But then, just as quickly, Jesse is back in the present-day trying to build an escape route to a new life. Without Walter, he is just another manchild with a gun and a pile of money in a garbage bag. Sometimes, the past is the past and it really is dead.

The actors are all better than the material, just as the script's occasionally amusing tangents are far superior to its mundane narrative arc.

A formulaic thriller, treated in a style that's just shy of outright parody.

As a stoic and weathered middle-aged ballet teacher, who lives in a cramped apartment and maintains a tender and dignified devotion to his craft, Fiennes gives the film’s best performance.

The World's Fastest Indian may be the world's slowest movie.

Mainly, though, it's the performers who are having the last laugh.

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

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.

A laugh a minute? Liar Liar Jim Carrey's forced truthfulness means a lot of mildly funny facial gyrations.

By the time The Hunter jettisons its narrative ballast altogether and embraces its elemental appeal, it's too late. The near-mythic grandeur of its final scenes is less a welcome payoff then a suggestion of the truly striking film that might have been; it's ironic that a movie about a man who sets traps for a living would itself end up ensnared by formula.

The man (Affleck) is something of a force of nature himself, and it ain't pretty.

The best fake trailer, and Grindhouse's high point, is Edgar ( Shaun of the Dead) Wright's tone-perfect parody of inviting taboos, entitled "Don't."

What a sprawling, befuddling, fascinating, frustrating mess of a movie. Usually the tautest of directors, Clint Eastwood has gone all slack here, allowing his subject to get completely away from him.

If physical appearance creates its own class system (in high school and beyond), then Qualls is perfect for this proselytizing role. He has that rarest of movie-star faces -- one that over comes the tyranny of beauty.

Once it becomes clear that the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an equal-opportunity offender, and that it is the politically correct modern family that is being picked on, rather than young Greg, the film becomes cheerfully mischievous fun for everyone.

Fortunately, he has an ace up his sleeve with 9-year-old actress Drew Barrymore: the movie might easily be retitled The Scene Stealer. Barrymore's performance as Charlie McGee has something of the pint-sized coquetry of a Shirley Temple, and something of the shoulders-back, chin- in-the-air hauteur of a Bette Davis, but she seems incapable of hitting a false, precocious or calculating note. She virtually acts her co-stars off the screen. [14 May 1984]

Truth be told, the full 99-minute movie does not entirely hold water; it feels like three or four good episodes connected with plot padding. Aesop probably wasn't too hot at long-form fiction, either.

Plays like an easy-listening hit.

This colour-drunk, sumptuous late Tang Dynasty (928 AD) drama is huge on spectacle but as devoid of delight as a Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic.

Yes, The Mysterious Island is everything a 12-year-old boy could want – endless adventure involving a reckless adolescent hero, with a pretty girl in a clinging T-shirt around to watch him struggle.

The result is the kind of picture you can sit through quite contentedly, the cinematic equivalent of an innocuous seatmate on an airplane trip -- it neither bores nor insults you, and, when the ride's over, is promptly gone and forgotten.

Win Win is a paragon of truth at a slow jog, but that upbeat sprint to the finish feels like a big cheat.

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.

This is not a spoiler alert; it’s a tip: If you go to see American Ultra, stay for the credits, right to the end. They are animated and provide a mini fourth act for the film, a little action movie starring a super simian and a beautiful (human) damsel; they are an amusing addendum, but mainly they tell you a lot about where American Ultra’s heart lies, deep in comic-book territory.

Savini seems to lose his grip in the second half, and what began as exhilaratingly horrendous settles into comfortable predictability. [24 Oct 1990]

Virtuosity never lacks for energy, its pacing is appropriately breakneck, its bangs are as big as Nagasaki - but finally it can't escape its limitations as a genre picture. [5 Aug 1995, p.C11]

It's a mini-masterwork of acting. Stahl is definitely one to watch closely -- he's the real deal. But the emerging plot isn't.

The result, which could be entitled There's Something About Curly, is an unabashedly moronic celebration of slap shtick.