Despite the Spielberg trademarks, a lavish attention to period detail and the occasional flash of visual potency, this is a picture you never get caught up in.

Brave feels like a merely good-enough children's movie.

Regardless of its flimsy emotional interior, Ricki is a worthy addition in this year’s growing canon of strong female-centred films.

The effort is admirable, the movie not so much, and yet, contrary to most pictures, it does improve towards the end. At least a little.

Michael Keaton’s go-for-broke performance is such a possessed work of splatter comedy that he almost proves right the producers who have been advocating for this nostalgia-play cash grab for decades.

Ghostbusters II is a comfy experience for all concerned - easy bucks for the producers, easier yuks for the consumers; nothing ventured, money gained. [19 Jun 1989, p.D9]

Shtick is what Twins is all about, but there's good shtick and bad shtick, and there's enough good shtick in Twins, the majority of it involving Arnold Schwarzenegger's exposure to modern U.S. mores, to keep the momentum going. [10 Dec 1988, p.C3]

Hanks doesn't quite manage a miracle this time, but thanks to a competent (if sometimes scatter-brained) script and a co-star who looks like a cross between Orson Welles and a spawn of the devil and who produces saliva like OPEC produces oil, Turner and Hooch ends up an amusing diversion that sprays gags - messy gags, wise-ass gags - as often as Hooch sprays the furniture with his excess spittle. Which is very often indeed. [28 July 1989]

Padilha is trying something noble here: to give every side its due. Unfortunately, he gives us a lesson in moral complexity instead of a movie.

Grandly overblown and deeply cornball.

And, in a pointless riffing on the title, there are ginger kitties galore -- this flick has enough cats to launch a Broadway musical.

In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the times may be hard but the apocalypse is soft. Welcome to the anti-"Melancholia."

Often funny, always telling, this is the kind of not- quite-successful comedy that is fraught with not-quite-intentional meaning. From the pun in the title to the echoes in the script, Class is a pop sociologist's dream. [22 July 1983]

There's an aspirational pleasure in seeing Cruise, now in his mid-50s, jump through these hoops. He knows we prefer him when he shades his easy charm with self-doubt, and Barry has a pleasingly sweaty desperation.

Here's what's good about The Good German: The look is fantastic; technically, the movie is a retro marvel. Here's what's bad: The script sucks; it keeps promising to be clever, engaging, subtle and completely fails to deliver.

Whenever the story’s central tension threatens to get interesting and complicated, the filmmakers deflate it in the most obvious of ways.

The whole cast is capable. The comedy doesn’t pop, though, and even a nifty late-film reveal can’t save this film from failing to live up to its potential.

Laughter, tears and Bette Midler: Santa's done a whole lot worse. [23 Dec 1988]

Not even Pacino can save it.

Days of Thunder relies on charm, loud noise and a few racing sequences to print money with Cocky's visage on the bills: there can be no suspense because there can be no possibility Cocky will lose. [29 Jun 1990, p.C1]

Despite its lapses in credibility, the screenplay does offer both wit and numerous surprise twists, as well as all that non-stop action. And it's a nice change to see an action movie in which the hero, Russell's Grant, isn't some muscle-bound squinter. [15 Mar 1996]

Gordon-Levitt, absent from the big screen since 2016′s "Snowden," oscillates nicely between maintaining an air of remarkable calm and then breaking down completely, and he pretends to know what all those airplane buttons do quite well.

Joker reveals itself as very expensive cosplay: effective at first glance, but at its seams superficial, disposable and dishonest.

Woodshock is a sensuous, visual tone poem of human consciousness. It works even when the languid pace, disorienting shifts and Theresa's elastic perception of time stretch a little too thin.

It's all such a throwback, and yet there's something rather sweet about the way this pot boils.

An amiable crowd-pleaser, nothing more, nothing less. [27 Nov 1987]

Silly, and unashamedly second-hand, the movie is essentially a Jack Black movie without Jack Black, which is, arguably, an improvement.

Deep Impact, a triple-strand ensemble disaster flick, has a few good opening minutes, the biggest tidal wave you've ever seen in the closing minutes, and a cluster of little meandering melodramas in between.

Too bad. What dreams may come, indeed, when such enticing foreplay ends with a consummation devoutly to be missed.

The most sentimental Italian movie about surviving the war since "Life is Beautiful."

When the tent folds and the dust settles, the question is not whether the movie is good – sorry, not a chance – but whether it's garish enough, sappy enough, Hollywood enough to rise to the level of being likeably bad. Is it, in short, a guilty pleasure?

Parents should find the warm-and-fuzzy sentiments of the movie tolerable, mostly thanks to the reliable star, Michael Keaton. [11 Dec 1998, p.C3]

Though Sandler's resemblance to a pro athlete is indiscernible, his mockery of authority and his penchant for buffoonery and slapstick violence make him more of an heir to Reynolds than might be expected.

Just like its mobile incarnation, The Angry Birds Movie 2 simply pelts you with loud, shrieking diversions. The filmmaking has levelled up, but you’re still wasting your time.

Not that The Nutty Professor should ever be confused with a good movie, but it is a perfect vehicle for the redisplay of Murphy's neglected talents, steering him away from the smug persona of his recent disasters and whisking him back to the cozy locale of his Saturday Night Live roots.

Frears has attempted to fashion a contemporary message of diversity and inclusion delivered by a tolerant and culturally inquisitive Queen in opposition to her hide-bound and racist courtiers, but in the end that theme is undercut by the film's own Eurocentric realities.

Tower Heist is as over-inflated as those Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons that are featured in the movie's climax. Also similarly, it's entertaining in its own predictable way.

The movie begs for a a third-act showdown but, instead, the dramatic tension is allowed to leak away.

To use the parlance of young people these days, Quickening is a mood.

The few parts of director Gene Stupnitsky’s film that feel new, then, don’t feel that new at all, from the ultra-shaggy plot to the gross-out gags that misunderstand the power that repetition might hold.

Sorry, but the real Grimms did a whole lot more with a great deal less.

Anyone expecting another dark satiric film in the same vein of Harron's earlier movies will be disappointed. Perhaps as befits a bondage-themed picture, The Notorious Bettie Page is very restrained, even a little starchy.

AT the end of the preview screening of Regarding Henry earlier this week, I sat with one tear welling in the corner of my left eye and a nagging feeling of annoyance at having been so shamelessly manipulated. [10 July 1991]

Yet -- and this must be said in all fairness -- as things progress, the magic of the story asserts itself over the audience.

If you're in the mood for tears and triumph, with a dash of exoticism, Together may well be the film for you.

Essentially Masterpiece Theatre comfort food, a chance to watch fine actors act without too many complications.

With a curiously stubborn kind of integrity, Tron: Legacy follows what did and didn't work the first time – another weak story with sub-B-movie dialogue, partly compensated for by intensely conceived geometric design and special effects.

Creepshow is probably not everything the fans of each horrormeister hoped it would be (it is not, for example, in the same league as Cavalcanti's great anthology film, Dead of Night), but it's probably enough.[10 Nov 1982]

These are valid ideas, but they don't always arise organically out of the script, and can seem clumsily expressed.

Crowe is too much the good employee to spin the yarn properly, to give the picture the very integrity it endorses. He might have made a more convincing movie had he first convinced himself.

Gimmickry is death to this sort of artsy endeavour -- it turns a movie with a small budget into a small movie.

Amounts to a complete misreading of Wilde, who used the conventions of artifice to lampoon artificiality. Parker totally misses the point by tacking on such cinematic curlicues -- apparently, in his eagerness to seem movie-friendly, he's too hung up on the importance of not being earnest.

Visually exhilarating as it may be, it’s worthwhile to remember that RRR is inspired by true events. It’s a work of historical fiction that’s just as inventive as its thrilling special effects.

This fluffy escape flick, directed by Ivan Reitman, is a TV sitcom plot grafted onto a travel brochure.

Will Ferrell is a scream, no doubt about it. And Anchorman contains some of his best work. But, Knights of Columbus! Wouldn't it be great if TV-based comedians weren't afraid of making movies that were funnier than they are?

Regresses into a lame action-thriller.

As with his other costume farce, "Stage Beauty" (with Billy Crudup and Claire Danes), Hatcher produces more froth than zest.

May not be the most scary or the grossest horror film you've ever seen, but it has one distinct feature: it actually talks up to the audience. By the conclusion, you won't be shaking in your seat, but you may enjoy the status of someone who has earned a Master's in Slashology.

The spaghetti western may be dead, but the noodle eastern looks to be alive and well.

It’s a film that considers young heartbreak so earnestly, it risks taking itself too seriously, too.

A serviceable story served up as a large animation experience for kids.

Unlike Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," which was also inspired by Rackham, The Spiderwick Chronicles is more whimsical than scary.

Warning: Cars comes unequipped with two essential options -- charm and a good muffler.

It is an entertainingly cheesy narrative, but overly comfortable for someone such as Miike, whose gonzo talents seem somehow muted here.

Yet for all that the director's unflinching vision, the cast's excellent performances and Mikhail Krichman's unerring cinematography impress themselves upon the viewer, there is something out of balance in Loveless.

Elf is jolly but could have been jollier, funny but could have been funnier, charming but ... well, point made.

The pop-culture answer to a murder-suicide, the kind of flick that serves itself up as the object of its own satire.

If you like movies in which fashionably dressed people spend a lot of time smoking and talking cryptically about sex in dark, overfurnished Paris apartments, you should put down your café au lait and run out to see this film right now. If not, you probably just don't like French movies.

Not half bad for a formulaic rom-com.

At times, this cinema-vérité approach results in a claustrophobic and engrossing viewing experience. But its construction also frequently, and curiously, lacks urgency, and the few characters the filmmakers keep returning to never quite stick.

The new version is mildly entertaining with some fun performances.

A better, and more relevant movie, might have left us at the point of troubled introspection, but Costner is compulsive about tying up loose ends and upbeat messages. If the climax of Open Range is disappointing, the ending is almost intolerable.

In Hollywood, and perhaps beyond, there's nothing more predictable than a rebel with a cause. XXX pretends otherwise, but isn't really fooling anyone -- ultimately, this is a movie as generic as its title.

Appaloosa wobbles and wanders, promising to take a fresh look at those old myths, only to lapse back into weary convention.

A spring-autumn romance that comes with side helpings of local colour and melodramatic backstory.

Like most simplifications, Lean On Me's genially despotic approach has its attractions, and it works fine as a movie. Simplification worked fine in Rocky and in The Karate Kid, too, but unlike those essentially simple films, Lean On Me oversimplifies a very complex issue. And unlike those films, Lean On Me leaves one pondering the fact that, in real life, things aren't ever simple. [9 March 1989]

The charm of the movie's first 20 minutes soon turns shrill and manic, as invention is piled upon invention.

There are moments of salty wit to its teen TV sensibility, and the story offers proof, once again, than there are few stories that can't be adapted to the theme of teenaged popularity politics.

Tilting between a teen sex comedy and a more sensitive tale about male bonding, The Wood is too anxious to please to quite make up its mind what it is.

A revisiting of George Pal's 1960 adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel. Pal's take on the book was visually delightful and occasionally clever; this one is always workmanlike and mainly pedestrian.

Paine does offer something of a heroine in Chelsea Sexton; the attractive EV1 sales specialist was laid off in 2001, became an EV1 activist and is now executive director of Plug In America.

So that great start turns all clunky and dull and, you know, mediocre. Still, you'll love Emma. Emma is about as cute as a kid can get.

The Woman in the Fifth is an interesting chameleon until it runs out of disguises, and all that was transitory just looks transparent.

Flashy camera work, a clattering techno soundtrack and impressive synchronized stunt work fill where the plot goes AWOL.

The movie makes for quite a hike. It's also, at times, a bit of a slog.

The film doesn’t feel like homework. Still, while its description of the problem is convincing, you wish it could offer more of a prescription.

Damned if Parker hasn't done it again. An intermittently good filmmaker but a consistently bad polemicist, he may well sway opinion here -- but, oops, not in the hoped-for direction.

It soars, all right, but it does it on automatic pilot. [10 June 1983]

Despite (or maybe because of) its showy cleverness, Full Frontal merely seems full of itself -- it's a small film made by a big ego pretending to a modesty he no longer feels.

Of Course A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is repulsive. That is its primary attraction. All right-thinking people will steer clear. But wrong-thinkers with a taste for the grotesque will be in heaven, or the nearest satanic equivalent. [27 Feb 1987]

It's doubtful that today's children would have any patience for the stagy 1956 version, so the current animated offering, despite its flaws, at least opens a door to the music.

The picture is actually watchable. What's more, as romance comedies go, it's something of a novelty.

Only a few of the characters are well-developed enough to sustain the movie's interest, while the rest speak in obscure, poetic dialogue that repeats the central thesis ad nauseam.

Features an excellent cast, in particular the child actors. These elements, as well as the director's light unsentimental touch, make the struggles and triumphs in Small Voices ring truthful.

Not an extraordinary portrait, but it does portray an extraordinary man.

A wildly convoluted, preposterous vampire flick that is understood best as a sardonic social allegory.

The documentary seeks only to make a joyful noise, and is sometimes laboured in the love it so keenly wants to express. Then again, as Leonard would be the first to concede, there are worse sins than flawed worship.

Shaping the rhetoric of black activism and black liberation into accessible and demographic-spanning prose is no easy task. It is work which must be undertaken with intelligence, care and, above all, experience. It is no surprise then that the adaptation of Angie Thomas’s debut young-adult novel, The Hate U Give, into a big-budget studio picture loses much of its import in translation.