It's mainly a hunt for ironies, usually playful but occasionally poignant, and the search is definitely successful enough to merit our attention -- although maybe not the two-hour running time.

Where Smallfoot shines, though, is – like Warner’s Looney Tunes and Animaniacs before it – its slapstick physical comedy.

When the bloody climax comes, we look on apathetically, as desensitized to the violence as a pornographer is to sex.

More than sufficiently funny.

What we have here is a piece of comic fluff that, in the hands of these actors, gets turned into an occasionally charming piece of comic fluff. [29 May 1992]

Ultimately, the movie suffers from the same fate as its characters. That first explosive scene creates a state of shock, leaving everyone and everything to drift about in a numbing vacuum.

Though Zoom skillfully weaves together animation and live action, I was not stoned when I watched it, and I’m not a fan of plot-plot-plot. So it left me meh.

We learn a little about Jett’s activism, and hardly anything about her personal life.

In a better work, the filmmaker would talk to hardcore punks about their parents, affairs, regrets, dreams and day jobs in an effort to explore the fledgling movement. Here, however, we get little more than a marathon MTV rap session, as Rachman drives about North America, yakking with aging punk heroes about the good ol' bad ol' days.

It's no fun looking after a determined, self-justified alcoholic; or even watching him waste away. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life accepts its subject on his own terms. And the compromise feels like capitulation before its hero's last record spins to a close. The death of a ladies man is pretty grim sport after the ladies have gone.

The problem with car-racing movies, though, is that they are car-racing movies. Has any director found a way to spare audiences the eventual tedium of watching automobiles go around and around a track and instead capture the thrill of the sport?

I love the City of Light as much as any starry-eyed provincial, but Paris, je t'aime tries even my considerable patience.

The best one can say is that it's a smart cartoon, and a fairly exhausting viewing experience.

There are a few scenes where Theron is an inch away from completely rewriting the proceedings – she just needs a slight jolt in the right direction from her director, a nudge toward chaos. But filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood never quite delivers the inspirational spark her star needs to unleash such fury, and the resulting antics rest somewhere between spectacle and shoulder-shrug.

A melodrama split, then cross-connecting, into three separate parts, Drunken Birds is a startling thing that just narrowly avoids whiffing the landing.

The result is a war picture that, trying to pass off fidelity to the book as objectivity, sacrifices any voice of its own, and ends up not knowing what to think.

Jerzy Kosinski's witty but slim novel was based on a witty but thin conceit, and Hal Ashby's film of that novel is equally witty, equally thin. [09 Feb 1980]

At once cluttered and cavernous, hysterical and static, romantic and cynical, The Zero Theorem works most effectively moment by moment and in the details.

Americans is unimpeachable fun. Peter Segal doesn't aim high in this lampoon of U.S. presidents, but hits the target. [20 Dec 1996, p.C8]

As a movie, Blue Chips is more journeyman than star, but, once in a while, it hops off the bench and shows a surprising flash of talent.[22 Feb 1994]

Travolta's star presence is confirmed in Grease, a weak musical comedy vehicle . The strength of Travolta's performance isn't from dialogue but shots of Travolta reacting, suddenly becoming macho when he realizes the gang is watching him talk to his girlfriend or smothering a giggle after accidentally elbowing Olivia Newton-John in the breast. These moments alone make Grease worthwhile. [17 Jun 1978, p.P31]

At his best, Spike Lee is too brave to be subtle.

The film is dialogue-heavy, easily imaginable as a two-hander for the stage, but watching the ice-thawing process between the two enemies is less compelling on screen.

Avrich was probably wise to avoid lengthy digressions into Middle East politics, but if a great film takes the particular and makes it universal, this is not a great film. Given the war that has followed, this individual story must remain only that, circumscribed by the larger context that perforce it can barely acknowledge.

What is missing from Brothers of the Head is an equally sturdy connection between form and content.

Despite an impressive array of acting talent, nothing quite rings true -- all those sharp pieces fit beautifully together without adding up to much. [22 Jan 1999, p.D6]

1492 is a pretty good movie, but it isn't as good as you might like. Part of the problem is Roselyne Bosch's script. The screenwriter (and co-producer) seems so determined to make a hero of Columbus that she can't resist giving him every virtue and virtuous motive available, and placing him in direct opposition to every bad guy or bad idea around, including decadent aristocrats, ignorant priests, and the Church and the Inquisition in general. [12 Oct 1992]

If this review had to be in pantomime, it would be me head-banging and busting out some gnarly air guitar for an hour straight – and loving every minute of it. That’s how much fun this concert film is. But be warned: If you’ve never rocked-out to a Metallica song, or don’t even know what throwing the horns is, this movie is not for you.

Slam is a film about rap poetry, romance and gangster culture that blends melodrama, visceral excitement -- and a lot of preaching. [23 Oct 1998, p.D3]

When Anita Hill took her seat before an all-white Senate committee in 1991, the optics said nearly as much about the systemic dynamics of race, gender and power in American politics as any of the specifics of the case at hand.

As manipulative as a charmer with a snake, and twice as much fun... Shameless, yes, but open your eyes, close your mind, sit back and enjoy - 'cause it feels so good.

It makes for intriguing and often gripping viewing, but delivers a more confounding experience than is necessary. Still, the director knows how to break those bones real good.

When the larger question cannot be answered, the lesser one -- "What would you have done?" -- seems beside the point.

The most unexpected thing about the Lebanese film Caramel is its predictability.

Keating’s flattery is sincere, and so is his wish to stylishly freak you silly.

So long as you grit your teeth and keep your eyes on the screen, it’s an enjoyable, if almost academic, exercise in bad taste.

Unfortunately, the film also wants to show us what happens to veterans, both human and canine, when they return home and here it loses its way. The stateside scenes meander so much, you’ll find yourself in the unlikely position of wishing we were back in Iraq.

The film would go nowhere without Hogan. He's a charismatic chap with a pleasantly minimalist approach to humor. [27 Sept 1986, p.E6]

One distraction is that everything feels smothered in an extra helping of déjà vu sauce: another movie featuring a middle-aged misanthrope with a dewy younger woman; another film with stage magic as a theme.

Mixes broad slapstick and off-hand one-liners in a sometimes surprisingly funny mixture.

Not exactly a movie in the usual sense, not exactly a ride, Journey is more of a virtual theme-park simulation and possibly a milestone of immersive entertainment.

Gold is important because Gold is a great writer. No further argument necessary.

When Keoghan and Peters are onscreen, their performances are compelling enough, as is most of Layton’s narrative script – adding in the doc footage feels less revolutionary, and more like easy filler. It’s enough to feel, well, a bit robbed.

By the time we make it to the present, oddly represented by a towering digitized city and a handful of white children playing in an idyllic American setting, it becomes clear Mallick has little space for the multifaceted human race in his gorgeous cosmos.

The movie was partially shot in beautiful British Columbia. And Carrey brings a madcap mashup of his previous avatars to this turn as Dr. Robotnik.

The movie's last two minutes, in which they all do goofy dances and have no dialogue or script to get in their way, is easily the highlight. It's the previous 113 minutes of plot that cause problems.

We're left with the weakest part of the novel -- the lurching and often melodramatic plot -- plus the chance to see two splendid actors, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, do the best they can with what they're given (sadly, in Blanchett's case, not much). Okay, no one would call that trade-off a scandal, but it sure ain't much of a bargain.

It is almost criminal, though, that the end of this otherwise game-changing franchise full of bloodthirsty and complex women concludes on a painfully trite note – the strides made by all four films are undercut by Part 2’s underwhelming and hokey epilogue.

No matter how many times the script instructs us that Valmont is "conspicuously charming," Malkovich is not charming, conspicuously or otherwise.

While both the scenery and star Diane Lane are highly watchable, the movie is pure froth, a plate-sized helping of zabaglione.

The film is also weighed down with a hokey record-scratch moment, a triumphant big-game sequence and a church-set finale that seems to be aping "The Graduate" but doesn’t quite have the courage to fully embrace the comedy of the moment.

The mainstream prominence of pornography gets a shove forward with the teen comedy, The Girl Next Door, an improbably-not-terrible teen sex comedy.

IN THE BEGINNING, Ivan Reitman begat Animal House and Animal House begat Meatballs and Meatballs begat Stripes. In the end, the box-office deity surveyed this handiwork and pronounced it good. Good and stale. For you can tamper with the setting, you can fiddle with the cast but, by all that's holy in the land of the cash flow, don't ever mess with a lucrative premise. [27 June 1981]

Judi Dench is much more of a challenge. Drenched in powder and pomp, the grand old Dame pops up in a London carriage. She's there in a flash and then, as quickly, gone, and her fleeting presence is exactly like the fleeting merit of this fourth galleon in the portly franchise: It prompts stirrings, not quite all the way to feelings.

When Beans works, it resonates deeply. And when it doesn’t, it’s not a tragedy – just evidence of a filmmaker finding what works for her voice and vision, and what might work better for an anticipated follow-up.

The thing is just a clunky and tasteless and dumb scare picture, isn't it? Clunky, yes. Tasteless, for sure. But not so dumb I fear.

Dug Dug is cleverly crafted, with its sharp edits and evocative sound design lending some bite to the satire. When the truth is revealed at the end, it’s stranger than fiction.

Lucy, you may have twigged, is named after our 3.2-million-year-old hominid ancestor.

The other thing that sets this movie apart from the current crop of tongue-in-cheek screamers (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream) is that it's actually perversely intriguing, rather than just clever. [03 Nov 1997, p.C2]

Don't expect a Caravaggio, but if your taste turns to Hallmark, this is a good bet -- a straight-up Nativity story as safe as death and taxes.

Director Robbins is a natural - he has managed to make a movie that is entertaining despite the handicap of having a main character who is at best a black hole. [30 June 1981]

Part "Billy Elliot" and part Chadha’s own underdog hit "Bend It Like Beckham," Blinded by the Light is a feel-good coming-of-age movie that often feels way too good about itself.

There are flashes of excitement in this film, mostly from the verbal play and sulphurous humour of Welsh's perspective, but there's a lot that makes you wonder why you're sitting through it.

Despite its name, L'Amour Fou, a documentary about the late fashion genius Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé, is not entirely a love story. Really, it's a story of loneliness and loss.

Time and again, the story simply stops for another tune from the band. Then again, without the buoyant sounds of Moten Swing, Tickle Toe, Yeah Man and the rest, Kansas City would be an even less appealing film than it already is. [16 Aug 1996, p.D5]

This isn’t some cutsey, bordering-on-laughable inspiration porn. It is more patient, messy and dead-serious than its sight-gag of a poster might have you believe. This doesn’t mean it’s a great movie – just a passable one.

The Final Countdown is an action picture, not a thoughtful rumination on time travel, nor even (per Time After Time) a picture with a puzzle - everything is subordinate here to the sweep and grandeur of an awe-inspiring, ocean-going masterpiece of American technology. [02 Aug 1980]

Like any good religious sermon, it follows its scary vision of hell with a possibility of last-minute redemption.

Millennium Actress is a quest for beauty and truth that is as wonderful to look at as it is gruelling to contemplate.

The soundscape is rich, and the beast-battles well executed. But the characters never develop beyond their two-word descriptors: Conflicted Boy, Lonely Girl, Angry Son, etc.

What we’re instead left with are two diametrically opposed performances: Williams goes small and intimate as the distressed Isabel, while Moore opts for a more operatic, less successful tenor that results in what might be the actress’s most unhinged moment ever (and not in a good way).

If the movie is essentially a study of a loving family, A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries is hampered by extraneous scenes that are simply self-indulgent on the director's part.

Touching, if by-the-books, documentary.

Cerebral without being dry, delicate without being dull, Mr. And Mrs. Bridge is a rarity: a drama of manners that breathes esthetic life into airless parlours, without either sentimentalizing the occupants or hyping the atmosphere. [21 Dec 1980]

It's no great thing, just a better Thing than expected.

Human Nature's zigzag ingenuity wears out some time before the farce bounces slowly to an uneven conclusion. For all its highfalutin title and corkscrew narrative, the movie turns out to be not much more than a shaggy human tale.

Tireless, ultra-talented and exceedingly charismatic, he emerges as a survivor in a film that spends too much time on his accolades and not enough on deciphering what makes this treasure of an octogenarian tick.

An overqualified cast (including Vincent D’Onofrio and an uncredited Nick Nolte) brings more gravity than required to repeated “this is me staring you down” confrontations.

Jacobs is a competent director but he doesn't bring anything extra to this shell game of a narrative.

For those entering grade school, there is likely no better and more concise primer on the scandal. For everyone else, well, you know the story.

Munn’s exquisitely readable face, which cycles through emotional states with delicate flickers, is Bateman’s strongest asset. Her weakest is her storytelling.

My advice is to choose the first half, where things are really funny until they aren't.

The pat inspirational formula is followed to a sweaty T, although it comes here with an inadvertent side effect -- more than a few nagging questions never get answered.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a bunch of bon mots in search of a larger theme. Happily, the mots are so very bon that the two hours breeze by quickly enough.

A comedy boasting a gimmick worth a peek. For, into this remembrance of time past and youth altruistic, the script injects a heavy dose of up-to-the-minute pragmatism. [16 Aug 1985]

Invincible lacks Herzog's usual visual and intellectual panache, and is afflicted by weak English-language acting, which makes it more of a career curio than a major work.

The state of modern criticism has never been so splintered. We create harsher and harsher binaries in our online response to cinema every day, so reading Kael can make you go, “Hey, remember pleasure?” While Garver’s documentary isn’t worthy of its subject’s fascinating artistic legacy, I anxiously await the one that is.

Panga’s strength lies in its capable cast, which brings heart to a largely contrived script that tells more than it shows.

The real question for audiences isn’t whether Tony Stark/Iron Man defeats the latest supervillain (of course he does), but whether the movie itself rises above the dreaded third-in-a-sequel torpor of "Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight." Spoiler alert: Yes, mostly, it does.

The ensemble cast clicks, and the ribbon-tied ending is always in doubt.

Like many of his (young) generation, Villeneuve is front and centre with the visual and musical language. He doesn't always hit the mark, but he is already trying for a symbolic allusiveness that is entirely beyond the reach of many filmmakers.

With all due respect to Japanese animation fans and pop-culture enthusiasts, life may be just too short to plunge into the busy world of Cowboy Bebop.

The film is visually bland, with only a couple of bookending outdoor sequences around a handful of interior sets.

A lotta woe to sit through, with not much to think about and only one matter to address. After the two hours-plus have sped by with brutal alacrity, all that's left is for the survivors of the bloodbath to hose down and suss out a "new beginning." I'm still searching for mine, but you might have better luck.

If Ocean's Thirteen were compared to a gem, it would have to be considered something of a flashy fraud: Initially impressive for cut and colour, it lacks either clarity or weight.

In the moments at his disposal, Smith almost steals the flick. He's so wittily government-phobic that I found myself hoping for a climax that would blow Bruce Willis away and promote Kevin Smith to saviour-of-the-free-world. Now that might be a sequel worth rooting for.

Cadillac Man starts slowly, makes a sharp right turn, accelerates hard, then coasts to a limp finish. The verdict: not a bad run. Stacked up against the typical field of Hollywood comedies, this one places a respectable second - definitely short of the top rank, but a mile ahead of the mirthless pack. [18 May 1990]

Estela Bravo's film Fidel, The Untold Story has the kitsch appeal of a farm implement on a restaurant wall, or an Andy Warhol Mao poster: Interesting, but not for its original purpose.