Foster, recovering nicely from her last directorial outing in the surprisingly unfunny "The Beaver," proves her smarts by managing to balance these different strands of humour while keeping the action ticking along.

So, is Yesterday a one-trick Dig a Pony or did renowned British screenwriter Richard Curtis and the great British filmmaker Danny Boyle turn a cute hook into something meaningful? The answer is that the duo tries for the latter, but doesn’t quite nail it.

Ambulance is here to remind you of the head-spinning delights of watching a genuine cinematic madman at work. This is eye-popping, ear-splitting, guffaw-inducing stuff that makes Red Notice look like the dumpster juice it truly is.

The problem with the Purge films is they feel like they’re made for people who would actually take part in the purge.

The sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes frustrating film proves that Stone, ever the professional provocateur, still has what it takes to rile an audience. Or at least make your head spin round so many times that you’ll be backward thankful for the migraine.

There are jump-scares aplenty, and a great deal of barely visible shots of its monster, culminating in a full-on creature reveal that’s nicely gross. The characters are sketched out just enough to make you care whether they live or die, with solid performances from all involved, including a rare star turn from Messina.

Forman's treatment is another matter entirely - infinitely more subtle and, using the intrinsic bias of film, far more naturalistic. [18 Nov 1989]

Yet after half an hour in Wendy’s world, it is clear that Zeitlin has exhausted both his visual imagination and whatever narrative interest he had in Barrie’s tale other than “kids, they grow up fast.”

The Greatest Game Ever Played is far too inconsistent to be great, but at least Paxton has made an honourable attempt to treat this piece of sports history with the gravity it deserves.

The cast is proficient, with Balk especially adroit at giving her demonic gifts a gleeful twist. And director Andrew Fleming keeps the special effects on a low boil, effective yet not ostentatious, while taking allusive advantage of the competing (and sometimes complementing) tension between the school's Catholic imagery and the girl's pagan icons. But as our heroines lose their grip, so does he. [03 May 1996]

True, this film is a suspense exercise with a frightened woman trapped in a house where she stands to lose her life. Some people would not call this kind of thing entertainment, and no one can blame them. Some people would find this story entertaining no matter how shabbily it was produced. [07 Feb 1987]

The result isn't meant to be an historical document transmuted into fiction; instead, it's fiction turned into a fable, a dark fable.

With a multiracial cast, an international spy-caper flick with "Mission Impossible" and John Woo overtones, and a series of comic turns, fantasy sequences and sly humour, it should be a fresh delight. Unfortunately, it's not.

P.S.'s ending, a cautiously happy conclusion, feels like an afterthought.

Speaking of that deadly finale, it's easily the best part of the picture. Beautifully edited, shot in fluid slow-motion, scored to a traditional Irish ballad crooned in a child's tremulous voice, the violence of the climax is anthemic. The whole sequence is undeniably moving.

Makin has a knack for comic jolts, and, apparently, little interest in the longer narrative arc that movies, no matter how unorthodox, require. [13 Apr 1996]

Wahlberg, whose dim-bulb act was over-exposed in Pain and Gain, fares better here in a more heroic role. Stig is a hothead and a narcissist, but he’s also just a little bit smarter than he looks. The same goes for 2 Guns as a whole.

Only Lange is a powerful enough presence to raise a flicker of realistic emotion from this kind of stuff.

There are the usual gaggle of embarrassing friends, a lot of voice-over and montages, a wedding, a funeral and wait … something’s missing. Oh, right. Hugh Grant.

Alas, around about the third act, the idea grows tired and the whole thing gets derailed. Too bad, because it's a good ride until it isn't.

The delight of this film isn't so much in the tale as the telling.

Love the kid though, and Statham too – it takes a star with quality to be so rock solid in a crumbling yarn.

It’s a genuinely fun affair – let’s not write it off as a cult classic just yet – with the smirking air of a confidant and mischievous filmmaker.

The movie's dated, stereotypical comedy often contradicts its wholesome intentions, coming across as laboriously cutesy and occasionally perverse.

Megalopolis might be Coppola’s decades-in-the-making passion project, an epic of ambition and imagination, but it is also a magnificent mess of a masterpiece, as irredeemably silly as it is sincerely sublime.

In making the first DC superhero film in a long time to aspire to anything like levity, Wan finds a way to catalyze what might have been yet another dust-dry origin story. The secret? Just add water.

As it exists, Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny is strictly for the tenaciously devoted.

Not that Harbour is the reason that Violent Night lands like a lump of coal. He does what he can in a witless movie that is too easily satisfied with its own premise and often feels like it’s elbowing you in the ribs trying to get you to laugh along with it.