On a few occasions the film lives up to its potential, but overall it's too slick and unintentionally funny. [12 Jan 1998]

The film, from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, is a typical action-comedy that benefits greatly from its two stars, and slightly from their unexpected characters, before plunging fast into explosive but trite set-pieces.

The film is competently made and absorbing at times, but there’s a workaday quality that slows its momentum. It’s a handsomely made project, but a story about such a complicated set of characters should make us feel more strongly, and Rust struggles to accomplish that.

It’s not entirely a bad time, as things involving Allison Janney and Bryan Cranston tend not to be. But it’s not exactly a satisfying one, either.

Honey Don’t! is a better movie than Drive-Away Dolls thanks to an engaging whodunit plot, but it ultimately suffers from the same issues as its predecessor: The film feels like a series of gags with nowhere to go.

Somewhere in Kesari Chapter 2 is the riveting story of a man who stood against an empire, but it comes alive only intermittently.

It can impress with its utter originality and technical know-how, but there’s so much going on for so long that many viewers will be exhausted by the midway point, if not earlier.

It’s a thought-provoking subject that probably plays better on paper than on screen, urging us to seek out the writer’s books once the movie is over.

The film lurches between comic set pieces and more dramatic beats, and while Johansson proves a competent helmer, it’s not enough to overcome some dizzying tonal imbalances.

The film proves at least somewhat compelling, with director Latif providing enough tension and chilling visuals to keep viewers engaged.

The conceit of letting Walters’ own interview tactics steer the documentary isn’t a bad one, but as executed here, it isn’t interesting either, which is a pity since Walters was absolutely interesting.

The film has its rewards, mostly of the unsophisticated kind, since the fight sequences come fast and furious and the cheesy dialogue has enough groan-worthy one-liners to inspire a thousand drinking games.

Fluk doesn’t have a firm enough handle on the material to make that story interesting. And the uneven division of the Keith and Vera plotlines makes Köln 75 a movie without a narrative center.

Ballad of a Small Player has plenty of flash, as befits the story of a man whose everyday wear consists of jewel-tone velvet suits and silk ascots. But there’s not much substance to be found underneath the consciously cheap glamour.

Rather than recalling any specific existing property, Cold Storage just feels generically familiar, like under-seasoned comfort food.

There’s a story worth telling here, a snapshot within a sprawling tragedy, but Avrich can’t make a bigger statement that doesn’t feel oversimplified.

It all feels like the film is setting up for nested tales within tales, but instead the layers don’t go that deep. Nor does the film offer up much in the way of thematic substance beyond love (between women) is grand, men are mostly bad, and matriarchal societies are better than patriarchies.

Australian theater and film director Simon Stone’s blandly glossy, capably acted adaptation, co-written with Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, is mostly a pedestrian affair that waits until the denouement to crank up the suspense and show some teeth.

Only once we’ve gotten the full picture, near the end of the movie, does Charlie Harper finally start to come into its own. The film’s last scenes are its finest.

Even Fiennes, who delivers a typically expert, understated performance, doesn’t manage to make us fully invested in the stagey proceedings.

The film is a mess, opaque in its argument and tiring in its effortful weirdness, and yet in its best moments has a hypnotic pull.

Karia’s attempts to make the play cinematic work well at times.

With many strong elements, it’s frustrating when The Astronaut fumbles in the final stretch.

Maybe it was too much to have expected something fresher than the totally 80s feel-good vibe that Drivers’ Ed is content to deliver, but considering the source, the comedy can’t help but feel unmotivated. It’s what the kids today would call mid.

It’s all harmless fun, other than the fact that parents will undoubtedly be forced to shell out money for cat ears for their children. Kraner is a suitably likeable presence and Estefan provides the requisite warmth as the grandmother.

By the time questions are answered, not just regarding Polly but also the way in which her history intersects with Caitlin’s, the glacial pacing and lack of suspense have dulled the thriller’s hook.

While there’s something to be said for the communal experience of absorbing an album surrounded by dozens of likeminded fans, what’s actually being served up on screen is more filler than killer.

You maybe have to be fully on board with the Charli xcx circus to really appreciate what a movie about it is trying to do. For the more casual viewer, The Moment is entertaining enough, for a while.

The Drama is a handsomely made, sharply performed letdown. It is yet another example of a far too common occurrence: a kicky logline premise having no real structure behind it.

Selena y Los Dinos remains a slick doc most likely to appeal to her fans.

The casting proves an inevitable distraction for Frontier Crucible, a competently executed but unmemorable oater.

If nothing else, Guy Ritchie’s latest effort proves that a movie can be ridiculously convoluted and simple-minded at the same time.

If You See Something is a flawed film that nevertheless reminds us of the selective cruelty that leaves so many struggling to survive.

The New Yorker at 100 is a commercial for The New Yorker and it isn’t masquerading as anything else. But at that point, it should at least be a commercial for the magazine that befits the voice, aesthetic and ethos of the magazine in a meaningful way.

With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.

Ultimately How to Make a Killing doesn’t have the courage of its convictions, or even its killings, giving it a blandness that’s surprising coming from the writer-director of the much sharper Emily the Criminal, a similarly themed, darkly tinged thriller in which its star Aubrey Plaza displayed a fearlessness that is sorely lacking here.

[Gibson's] charisma keeps the formulaic movie afloat, while director Collins displays a flair for action scenes.

While it’s a little low on scares, Hokum is pacey and involving enough to keep genre fiends watching once it hits streaming, just for production designer Til Frohlich’s creepy hotel set alone, a place that looks untouched by the passing years. But the writer-director smudges the lines separating an ancient evil from a sordid but disappointingly non-supernatural crime.

Although Manville and Hinds are always worth watching, it’s obviously a problem when the actors and the scenery so thoroughly overshadow a film’s story.

Cheese and kitsch, with smatterings of blood and decapitated heads, are all on the menu in Dracula, which is a watchable if totally ludicrous version of the Stoker story. At best, the movie is another showcase for the always-interesting-to-watch Caleb Landry Jones.

The Gallerist is not without its occasional charms. There’s a chuckle to be had here and there, bits of zinging dialogue that actually find the right notes. Enough so that one roots for the movie despite its many missteps. The problem, ultimately, is that Yan chose a poor subject for her film, an environment that is an incredibly hard target to nail.

The customary warmth and gentleness of Kogonada’s approach and the corresponding delicacy of the three actors makes you keep wishing Zi would build more substance, more lingering poignancy instead of wafting along on its cloud of melancholy with characters that lack dimension. But it only acquires life intermittently.

As answers to the film’s big questions begin arriving in slapdash fashion, one loses patience for Tuason’s evasive, cluttered storytelling.

If the concept has a way of grabbing one’s attention, however, the execution proves too uneven to leave a lasting impression. Though Good Boy gets by for a while on the strength of its performances and the sheer oddness of its plot, the flimsiness of its characters drains the film of energy long before its 110 minutes are up.

The movie is a one-joke premise, cute and colorful but unsatisfyingly fleshed out.

Chasing Summer often plays as the most peculiar Hallmark movie ever made. I want that to be a good thing, but it unfortunately is not.

Though The Musical may lack a feeling of modernity, it could make up for that elsewhere: with tart humor, with unexpected plot developments, with compelling performances. But, alas, Bonilla and her actors can’t do much to leaven the leaden script they’ve been handed.

Overall, there is so little texture to these character arcs that the actors are mostly just working in service of a blandly uplifting message. It’s as if they’ve all been commissioned by a well-funded science museum to lend their bodies and voices to the cause of slickly comestible up-with-people infotainment.

No one enjoys beating up on a film in which the writer has invested so much of himself and his pain. But Cayton-Holland and Duplass have somehow made an authentic tragedy feel phony and unaffecting.

Ritchson, whose massive bulk qualifies as a special effect itself, displays his usual charisma, but the one-note nature of the proceedings doesn’t give him the opportunity to do much more than look physically or emotionally anguished.

There’s no shortage of stylish craft here and much to enjoy in the performances, but ultimately, Rosebush Pruning is too glib to work, leaving only an acrid aftertaste.

For Worse isn’t all bad; bits of it are intriguing and the rest is too anodyne to get worked up about. But it’s hard to shake the disappointment that this is just an okay movie, when it seems like it should’ve been a good one.

It’s an aggressive glossing-over of a career that is worthy of both reverence and introspection/interrogation/investigation. Entertaining, funny and light on its feet to a fault, Lorne offers only the first.

Family Movie is a project that seems to exist entirely because the Bacon-Sedgwick clan just thought it’d be fun to collaborate on something, and that’s being released for the rest of us entirely because the Bacon-Sedgwicks are the Bacon-Sedgwicks. For some fans, maybe that’ll be enough. I think I preferred the actual home movies of the actual Kevin, Kyra, Sosie and Travis that play over the ending.

The impression Pretty Lethal leaves behind is one of unfulfilled potential, an exciting premise executed as a fitfully fun but mostly forgettable distraction.

It’s reasonably effective, with Ferreira appealing in the lead role and Montgomery very creepy as the copycat killer who would have benefited from a more wholesome media diet.

The documentary is an ungainly blend of ultra-earnest hagiography and trashy true-crime sensationalism, without being completely satisfying as either.

That exciting crash sequence — from initial turbulence through to catastrophic Pacific Ocean landing — is where high-stakes action specialist Harlin is most firmly in his sweet spot.

Sometimes eloquent and often rocky, Magic Hour is good enough to make you wish it was much less predictable.

While it’s not without entertainment value, Motor City feels like it wants to be Don Siegel meets Michael Mann meets Walter Hill with a dash of John Woo, but ends up an ersatz version of all their work.

More chronicle than drama, it sticks faithfully by the side of its lovable mess of a heroine, whom Exarchopoulos plays with her usual no-bullshit funkiness, this time with too many glasses of wine down the hatch. She brings a dose of humor and a few grace notes to a movie in search of a tighter story, even if it deserves credit for its honesty.

Based on a well-regarded novel by Brenda Navarro, it’s a wafty character study so stripped down and elliptical that it lacks the connective tissue to hook us into its story or provide emotional access to its characters.

Jim Queen is a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp through a heap of stereotypes about gay life in Paris. It’s teeming with jokes about prostate orgasms, about tops and bottoms, about fetishes and bodily fluids and G’d out party bois. It comes as a welcome shock to the system here at this august, black-tie film festival. I just wish the movie was funnier and fresher than it is.

Not bad enough to be considered a camp, guilty pleasure, it's more of a dull, defanged dirge with the reliably intriguing Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins turning in oddly disaffected performances.

Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.

An uneven romantic comedy that feels as fresh as a hunk of week-old soda bread.

Charmless sequel.

A mechanical sci-fi'er absent of logic or emotions. It functions as an expensive place-filler on the Disney release schedule and, as such, will be welcomed by only the least discriminating thriller fans.

The technical barrage of visual and digital effects, quick cuts and strobe lighting does produce something akin to the sensation of playing a video game. So why, one wonders, don't potential viewers simply play one instead of watching this pale imitation?

A dull actioner that looks like a bad video game.

An artistic fiasco that cuts across genre lines and all logic to become, perhaps, an instant midnight movie.

Combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.

The title is a good indication of this movie's blandness and predictability.

Not a single person in this ensemble comedy doesn't suffer from colossal stupidity.

Mercilessly plodding pacing, problematic character motivations and a fundamental lack of chemistry between the two star-crossed lovers in question don't do a lot to help its cause.

Making a vampire movie without any bite is like removing guns from a Western.

The fifth outing for the slime-dripping, shape-changing creatures, the Aliens are looking a little dogged, perhaps ready for the Alien Retirement Home. Meanwhile, the Predator warriors, who never achieved the artistic heights of their counterpart, look better invisible. When visible, they resemble robotic can openers gone berserk.

Bruno is only intermittently funny and all too often the "ambushes" of celebrities and civilians look staged. The movie is even a tad -- dare we say it? -- tedious.

There are twist endings and there are twist endings -- and then there is the logic-strangling, complete cheat of a reveal that takes place in the final 10 minutes of Hide and Seek. It's so absolutely preposterous that it stops the film cold and draws a collective "Aw c'mon!"

An unwieldy, excessively talky affair, unintentionally exhibiting all the clunky stops and starts and self-conscious ramblings of a particularly awkward first date.

This tale of the theater could have used more time on the road.

The director's split-screen effects and hand-held digital camerawork go from being innovative to repetitive to irritating in a Santa Cruz minute.

Vin Diesel is out of his element in this lame family comedy.

There is little suspense, however, and while all the attention on the small details of their lives is laudable, it isn't very interesting.

Even as agile a performer as Sandra Bullock seems to be straining here amid the repetitive jokes and muddled girl-power message.

Eye-popping yet ultimately thin and shallow as a page in a graphic novel.

Any movie starring Penelope Cruz or William H. Macy can't be all bad. And Sahara, which stars both Penelope Cruz and William H. Macy, proves the point: It isn't all bad.

Ultimately a less-than-satisfying cinematic meal.

It's a highly stylized piece of work typical of director Todd Solondz, who renders wildly exaggerated sequences on a topic not generally thought of as a basis for comedy. He leaves it to the viewer to decide if it's insightful whimsy or meaningless drivel.

Ultimately, Adam Moreno's screenplay, with its multiple narrators and constantly shifting points of view, makes for mighty confusing viewing.

Crammed with charmless characters and/or hammy performances.

While those in the know will undoubtedly find something to appreciate in the film's wide-ranging if amateurish stabs at satire, the vast majority will feel left out of a private joke.

A dry compendium of talking-head interviews.

Dull film about pedophilia that fails to shed any light on the topic.

Yet another stylish exercise in depravity in which Huppert floats through the sordid proceedings in a calm haze. If only the film she inhabits was as sexy as it aspires to be.

Awfully dull, with scant evidence of the sort of things that make horror movies attractive -- like mounting suspense and spine-tingling creepiness and, oh yeah, the element of horror.

That outrageous third-act reveal proves to be a major deal-breaker.

Lacks the finesse to attract significant attention beyond its target audience.