A little less fascination with computer tricks, and a little more application of human intelligence could have done The Arrival a world of good. [31 May 1996]

The Square turns from a sharp art-world satire into something egregiously bonkers, a collision of blunt comic beats and heavy-handed social commentary that's more messy than profound.

Once again Anna Faris manages to be the best thing in another not very good Anna Faris movie.

With the release of Stop-Loss, a precedent of sorts has definitely been set. If we've yet to see a brilliant Iraq movie, the wait is over for a bad one – this is it.

Full of post-hippie fatalism and cynical macho barroom existentialism, the original film feels very much of its era, and the remake anachronistic.

The result is an erratically funny but often frustrating comedy, with an interesting premise hobbled by internal inconsistencies and uneven writing.

As an examination of social psychosis, the subject is skinhead but the treatment is skin deep. [03 Dec 1993]

Alig's superficiality seems to have been his only talent. His banality is a problem that the film can't overcome.

At the end of these "based on a true story" flicks, it's customary to flash photos of the real people over the end credits. There, Sam Childers looks older and less handsome and awfully imposing, a scary sort of cat with raw but authentic tales to tell. I'd like to hear them.

The entire movie doesn’t merely tip-toe into the ridiculous, it dives head-first into the shallow end of stupid, cracking its head, and yours, along the way.

Sometimes sensitive and often silly but really, essentially, beneath his pallor and her panting and their intertwined frustrations, it's just two long hours of coitus interruptus.

Anyone interested in hearing the artist's heart-to-hearts properly translated is encouraged to seek out Leonard Cohen's flamenco serenade, "Take This Waltz."

For most of its duration, Suicide Kings turns into something like a hoary murder-mystery theatre piece in the Agatha Christie/Clue tradition.

The trouble with Body Double is not that it sets "new lows" in the treatment of women or anything else, but that a stunningly original talent has willingly hitched itself to a derivative vision. The person De Palma really degrades is himself. [26 Oct 1984]

There will be occasional tears, there must be frequent laughs and the whole contrived structure has the calculated quaintness of Ye Olde Pub at a EuroDisney theme park.

At two hours, Eight Below becomes rather repetitive and arduous in its final stretch, the rescue mission. But the canine cuteness, breathtaking action and acts of bravery are worth braving the Disney elements -- overpowering, poignant music, an unnecessary romantic subplot -- if you like your movies doggy-style.

Relentlessly twee as all this is, Wasikowska's warmth and Hopper's off-beat timing (he's the son of the late Dennis Hopper) are appealing to watch.

Zhang’s apocalyptic view of the beasts from above as they swarm over the palace like rats may be a chilling metaphor for what awaits us all if we don’t achieve effective international co-operation – but it is also the too-hasty climax to an underdeveloped martial-arts/monster-movie mashup. East and West are going to have to do better than this.

The plot feels both familiar and far-fetched.

In truth, despite its honesty, this is a flawed little film, its low comedy never funny enough to justify its crudeness.

The film’s writing is unambitious; there’s little to cause adults to smile knowingly.

Hurt is so good at capturing the charming and chilling Ned that he almost makes up for the film's two primary weaknesses: Kasdan's inexperience and a message of significant unpleasantness. [28 Aug 1981, p.P17]

Vardalos has a talent, and there is one sequence in the movie that works. In the romantic subplot, Connie falls for Peaches' brother Jeff (David Duchovny, as Vardalos's sleepy, hunk replacement for John Corbett in Greek Wedding).

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

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

The narrative is tightly written, fast-paced and delivered with a scorching, emotional intensity by the actors. The timeline – which moves from the dank cellars of wartime Poland, to concert halls in 1970s Berlin and Sephi’s staid music academy in Jerusalem, is smoothly interwoven. Still, the drama seems overwrought at times, even cliché.

The result is an intriguing but uneven thriller that doesn’t fully establish the tone and style that would be needed for an audience to accept its supernatural plot.

Continuing directly from where 2010’s "Insidious" left off, Insidious: Chapter 2 follows the further misfortunes of the Lambert family with diminishing insidious rewards.

The finale is a gut-punch, but it arrives too long after Komasa has already exhausted most of his story's, and leading man's, energy.

This is a movie that cries out for attention, in ways both admirable and grating.

The old carnival phrase "Close, but no cigar" comes to mind when watching The Brothers Bloom , a globetrotting heist film that starts off terrifically and then progressively deflates.

Perhaps the most regrettable crime here is the way that Mann, trying to do too much, robs himself of a great opportunity. Here was a chance to capture the drama of the Thirties.

For its last third, the entire thing gets a Frankensteinian head transplant, and turns into derivative serial-killer nonsense.

It's possible to admire the performances of stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger in The Burning Plain , even as you backpedal from the film, hoping the ponderous megasoap will just go away.

A comedy should provoke more than smiles. Should have characters instead of show-offs. Although often charming, Micmacs seems so pleased with itself that it hardly needs an audience.

The differences between the two movies are, first, that Scoop is a comedy and, second, unlike "Match Point," it's not very good, as Allen also returns to pre-Match Point mediocre form.

The Bostonians, from the novel by Henry James, is the story of their relationship, one of the strangest in literature. Unfortunately, that strangeness has survived the transfer to the screen less than intact, and satiric oddity has been replaced by romantic banality. Redgrave's performance - red-eyed, quivering, opalescent - is peerless, the one incontrovertible reason to see the film. [23 Nov 1984]

Needless to say, what's refreshing about A Christmas Story is subversive to the sepia-toned and loving references to the forties which director Bob Clark has provided for the film. The fictional Parker family that Shepherd has written about for 20 years is not as gentle or gauzy as they first appear. It's possible to imagine them so preoccupied with their own problems, whether dealing with the neighbor's dogs or winning a mail- order contest, that they could forget Christmas altogether. [25 Nov 1983, p.E5]

William Smith, who plays Lucky Lonnie, a drag-strip racer in David Cronenberg's Fast Company, is a personification of country singer Waylon Jennings' voice: powerful and rich and funky and gentle. He doesn't hold Fast Company together - a vise the size of Paraguay couldn't hold Fast Company together - but his presence gives the movie an entirely undeserved distinction. [03 Oct 1979]

As her oddly unengaged zoologist husband, the Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh appears to be working in a different movie altogether.

For my first trick, allow me to write off an entire picture by merely affixing to the title a one-word contraction: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone isn’t. Please hold your applause.

The formula is a bit too neat and the dialogue is often painfully expository, but there are some fine performances – especially from Gillian Anderson as the earnest Lady Mountbatten – and plenty of compelling drama.

The result is a movie that's both odd and mediocre: not as bad as doing hard time, but not a particularly good time, either.

Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil is a misfire, despite its wonderful title, which feels plucked straight from an Elvira movie.

The Last Circus is a bizarre, surreal, grotesque, fascinating, demanding, disappointing and ultimately exhausting political allegory that plays like a waking nightmare.

The film's up-yours attitude toward authority is cheering, but as personified by Robert Culp (he's the mayor of New York), authority is so comic-strip in its hideousness that fighting it is beside the point. If the audience can't believe in the reality of the opponent, it can't believe in the reality of the fight. [15 Feb 1985]

Match your expectations to the level of the humor - measurable at about knee-high to a snake's belly - and you just might enjoy Who's Harry Crumb? I mean, we're talking low comedy here, boasting more pratfalls than another losing night at the Gardens. But there is a redeeming factor in this manic equation, a high-flying blimp by the name of John Candy. [08 Feb 1989]

With its jazzy saxophone noodlings during the opening credits and its bruised black-and-blue look, it's so quaintly and conventionally pulp that you feel like filing a report with the cliché police.

Unfortunately, once these creatures do come to life for a second outing, the promise soon evaporates and the clever comedy, built largely on crisscrossing anachronisms and various sly cultural references, is not enough to sustain a romp that is all rather predictable.

Brody plays opposite Yvonne Strahovski, whose femme fatale is less like Lauren Bacall and more like Sharon Stone. Unfortunately, Strahovski’s flat portrayal lacks the basic instincts of Stone, though she does uncross her legs, and that is central to the curve-balling, sex-tape plot.

Though bathed in ecclesiastical light and a work of obvious craft and ambition, Bee Season is grimly serious and rather full of itself.

Even if it's accepted simply as glitter-sprayed trash, sophomorically plotted and incompetently acted, Femme Fatale is a uniquely De Palma kind of effluence, an exercise in auteur self-parody.

All hell breaks loose and it's a heck of a lot of fun to watch.

There's an alchemy that can transform personal experience into a great film, but it was nowhere nearby when Tamara Jenkins wrote and directed this lacklustre first feature.

A catalogue of made-in-America delusions, hallucinations and cosmic catastrophes that draws on environmental fear-mongering in one reel and evangelical lore the next.

The trouble is, once you get past the historical information and chummy interviews, you have to put up with the inevitable risk of any ad-hoc jam session: It Might Get Boring.

Well, the Hood would never stand for it and neither should you. Defy authority and watch this movie on a plane instead.

Yet after half an hour in Wendy’s world, it is clear that Zeitlin has exhausted both his visual imagination and whatever narrative interest he had in Barrie’s tale other than “kids, they grow up fast.”

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, is still offbeat, but more in the sense of unco-ordinated than syncopated.

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.

Feels stale, bloated and willing to get by on sheer familiarity.

Lone Wolf gets mad as a bee-stung boxer dog. [18 Apr 1983]

A movie that serves up what its debauched subject would never have countenanced -- sanitized smut with a moral attached.

All this holding back is a bad idea, especially as the subject of an entire movie.

The movie offers nothing new or special, but at least it isn’t as painful as watching Sandler walk Al Pacino through a Dunkin’ Donuts rap.

Sea Of Love has got a lot of things going for it: it's got two strong lead performances; it's got some down-and-dirty dialogue and a few sexy scenes and a couple of yuks and a nifty title tune. What it ain't got is plot, and thus suspense, and thus thrills. [15 Sep 1989]

Confused, and confusing.

You can see Rock hedging his bets right from the opening frames.

So why, despite everyone's best efforts, does all this bigness seem so small and unfocused and simply not up to the task?

As a drama, The Soloist is stuck before it starts.

Jungle Cruise taps into a type of thrill-ride nostalgia that feels algorithmically created. Everything about the film is just right, from its charismatic stars to its jungle hijinks to its heart-to-heart chemistry between Lily and Skipper – all of it only slightly updated for a 2021 crowd.

Writer Andy Breckman and director Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinnie ) don't even try to recapture or eclipse the past. Instead, they offer the movie a comfortable plug-in-and-play system for their well-known comic stars to be all that they can be. [29 Mar 1996]

Porky's is crafty, offensive retro-fantasy for one gender. [20 Mar 1982]

The dread in the film is so quickly forgotten. What remains is an urge to fly to Italy, rent an apartment in a medieval city and invent your own adventure.

Eisenberg does an admirable job porting his typically nervous energy into Marceau, a man who’s not portrayed as a full-blooded hero so much as a sincere, if naive, nebbish constantly wrestling with his fears and doubts.

The oddest movie to come out of Disney since Herbie ran out of gas in Monte Carlo, Brother Bear is a cartoon about a boy who becomes a man by learning how to be a bear.

The result, as a colleague once so aptly put it, is less film noir than film beige.

This might be tolerable if Nair hadn't missed the central point, that Becky Sharp isn't sharp like spice, she's sharp like a razor.

Big, annoying, and mostly pointless.

The Love Punch feels like a remake of an old MGM caper comedy. It’s not, but it feels that way, which will certainly set it apart from the Disney villains, X-people and radioactive sea monsters of the summer movie schedule.

Nope, this picture doesn't bear thinking about, but, if you resist that nasty temptation, setting all your mental gauges at Dead Slow, the flow of the action will see you through.

This last Merchant/Ivory film feels like a thin apparition of the team's best films -- similarly static but less substantial, less palpable, and sadly less respectable, just the vestigial remains of a better day.

A mixed bag of old-school and contemporary horror tricks that occasionally raises a hair prickle of intrigue.

It's scary how unfunny this flick is.

Middling gets downgraded to muddling. Of course, on such slippery slopes, reputations are made. Damned if the original isn’t looking like a comparative gem.

A lot more cutting would have made this movie much funnier – but it should have taken place in the editing room, not on the screen.

Until the movie stumbles under the weight of its noble intentions and its tediously formulaic story, it delivers a few lively, well-shot dance sequences and some winning moments.

For the price of a ticket, and 100 minutes of your time, how many laughs are enough to qualify as just compensation? Will four or five do? Let's be generous and count five.

Clearly, Avary wrote himself into a tight corner and, unlike his mentor, lacks the narrative imagination - the clever shifting of time planes, the neat overlapping of incident - to extricate himself. Instead, quite literally, he blasts his way out and, in the process, shoots his picture in the foot. Killing Zoe starts life as a vigorous wannabe, but pulls up dead lame. [04 Nov 1994]

A good-looking but anecdotally slight dramedy about life and lifestyles in Los Angeles's hip Silver Lake district.

All in all, it’s many prayers short of a revelation.

Maybe Bee Movie is another ground-breaking show about nothing – a hornet's nest of hype for a fat hive of nothing. If so, pay up and get stung.

Quaid and Whitaker, who serve more or less as the designated humans in this clockwork contraption of a film, are capable in corny roles, but otherwise Vantage Point is as stuffed with cardboard performances and expositional speeches as any seventies disaster flick.

If Corman productions are lacking originality, ideas and expertise, they are at least devoted to the proposition that the attention span of the modern audience is shorter than the time it takes to soft boil an egg, and they are paced accordingly. Galaxy of Terror is one of the few films in existence that actually moves faster than its trailer. [26 Apr 1982]

Except in the performances of John Savage, as Hettinger, and James Woods, as Powell, there is little attempt to probe the reasons for behavior, and except in the stylized filming of the murder, there is little attempt to assign special importance to one event over another. The picture is a textbook example of the limits of objective reporting. [06 Oct 1979]

Love the kid though, and Statham too – it takes a star with quality to be so rock solid in a crumbling yarn.

The narrative of Lonesome Jim pokes about aimlessly, trying to mine nuggets of amusement.

There’s enough action to keep things moving along, but the drama is ho-hum, juiced up with a turgid soundtrack and sirens howling in the night. It’s all just so average.