Victoria & Abdul is a small tale well told, a modest historical biopic allowing Dench a remarkable encore.

Get Low is a pleasant yarn, well-acted and dutifully mounted with period designs. There isn't a false note among the actors.

Except for slipping on a third-act soapbox, The Joneses is a deft allegory of the greed and coveting that led to the recession. At times, you wonder if something like this scam could really happen, or does.

Even in strained moments, there is a sincerity to Dolphin Tale 2, an ambition to be more than an easy sequel, making it satisfying.

Farewell is a solid telling of an obscure story and nothing more. The most effective scenes aren't cloak and dagger stuff but passages like Igor daydreaming of becoming a rock star like his idol Freddie Mercury of Queen.

Graphically thinking outside the box, the Lonely Island comedy team makes a decent splash with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, an SNL spinoff that generally works.

It's an audacious mashup that Baz Luhrmann would approve, lending freshness to Tolstoy's too-often-told tale.

Director John Schlesinger takes an hour to get around to the vigilante premise promised by the title and previews of his latest thriller. Eye for an Eye is a much better movie before he does it. [12 Jan 1996, p.10]

In the movie's best moments, Rivers is defiantly obnoxious and forthcoming about the fact that she'll do anything for money. At other times, the filmmakers attempt to make the wildcat warmer and fuzzier.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a relentless marvel of sense-pummeling stunts and gargoyle horror that needs to take a breather once in a while.

This is first and foremost Murray's show, and the shortcomings in Melfi's script and direction are strangely appreciated. They give this singular comedian, who doesn't do it often enough these days, the room to let his buffalo heart roam.

I'm not sure there's anything else to take away from this film besides Manville's performance and gratitude that we aren't these people.

Nothing about Koolhoven's film is stunning, but it's a solid piece of work, occasionally feeling as tense as life-and-death situations with Nazis should be.

Split is a tidy example of lurid understatement, its themes ripe for nastier treatment than Shyamalan offers, grindhouse stuff served with vegan restraint.

Pacino, Cusack and Aiello are fascinating to observe, playing three sides of the same political coin, but the whole thing winds up as meaningless as a concession speech by Phil Gramm. [16 Feb 1996, p.5]

This franchise that won't die began in 2001 as The Fast and the Furious and has pretty much run through every title permutation, so the inevitable next chapter might be called only "The & The 7."

It continually finds some added depth and shading to its familiar setup and it's hard to not appreciate a movie that's content to be a solid, unpretentious genre entry, especially for a first outing.

The movie needs one or two central characters directly affected by the dictatorship, in order to create more tension around a conclusion that's already known.

Efron makes hay with his richest role post-High School Musical, making Dean a rural rake with conflicting charisma.

Thankfully, much of Red Tails is spent in the skies, where fighter planes swoop and zoom in thrilling dogfights with incendiary direct hits. Executive producer George Lucas apparently gave Hemingway the keys to his CGI kingdom, creating marvelously designed in-flight action and a sappy, snappy salute to the Tuskegee Airmen.

It is sophomoric, yet very funny. And until its weepy, reconciliatory ending, it moves with locomotive force. It's the type of movie that makes critics feel guilty about liking it, yet there's no refuting its charm. [02 Oct 1987, p.1D]

Has something for everyone, if everyone is looking for young nuns taking showers, a department store Santa dealing weed, a coked-up infant crawling on the ceiling and Danny Trejo as the father-in-law-to-be from Hell. I didn't think I was looking for that but found it. And heaven help me, it wasn't bad.

Robespierre does a nice job of balancing the seriousness of this situation with the no-boundaries irreverence of Donna's comedy background.

Casino Royale mostly succeeds as an introduction to a badder Bond than ever.

Arachnophobia is a movie spun as carefully as a cobweb, and a whole lot more likeable than you'd expect from a film about creepy crawlers chomping on townsfolks. Credit first-time director Frank Marshall for the success as he expertly wrangles cast and spiders into an entertaining, three-star movie that moves so swiftly along that there's barely a minute to catch your breath. [20 July 1990, p.18]

What makes Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right remarkable also makes it a tad humdrum, which may be the filmmaker's point.

The performances are spot-on, with former Tampa resident Morgan Simpson scripting a showcase for himself as Jefferson, and Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) as the enigmatic stranger, proving again that he's more than just a not-so-pretty face atop an intimidating body.

A memorable doomsday drama. [28 Sep 2000, p.13W]