Broad, loud and crammed full of costumed characters and stage asides about the poverty of the script, it's typical pantomime, with a thin plot on which to hang the over-the-top performances and light-hearted musical numbers (by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil). [16 Feb 1996]

The cast of aliens, led by Matsuda, has great fun playing the humans-in-training, but it's Nagasawa's defeated young wife who really stands out as the performance that elevates the film.

You may find yourself having more kinky fun in The Wanderers than you have had in any American movie for a long time, but when you try to grasp the meaning of what you've seen, you find yourself clutching at moonbeams. [31 Aug 1979]

Elvis is as much a ride following the highs and lows of the musician’s fabulously rich and sad life as it is a one-way journey into the extremities of its director’s exhaustive imagination. For better, and worse.

A film with enough sexy one-liners to tempt Mae West from the grave.

Identity opens with its mind nicely intact, suffers a major crisis about 30 minutes in, then bad turns to worse.

It's a bright, busy imitation of independent moviemaking. But it's hardly an independent film. Hopefully, next time out, director Crowley, a promising storyteller, will find his own story to tell.

Give it an A for concept -- a bizarre marionette version of a Jerry Bruckheimer-style action movie; B for its occasional moments of convulsively funny comedy; and D for the politics, for pandering to exactly the kind of reactionary sentiments it purports to satirize.

The cast is equally strong (especially McDonnell), but the vast subject and the shifting settings force Kasdan all over the map. [10 Jan 1992]

For Napoleon, Scott gives every last little slice of himself – the dramatist, the set-piece strategist, even, and especially, the comedian – to deliver what just might be his late-career masterpiece.

You Kill Me is not so much a bad film as one filled with missed potential and marked by the seams of compromise.

So why does the thing play like a mediocre sitcom stripped of its laugh-track?

A stylish, brutal affair that delivers grim atmosphere and punishing violence but loses impact in telegraphing its political punches.

One part relationship comedy, one part existential human drama, one part environmental warning and, regrettably, one part white-saviour myth, Alexander Payne’s Downsizing is a beautiful, confounding creation.

Think of one of Wiig’s closer-to-1 a.m. Saturday Night Live sketches coloured with the purposefully unpalatable aesthetic sensibilities of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and you’ll start to form the right picture. If none of the above appeals or even makes sense in the slightest, then feel free to run far, far away.

Overnuanced, a world of delicate cruelty, where most of the wounds take place without breaking the skin or even a sweat.

A well-layered film makes a fascinating case for forgiveness and a sharp rebuke of Bible-taught eye-for-an-eye revenge.

Cloverfield is an exercise in realism that lacks reality's broader and richer context. Or, put another way, the experiment is artful, but it ain't art.

What hurts Miles Ahead, though, is a lack of imagination.

Fury is a war movie with balls of steel and marbles for brains.

Really, Young Victoria is just a lot of costumes in fond search of some drama. And finding precious little.

Essentially a love story, as stripped of sentimentality as the landscape is shorn of green, yet an extraordinary love story nonetheless – powerful and poignant and, even in the midst of hope's imminent extinction, hopeful too.

On the whole, the film is content to lumber awkwardly between the condemned man on death row and the intrepid reporter on his save-a-life beat -- there's about as much rhythm in the style as there is sense in the plot.

Surf's Up is that rarity in a children's movie, a comedy that's actually exciting.

Miss Sloane is a powerfully conceived thriller with something dead at its centre: there is no reason a female protagonist must be good or well-behaved, but she must at least be interesting.

Vivarium is an exercise in wringing dry the audience’s emotions until we’re nothing but husks. For some, that could be appreciatively cathartic right about now. Myself, I felt little other than a deep and nagging depression.

The movie is often both smart and creepy, but it's still a novice effort. After an initially engrossing start, it stumbles through a series of implausible coincidences and murky events, barely held together by the magnetic performance of Javier Bardem.

Unfortunately, the actual confrontations this project must have caused happen off camera, but the story of a determined quest is always enlivened by insights into the clawing animals, bizarre monsters and sinful humans that populate Bosch’s fantastical visions.

At its most interesting when it shows the lives of women and children prisoners, the film has the feel of a movie-of-the-week cliché when it returns to Julia's improbable crime.

This feeble documentary ends up perpetuating the very hypocrisy it means to probe.

A film I had to watch with my hands over my face at times. Part horror, suspense thriller and comedy, Come to Daddy gives us some very creative mutilation, plenty of second-hand embarrassment and laughs in a perfectly paced hour and a half.

As provocative as it is timely.

While a lot of geography is covered, as a concert film, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is decidedly thin entertainment.

The cast is solid; Everett’s acting in particular is deep, indelible and award-worthy. We smell Oscar, one might say.

The movie's title proves to be not entirely a case of bait-and-switch. The film really is a homage to vintage Hollywood comedy.

That makes Mockingjay – Part 1 an experience to be endured, like a prison sentence, rather than enjoyed. By all means, bring on the revolution: It has to be more exciting than this.

It’s frequently funny and entertaining enough, but its insights are far from revolutionary.

It’s a twisted existential grotesque that wrings thought-provoking pathos and even affection for the lunatics running the menagerie, no mean feat.

Speaking as one of the mourners, did I mention how pleasant it is to revisit footage of John Lennon? And to listen to his music which, in this case, comes either in taped performances or laid onto the soundtrack, no fewer than 40 songs drawn almost exclusively from the post-Beatle, pro-Ono phase of his career.

At around the hundred-minute mark, everything in Gunn’s perfect little cinematic galaxy falls apart in a magnificently depressing fashion. It is as if the MCU higher-ups got wind of what was going down and quickly engineered a black hole of studio notes to suck the Guardians into a tesseract of meaningless set-pieces and prolonged B-plot detours.

This parade of admiration is almost as exhausting as the experience of a Motörhead concert.

A shamelessly commercial and determinedly vulgar director, such as Flash Gordon's Mike Hodges, might have made the film work; it might have succeeded on one level instead of failing on many. [13 Dec 1980, p.E7]

The movie does offer one historical first: Ferrell, who previously appeared with comedian Sacha Baron Cohen ( Borat) in "Talladega Nights," now appears with skater Sasha Cohen (one point).

Those Hollywood tricksters have managed to shorten the story while slowing the pace -- all of a sudden, minutes are passing like hours.

If only Moretti had had the faith in his story and its gentle, organic comedy, and done away with the forced silliness.

The film Cloak and Dagger is like a visit to the midway; fast and noisy and a lot of unsophisticated fun. [10 Aug 1984]

It's a downbeat flick forged by an upbeat talent - despite the angst in the frames, you can feel the joy of the framer. [23 June 1995]

It don't mean nothin'. [28 Aug 1987]

Perversely enough, the comedy is what keeps the picture rolling; it's the so-called action that persists in bringing the thing to a screeching halt.

Here’s how good an actor Bill Murray is. He does such a bristly, entertaining turn as a boozy curmudgeon in St. Vincent, that he saves first-time director Theodore Melfi’s obvious dramedy from sliding into a burbling sinkhole of schmaltz.

The fact that these atrocities are not well known in the West is a good reason for this film to exist.

Suspense picture veteran Curtis Hanson (he directed The Bedroom Window and Bad Influence and wrote The Silent Partner) disguises the contrivances with energy and admirable performances, and the audience squeals and cheers on cue. [13 Jan 1992]

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

Fried Green Tomatoes was obviously cooked up with the best of intentions but, like the dish to which it refers, it's rudimentary eats - not quite junk food, but not quite nourishing, either. [03 Jan 1992]

Icy landscapes, the cozy tones of Queen Latifah and a walrus-farting scene that rivals the campfire bean-fuelled explosions of "Blazing Saddles" help make Arctic Tale, a new wildlife documentary, a fun family indoor excursion.

There is no tragic hero here; there is no overarching explanation, but a movie that offered either of those would seem pretty pat. Take it or leave, Everest is just there.

With a plot focus on the exotic, ever-more anachronistic Edwardian manners and mores occasioned by royal protocol, it’s like a crossover episode with "The Crown."

Worse still is his idiotic tampering with the so-called "Happy Ending" -- in print, it's bleakly ironic; on screen, incongruously sentimental.

At best, the film makes a more convincing case for the adventure of artificiality: Take Billy Crudup, add a little rouge to his cheeks and suddenly: Voilà, the guy can act.

There's little doubt a person can get a little pent-up looking for a good romantic comedy -- but you might want to save yourself until something better comes along.

The combination of DiCaprio's soulful, self-effacing work in Scorsese's "The Departed," and this unexpectedly complex portrait in a simple-minded movie, make it the best year of his career since the big boat crash of 1997.

In the recent "Half Nelson," a similarly themed classroom pic, liberalism struggled to balance its lingering hopes with its systemic despair. That film was pure fiction, yet felt absolutely true. This one is apparent fact, yet seems abjectly false.

Have you ever seen a movie you half-liked a lot?

All the silliest racist cliches are perpetrated: the dark people with their dark magic; British actress Cathy Tyson, as a Haitian psychiatrist who is occasionally possessed by demons and lapses into frenzied love-making; evil third world politics hand-in-hand with black sorcery. [5 Feb 1988]

Every season it appears that Hollywood has truly and finally run out of comic things to say with coming- of-age scenarios, and every once in a while it's demonstrated that the genre simply needs intelligent handling. Once Bitten is one of the better things to happen lately to adolescent sex comedies simply because it isn't gross; because it isn't mean- minded; because Jim Carrey has a way of pouting that makes him look like he has buck teeth. [27 Nov 1985]

The Traitor is an exploration of betrayal, according to Bellocchio. He seems to be asking, can a man truly change the course of his life, or is it just a pretense? Unfortunately, this account of Buscetta’s story doesn’t really give us any answers.

To give filmmaker Russ Meyer his own due, the women here are freed up to love sex as much as are the men, although it's pretty obvious his message was less directed at 1970s feminists than at horny guys hoping beyond hope that chicks want 24-hour-a-day fornication. [31 Jan 2004, p.48]

While Trauma is a veritable stew of psychological motivation compared to so many of the director's other films, the prevailing motivation remains, just as it is with Argento's killers, technique. [15 Sep 1993]

Mescal and Pascal are both fine; though they often seem too overwhelmed by the tired plot machinations to really make an impression beyond how fine they both look in Roman garb.

While the situation is played for dark laughs, Odenkirk’s commitment to the role is dead serious. He makes its ridiculousness believable. By the end of Nobody, I wanted desperately for the producers of the next Fast & Furious film to cast Odenkirk as the muscle-car-driving villain. In your heart of hearts, you know it would work, too.

TERRIFIC cast, imaginative direction - Patriot Games is such an enjoyable film that you keep hoping it will go the extra mile, that it will transcend the action-genre and progress from an intelligently made picture to an intelligently themed picture, That it doesn't - not quite, anyway - is mildly disappointing but easily forgiven; there's a lot to be grateful for here. [9 June 1992]

It's a film that will both captivate and divide audiences.

“I have a theory that less becomes more,” Halston purrs in one early interview. The opposite may well be true, and the same could be said for this documentary.

If you want a movie to nail-gun you to your seat, then you must visit Greenland.

A truly torturous experience for almost everyone involved – up to and including the starry cast of Lanthimos regulars, who must now surely realize they have been duped by a master cinematic con artist – the film is an aggressively juvenile and tedious dissection of the notion of free will.

That feelgood story of a long dormant musical dream finally realized was enough to earn major press attention, but is it enough for a feature-length film? Probably not, which is why writer-director Pohlad piled on the melodrama and leaned into clichés.

So much of Ready Player One is assembled from the detritus of our past that it is less a film and more an overstuffed cultural recycling bin. A shiny, expensive, well-cast and professionally assembled recycling bin, sure, but a trash heap all the same.

Rather than build on the new momentum, this one's a bit more of a cruise-control effort.

The result, like so many stout travellers from stage to screen, is respectable. Stolidly, bloodlessly, yawningly respectable.

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.

Jack Goes Boating barely stays afloat – it's a deep disappointment.

YOU'VE gotta love the casting. Defying the skeptics, The Great Gonzo keeps his furious urges in check and transforms himself into none other than the prolific Charles Dickens, popping up on camera to act as our narrative guide through his Christmas Carol classic. For the feisty one, it's a remarkable stretch. [15 Dec 1992]

Rosen has not so much adapted Watership Down as he has intelligently condensed it, and compensated for the simplifications with pleasures books can't provide. [20 Jan 1979]

While The Lodge isn’t as hearty as the horror films it desperately wants to emulate, the filmmakers have concocted a heavy stew of emotions, left on a low simmer. In the cold winter season of "IT" children orphan horror movies, it will have to suffice our cravings.

Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who takes much delight in exposing the blinding sunlight and dusky interiors of old Hollywood, the film is lightly entertaining but largely pointless.

Lush, loud and sparkling, and not nearly as innocent as you might imagine.

Easily the best scene of Nymphomaniac occurs in the first two hours, when Joe finds herself the other woman in a marriage breakup.

Designer babies rule dystopia in stylish SF thriller filled with recycled plot devices.

Sure, it's a bit mechanical, but what did you expect? The important thing is that the characters and jokes don't prevent you from grooving on the pleasures of the moving parts.

The film lacks flow, unfolding in a rat-a-tat series of short, artfully lensed scenes -- individually nice but collectively jerky.

There is nothing dry about Last Call at the Oasis, Jessica Yu's engaging, informative and fast-flowing documentary exploring the global water crisis.

Unlike its subject, The Apprentice largely sticks to documented facts. Most of the cheating, lies, greed, vanity and misogyny on display are hardly new or shocking, and rather mild compared to what’s to come.

But Schneider, whose only other directing credit is the extremely low-key 2009 family drama "Get Low," finds a way to portray the nautical action with clarity and precision. You might not know what Krause and his crew are saying at all times, but you definitely know what they’re witnessing.

A mildly enjoyable if toothless adaptation of a much better book.

By the end of Trekkies,you almost feel the best way to bring peace to the Middle East would be to hold a Star Trek convention there.

At his best, Clint directed as he acted -- sparely, laconically, but concisely, with a clean precision. There are flashes of that trademark style early on, but it soon degenerates badly.

The movie is entertaining on a rudimentary, never-to-be-taken-seriously level. On the rare occasions when it does rise above the material, it's because Pierce Brosnan is chillingly effective as an assassin with the body temperature of a snake. [26 Aug 1987]

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.