An interrogation session involving a psychotropic drug is just too weird for words and some will find the film sentimental and too naked in its Academy baiting. That said, 13 Minutes works like clockwork as an artful (if not terribly ambitious) take on a grotesque era.

In the end, F*CK is at most a compendium of opinions and examples, and never feels like a story. Still, great casting and inventive visuals make it an entertaining big-screen experience -- and don't expect to catch it later on network television (otherwise it would have to be retitled BL**P).

Jojo Rabbit excels with at least a sincerely attempted – if not exactly precise – balance of humour and horror, absurdity and tragedy.

Any one of these narrative components might have made for a worthy picture. But that would have taken a more imaginative writer than Charles Leavitt and a more sensitive director than Gary Fleder.

With the bigger story and more fully developed relationships than the previous films, this is the first Twilight film that feels like a real movie in its own right.

En route, the plot gimmick degenerates from clever to dumb, then gets forgotten entirely, and the last act simply poops out - the climax is a Bigger Bang that plays like the saddest of whimpers.

Best of all, it’s tight at 81 minutes, which means a 7 p.m. screening gets you out of the theatre while it’s still light out, thank God.

On the one hand, you gotta give it to the man. He’s got grit. But surely, there are other cowboys whose stories are just as worth telling.

This is Sweeney’s show, and when she’s not framed in its dead centre, the movie’s blood cannot help but drip down the drain. The star deserves whatever awards might be coming her way. Don’t make her put up a fight.

It’s saved, first by strong performances from Buckley, always effortlessly believable, and Colman, expert at laying bare the clammy soul of easily dismissible women. And second, by the letters themselves.

It's a movie located in an interesting place, but without quite enough self-confidence really to inhabit it.

Actually a pretty entertaining movie, in a kick-you-in-the-pants kind of way. A relative rarity -- a solid no-brow comedy.

Spiritual V-8 juice.

Like most of Simon's work, the situation is gaggy and mechanical and predictable, but Miss Hawn may succeed in persuading you it's a screwball classic. [19 Dec 1980]

Delight, a modest yet palpable measure of the stuff, is restored.

The problem is, there's just not enough Burton in Big Fish.

Truth be told, Wrong isn’t as funny as "Rubber," which played kamikaze games with horror-movie tropes. The tone here is flatter and more meandering, and more than a few of Dupieux’s digressions feel like dead ends. At the same time, there’s a winning confidence to the filmmaking, which is deceptively stylish.

This is just another generic war movie of the kind that revels in combat's greater glories. You know the type - the camaraderie that never quite rings true, the plot that never once makes sense. In short, the whole bombs-bursting- in-air, truth-through-the-night jive. [21 Oct 1988]

It attempts to take local history of the illegal whisky trade and raise it to the level of myth.

As the frequency of this particular nightmare ratchets up in volume, The Antenna proves a worthy successor to the work of David Cronenberg, Ben Wheatley and the many other filmmakers who delight in the meaty material of rancid subjects.

The Escape Artist looks as if it may be intended for children, but it's so fuzzy in detail and character that it fails in its premise as either adventure or fantasy. [29 May 1982]

This is a movie that was made not because the director had anything to say, but because she wanted to get a movie made. Even at that, the script is slapdash. Only one character has any dimension (Frances O'Connor's Mia), the plotting is the usual sub-screwball comedy with obligatory pranks and misunderstandings, and the overall tone is bland, smug and connivingly cute. [11 Apr 1997, p.C6]

It tries too hard too early.

This time, Tykwer somehow manages to turn Eggers’s attempt at an era-defining story into a weird little cross-cultural comedy with romantic overtones while remaining largely faithful to the original plot and dialogue. Here, globalization’s economic devastation is just a nice backdrop for some amusing – and, thankfully, inoffensive – observation of one American abroad.

There's a spunky charm to the Scream-meets-Groundhog Day thing, and the film is well-built. The problem is its chipper message.

This is still a light and frothy rom-com, predictable and charming in equal measure, and most comfortable when it fits the efficient mold of genre obligations. But when it wants to, it can really crank that charm up to 11.

Director Michael Apted's Thunderheart is a fleetly-paced murder mystery cum conspiracy thriller marred only by an 'inspirational' Hollywood ending at odds with the trajectory of the plot. [3 Apr 1992]

This tale of a visiting feline from outer space is liable to send anyone over the mental age of eight scurrying to the refuge of the candy bar. [17 Aug 1978]