Disney raised the stakes by turning its hit TV-movie franchise into a feature film – and the bet has paid off.

Besides psychological drama, besides thriller, social satire is another significant element in this sometimes erratic film and it’s one that, surprisingly and belatedly, rises to the top: Anyone who started out thinking The Dinner was a thriller will probably be disappointed when the evening wraps up with an ending that is more farce than denouement.

With barely a laugh to be found, Confetti takes the "mock" right out of the mockumentary, and you can guess what's left. Yep, a Umentary, a brand new genre best defined by what it's not -- not real like a doc, not funny like a mock, not this thing or that thing or much of anything.

Although overplotted and underexplained, the movie is rich in memorable lairs.

Yes, it's "The Devil Wears Prada," redux.

The daring ceases to be exploratory and turns, spitting and screaming, on itself. When Bakshi shows us an animated replay of the infamous 1968 pistol execution of a suspected Viet Cong sympathizer, he imparts to the event the grinning slapstick of a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote confrontation. It's as good a place to walk out of American Pop as any. [6 March 1981]

Actor-turned-director Tony Goldwyn elicits solid performances from the cast, then undercuts them by resorting to a trite montage or a clunky set-piece, inevitably scored with an obtrusive rock tune telling us what to feel and when to feel it.

Almost a comedy, though not an entirely successful one: It's too acerbic to be funny and too detached to be really moving.

Wind is a rapturous experience. It's a sporting movie about the spirit of sport that never steps over the line into a win-at-all-costs ethos, or into the hypocrisy of it's-the-way-you-play-the-game-that-counts. [14 Sep 1992]

Ritchie pulls together an impressively determined thriller that sticks. Ideal for both a certain generation of viewer who gets excited when hearing the line, “We’ve got eight weeks of recon” and for those who will watch absolutely anything starring Statham (hi!), Wrath of Man is the best, bloodiest surprise of the year so far.

While thoughtfully done, the entertainment value of this sombre scare fiesta isn’t high. It’s about life’s paths taken and the rituals (and fears) we submit to.

Distinctly middling, London-set romance.

What's right about Horrible Bosses is less easy to identify, but it comes down to something like esprit de corps. The three principal actors click. The looseness of the structure actually proves a benefit, allowing Bateman, Sudeikis and Day, all trained on television comedy, to bounce off each other, talk over each other and apparently pull lines out of the air.

The film's long middle section is basically "Paranormal Activity" sans that series' handicam aesthetic, as things go bump in the night and the grown-ups take forever to get their act together.

In The Company You Keep, old radicals never die – they just turn into old actors.

Everything's Gone Green is the second feature directed by Paul Fox (The Dark Hours), who maintains an energetic, lighthearted tone throughout the film, even when the story loses focus at its not-quite-satisfying ending.

A middling documentary but a magnificent indictment.

Is it possible for a horror movie to be too good? If it is, then Cujo is it: this is one of the few films on record where the combination of low shock and high style results in an experience that borders on the unbearably intense. The movie is spectacularly well-made, but it's nearly unwatchable. [29 Aug 1983]

After a decade of silence, surely Hollywood can do better.

Typically, Whitaker can lend the sloppiest assignment some much-needed dignity, but here he gives far more than the easy and lazy script ever demands, so much so that you begin to feel sorry that he took the time and energy to do so.

The problem with Flash of Genius is that a windshield wiper is an awfully thin mechanism on which to hang a feature movie.

This is wish-fulfilment fantasy, where the laughs lie in sorting out an embarrassment of riches.

Given Part II's quality, the final sequence, a series of clips from next summer's Part III, may be a major miscalculation. "To be concluded," reads the final title. Sounds more like a threat than a promise. [22 Nov 1989, p.C9]

Although the film and the actors keep on looking good, this solemn, soppy, fantasy has nothing to say about science or faith.

In the end, then, just Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp and those voices – their solos contain this picture like carved book-ends, vintage and lovely and still so profoundly of use.

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

Phillips delivers a mostly by-the-book rise-and-fall saga of two bros in way over their heads, complete with ostentatious title cards that, instead of subtly addressing the film’s themes of greed and jealousy, only hammer the moral lessons with the grace of a rusty Kalashnikov.

An inspired variation on his familiar theme: the whore with a heart of gold is a man. [2 Feb 1980]

Bring on the sequel please, because, as fine as Denzel is, director Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer is not so good – a self-consciously stylized, stop-and-start hodgepodge of Death Wish street vengeance, Bond-style Russian villainy, and moodily shot Boston locale.

The appeal of the Jack Ryan character, at least on the page, was that he was always the smartest guy in the room. In Shadow Recruit, that doesn’t seem to be much of an accomplishment, because the movie around him is so dumb.

Guy Ritchie's Holmes reboot feels both too complicated and too elementary, dear Watson.

While its penultimate scene returns to its affections for shock and gore, there remains a feeling that it’s been apologetically tacked on to a final act that is, overall, lacking in any other sort of fun or thrilling narrative twists and turns.

It comes across, however, as a 90-minute flirtation with a quarter of an idea, the gist of which barely impinges on the consciousness. [24 Aug 1987]

Utterly preposterous but so full of enthusiasm and flashy style that it's entertaining anyway, The Brotherhood of the Wolf is like the platypus of genre films.

It marks the first time in a decade that Sidney Poitier has worked in front of the camera. Well, after such an extended absence, maybe he wanted to limber up slowly, just a little light stretching to iron out the kinks in his actor's reflex. If so, the guy made the perfect choice. As flicks go, this is definitely a low-impact workout. [12 Feb 1988]

This is potentially compelling, but truncated flashbacks are far too crude a mechanism for exploring not only the intricacies of that tumultuous period in Kenyan history but also its ongoing legacy.

Morse and Donovan hold us rapt in this clearly told tale about identity confusion.

The Kingdom is a barely coherent compendium of Middle East fantasies, fears and doubts.

Add it all up, and Extraction’s many creative solutions to reinvigorating the genre nearly balance out its many generic genre problems. So, it’s good enough to take a shot on, especially after a stressful day of isolated modern life. But just one shot.

Where Mufasa distinguishes itself is Jenkins’s eye for balancing emotion with action.

The Rise of Gru is the weakest entry by far. But with just enough semi-inspired moments of weirdness to skate by.

Imperfect, but certainly provocative.

While Tom Tykwer's lavish and lively screen adaptation of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is certainly not a stinker, there is something decidedly off about it.

The man likes a scrap. But he's never had quite as ludicrous, and ludicrously entertaining, a fight as in The Commuter, which is essentially Liam Neeson versus a train.

There's not a scrap of imagination in the script.

The producers of Hidden in Plain Sight decided that they couldn't deal with Sept. 11 in the film without losing focus on its principal subject. The result is that the film stands as a testimonial to the world as it existed before that date, a world very different from the one we now live in.

The Corruptor is visually lively and filled with gratuitous destruction. [12 Mar 1999]

Every hero needs to be revitalized by a little humiliation, and for at least the first 40 minutes of Die Another Day, Bond's dressing-down seems to do him and the movie franchise a world of good.

It must be said that the closing sequence, in which Arthur meets the misbegotten Mordred on an orange battlefield illuminated by a shield-sized red sun, is an epic, Oedipal masterpiece of authentic mythic power, a sequence so strong it shakes the torpor from one's shoulders and induces regret that the rest of the saga has been so juvenile, so lifeless and so lacking poetry or Shakespearean sweep. [11 April 1981]

Perhaps Hill simply failed in his attempt to make of The Driver something more than an action picture. The trouble is that he doesn't do enough to elevate the film above the level of the genre. [29 July 1978]

Morlando's approach, influenced by interviews with the real Boyd in his old age, is cerebral and melancholic. The tone is more foreboding than suspenseful.

Appropriately for a film about art forgery, every cast member in The Last Vermeer seems to be attempting their best impression of someone else.

A nervy, eye-popping reimagining of the AIDS crisis as filtered through the lens of a frenzied domestic drama, Julia Ducournau’s new film is, like the very best Cave song, a profoundly upsetting creation to sink into, equal parts blood-pumping passion and skin-crawling menace.

Eraser may lack the chameleon wizardry of the the "Terminator" duo, or the imperious mechanics of "True Lies", but the bang-for-the-buck ratio is high enough to appease even the thinnest wallet.

Like "Everest," Adrift is a movie throbbing with an audience’s anxiety – and yet it is not particularly dramatic.

As a motion picture, Fever Pitch is merely competent.

The bloody narrative has an oddly bloodless effect. But that's not surprising – not when a film is so eager to double as a lecture.

A film that is touching in a clumsy, boyish way that adults will understand and may even applaud.

To its credit, Heart and Souls aspires to being nothing more than a standard bauble of summer movie entertainment, funny a lot of the time, heart-warming some of the time, sad once or twice. And unless you see it in a sour mood, you will be entertained. [13 Aug 1993]

This much is inarguable: In the more than two flamboyant hours of Across the Universe, Julie Taymor doesn't cheat us for a single second.

Harsh Times opens with a deadly nightmare and ends with a vast bloodbath -- in between, things get a little gruesome.

Are any of his stunts funny? Yes, one scene is worthy of Borat and Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops.

In every way but one, A Knight's Tale is a bouncy pop song of a movie, the snappy/happy kind that puts a grin on your face and a tap to your toe, shifting the heart into high and the mind into neutral. [11 May 2001]

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.

The movie meanders on and on, like a bad sexual dream, until you finally wake up mumbling: Stella, please: leave that groove thang alone.

Waters's rude, lewd and occasionally nude extended skit takes a simple idea and beats it limp.

The Two Jakes itself is less tragic than petulant, mired in a self-pitying remembrance of things past. [10 Aug 1990]

FALLING Down is a nasty bit of business, a two-faced manipulator that condones what it pretends to condemn. Cluttered and often downright silly, it's not much of a movie, but it is a fascinating sign of the times - a litmus test for every prejudice and fear harboured by the white middle class in ailing, urban America. [26 Feb 1993, p.C6]

Dogs of War takes its title from Julius Caesar but its cue from Julia Child. Based on Frederick Forsyth's novel, the film is meant to be an intimate study of soldiers of fortune. But it ends only as a shallow, pseudo-elliptical lesson in how to whip up a frothy coup when time is pressing and the guests are about to arrive. [17 Feb 1981]

As returns go, Return To Paradise falls short of heavenly, but it does get to the stars -- at least three of them.

Posse wants to be a 'classic Western' but its definition of classic is consistently cliched. Yet it has such grace and such an abiding belief in its message that you can't help but smile approval. [14 May 1993]

Clearly, Costa-Gavras has lost none of his kinetic pacing or his cerebral way with thrills. Unfortunately, the script later gets corrupted itself by a sexual melodrama that lacks both sense and sultriness.

Where it falls short is that the film’s most compelling characters – Patel and Singh – are faintly unfinished and underexplored. It may well have worked better as pure documentary, and it will send many moviegoers on a mission to Google, where they will learn more about the real stars of the picture.

More rant than rollick, it's just ain't funny enough.

Jumping the Broom also benefits from a great soundtrack (Al Green, Aretha, El DeBarge, Curtis Mayfield).

Popped in the oven and marked with a predictable P, The Family Stone is the Christmas cookie of Christmas movies -- this thing is so pat it should come with the recipe attached.

The fault in the film lies as much with Cretton’s script, which he co-wrote with Andrew Lanham, as it does with his direction.

Not nearly as smart as it should be.

It’s been not so much remade as restrained – tamed and dumbed-down and with any sharp political edges safely filed off.

In-jokes for horror-film fans abound (the dog is named Jason, the monster in the Friday the 13th series; a cafe is the Craven Inn - Wes Craven directed the first Nightmare on Elm Street), and it's possible that those fans will be satisfied with the expensive, surreal special effects unleashed by director Renny Harlin. Everyone else is apt to agree with the teen-ager who dismisses Freddy by saying, "We all got better things to dream about." [19 Aug 1988]

The dogs and the snow and the flag-waving and the choo-choos are all reduced to TV-sized portions. Just as well, I suppose - think of it as audio-visual aerobics, forced training for next month's big bout in our living-rooms. [14 Jan 1994]

Were it not for the fine engaging performances of both Dancy and Byrne, Adam would be sickly sweet.

So this is a first-level, unironic fright film, the sort whose tongue is removed from its cheek, coated in gore, and pointed right at the audience.

On the downside, Rosebraugh’s own film is too self-righteous and his attempts to play a humour-challenged, lightweight version of Michael Moore in front of the camera is a misfire. The climate-change deniers are comforting, though obviously wrong. Greedy Lying Bastards is grating, even if it’s right.

The problem is not so much Satrapi’s theatrical approach to the subject, which veers wildly from the overwrought to the dramatically compelling, as it is Jack Thorne’s abysmal script, full of clunky exposition about isolating elements, curing cancer and refusing sexism.

Having managed Berlin rather gracefully, Race often plods along the home front.

Director Walter Salles, who knows a thing or two about picaresque journeys – in "The MotorcycleDiaries," even in "Central Station" – does make an honest effort here.

This extraordinary film, a stiletto-edged domestic melodrama that, at different times, evokes the work of Sam Peckinpah, Hal Ashby, John Cassavetes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the other, unrelated Penn (Arthur, director of Bonnie and Clyde), is harrowingly honest in content yet lyrically elegiac in style. [21 Sep 1991]

Like the writings of William Burroughs or Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," Watchmen falls into the category of what might be called meta-pulp, a multilayered fiction that serves as a parody and commentary on our collective bottom-feeding fantasies.

This is a formula film with panache.

The screenplay feels like the feverish byproduct of an all-nighter pulled off the very first day back from a writers' strike.

It's undemanding good fun, even when the script turns sentimental. [14 Dec 1990]

So the questions arises: Why bother watching the contrived fiction when the eye-popping fact is readily available? Answer: Why, indeed.

Too much diary, not enough movie.

Focus, which was co-written and directed by "Crazy Stupid Love" creators, Glen Ficarra and John Requa, is drunk on its perfume-ad cinematography and doesn’t know when to quit with its double-double cross plotting.

The lows never last too long - something invariably jumps out to recapture our interest or prompt a chuckle.

It's all picture and no motion, as wooden as its framing. Lovely and lifeless, the result is a traditional portrait of two defiers of tradition.

How to Eat Fried Worms arrives just in time to placate preteen boys who resent being unable to see the frankly more adult though equally immature "Snakes on a Plane."