The movie is dramatically limp, running out of narrative steam long before the set decorator runs out of colours.

In the end, the power of Minervini’s pseudo-fiction gives way to a much blander version of pseudo-reality.

Martin Scorsese, meet Djo Tunda Wa Munga, because you obviously have a lot in common. Viva Riva! is nothing less than the Congolese Mean Streets, oozing sexual heat and brute violence and powered by a locomotive's worth of raw kinetic energy.

This half-throttle documentary might better be called The Fast and the Uneventful.

There are occasional moments when the film is so close to feeling like it is accomplishing its goals – to be seen as a sharp and comedic critique of the cost of storytelling, with a fun little whodunnit at its core – but it never quite gets there.

Only Seyfried truly understood the assignment that Feig handed her, the actress oscillating between two modes – intense and freakishly intense – with finesse.

As the plot moves toward the climax, where each girl is forced to make a hard choice dictated by her unique "circumstance," that feeling of compression, of so many contradictory urges and needs vying for attention, grows almost overwhelming. Such is life among the young in present-day Tehran, up on the screen for all to see – all but those who most need to see it.

It’s quite a film Stephens has made.

For the most part, it's simply a pleasure to watch a smoothly made and underplayed film about attractive, nice people without a hint of violence on their minds. [25 Apr 1997, p.D8]

More heart-breaking and action-packed than one imagines from a monastery travelogue film.

It may not be a pretty picture, but A Tale of Two Sisters is definitely a satisfying piece of less-is-more cinematic horror.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus takes us deep into the imagination of Terry Gilliam, which once was a splendid place to visit. And might prove so again. But not here, because this film is less a coherent exercise of imagination than a haphazard lecture on its importance, a lecture that eventually dwindles into self-indulgence.

If there were an ounce of pretension in this, it would be unbearable. But it is clear that nobody in the film takes it seriously, and that everyone is having fun, and you just can't help having fun with them. [28 June 1991]

Overall, The Salt of Life has more bite but less charm than "Mid-August Lunch."

The many stumbling blocks, setbacks and eventual (spoiler alert for a three-quarters-of-a-century-old war) triumphs of Operation Mincemeat are handled by a deft crew of real-life stiff-upper-lip types played by the finest U.K. actors working today.

The Runaways captures the sleaze and innocence of the era and has some still-relevant things to say about the conflict between girl-rocker empowerment and exploitation.

The bond between Barney and Ron is clearly the reason this movie works.

The acting is superb, the settings are beautifully recreated, the dialogue crackles with occasional wit, but where's the juice? Although lovely to gaze upon, the whole thing feels a bit precious and porcelain, more teapot than sexpot.

It adds nothing to our understanding of "Howl," and the movie is exactly what the poem isn’t: ordinary.

Conducting another symphony in action, Spielberg seems a bit bored – always competent but never inspired – and who can really blame him? He tries to fire his interest by swiping a few tropes from the fifties pop bin, not-so-sly allusions to teen-trash movies and those McCarthy-era horror flicks. After that, there's really nowhere to go but inwards, which is when Spielberg starts looting Spielberg.

For all its action thrills, Salt is relatively humourless fare.

It is almost criminal, though, that the end of this otherwise game-changing franchise full of bloodthirsty and complex women concludes on a painfully trite note – the strides made by all four films are undercut by Part 2’s underwhelming and hokey epilogue.

It's a turning-the-tables story a five-year-old could appreciate -- except for the confusing crowd scenes and haphazard camera work. Technically speaking, Waters' skills haven't improved much over the years.

La Bamba may in many ways be a catalogue of cliches, but they are cliches that Valens was able to live for his people for the first time, and they are cliches that Luis Valdez has been able to film for his people (for all people) for the first time.

What's missing, in the direction no less than the script, is any real sense of dramatic urgency.

Though credibly performed and photographed, it's hard to care about a film that proposes as epic tragedy the plight of a callow rich boy who is forced to choose between his beautiful, self-satisfied 22-year-old girlfriend and an equally beautiful, self-satisfied 18-year-old mistress.

Dirty Dancing is "Flashdance" with a triple-digit IQ.

Certainly, this imagineered version of P.L. Travers’s life provides an orderly drama, but it’s uncomfortably reductive. It may be a small world, after all, but it comes in a lot more shades than Saving Mr. Banks suggests.