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.