A weird, hilarious, romantic, messy, violent and upsetting manic spectacle, Lana Wachowski’s sequel-reboot-remake encapsulates every emotion of this supremely messed up year.

Was it worth slogging through the nearly two hours of damned muddle to get to those last affecting moments? Not often in movies is the destination so much better than the journey.

Like Maddin's melancholic and relatively more conventional "My Winnipeg," Keyhole is about a memory house, but one that is even more fragmented, mythical and elusive.

Smart, anxious and weirdly funny, the first feature from Toronto video artist Daniel Cockburn connects a series of scenarios that gradually begin to loop into each other.

Peaches Does Herself is constantly inventive, from the Road Warrior/Rocky Horror fantasy costumes, to the hump-happy choreography.

When I walked out of the movie theatre screening Padmaavat, I was shaking in rage.

A mish-mash that is further hindered by Howard's trite ideas of directing. Plot and camera moves are entirely predictable, with Howard so out of his depth that he often resorts to blackouts, or rather greenouts, when he doesn't know how to curtail a scene.

The Lost Boys mixes comedy and horror with a dexterity that augments each. Dracula and Peter Pan were antipodal products of the same society: bringing them together has resulted in a marriage that would make Bram Stoker snicker and J.M. Barrie bawl. [1 Aug 1987, p.C5]

In Youth in Revolt , Cera bellies up to the same table once too often. His fresh-faced act is starting to look really stale.

A smooth family drama with hints of big, bold comedy and a spicy, complicated aftertaste reminiscent of Lifetime movie-of-the-week tropes, Uncorked is the cinematic equivalent of merlot: fine enough if you’ve drained all your other options, but nothing to get drunk on.

Kurt Russell has never seemed more clever, Mel Gibson more vulnerable nor Michelle Pfeiffer more goddess-like. Once upon a time, before the pictures got small and the hills were obscured by smog, the Hollywood sign read: "Hollywoodland." That was back when Tequila Sunrise, an intelligent, escapist epic for adults, wouldn't have seemed the anomaly it seems today. [2 Dec 1988, p.C1]

Filmmaker Anthony Maras has made a chilling thriller, using extreme violence and high-wire tension to impressive effect, but it lacks deeper characterization.

Compared with the recent spate of blockbuster sellouts, Severance is a worthy package, and fair compensation for time spent. Best to watch on the big screen, of course.

V for very, very ordinary.

Unlike Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," which was also inspired by Rackham, The Spiderwick Chronicles is more whimsical than scary.

Directed by Sophie Brooks and co-written by Gordon, it subverts both the rom-com and horror genres to produce an original story that thwarts predictability.

Each performer tries their best to inject the material with energy and wit and verve, but Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe’s script has too many threads to weave together, leaving everyone looking a bit stranded.

The wee mousie is fun, all right, yet like the occasionally ragged editing, the fun just gets haphazardly wedged in.

Nothing in Common does not have flawless courage - Hanks is too pumped-up, his fun scenes too tidily choreographed - but it has a heart and a mind and decent intentions. For coming out of today's Hollywood with these intact, the film deserves a medal. [1 Aug 1996, p.D1]

Kuras’s film, especially the paint-by-numbers script credited to a trio of writers, seems to oddly object to such a strong spirit, boxing the character into the most formulaic of narratives.

The heavy Star Wars legacy sits lightly on Ehrenreich’s shoulders in a Disney-Lucasfilm movie that is finally having fun.

The return to an Errol Flynn-style hero, who can swing from chandeliers, fight with two swords at once and ride a horse backward, recalls a movie era both sexier and more innocent.

HAT in the name of artsy pretension do we have here? That Arizona Dream is a nightmare is beyond dispute - it's the sort of murky, symbol-laden trap that European directors often fall into when they cross the pond to take on the entire social stratum of the United States. The culprit in question is Emir Kusturica - Yugoslavian born, Czech trained, and now American buffaloed. This thing makes The Red Desert look coherent. [19 Nov 1994]

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.

Jeunet manages a terrific pass in an extended underwater sequence, but, beyond that, he runs out of ideas as we run out of patience.

This summer has given us two Supermen to choose from in our own distemperate times: "Superman Returns" was for the starry-eyed idealists, Hollywoodland is for the bleary-eyed cynics.

Fear is the anticipation of horror, and it’s this movie’s prime evil: not what happens inside the tent, but what might be making that noise outside.

Despite its lapses in credibility, the screenplay does offer both wit and numerous surprise twists, as well as all that non-stop action. And it's a nice change to see an action movie in which the hero, Russell's Grant, isn't some muscle-bound squinter. [15 Mar 1996]