It’s a manic movie in a familiarly corporate kind of way that provides kids with a computer-generated candy rush. The movie’s own business imperatives occasionally show through like a leaky diaper.

Even if the book’s story has been told and the movie’s format has been done before, a movie that reminds us to be imaginative — and that delivers some imaginative visuals to boot — can’t really get old.

The film’s off-kilter schizophrenia gives it a madcap appeal. While Fleischer seems to have a darker, moodier film in mind, Hardy has the good sense to steer Venom in a more over-the-top direction, even if the movie around him can’t catch up.

What’s never quite fleshed out here is why this all should resonate with us — or how these haphazard moments, albeit compelling, weave together in the cohesive way the filmmakers seem to promise.

Most of Mann’s toolkit is here — slick and moody camerawork, a poetic surrounding and heightened use of music, even the car porn of “Miami Vice.” But Ferrari — despite Mann’s leaning on Italian opera — fails to ignite.

Productions of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull almost always tip too far into farce or wade too deeply into tragedy, unable to sustain the play’s elusive balancing act. Michael Mayer’s lush and lively big-screen adaption is unfortunately no exception.

The plot is incoherent and jumpy and the dialogue weak. Scriptwriter Tedi Sarafian makes the same mistake his brother Doran made in his movie "Gunmen." It's all effects and nonstop action, as if that can cover for one-dimensional characters. [30 March 1995]

It’s not surprising that “Folie à Deux” originated in concept as a stage show. It’s stuck in place, with only Phoenix’s dazzling contortions to marvel at.

This seems designed to be a minor Marvel – a fun enough, inoffensive, largely forgettable steppingstone — a get-to-know-them brick on a path only Kevin Feige has the blueprints for.

With handsome period craft, “Munich — Edge of War” makes for a watchable, engrossing historical thriller with fictional characters situated like spies around political leaders at a profoundly tense, and ultimately woefully misjudged, moment in time.

It seems the filmmaker just can't decide where he wants to go with this movie. It's far too predictable and just not scary enough to be a chilling thriller. It's not clever or sophisticated enough to be campy. It's far too insipid to be taken as a thoughtful psychological drama. And it lacks the smooth, compelling or joyful ride expected of pure entertainment. [06 Aug 1992]

Campbell and Crane get along about as well as a mosquito and a can of Raid. Unfortunately, their abrasive relationship has none of the delicious repartee of a Tracy and Hepburn, or a Grant and Dunne and only serves to slow down the plot. [05 Feb 1992]

For all the hype behind these three characters meeting, and the years it took to get it off the ground, Glass is one big anti-climax.

This predictable family drama leads up to an equally predictable battle of goliaths who fight with one arm only. Over the Top boasts one distinction: it is the first major movie about arm-wrestling. Don't look for a cycle to follow. [23 Mar 1987]

How jokes this offensive can make it to the screen in 2019 is beyond comprehension and a bit of a shame, considering that this has so much else going for it including a delightful late-game appearance by the original Shaft, Richard Roundtree, who looks fantastic, by the way.

The script by Jake Crane and Jonathan A. H. Stewart is a slow-burning affair that will have audiences tugging at the leash.

If any narrative thread holds the movie together, it’s each character dealing with their own version of anxiety, fear and stage fright as performers. While a laudable message for a kids movie, it’s drowned out by the movie’s commercialized blare.

Ultimately “Day One” could have been set around any old apocalypse. Tethering it to the rules of “A Quiet Place,” a smart premise whose novelty is impossible to recreate let alone build a world upon, just holds it back.

As much as Neeson might seem to have the special set of skills required to play Marlowe, his detective feels hollow and maybe a little too tired.

As a B-movie with a couple of A-listers, “The Rip” will probably go down as a minor and flawed genre exercise. But even in their lesser efforts, the sincerity of Damon and Affleck’s buddy routine remains winning.

Figgis' uneven pacing and reliance on blood and guts makes this a difficult movie to watch. Still, his handling of the clash between the two cops makes Internal Affairs somewhat compelling but far less interesting than his Stormy Monday. And his ending for Internal Affairs is a cop-out and predictable. [03 Jan 1990]

As cinematography, Malcolm & Marie (shot by Marcell Rév) is great. As cinema, not so much.

The early scenes in this wacky place high in the mountains are the best part of “Ballerina” — they actually contain deft surprises and even a glimmer of humor, which is hardly something we expect in a John Wick film.

A well-cast and often entertaining but campy and sometimes obvious thriller starring Amanda Seyfried and James Norton.

The Meg is best when it acknowledges its derivativeness, just one more silly shark movie in an ocean full of them.

Dark Phoenix is a whiff. The most suspenseful thing that happened had nothing to do with the movie at all, but the theater’s fire alarm that went off during a review screening during the epic climax.

Good Fortune has its heart in the right place, but it lacks a spark and internal engine that might have made it more entertaining, and ultimately impactful.

Bird may go down as a rare miss for Arnold but you can still see the keenness of her eye and the nimbleness of her camera, with her regular cinematographer Robbie Ryan. And that’s true never so much as when the camera is on Adams, a talent, whose melancholy eyes say more than all the theatrics around her.

If “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” felt like a pale imitation of the buoyant original, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” feels sorta like a pale imitation of that pale imitation. Or, to analogize with a favored franchise food item: like a thrice-warmed piece of baklava.

Like its predecessor, Murder Mystery 2 is built on old-fashioned star power and the interplay between Sandler and Aniston. They’re good company to be in, and sometimes that’s enough.

The only time Bohemian Rhapsody works is when it finally retreats from not just the standard biopic narrative but from storytelling altogether.

By sanding off all the dark human quirks from their deeply human heroine, the filmmakers have left us a film that’s just filling the space.

This is a movie that should have probably leaned far less on wild hijinks with diminishing returns and more into the smaller moments of what it means to be friends for 40 years. But it’s not without its charms, either.

The dog is, as ever, irresistibly winning.

Despite the admirable ambitions and the prestigious names involved, including stars Keri Russell and Jesse Plemons as well as producer Guillermo Del Toro, it doesn’t really work either as metaphor or engaging, thought-provoking entertainment.

This Hillbilly Elegy has stripped away the most sermonizing, debatable parts of the book, but it’s also denuded it of any deeper purpose, leaving us with a cosplay shell of A-list actors chewing rural scenery.

“Bad Boys” only works when the bickering cops are center stage.

Pearce, sweaty and grungy, steadies Memory; it’s his film as much as Neeson’s.

Whether these Hollywood touches will make the film appealing to the Rambo crowd is doubtful. By all means, read the book first. [24 Sept 1986]

Buzz Kulik has directed some slam-bang chases, but their effectiveness is blunted by a script that meanders between the bounty hunter's missions and a boring relationship with his housemate (Kathryn Harrold), who is heavy with child. [12 Aug 1980]

Next Goal Wins isn’t a tale of “woe” or “woah!” but “meh.”

If the idea was to make something for the moms, “Oh. What. Fun.” is about as thoughtful as a hastily scribbled card on a piece of printer paper the morning of her birthday. We can all do better.

Without spoiling any secrets, the film progresses in horror-film mode before, in its third act, tying things up in a somewhat clever, unexpected way. By then, though, you may have given up on this group.

Golding is simply not the right actor for the part. He’s not exactly bad, just miscast and misused. And despite the novel trimmings and flash around him, his character is woefully generic.

While its ideas are often intriguing, the movie feels like high-concept scaffolding that only thinly conceals it hollowness. It’s a Tesla without electricity.

While Mistress might gnaw a bit at the problems it tries to confront, it never really sinks its teeth into them. [15 Mar 1993]

Power fails, not because it is badly done; Lumet and an exceptional cast do their best to bring it to life. But they are ultimately defeated by an overplotted script that offers few surprises and no real revelations about today's politics. [17 Feb 1986]

Besides the muddled story, the script is burdened with some of the clunkiest dialogue for a major film in recent memory. [3 Aug 1996]

To both the movie’s benefit and detriment, the seas here are choppier than in the predictably (and sometimes boringly) smooth sailing of a Marvel movie. But the bright spots (Momoa, that octopus) can be difficult to really relish amid the oceans of exposition and a typically pulverizing, overelaborate screenplay.

Food, family, a big karaoke scene … and a spotlight on an immigrant community underrepresented in Hollywood. There are worse ways to spend 96 minutes.

Great Balls of Fire is fun to watch, especially Quaid's gymnastics and clownish grimaces. But the movie lacks authenticity; it seems to be laughing at itself and at the era it purports to chronicle. [29 June 1989]

A calculatedly combustible concoction, designed, like its chaos-creating character, to cause a stir. To provoke and distort. I wish it was as radical as it thinks it is.

Visually and storytelling-wise it’s not a cut above much of what kids can watch on TV these days. This is a franchise that looks like it’s slowly going the way of the dinos, while we drool.

The only real heroes in this lumbering, over-inflated epic are the army of special effects coordinators and technicians who create a fantastic, otherworldly environment peopled by creatures more weird and threatening than Jabba The Hut. Freddie Francis' photography is constantly impressive. But technical wizardry alone cannot save Dune from a crash landing. [3 Jan 1985]

It would be easy to hail The Naked Gun as something better than it is, since it simply existing is cause for celebration. But like most reboots, particularly comedy ones, the best thing about the new “Naked Gun” is that it might send you back to the original.

Monday has an artsy, improvised feel, but also falls prey to some pretty standard rom-com tropes.

The script by Tracey Scott Wilson (Fosse/Verdon) is a collection of scenes that don’t add up to much, never really building and interrupted — by necessity, of course — with overly long music sequences. This film needed someone to sharpen and clarify.

McCarthy’s visual style is too fragmented, happy to capture his scrambling camera and sound operators in the frame and changing up his shots from guerilla-style jerky iPhone images to tasteful, polished portraits.

While the franchise soldiers on unironically, the films may fail to keep up with the real world, where fears have metastasized.

While Super Troopers 2...may be just enough to satiate any remaining die-hards, it’s not likely to convert many new moviegoers to their syrup-swilling, “meow”-ing ways.

Megalopolis is not a disaster, but it’s far from a success. It’s a bacchanalia that’s bursting with so many ideas, so many characters, so many great lines and truly terrible ones as well that it’s nearly impossible to digest in a single, baffling viewing.

This is a movie with a plot that’s as predictable as a well-tuned washing machine...What saves this movie from insipidness is an endearing performance by Walter Matthau as the cantankerous Mr. Wilson.

The movie, like the magazine, contains a mixture of inspired graphics and hollow content. [10 Aug 1981]

Last Christmas is about as buoyant as leftover eggnog. Clarke’s natural charm comes through — she looks ecstatic to be out of Westeros and playing a less upright character — but such a fleabag-screwup role feels better suited to a more comedic performer.

The laughs run out early and the balance of the film relies on special effects to tickle the audience’s funny bone.

All the buzz and talent around a tale that’s sold more than 12 million copies can’t thoroughly mask a sometimes corny, often clunky script, even if most of the lines are delivered by Daisy Edgar-Jones, whose poignant, grounded lead performance is the distinguishing highlight of the enterprise.

Harry and Son is uneven, rambling into irrelevant subplots. But the strength of Newman's character holds the film together. [06 Mar 1984]

Roland Joffe has directed an earnest and well-meaning film but the crushing inevitability of the climax makes it a less than rewarding experience. [17 Dec 1986]

Roger Young's direction is crisply paced, but the script shortchanges the women. Lauren Hutton is unconvincing as the murderous counterspy, and Jane Seymour does little more than wait for Lassiter to come home. [28 Feb 1984]

The most interesting part of The Mother, a decent if forgettable action pic starring Jennifer Lopez, is the one that is left largely unexplored. The movie is a high-concept thriller that boils down to just a few words: She’s a mother and an assassin.

The driving engine behind the film — a whirlwind 24-hour romance — is contrived, underwhelming and perhaps worst of all, unconvincing.

Did you want closure in a satisfyingly coherent way? That’s not what you’ll get. Did you want to see Curtis in one more (we think) badass performance as durable Laurie Strode, whom she’s been playing for some 45 years? You’ll get that. Did you want to see more gore and guts, with a disturbingly creative scene involving a record turntable? You’ll get that, too.

It’s a movie best seen less as a historical epic and more as a metaphor for a rising young movie star coming up in a culture he aims to subvert.

It’s not a bad idea and Union proves more than capable of nailing her Liam Neeson/Bruce Willis moment of save-your-family action stardom, but the movie has trouble sustaining interest even over its brisk 88 minutes.

Peter Hastings, director, screenwriter and animal voice of Dog Man, has had a hand in Pilkey’s much better adaption of “Captain Underpants,” but this time smashes together characters and plot lines from several of the books in a way that is hard to follow even for fans.

Goddard’s film looks terrific and has all of the — as Hamm’s character would say with exaggerated Southern flare — “accoutrements” of an intoxicating slow-burn thriller, but none of the payoff.

Indian Summer is as sunny as a June day is long and as charming as a late-night marshmallow roast and just about as fluffy. There's not much to the movie, although it seems desperately to want to be taken seriously. [20 Apr 1993]

What's off about this latest De Palma work is that the movie can't be taken seriously. The characters are straight out of a comic strip and proceed through some cartoon-like situations. And so, viewed in this way, it becomes an enjoyable romp. [17 Dec 1990]

Fennell clearly has so many ideas swirling around, which is fitting for a story like Wuthering Heights. And yet as a viewing experience, it is an undernourishing feast, neither dangerous nor hot enough.

A pair of other recent films — “Minding the Gap,” ″Skate Kitchen” — better explored the camaraderie and freedom of skater culture. But there are glimpses here of a more radiant, lyrical film.

Glum and meandering, the Los Angeles-set mystery about a Hollywood starlet and her assistant starts off promising enough but trudges along aimlessly to a deeply silly and maddening end.

This is the first Hollywood film from South African director Donovan Marsh, and he does cook up some captivating action set pieces...which may have you laughing, rolling your eyes or even cheering (as a fair amount of people were in my screening), but it’s never boring.

Hosoda grafted “Beauty and the Beast” into “Belle,” to sometimes awkward, sometimes illuminating effect. But in “Scarlet,” he struggles to bridge “Hamlet” to today. It’s a big swing, the kind filmmakers as talented as Hosoda should be taking, but it doesn’t pay off.

It’s not complicated. But there are worse things in life than 88 minutes of uncomplicated chuckling.

The Hunt is not great satire or even a great film. It’s an unstylish and heavy-handed horror-thriller that turns into a revenge gore-fest as it mocks everyone with a big clumsy paw.

Edgar Wright’s new big-screen adaptation is fittingly but awkwardly timed. Arriving in the year of King’s imagined dystopia, its near-future has little in it that isn’t already plausible today, making this “Running Man” — while fleet of foot in action — feel a step, or two, behind.

They’re just two strangers thrust together by this surrogacy agreement and spending time with them is not fun, engaging or enlightening enough to sustain a movie.

Plotlines are abandoned at will, there are set ups for things that never come back and some suspiciously malleable “monster-logic” that makes the whole endeavor seem a little lazy and half-baked.

A cerebral approach to espionage and defection, often suspenseful but sometimes dull. [26 Jan 1980]

For all its pizazz, everything about this Little Mermaid is just more muted.

Simon McQuoid does a decent job on his feature directorial debut, giving us a constantly staggered hits of dopamine in the form of controlled violence.

The deft tonal balance of “Hit Man,” let alone of “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” is missing in How to Make a Killing, a disappointingly flat almost-remake that has neither the biting farce nor the chilling darkness to match its black comedy ambitions.

Ackie’s performance is something to be cheered, reaching for the the kind of authenticity that Andra Day channeled when she also tackled a doomed musical icon in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” But so much clumsiness, scenes featuring unnaturally heightened drama with little insight and the compromised authenticity of the performances drag I Wanna Dance With Somebody down — ultimately, it’s not right but it’s just OK.

I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who just wants to see her and these actors together again. But the movie, well stocked in Prada, could have used a bit more of Streep’s unflappable devil.

The battle of the heads in "How to Get Ahead in Advertising" is curious, bizarre and at times distasteful. The plot becomes almost existential, but the ending is a cop-out. [21 Nov 1989]

A sort of high-gloss, nicely crafted daydream with a good score and generous references to LA noir films.

There is little here, amid the high-tech photorealistic animations, that would satisfy London’s concept of “wild.”

Somewhow Adams, who also produces here, makes these things seem, if not quite natural, then logical.