A rather anemic effort that runs low on suspense but high on some wonderfully campy moments that will probably leave you howling. [01 Feb 1994]

If some of King’s Wes Anderson-inspired pop-up book designs and skill with fine character actors is missing, the bedrock earnestness and unflaggingly good manners of its ursine protagonist remain charmingly unaltered.

Of course, you might ask, at a time of such turbulence in the world, what do 19th century upper-class romantic machinations have to do with, well, anything? To which we say: Whatever! Bring it on. Distract us with your lovely frocks flowing straight from the bosom, your exquisite bonnets with feathers, your real-estate porn in the countryside and your smart dinner-table repartee. We could do a lot worse.

Instead of exploring new territory in the animated art, the film harks back to the tried-and-true Disney formula. The result is sentimental, predictable and totally endearing. [27 July 1981]

It has the makings of a stealth classic.

Noises Off is a raucous, riotous romp that will leave you delightfully giddy from the wonderful on-screen frenzy and non-stop laughs. It's the kind of comedy we haven't seen in a while, one that doesn't rely on righteous dudes or far-out babes to make us laugh. It's all silly farce, played out by an effective ensemble of screen and TV actors. [19 March 1992]

Based on Freida McFadden’s novel, “The Housemaid” rides waves of manipulation and then turns the tables on what we think we’ve just seen, looking at male-female power structures and how privilege can trap people without it.

It’s a little shaggy and you’ll occasionally yearn for a bit more humor along the way. But “Caught Stealing,” based on Charlie Huston’s 2004 novel, is a ride, foremost, in ‘90s nostalgia.

Ron’s Gone Wrong thinks it’s being subversive when its really being very corporate. It wastes its voice cast — including Olivia Colman, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis — and it never really connects, ending as awkwardly as a modern-day seventh-grader with a rock collection.

While it might not be on the same level as Bridge of Spies, it’s solid, well-acted and enjoyable nonetheless.

The problem with Men isn’t with the acting. It’s with a script that could be described as attempting at something like arty horror and can’t stick the landing. Often it is tedious, slow to build and pretentious.

I’m not sure just how much more the studio can mine out of this concept that was once so brilliant. But happily, The LEGO Movie 2 doesn’t destroy everything the first worked so hard to build. It’s just trying very hard to be exactly the same.

The setting of a boat in the middle of the Coral Sea unlocks a delicious new home for terror.

The abundance of special effects, no matter how clever, overbalances the charming premise of Young Sherlock Holmes. [9 Dec 1985]

Chung, a filmmaker best known for the comparatively small “Minari,” has made a solid film with escalating action sequences that look great on the big screen.

Disney’s pleasantly entertaining, gorgeously rendered but slightly heavy-handed meditation on climate change and father-son dynamics.

Alice, Darling is a little thinly sketched and lacks a strong sense of directorial perspective. But, in shirking genre contrivance, Nighy gets the most essential thing right, authentically capturing a not-uncommon real-life experience with rare nuance.

Drop, a silly but suspenseful new thriller, carries on the tradition of “When a Stranger Calls” and “Phone Booth” by situating its tension around mysterious, threatening phone messages.

To the filmmakers’ credit, they don’t manufacture a motivation where there wasn’t one. There’s no need. The unembellished horror of this real-life tale is way more than enough.

While “Magazine Dreams” is an interesting character study, one many actors would love to play for all its dramatic opportunities, it also seems crafted entirely to provoke and shock — especially in the almost unbearably bleak final hour.

The saddest thing about “Transformers One” is the wastefulness of another dull outing in a universe geared toward kids just learning to transform themselves.

What makes The Black Phone stand out is how it perfectly captures what growing up was like in the often raw ’70s and an utter respect for the world of kids. Every adult is either dismissive and distant — or downright murderous.

To say that the many parts of In the Fade are held together by Kruger would be an understatement. As a cocktail of grief, fury and regret, she’s a remarkably original protagonist — a chain-smoking, tattooed mother who, in her trauma, is always a breath away from drowning.

Five years after we just went through (at least a lot of) this, “Eddington” somehow seems both too late and too soon, especially when it offers so little wisdom or insight beyond a vision of hopelessness.

Bursts of intense violence are punctuated with sometimes tedious blocks of speeches and silence, but Hostiles, despite its posture of brutal amorality, has a goodness at its core, of understanding and empathy. It also has something that so many sequel and franchise-hungry studios today wouldn’t dare show — an actual ending.

Objectivity is not Meeropol’s goal here but better understanding of who this slippery character is, and this film succeeds in that.

A slinky, slick caper that finds ways to distort expectations while unfolding a puzzle-box narrative.

Rylance is also one of those few actors who can power an entire film, and The Phantom of the Open definitely rides on the strength of his signature quirky energy as it tells the true-life story of Maurice Flitcroft, a shipyard crane operator from northern England who stunned the golfing world in 1976 by entering the British Open under false pretenses — he’d never played a round of golf — and shooting the worst qualifying round in Open history.

The plot is simplistic, but the film makes no pretense. It is aimed at the action fans, and it should immensely please them. [11 Apr 1983]

Despite its grainy, VHS aesthetics, “The Smashing Machine” is a surprisingly conventional and oddly untroubled movie, albeit one that gives Johnson an indie-film platform for one of his finest performances.

What it certainly is, though, is a very solid comic book movie. It’s a little surface over substance, and the time capsule feeling is pervasive. This is an earnest-enough superhero movie where even the angry mob protesting the superheroes turns quiet and pensive.

It feels strange to want a movie to be longer, but in the case of Last Breath I was both desperate for it to end, for anxiety reasons, and also wanting more.

This is a very big, very (very!) loud, very jumpy horror flick, and the screams will come, and they’ll be audible. Which is precisely what “Alien” fans are surely waiting for.

It just doesn’t have the exciting, lightning-in-a-bottle feel that the wonderful original had. Perhaps that was too much to ask.

Gretel & Hansel is as visually arresting as it is tedious, a 90-minute movie that really should have been a 3-minute music video for Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne. It’s in the horror genre only loosely. It’s more eerie, if that’s a genre. Actually, it’s like dread for 90 minutes. It’s dreadful.

Goth is compelling again as Maxine, especially in a killer audition scene, but her character feels underwritten.

Literal-minded moviegoers will find it easy to hate Pennies from Heaven. But those willing to go along with the device will find the film a source of constant surprise and delight. [14 Dec 1981]

I spent over two hours with Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers and I still have no idea what her personality is. Sure, there’s a lot more going on in Captain Marvel, but it’s a pretty egregious failing considering that the creative bigwigs at Marvel had 10 years and 20 films to work it out.

The actors perform their deadpan duties satisfactorily. The news about Charlie Sheen is his pumped-up body. Look out, Arnold and Sly! Bridges is amusingly wild-eyed as the bionic president, and Golino manages to be sexy and funny at the same time.

Certainly the film has a fascinating premise, one that would have worked well enough were it totally fictional — but works better with the knowledge that it’s based on fact.

You’d have to be a certain kind of grinch not to get swept up in the hurdles and triumphs, especially with such a compelling lead performance from Jharrel Jerome. And yet for a story about a guy who shattered expectations, the film itself is rather conventional.

Kiri is exceptional in carrying a film in which she’s the only talking, present actor. But that a movie so threadbare manages to feel like too much is both the film’s accomplishment and its failure.

The Lost Bus is about a few ordinary people in an impossible situation just trying to survive. While it’s not hard to wring emotion out of an audience watching kids in peril, it also, in some ways, gets right to the very heart of the matter.

The Bad Guys 2 has clearly lost its moorings.

The question, ultimately, is whether Bombshell ought to have spun quite so snappy a movie out of such a story. It does cartwheels to make a vile tale compelling, and it can feel like a parade of starry impressions rather than something genuine.

It’s a well-plotted film that excellently mixes gore and humor while also offering some social commentary by torching the clueless rich.

Luhrmann never does anything by half measures, but perhaps one of the most striking thinks about Elvis is how ultimately restrained it is in the end.

Here is a sweeping historical tapestry — no one does it better today than Scott — with a damning, almost satirical portrait at its center. That mix — Scott’s spectacle and Phoenix’s the-emperor-has-no-clothes performance — makes Napoleon a rivetingly off-kilter experience.

The film nicely sends up spy capers, Broadway and buddy movies and is a lot like its two leading characters: Kindly, a little silly and as sweet as a candy-colored drink at the pool bar.

It’s the kind of comic, eminently British underdog story that Frears excels at. And with Sally Hawkins playing Langley as a woman undeterred by pompous academics and condescending naysayers, The Lost King makes for a charmingly droll tale of long-ago and not-so-long-ago reappraisal.

Vol. 3 is a messy, overstuffed finale. But you rarely question whether Gunn’s heart is in it. Sometimes it spoils some of that effect by trying too hard to juxtapose tonal extremes, and show off its brash juggling act. Yet whatever this sweet, surreal sci-fi shamble is that Gunn has created, everyone here seems to believe ardently in it.

The force is not strong in “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” a shallow “Man on Wire” for social media influencers about a pair of Russian daredevils who stealthily scale urban heights to attain the precious treasure of a much-liked Instagram post.

Seeing Hamburger Hill is like watching the 6 o'clock news almost two decades ago. Part of this reality is due to the special effects, which were coordinated by Joe Lombardi. The napalm sears the screen; the tracers rip right through it. [14 Oct 1987]

Have plenty of tissues nearby when you watch the top-notch Netflix film All Together Now, a teary tale of fellowship.

The movie could have benefited on a little focus and not so much fan service, especially considering how good all of the ensemble actors are in these roles. Perhaps that’s why Fellowes couldn’t choose just one.

Flight of the Navigator won't earn a place among Disney's classics, but it's a perfectly entertaining sci-fi movie that does a creditable job with the stale human-meets-alien theme. [18 Sep 1986]

Gladiator II isn’t quite the prestige film the first one, a best-picture winner, was in 2001. It’s more a swaggering, sword-and-sandal epic that prizes the need to entertain above all else.

For all these characters, something about being subjugated by someone else provides a perverse sense of comfort.

Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, a rollicking virtual-world geekfest flooded by ’80s ephemera, doesn’t just want to wade back into the past. It wants to race into it at full throttle. For those who get their fix through pop nostalgia, “Ready Player One” is — for better or worse — an indulgent, dizzying overdose.

I thought that The Muppet Christmas Carol was a wonderful movie. The Muppets' re-enactment of the story was funny and touching and full of Christmas spirit. Michael Caine was a perfect Scrooge, in looks, manner and expression. [9 Sept 1992]

This film’s biggest lack is the connective tissue — we don’t ever really understand, alas, how young Trump became President Trump.

Greyhound is perhaps not so much a thriller as a very spare, economical drama.

The film, which runs over two hours, is building to a profound conclusion, a payoff for all the slow-paced and melancholy moments that preceded it. But it requires definite patience from its audience that it doesn’t necessarily earn just by existing.

Somehow, this amusingly chaotic mashup of genres finds a way to strike a final note that’s simple and true.

The Creator is an original movie too, and even if it is a somewhat convoluted and silly mishmash of familiar tropes and sci-fi cliches, it still evokes the feeling of something fresh, something novel, something exciting to experience and behold — which is so much more than you can say about the vast majority of big budget movies these days.

Gyllenhaal is absolutely commanding throughout the lean 91-minute runtime, a compelling ball of stress, anxiety and frustration working only with computer screens, phones and disembodied voices. It is no understatement that the success of The Guilty rests entirely on his shoulders.

You can see why Hold the Dark might have made a compelling book, but the film is one grim and pitiless journey.

It is deep and surreal and often adorable. Is it high concept or low? Like Williams, it’s a bit of both.

Nyad is balanced between Diana’s admirably insane ambition and Bonnie’s loyal (up to a point) support for her friend. In any case, it’s a reminder, like a pail of cold water, of just how good Foster can be.

The story of centerfold girl Dorothy Stratton has been told before, in a television movie and countless articles. But Fosse gives it new and immediate strength through his superior talent as a filmmaker. [7 Nov 1983]

On Swift Horses belongs in the same category as other hushed ’50s-set same-sex romances, like Todd Haynes’ “Carol” or Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” But this adaptation hasn’t made the leap to the screen very well. Sometimes swift horses stumble.

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.

In the end, “A New Era” is a misnomer of a title — not much has changed, which actually may be the best gift to “Downton” fans. After a tough couple of years, you could do worse than this, the latest in what may end up being a line of sequels as long as the Crawley bloodline.

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

When it’s at its best, I’m Your Woman feels like you’ve slipped through a trap door, revealing a hidden pathway in an old genre apparatus.

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]

Shyamalan doesn’t pump up the violence, nor does he rely on plot twists to carry Knock at the Cabin along. Instead, the film works as a brutal, neatly distilled kind of morality play that toys with fatalism, family and climate change allegory.

Robin Williams discards his Morkisms for a credible portrait of the fated hero, and the rest of the cast is remarkably good, especially Mary Beth Hurt as his wife, Glenn Close as his mother and John Lithgow as the transsexual former tight end of the Philadelphia Eagles. [23 July 1982]

Molina’s main stage might be a dull, claustrophobic prison cell, but Tonatiuh’s performance is vibrant technicolor.

Cage perfectly expresses the rage and frustration of the postponed bridegroom, and Miss Parker is a real find. Caan completes the triangle with insidious charm. [28 Aug 1992]

While the movie isn’t quite as clever as it thinks it is, the Zellners have a sweet, likable sense of humor tinged with tragedy. And they remain filmmakers to watch.

Like a haphazardly planted garden, it’s lot of ideas that don’t seem to create anything terribly coherent but it has its individual pleasures nonetheless.

This fabulous, moody film isn’t your typical jock flick where bitter rivals compete to a crowning, sweaty end. There isn’t a real victor in Borg Vs. McEnroe and the points don’t prove anything. It’s less a tennis movie than a meditation on the personal costs of chasing excellence.

Unsane, a pulpy psychological thriller, is an exercise in both genre and technology. It’s a B-movie iMovie. And it’s 98 minutes of proof that the laborious apparatus of filmmaking can be not only light on its feet, but fit snuggly inside your pocket.

A first-class thriller that will strike a terrifying note with anyone who's ever met the roommate from hell. [12 Aug 1992]

Someone Great has not exactly rewritten the rom-com rule book. Where it distinguishes itself is in the fresh faces of it cast (the rom-com is not known as the most diverse of genres) and in focusing on the hard realities of breakup rather than the fairytale of falling in love.

Triangle of Sadness, which clocks in at almost two and a half hours, is at its sharpest before the symphony of bodily fluids and survival plots arrive.

Both Lane and Costner, direct and earthy performers from the start, have only added depth with age. As long-married Montana ranchers in Let Him Go (in theaters Friday), they’re basically the platonic ideal of an old-fashioned, homespun Americana. They could sell you a mountain of jeans if they wanted to.

Is it all a little much? Of course, but that’s kind of the point of Maria.

Many of its twists aren’t hard to see coming, and the movie sometimes lacks the scale needed for a sprawling battle. But a mustachioed Odenkirk with a shotgun is, by most metrics, more than enough firepower for any movie.

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]

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.

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.

Beau Is Afraid takes a long road — and one with a lot of yelling and sniveling along the way — to not get very far. That could, of course, be the point. But the simpering sad sack Beau — despite Phoenix’s typically committed and sympathetic performance — remains curiously void, stuck in a one-note nightmare.

Kenneth Branagh indulges in the kind of macabre theatricality that only a crumbling Venetian palazzo on a stormy Halloween night can provide in A Haunting in Venice.

But if defying one’s heteronormative programming and entering the Matrix was once a balletic finesse, in “Resurrections” the battle is blunter and the tone less exultant.

The pleasures of Uncorked are in how it gently eludes stereotype and brings a rich sense of texture to even its smaller moments.

It’s a kind of over-the-top, “Misery”-styled meditation on entrenched gender cliches in heterosexual dating.