Although the film and the actors keep on looking good, this solemn, soppy, fantasy has nothing to say about science or faith.

In the end, then, just Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp and those voices – their solos contain this picture like carved book-ends, vintage and lovely and still so profoundly of use.

As with his other costume farce, "Stage Beauty" (with Billy Crudup and Claire Danes), Hatcher produces more froth than zest.

Phillips delivers a mostly by-the-book rise-and-fall saga of two bros in way over their heads, complete with ostentatious title cards that, instead of subtly addressing the film’s themes of greed and jealousy, only hammer the moral lessons with the grace of a rusty Kalashnikov.

An inspired variation on his familiar theme: the whore with a heart of gold is a man. [2 Feb 1980]

Bring on the sequel please, because, as fine as Denzel is, director Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer is not so good – a self-consciously stylized, stop-and-start hodgepodge of Death Wish street vengeance, Bond-style Russian villainy, and moodily shot Boston locale.

The appeal of the Jack Ryan character, at least on the page, was that he was always the smartest guy in the room. In Shadow Recruit, that doesn’t seem to be much of an accomplishment, because the movie around him is so dumb.

Guy Ritchie's Holmes reboot feels both too complicated and too elementary, dear Watson.

While its penultimate scene returns to its affections for shock and gore, there remains a feeling that it’s been apologetically tacked on to a final act that is, overall, lacking in any other sort of fun or thrilling narrative twists and turns.

It comes across, however, as a 90-minute flirtation with a quarter of an idea, the gist of which barely impinges on the consciousness. [24 Aug 1987]

Utterly preposterous but so full of enthusiasm and flashy style that it's entertaining anyway, The Brotherhood of the Wolf is like the platypus of genre films.

It marks the first time in a decade that Sidney Poitier has worked in front of the camera. Well, after such an extended absence, maybe he wanted to limber up slowly, just a little light stretching to iron out the kinks in his actor's reflex. If so, the guy made the perfect choice. As flicks go, this is definitely a low-impact workout. [12 Feb 1988]

This is potentially compelling, but truncated flashbacks are far too crude a mechanism for exploring not only the intricacies of that tumultuous period in Kenyan history but also its ongoing legacy.

Morse and Donovan hold us rapt in this clearly told tale about identity confusion.

The Kingdom is a barely coherent compendium of Middle East fantasies, fears and doubts.

Add it all up, and Extraction’s many creative solutions to reinvigorating the genre nearly balance out its many generic genre problems. So, it’s good enough to take a shot on, especially after a stressful day of isolated modern life. But just one shot.

Where Mufasa distinguishes itself is Jenkins’s eye for balancing emotion with action.

The Rise of Gru is the weakest entry by far. But with just enough semi-inspired moments of weirdness to skate by.

Imperfect, but certainly provocative.

While Tom Tykwer's lavish and lively screen adaptation of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is certainly not a stinker, there is something decidedly off about it.

The man likes a scrap. But he's never had quite as ludicrous, and ludicrously entertaining, a fight as in The Commuter, which is essentially Liam Neeson versus a train.

There's not a scrap of imagination in the script.

The producers of Hidden in Plain Sight decided that they couldn't deal with Sept. 11 in the film without losing focus on its principal subject. The result is that the film stands as a testimonial to the world as it existed before that date, a world very different from the one we now live in.

The Corruptor is visually lively and filled with gratuitous destruction. [12 Mar 1999]

Every hero needs to be revitalized by a little humiliation, and for at least the first 40 minutes of Die Another Day, Bond's dressing-down seems to do him and the movie franchise a world of good.

It must be said that the closing sequence, in which Arthur meets the misbegotten Mordred on an orange battlefield illuminated by a shield-sized red sun, is an epic, Oedipal masterpiece of authentic mythic power, a sequence so strong it shakes the torpor from one's shoulders and induces regret that the rest of the saga has been so juvenile, so lifeless and so lacking poetry or Shakespearean sweep. [11 April 1981]

Perhaps Hill simply failed in his attempt to make of The Driver something more than an action picture. The trouble is that he doesn't do enough to elevate the film above the level of the genre. [29 July 1978]

Morlando's approach, influenced by interviews with the real Boyd in his old age, is cerebral and melancholic. The tone is more foreboding than suspenseful.