisable - to forget the movie's right-to-left-wing political swings and just watch Seagal rage. [22 Apr 1988, p.7]

The Glass Castle meanders toward its uplift ending, needing a few more of Cretton's clever time-jump edits, less rehashing the same personal failures. Not a bad movie at all, at times something more but seldom what it could be.

Game Night is one of those comedy tweeners in which the jokes that click are milked too long and jokes that don’t will take too long to confirm that. Appropriately for the premise, it’ll likely be more enjoyable at home with friends.

It's to Crystal's, King's and Williams' credit that they give engaging performances considering the cliched nature of the script. And, it's a measure of first-time director Winkler's fortitude that he plows through the material and keeps Memories of Me bouncing along when a less imaginative director would have abandoned the picture to its own devices. [07 Oct 1988, p.9]

At times the sewer dwellers don't appear worth saving, except for Socha's profiting. This can't be the filmmaker's intention but it's there.

Addams Family Values is a rare sequel that surpasses the original, primarily for the same reason that Superman II topped the Man of Steel's first outing. This time, Sonnenfeld doesn't bury the jokes in exposition about characters we already know. [19 Nov 1993, p.7]

The final 20 minutes at the Radio City Music Hall extravaganza are fairly tense, in highly improbable ways designed to rouse send-off cheers.

Personal Shopper is wildly imperfect, wandering like Maureen through surroundings matching her dark, curious mood. Dead ends abound with scenes running long then abruptly dropping their subjects. Thrills aren't part of the bargain unless Stewart's intense vulnerability counts. Now more than ever, it should.

Jude Law's ferociously vulgar portrayal of a hard-luck safecracker carries the first hour of this amorality tale. Then writer-director Richard Shepard makes the creatively fatal mistake of making Dom Hemingway sympathetic, when irredeemable is much more fun.

There hasn't been a great Muppet movie since the first one, in 1979. Muppets From Space is the most entertaining of five sequels since then, although it isn't anything special. Yet we can all appreciate the way it's packaged, with one adorably round eye on the kid market and the other focused on grown-ups buying the tickets. [14 July 1999, p.1D]

When the fadeout comes, viewers may feel as unsatisfied with the movie as these characters are with their lives.

The movie maintains its posture of mystery long after the solution is evident, and the best suggestion is to just smirk with the flow.

The relevant question now isn't who John Galt is, but how much demand there will be for what the producers supply.

Fifty Shades of Grey isn't the howling pornucopia it could be, but it's sexy enough, spank you very much.

Renoir is beautifully filmed and scored, yet with the emotional pull of watching exquisitely textured oil paint dry.

So many oddities are thrown in our faces that The Frighteners becomes measured by its occasional imaginative moments, rather than as a complete entertainment. [19 July 1996, p.5]

Leave It to Beaver turns out to be a pleasant time-waster and a future video babysitter. [22 Aug 1997, p.8]

Even stock characters -- Zoe's tirelessly supportive friends and relatives -- get style points for giving jobs to old pros Klein, Linda Lavin (Alice) and "Mr. C" himself, Tom Bosley. Of course, the babies are adorable.

Hocus Pocus is a sweet-spirited romp that could give clean-minded silliness a good name once again. [16 July 1993, p.6]

It's as slick and fun as summertime entertainment should be. Downey is still an arresting presence, glib to the nth degree and supremely confident that he's smarter than anyone else.

Never thought I'd type this about a comic book movie, but Ant-Man needs to take itself more seriously.

It's occasional fun, but that's about all, folks.

Some prime stiff-upper-lip comedy surfaces above a messy morality tale. [09 Sep 1994, p.10]

Plenty of ideas float through Ender's Game but the notion of honing a child into a war machine is one that sticks. Writer-director Gavin Hood's adaptation of Orson Scott Card's novel doesn't offer much else, bottled up with battle jargon and special effects debris as it is.

The heist movie genre gets a hip-hop makeover in Takers, a movie loaded with as much style as ammunition.

I learned a total of two things from watching Evil Dead: No camping kit is complete without duct tape, and sometimes end credits are worth sitting through for a movie's best gag.

Espinosa overcomes any shortcomings in originality and logic with one of the most satisfying finales in recent memory. First impressions are important but a clever last impression makes Life worthwhile.

Escape Plan is so dumb it's adorable, as any movie pitting Sylvester Stallone's grunt against Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent should be.

Strange Days - on and off screen - should be a lesson to filmmakers not to use virulent, touchy subjects for entertainment shortcuts. Bigelow has created a state-of-the-art movie machine, with all the moral and political complexity of an Etch-a-Sketch. [13 Oct 1995, p.10]

Despicable Me 3 doubles down on Steve Carell's silly way with words, a smart idea after too much Minions gibberish spoiled Part 2. They're still here, in smaller doses and somewhat funnier for it.

Linklater tinkers with Ponicsan’s memorable characters while asking practically the same performances of his actors that Ashby did. Of course, if a viewer isn’t familiar with The Last Detail then Last Flag Flying gets by as an okay grumpy old soldiers tragicomedy. The rest of us know better because we’ve seen far better.

All that director Kenneth Branagh must do with Thor is not mess it up, and he succeeds. But that isn't enough. The results aren't as exhilarating as the first "Iron Man," but Downey can't play every superhero.

An imagined conversation between Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, after the premiere of Wrath of the Titans...

America's foremost smart aleck Dennis Miller adds grand giggles to familiar gore in Bordello of Blood. [17 August 1996, p.2B]

Set It Off doesn't say anything especially original, but it says it loud and proud. [06 Nov 1996, p.1D]

Somehow, the loose ends fit together, as rag-tag plucky as Eddie himself. What Eddie the Eagle has that last week's more historically accurate Race didn't is charm to spare, especially in Egerton's performance.

Director Baltasar Kormakur (2 Guns) essentially made a faux documentary with big stars and better lighting.

It's a valuable history lesson crammed into a creatively uninspired movie. Wiki-cinema, if you will.

It took brains to create such a sumptuous fantasia with pixels and keyboard swipes. Now, if it only had a heart.

Emperor is also one of those movies in which the most intriguing occurrences are revealed by "what-happened-to . . ." title cards at the finale.

The recurring fight scenes had a campy quality that recalled the funniest flicks from Hong Kong. [30 June 1995, p.11]

Justice League does remain fun as it unravels, an upgrade from every other DC flick. Yet a movie intended as the culmination of DC lore instead feels like just another sequel set-up.

There's enough here for a nice little movie, anyway, even if Al Pacino didn't think so. He was hired to voice the movie's arch villain but dropped out due to "creative differences."

For Colored Girls is blessed with a Murderer's Row of black female actors, each tearing ferociously into Shange's words and gamely hanging on through Perry's.

Yes, The Eagle is as bad as it sounds but also entertaining, in a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" sort of way that Macdonald didn't intend.

There is nice stuff found in The Lorax - Thneedville's artificial nature is inspired - and bad, like the original songs nobody will be humming when they leave the theater. But good intentions don't trump mediocre filmmaking. If that makes me a Grinch, so be it.

There are laughs that stick in your throat, when they aren't broad strokes shattering a forlorn mood that occasionally makes the movie feel like a companion piece to "Magnolia," or any film depicting downbeat people realizing they have more sorrow in common than expected.

The fun of watching We're the Millers is guessing how raunchily low it will go, and realizing you've sorely underestimated these writers and actors.

Kenneth Branagh's version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein reverts to the creature's roots to become the most faithful adaptation ever of the horror classic. [04 Nov 1994, p.10]

It's a very funny character needing more arc than Rauch's script offers or a shorter movie.

Nothing much happens in Greenberg, yet Stiller and co-star Greta Gerwig make inconsequence tolerable with solid performances.

An affably crude bromantic comedy with an appealing set of bros.

American Made wants it both ways, with comedy eroding its drama and vice versa.

DeVito's pacing stunts the eventual triumphs and gives devotees of Dahl's book one more reason not to trust anyone past middle school. [03 Aug 1996, p.2B]

Although there are enough zany antics and puppet slapstick to keep the younger kids amused, there is little of the charm and intelligent humor that made both grown-ups and children love Muppets in the first place. [11 Dec 1992, p.8]

Schwentke keeps things lively and loud, with a mildly alarming body count, smashing glass and gunfire.

Angels in the Outfield has a lot going for it, beginning with the engaging performances of Glover and Gordon-Levitt in the lead roles. [15 July 1994, p.8]

The next step in Matthew McConaughey's inevitable march to network television is The Lincoln Lawyer, a pilot disguised as a feature-length movie, with an entire season's arc crammed into two hours.