While the gender-based farmhouse siege is suspenseful and bloody, director Daniel Barber weighs in too heavily with extended silences that slow down the goings-on of a film that has darkly lit tension, lovely scenery and fiercely presented ideas on feminism.

There are so many missteps that Hancock and screenwriter John Fusco make here, but to list a few briefly: The dialogue is 85-per-cent clumsy exposition, the heroes are given exactly one character trait each (Gault’s a drunk, Hamer’s a jerk) and the film’s politics read as MAGA-esque vigilante evangelicalism (the movie is perpetually on the verge of having Hamer say, directly to the camera, something along the lines of, “the only good criminal is a dead criminal”).

While Rich’s script misses a few trickier opportunities to further dig into questions of religion and history – Herschel sleeps his way through the entirety of the Second World War, yet there’s never any discussion of how the Holocaust has irrevocably changed the world he wakes up in – An American Pickle is a movie that your bubbe will love.

They deliver precisely enough guffaws to give you your money’s worth, with a couple of sweet moments about how daughters break their parents’ hearts tossed in. I guess they had to hold something back for "Neighbors 3: Suburbia, a.k.a. The Cat Catches the Tinfoil."

Exist as extended videos for the accompanying soul and rap soundtrack.

The low-budget effort from Vancouver writer-director Scooter Corkle is earnest and methodical, with a tone-setting murkiness to it.

A crusty screed against many facets of modern life – the internet, smartphones, insurance companies, pecans – but kinda ho-hum on the subject of drug violence, Clint Eastwood’s The Mule is one of the more confounding films of the year.

Letting Shrek get grumpy again has freshly animated this cartoon series.

Most of all, though, it comes off as unsure, even afraid, of just what it wants to say about America today, resulting in a sometimes amusing, sometimes stilted lecture that indicts everyone, and no one.

Jonathan Demme's potent adaptation of Morrison's novel may be substantial, but it is also engrossing, a movie that plays at times like a combination of “Gone With The Wind” and “The Exorcist.”

Psycho III, directed by Perkins himself, is years behind the Hitchcock original in quality, it's light years ahead of Psycho II. [27 June 1986, p.D1]

Fortunately, Sisters doesn’t collapse into total absurdity in the same way that many house-party movies do – the film is slapstick and at moments teeters on the edge of too much, but it quickly snaps back before losing its audience.

In its defence, the movie means to incorporate Jet's conversion into its theme, serving up his new pacifism as a choice morsel of irony. But it doesn't taste ironic, just bland, and we aren't biting either.

In this vast balloon of a film, Bardem is the ballast – that Manichean face is a movie onto itself.

While Baron Cohen's lanky physical slapstick and verbal manglings are funny, the movie begins to feel like one of the later, worn-out Pink Panther movies.

A sequel that immediately picks up the plot of its predecessor, and then proceeds to drive the redeemed franchise right off the deep, dark end.

The plot finds loopholes as it rambles ahead semi-plausibly to its conclusion. Audiences will no doubt applaud this entertaining film, but the case is under appeal.

It's no fun looking after a determined, self-justified alcoholic; or even watching him waste away. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life accepts its subject on his own terms. And the compromise feels like capitulation before its hero's last record spins to a close. The death of a ladies man is pretty grim sport after the ladies have gone.

The narrative meanders on occasion, the conceit can seem repetitious, the editing is loose. Nevertheless, buoyed by the naturalism of its exclusively young cast, the picture effectively gets into your head and under your skin.

Come Play’s themes, characters and story are too strong to lump the film in with the wave of sub-tier horror flooding the market this month.

From time to time, as Alexandre Desplat's insistent score surged yet again while the characters rushed by, I found myself wanting the movie to slow down. Some of these images are too beautiful to disappear so quickly.

From a technical standpoint, this might be Clooney’s finest work as a director. . . . But as a storyteller, The Midnight Sky is an irritating experience.

There is also a capable, wisecracking stewardess (Julianna Margulies) and, what a surprise, a steward who appears to be doing a Paul Lynde impersonation.

When a Stranger Calls manages to scare the stuffing out of the audience - the film is authentically terrifying - without pouring more than a demi-carafe of gore. [22 Oct 1979]

Like most simplifications, Lean On Me's genially despotic approach has its attractions, and it works fine as a movie. Simplification worked fine in Rocky and in The Karate Kid, too, but unlike those essentially simple films, Lean On Me oversimplifies a very complex issue. And unlike those films, Lean On Me leaves one pondering the fact that, in real life, things aren't ever simple. [9 March 1989]

Ferdinand is not going to be the next "Frozen" or "Lion King" or even the fourth or fifth "Ice Age" movie, but there's a reason the story is still being told some 81 years after it was first published. Its lessons – be true to yourself, go your own way, and don't let society tell you what you should or shouldn't be – are just as applicable today as they were then. And that's no pile of bull.

When the larger question cannot be answered, the lesser one -- "What would you have done?" -- seems beside the point.

The movie becomes an American salute to military patriotism, anybody's military patriotism. Think of it as "A Few Good Reds."