Director William Eubank keeps the action taut and the look of the film is realistically impressive and dark, with grimy, dirty workers donning cool dive suits that make them each look like Transformers. His camera often goes tight on the shocked faces inside the helmets. Stewart, in particular, shines with a combination of steely nerves and harrowing expressions.

Haunted Mansion is by no means a terrible movie, or even an unpleasant watch, but it’s just missing the magic that makes the trip to the theaters (or Disney World) worth it.

Teamwork. Friendship. Family. Playing for the game’s sake, not money. All these themes come together in a warm-hearted but highly predictable way.

Director Rob Cohen gets the most out of the buddy relationship between Bowen and Draco. Cohen also provides imaginative battle sequences, especially a pursuit through a forest. But the script, credited to Charles Edward Pogue from a story by Pogue and Patrick Read Johnson, sometimes veers into the obscure. [28 May 1996]

In mixing up the Beanie Baby timeline to play out each storyline simultaneously, The Beanie Bubble needlessly complicates itself. But it also makes a compelling reflection of history repeating itself.

The Exorcist: Believer never manages anything like the deep terror of the original, and the film’s climactic scenes pass by with a lifeless predictability. Been there, exhumed that.

For older viewers, though, it may be hard to ignore some of the clunkier moments of a script that, in trying to update a story created in 1963, gets in its own way with dialogue that while sometimes funny and sweet, can be awkward and occasionally even off-key.

The elements never quite cohere in “Freud’s Last Session.” The rhythm of conversation feels choppy and lacks the probing give and take that can electrify a two-hander.

Samuel never stays with any idea for long and “The Book of Clarence” lacks cohesion, as well as consistency, even if the acting is superb, especially from a soulful Stanfield.

The latter stages of "Moreau" prove chaotic and confusing, negating what showed promise as a "Planet of the Apes" thriller...Any appearance by Marlon Brando is an event, if only to witness his latest transformation. He seems to have entered his Sydney Greenstreet period. Looking huge and sinister, he affects an upper-class English accent with lines such as, "I'm simply going to perish from the heat." He even sports a monocle in one scene...At times, Brando conveys a demented menace, but mostly his performance seems a mockery, of the film and himself...And Kilmer makes the most of his ambiguous role. [22 Aug 1996]

Again, it all feels like a 30th reunion — maybe because it IS one — where the liquor flows, old stories are rehashed, the men haven’t aged quite as well as the women, the kids steal the show, and by the end you’re happy to have gone but feel no need to be at the next one.

As it is, this “Death on the Nile,” for too long an affected and strained entertainment lacking any sense of place, floats well downstream from more bracingly constructed whodunits.

Collet-Serra’s genre mechanics, stylized and sober, are efficient. His trains run on time, even if — especially in The Commuter — a rush-hour’s worth of implausibility eventually wrecks the thrill.

Voyagers is simply a semi-effective thriller with about as much emotional intelligence as its lab-produced, hormone-controlled, sequestered youngsters.

Honk for Jesus in the end doesn’t aim for anything like the madcap parody of, say, HBO’s riotous “The Righteous Gemstones,” but it may have been more successful if it took the approach of “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and kept its camera glued to the first lady of the church.

Peppermint is not some model of equality, it’s just violent escapism that happens to have a woman in the lead role. And, frankly, as long as this genre continues to entertain audiences, Garner is a compelling a lead as any, and more so than quite a few of the men who get so many parts like this. But maybe, just maybe, next time consider a woman or two behind the camera (and script) as well.

Golda has seeds of interesting insights, like the suggestion that she was betrayed by some of the men she relied on during the war and yet protected them. Or how false intelligence is nothing new when it comes to Middle Eastern conflicts. Or how female leaders inevitably face catch-22s. But none of these is taken.

A dead-end wrong turn in the usually boundless Pixar universe. Buzz, himself, is a bit of a bore, too.

Hawke takes a fairly one-dimensional character and gives it an intelligent and shaded performance.

The focus sometimes gets a bit blurry, to be honest and the whole thing often doesn’t add up to much.

What is most surprising about the latest Charlie’s Angels, which was written and directed by Elizabeth Banks, who also plays the part of Bosley, is how little the “go girl” feminism of the 2000 film has evolved in nearly 20 years. Blame society or a lack of imagination on the part of the filmmakers, but there is nothing all that new about the ideas here.

There are dark marriage comedies and then there’s “The Roses,” an escalating hatefest that, by the time a loaded gun comes out, all the fun has been sucked out. It’s hard tonally to go from microaggressions to the burning of someone’s prized books to attempted murder and stay a comedy.

All the charm and style in the world, and J.Lo has more than anyone, can’t make up for the bizarre tonal imbalance of “Shotgun Wedding,” a movie too violent to be funny and too funny (in the odd, weird sense) to be fun.

Poms really wants to be a sweet movie with a sweet message, but it’s hard to buy into it when none of the squad gets significant backstories, inner lives or even enough dialogue to give them distinct personalities. They’re just there to be punching bags for other characters and the movie.

Conor Allyn is clearly a talented director and has a lot of reverence for the Western genre, but for as good and lofty as it’s intentions are, No Man’s Land comes up short.

The sequel follows four unconnected stories in different locales, with resultant confusion. Especially since writer-director B.W.L. Norton has employed the outmoded multi-image screen. Still, the movie has moments -- car races, campus riots and especially in the war-zone sequences. [30 Jul 1979]

Some have argued that the film glorifies its subject. It doesn’t, really. But it doesn’t explain him, either. And that leads to another question, which is, if there’s nothing really new to say about Ted Bundy, need we be saying anything?

Two hours later, it’s not clear if this is really an upgrade.