What is far more unsettling than the environment itself, though, is how tedious the excursion winds up being, going from freaky to sleepy in the span of an hour. Once you’ve seen one of the backrooms, which begin to resemble a Leon’s showroom rendered by M.C. Escher, then you’ve seen them all.

Through it all, Smith’s performance grounds the horror in a place of courage, heart and soul.

Once Land of Bad establishes its stakes – one man versus an army – the film settles all too comfortably into war-machine territory, minus any particularly inventive kills or sense of style.

The Roses is not nearly acrimonious, or funny, enough to justify its peculiar existence. If DeVito’s original was the cinematic equivalent of going through the divorce from hell, this new break-up feels more like a trial separation.

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.

Despite strong performances across the board – most notably Wright, who has never before been able to flex such leading-man magnetism – there is an overriding flatness to Monk’s personal life.

It is mighty impressive, in a stupefying way, just how close Cruella’s filmmakers get to pulling the dang thing off. This isn’t to say that the movie is a success – it is embarrassing on many levels, and seems to be frequently at odds with its presumed family-friendly audience – but as far as movies that have no business existing outside sketch-comedy land go, it could’ve been worse.

The talented performers are ultimately overmatched by a janky script that telegraphs every emotional swerve and narrative beat as if audiences are not to ever be trusted.

All the magnificent little elements add up to a whole lot of not-enough this time around, resulting in a creaky and exhausting pastiche of Andersonia rather than the real deal.

Short, flashy and about as complex as a beer belch, Men in Black II is also brisk. The film clocks in at 88 minutes total running time, and it's loaded with new special effects and monsters.

The result is messy, zippy and smart-alecky. But never boring, and occasionally funny enough to warrant a spit-take or three.

Though the animation is solid and the writing reasonably clever, Over the Hedge is clearly more about packaging than freshness or substance.

There are several scenes in There's Something About Mary that are so absurdly original and outrageous they will leave audiences talking about them for weeks.

How's this for a ringing endorsement: Watching Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola's first film in nearly a decade, is like taking a philosophy exam. A really tiring philosophy exam, where the questions are elegantly phrased but damn confounding and not really conducive to right answers.

The movie is directed by Mark Waters (responsible for the indie black comedy, "The House of Yes") and mostly, he's workmanlike, but smart enough to get out of the way of the nicely balanced two lead performances.

At one point, Downey's character is asked, "What are you gonna do with all this rage, this hate?" and he snaps back, "I'll probably just write serious literature." On TV, where the material seemed both serious and literate, that bit of black humour felt prophetic. On film, it's just a good joke.

The Final Frontier is the funniest - okay, the most intentionally funny - Star Trek yet. [9 June 1989]

The movie ends up exactly what it sounds like: a good film for filling the midnight slot at a review cinema or genre festival.

Bullock is firm as the preternaturally self-assured Debbie but little more than that; her performance as the con artist is reined in so tightly that she only finally appears to be having some fun when she gets to don a blond updo and German accent on the night of the ball.

In 5 x 2, the 2 are terrific; it's the 5 that needs work.

Brooks' bravery is spiriting; in his debut he has written an unlikeable character doing unlikeable things to likeable people. One wishes his talent as a director matched his chutzpah. [17 Mar 1979]

When it comes to rude comedy, one person's caviar is another's smelly fish gunk. A case in point is Strangers With Candy.

The script is taut, the actors perform their roles well and some neat visual and sound design elements add texture to this portrayal of rising India. Bahrani’s spin on the novel brings the story alive – even if the voiceover grates occasionally.

The combination of less-experienced actors with a deadpan script is hit-and-miss. The naturalistic performances give the feeling of real high-school students, but at times that vibe veers more toward high-school drama production.

"The Road" meets "Leave No Trace" with a sprinkling of another half-dozen sharper films, Light of My Life is Casey Affleck’s ode to the power of storytelling. Namely, Casey Affleck’s brand of storytelling: glacial, meandering, but not entirely ineffective.

Given the predictable scenario, this picture needs passion, and all it gets is his workmanlike precision. What he's constructed is worthy enough, and certainly navigable, but you need more than the bricks of craft to build a road to paradise.

It mostly all comes together in the end, but you still cannot help but watch the film and wonder why the need for just so much of everything.

The reign of the last emperor, a reign in name alone, was an exercise in style over substance; it is perhaps fitting that his cinematic biography should follow the same incarcerated course. [20 Nov 1987, p.D1]