The narrative line itself rambles increasingly down a path toward tawdry melodrama, defeating the impact of the handsome visuals and finely etched performances. [13 Jan 1995]

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.

Cherry is a mess. Nonsensically stylized, wildly overlong and constantly mistaking yelling for dramatic tension, the film unintentionally underlines everything that made the Russos’ Avengers films so sloppy .

The film's best and most carefully shaded performance belongs to Bacon.

Miracles from Heaven is mostly an embarrassment.

School for Scoundrels suffers from an old-fashioned identity crisis. The poor thing is awfully confused, and so are we. Is it a black comedy that isn't dark enough? Or a dumb comedy that isn't stupid enough, or a gross-out comedy that isn't yucky enough? Or is it really just a romance comedy that isn't sweet enough? Don't have a clue, but this much is certain: It's definitely a failed comedy that isn't funny enough.

A work of soulless indifference. It is not so much a movie as an exercise in how to wring the life out of even the most lifeless of properties – grave robbing writ large, except the ostensible corpse was never more than a worthless bag of bones in the first place.

Unfortunately, it has the model of the 1939 film to remind us how lacking in delight this version is.

An unholy mess.

It's the same package with new wrapping.

3 Men and a Cradle is in fact a dated farce with designer cinematography. [25 April 1986, p.D1]

Bushwick is an unpolished work, but there's an adrenalin charge, sure thing. It's close combat and it's closer than most Americans might wish to believe.

The Love Punch feels like a remake of an old MGM caper comedy. It’s not, but it feels that way, which will certainly set it apart from the Disney villains, X-people and radioactive sea monsters of the summer movie schedule.

This is the kind of picture that is faux subtle when it should be bold, and really ham-handed when it should be delicate.

When you watch Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, there's often a sense that you're not just watching him perform in a movie, you're watching the next stage of his unfolding career plan.

Memo to screenwriters cranking out murky existential thrillers: Do not have various characters repeat on several occasions: "I know this doesn't make any sense."

A wild, reckless, gleefully immoral work of pop nihilism.

The Miracle Season is a simple movie of straightforward sentimentalism and gung-ho, against-all-odds inspiration.

Strictly for the midnight-movie crowd, Drive Angry serves up a non-stop stream of female nudity, flying body parts, gun battles and smart-alecky dialogue.

Although In My Country is charged with moments of grace and feeling, the film is ultimately betrayed by the clunky Jackson-Binoche romance.

Actress Kristen Stewart – coolly intense, androgynous, and intelligent – remains the series' strongest asset, as Bela, the emotional centre of the story.

There’s also not much chemistry between Skarsgard and Robbie in a film that hints at the Greystokes’ great sex life but barely shows it. Instead, we get flashes of flesh that are hilariously dated in their obviousness.

The plot is stale though some of the moves are fresh.

Estela Bravo's film Fidel, The Untold Story has the kitsch appeal of a farm implement on a restaurant wall, or an Andy Warhol Mao poster: Interesting, but not for its original purpose.

While his sincerity is admirable, Pellington is reluctant to offer any ideas that are more theologically complex than 'Faith is valuable' and 'Life is for living.'

The movie surprises on almost every level, breaking a number of contemporary rom-com rules along the way thanks to Tiffany Paulsen’s self-aware screenplay. I don’t mean in the meta-satirical sense of, say, David Wain’s absurdist They Came Together. More like a watered down Nora Ephron project.

With all due affection, del Toro is the fantasy world’s Quentin Tarantino – his originality rests in how meticulously and enthusiastically he repackages the work of others. DeKnight has no such goals; he can’t even be bothered here to ape del Toro’s imitation game.

Ultimately Murder Mystery 2 is the most business-as-usual kind of Sandler shtick, its only real surprise being how the production manages to pull off one solitary, very lonely surprise toward its end (it involves a quick appearance from Jillian Bell, bless her heart).