Zhang’s apocalyptic view of the beasts from above as they swarm over the palace like rats may be a chilling metaphor for what awaits us all if we don’t achieve effective international co-operation – but it is also the too-hasty climax to an underdeveloped martial-arts/monster-movie mashup. East and West are going to have to do better than this.

The plot feels both familiar and far-fetched.

In truth, despite its honesty, this is a flawed little film, its low comedy never funny enough to justify its crudeness.

The film’s writing is unambitious; there’s little to cause adults to smile knowingly.

Hurt is so good at capturing the charming and chilling Ned that he almost makes up for the film's two primary weaknesses: Kasdan's inexperience and a message of significant unpleasantness. [28 Aug 1981, p.P17]

Vardalos has a talent, and there is one sequence in the movie that works. In the romantic subplot, Connie falls for Peaches' brother Jeff (David Duchovny, as Vardalos's sleepy, hunk replacement for John Corbett in Greek Wedding).

Worse still is his idiotic tampering with the so-called "Happy Ending" -- in print, it's bleakly ironic; on screen, incongruously sentimental.

Waters's rude, lewd and occasionally nude extended skit takes a simple idea and beats it limp.

The narrative is tightly written, fast-paced and delivered with a scorching, emotional intensity by the actors. The timeline – which moves from the dank cellars of wartime Poland, to concert halls in 1970s Berlin and Sephi’s staid music academy in Jerusalem, is smoothly interwoven. Still, the drama seems overwrought at times, even cliché.

The result is an intriguing but uneven thriller that doesn’t fully establish the tone and style that would be needed for an audience to accept its supernatural plot.

Continuing directly from where 2010’s "Insidious" left off, Insidious: Chapter 2 follows the further misfortunes of the Lambert family with diminishing insidious rewards.

The finale is a gut-punch, but it arrives too long after Komasa has already exhausted most of his story's, and leading man's, energy.

This is a movie that cries out for attention, in ways both admirable and grating.

The old carnival phrase "Close, but no cigar" comes to mind when watching The Brothers Bloom , a globetrotting heist film that starts off terrifically and then progressively deflates.

Perhaps the most regrettable crime here is the way that Mann, trying to do too much, robs himself of a great opportunity. Here was a chance to capture the drama of the Thirties.

For its last third, the entire thing gets a Frankensteinian head transplant, and turns into derivative serial-killer nonsense.

It's possible to admire the performances of stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger in The Burning Plain , even as you backpedal from the film, hoping the ponderous megasoap will just go away.

A comedy should provoke more than smiles. Should have characters instead of show-offs. Although often charming, Micmacs seems so pleased with itself that it hardly needs an audience.

The differences between the two movies are, first, that Scoop is a comedy and, second, unlike "Match Point," it's not very good, as Allen also returns to pre-Match Point mediocre form.

The Bostonians, from the novel by Henry James, is the story of their relationship, one of the strangest in literature. Unfortunately, that strangeness has survived the transfer to the screen less than intact, and satiric oddity has been replaced by romantic banality. Redgrave's performance - red-eyed, quivering, opalescent - is peerless, the one incontrovertible reason to see the film. [23 Nov 1984]

Needless to say, what's refreshing about A Christmas Story is subversive to the sepia-toned and loving references to the forties which director Bob Clark has provided for the film. The fictional Parker family that Shepherd has written about for 20 years is not as gentle or gauzy as they first appear. It's possible to imagine them so preoccupied with their own problems, whether dealing with the neighbor's dogs or winning a mail- order contest, that they could forget Christmas altogether. [25 Nov 1983, p.E5]

William Smith, who plays Lucky Lonnie, a drag-strip racer in David Cronenberg's Fast Company, is a personification of country singer Waylon Jennings' voice: powerful and rich and funky and gentle. He doesn't hold Fast Company together - a vise the size of Paraguay couldn't hold Fast Company together - but his presence gives the movie an entirely undeserved distinction. [03 Oct 1979]

As her oddly unengaged zoologist husband, the Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh appears to be working in a different movie altogether.

For my first trick, allow me to write off an entire picture by merely affixing to the title a one-word contraction: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone isn’t. Please hold your applause.

The formula is a bit too neat and the dialogue is often painfully expository, but there are some fine performances – especially from Gillian Anderson as the earnest Lady Mountbatten – and plenty of compelling drama.

The result is a movie that's both odd and mediocre: not as bad as doing hard time, but not a particularly good time, either.

Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil is a misfire, despite its wonderful title, which feels plucked straight from an Elvira movie.

The Last Circus is a bizarre, surreal, grotesque, fascinating, demanding, disappointing and ultimately exhausting political allegory that plays like a waking nightmare.