A tasteful melodrama courtesy of the easy chemistry between its two leads and a generally restrained touch from Tony-winning director George C. Wolfe in his feature debut.

Returning director James McGrath and screenwriter Michael McCullers had an opportunity to build on an entirely workable formula, but instead have settled for a frenetic sugar rush of a retread that rapidly wears out its welcome. Pint-sized viewers might be distracted by the noisy, chaotic result, but most others will be hard-pressed to find the proceedings cute and adorable.

Although wholly predictable in its every beat and featuring bland, unremarkable WASPs as romantic leads, "Life" is not without its charms.

Moviegoers may expect something sexier than what they get here, but Neil LaBute's focus on just-talk between Broderick and co-star Alice Eve, funny but never uproarious, provides its own modest rewards.

The film’s facile message of cross-cultural unity owes more to fairy tale than reality, but the action is slick and the story gripping.

A human/robot love story that is less deeply imaginative than Spike Jonze's Her and less heartbreaking than Doremus' own Like Crazy, the picture is nevertheless a beautifully acted, affecting drama that teases some questions society may need to answer sooner than we expect.

Despite the director's frequently stated mission to liberate the poetry in his material by excavating what he has described as "ecstatic truth," this is a literal, rather flat epic that keeps telling us in voiceovers of its spiritual dimension, without actually generating much evidence of it.

Despite the care with which DeMonaco and his collaborators build dread, The Home only partially delivers on its frightening promises. The film suffers from uneven pacing, as it waits a touch too long to capitalize on the suspense it musters.

The film belongs to the women, with Knightley going from strength to strength (and showing she can sing!) and Miller again proving that she has everything it takes to be a major movie star.

A movie that tends to stick to formula, offering up minimal scares amid scattered moments of gross-out bliss.

The fight sequences are staged with admirable proficiency despite the often cheesy special effects.

Farrelly’s loftier impulses work against the material. The result is a meandering, disjointed production that struggles throughout to find a satisfying tone.

As a spoof of against-all-odds sports movies, "Power" has its moments. But for most of its running time, it buys into the feel-good formula, aiming to blend silliness and social issues into an inspirational tale

Unfortunately, as rendered here by the average-looking CGI effects, the characters are underwhelming in their appeal, lacking the charm of their previous animated incarnations.

Levinson diverts his film into a political thriller with its own conspiracy theory, an improbable romance and a curious subplot that feels like an anti-smoking ad. Little wonder his bewildered star, Robin Williams, looks confused much of the time.

Intermittently amusing but rarely as funny as it wants to be.

For a movie covering such an expansive passage of American life, Here feels curiously weightless. It’s no fault of the actors, all of whom deliver solid work with characters that are scarcely more than outlines.

The film offers enough low-key goofy pleasures to provide an amusing diversion.

Dr. Giggles may not be first in its class, but you'll get your money's worth. [26 Oct 1992]

Although the movie set in the hot new arena of mixed martial arts is a bit short on star power, it's energetic and warm-hearted enough to become a word-of-mouth hit.

Obvious parallels to "Thelma & Louise" do little to raise the dramatic stakes here.

Gentry's tense screenplay works well on its own, but gets a big assist from music and production design intent on conjuring some very specific moods.

The promise of a stylish psychological thriller is squandered in Camera Obscura, which lapses into an ordinary, wearying tale of a nice guy in over his head with ruthless criminals.

[Daniels] desire to wrest explicit meaning out of the mother’s experience and corral viewers toward a single conclusion unwittingly places The Deliverance in mawkish and disappointingly cartoonish territory.

Unlike Green’s Halloween trilogy, which served up diminishing returns with each new installment, Believer condenses that downward trajectory into the first chapter.

For all its admirable intentions and the terrific performances by its talented ensemble, Inherit the Viper fails to have any genuine impact. Neither weighty enough to satisfyingly explore its themes nor sufficiently suspenseful to work as a straightforward thriller, the film proves dramatically inert.

It all goes down easily thanks to a terrific cast.

Tautly orchestrated within its single setting and photographed and edited for maximum shock value, The Damned never really rises above its standard conventions. But its fast pacing and sheer air of conviction make it a better than average example of its overworked genre.

This is the kind of indie doodle of a movie in which several potentially interesting ideas co-exist but never quite come together and where supporters will call the narrative "freewheeling" while naysayers will insist on "rambling."

Battlestar Galactica is a poor man's version of Star Wars — poor in every detail, including writing, pacing, characterization and, above all, imagination.

Great comics from Jerry Lewis to Peter Sellers have turned pathetic into comedic. But James never seems to able to get beyond pathetic.

Young moviegoers who haven't yet tired of cookie-cutter dystopias will find a sympathetic protagonist played by Amandla Stenberg; but viewers who've taken this ride enough times to want, for instance, subtext addressing real-world oppression should look elsewhere.

While the screenplay by T.J. Cimfel and David White eventually proves unsatisfying in its plot revelations, the film certainly holds your attention thanks to Schindler's tautly paced direction and Riegraf's emotionally nuanced performance.

Nearly eight years on from the signing of all the brand extension contracts, here is the primarily pop-star-voiced animated musical UglyDolls, an imbecilic eyesore that could lay claim to being one of the worst movies ever made if it was worth such hyperbole.

As I might have said during my own high school days, The Kissing Booth 2 is "mad stupid," but it's still not as overtly slappable as Netflix's other low-budget teen comedies.

Whenever the camera settles down to record a simple conversation between two characters, things suddenly feel stilted, as if the filmmakers cannot build the drama without flinging a hundred different things in front of the lens at the same time.

There are some undeniably amusing moments, thanks largely to a cast unafraid to throw themselves into the raunchiness and violence with full abandon, but it's hard to avoid the feeling that the film represents a missed opportunity.

This low budget effort from director John Erick Dowdle and writer-producer-brother Drew Dowdle provides a few late scares after plenty of eye-rolling setup, with said scares due more to the heavy sound design than the action itself.

The Pale Door represents yet another stylistic mash-up that ends up less than the sum of its parts.

She's (Milla Jovovich) constantly being besieged by a seemingly never-ending series of monsters, and we -- at least every couple of years or so -- are forced to sit through yet another installment of the mind-numbing series.

Ripe, borderline hammy turns from Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Idris Elba and Mark Rylance add some spice.

A slim idea for a pulp-fiction short story padded out to 81 minutes with random encounters and celebrity sightings.

Featuring a stellar cast apparently seeking to prove that they're interested in being popular in red states as well as blue, Big Stone Gap goes down relatively easy, but it contains lots of empty calories.

Depicting the travails of an emotionally troubled Manhattan woman who returns to the remote Maine village of her childhood, Frank the Bastard doesn't reward the viewer's considerable investment of time and patience.

This is a shallow snapshot of First World problems and feeble conflicts that makes you despair for the state of gay-themed drama, perhaps even more so because it's capably acted and assembled with a slick sheen.

A female solidarity adultery comedy that's three parts embarrassing farce to one part genuinely comic discharge.

Johnny English Strikes Again is an oddly mirthless addition to the series.

Has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters.

Hill shows less snark and agitation than usual here, and the restraint serves him well.

It’s a waste of a good cast as well as a serious trip-wire for McCarthy, who may know what’s best for her talents but, on the evidence, needs a deft-handed outsider to make sure she’s maximizing them.

Anyone nostalgic for the director’s more memorable work might get a kick out of seeing him reunite with past collaborators Kavner and Albert Brooks. But almost everyone here is trying way too hard, with the exception of Mackey, who’s appealing and natural even when stuck in a phony world full of phony characters.

O Jerusalem has the virtue of energy, but it suffers from superficiality, particularly with regard to the characterizations.

The result isn't an unpalatable pudding but rather a fair-to-middling children's film that is half CG-animation and half live-action.

Strictly for the Beliebers.

Emperor has difficulty mustering a seriousness to match its subject.

The film, written (with Steven Rogers) and directed by Richard LaGravenese, is long and drags in places. But the chief problem is that "P.S." feels like a gimmick.

Scodelario, of the Maze Runner films and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, is just about the only member of the cast who seems to believe she's expected to be more than a thin generic functionary or flamboyant scene-stealer.

The picture's quiet performances and occasionally surprising moments take it just far enough off the beaten path to make it more than a transparently formulaic feel-good story.

A weakness for the formulaic, combined with a noticeably weighty running time, continually bumps up against the film’s many fine points.

Boasting uncommonly handsome production values and a stellar cast, the awkwardly titled The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box nonetheless feels like a stillborn attempt at a franchise starter.

It relies too heavily on shock value rather than solid facts.

An awkward blend of live action and animation.

Aiming for Hitchcockian suspense but coming closer to daytime drama, the film offers only occasional tension.

Taking the inspirational sports movie template, then infusing it with so much weed and foul language that it deserves its own MPAA rating, The Underdoggs is a good example of what happens when Snoop Dogg steps into an otherwise familiar tween-age comedy to wreak havoc.

The film leaves itself open to accusations of making Michael a saint, which will not sit well with the cancel crowd. If you are unwilling to separate the art from the artist, this will not be a movie for you. But for lifelong fans who cherish the music, the movie delivers. Simply as a celebration of Jackson’s songs and stagecraft, it’s phenomenal, shot by Dion Beebe with visual electricity in the performance sequences. The music has never sounded louder or better.

A cut above the usual level of slasher films, with its overly convoluted plot enhanced by an impressive level of cinematic style. It also places a greater emphasis on surprising plot twists than gore.

A cookie-cutter thriller that takes its time getting to the (sorta) good stuff, it's for die-hards only.

A solid (if conspicuously handsome) cast does justice to the grim mood of Cipoletti's sophomore feature, but that mood sometimes suffocates a script that deviates little from genre expectations.

The main problem is that the directors often struggle to assign meaning to their images that helps advance either the narrative or illuminate the emotional state of their main character.

By now Bowers, who also directed the last two Wimpy Kid movies, knows how to choreograph the inherent chaos for optimal giggles, even if many of the book’s more satirical elements have been swapped out for broader slapstick.

Despite Meat Loaf’s hammily entertaining turn as the desperate owner of a musical theater summer camp, the film fails to live up to its obvious inspirations.

Awkward execution and technical imperfections prevent the film from having its desired emotional impact.

Why somebody would get off the couch and spend money to see it is anyone's guess.

A perky though not terribly imaginative feature aimed primarily at youngsters.

For a film so seemingly interested in educating audiences about the evils of sex trafficking that it provides horrific statistics at the conclusion, it has no compunction about including copious doses of female nudity.

Another among this year's crop of features that demonstrates that having a cast with indie cred can sometimes do little to buoy a film's miscalculated execution.

More aggressively violent and thankfully less mythology driven than previous installments, Underworld: Awakening is strictly for the converted.

There’s a sense that the goings-on are more quirky than comical.

While visually engaging, this production of Disneytoon Studios -- it was originally slated to go direct-to-DVD -- lacks the sort of character depth and dramatic scope normally associated with the Pixar brand.

Features sitcom-style stock characters and situations, not to mention the sort of ethnic stereotypes to be found in TV ads for fast-food Mexican restaurant chains.

Ethnic comedies have their limitations, and a sharper script would have helped this one to stand out from the pack. Nevertheless, audiences in a forgiving mood will enjoy the byplay among an appealing bunch of desperate characters.

Embalming the simple and simplistic yarn in an amber glow that is all but suffocating and banishing from it any traces of humor and spontaneity, director Scott Hicks serves up this treacly tale with absolutely no trace of self-consciousness about the material's cliches or simple-mindedness.

The movie delivers an inspiring message about the power of faith and forgiveness, which is its obvious raison d'etre. But it does so in the sort of formulaic, cliched and simplistic manner that afflicts so many inspirational films.

Other than the luminous Dawson, who somehow manages to rise above the hackneyed material, none of the principal players emerge from this cinematic wreckage unscathed. Director Macy emphasizes the comedic aspects of the material in such overly broad fashion that Krystal begins to resemble a demented sitcom that could only have benefited from a laugh track.

None of it adds up to much beyond painting the band, despite their often repellently bad behavior, in a flattering light.

A surprisingly effective debut effort from writer-director Robert Kirbyson.

Chastain is utterly convincing in another tough-as-nails role. If audiences stick with the movie, it's largely thanks to her movie-star charisma, which almost compensates for the increasingly ridiculous plot. Malkovich and Farrell seem to understand they are A-list talent in B-movie roles, and relish the opportunity.

The heist itself is almost dull, and the characters aren't half as colorful or interesting as they need to be.

A frequently charming, if ultimately slight, coming-of-age tale.

Heavy on oppressively humid atmosphere and light on originality, the film is a mostly forgettable genre exercise whose viewers won't miss much by watching at home.

The film is affecting, because it outlines the saddening end of an adored American icon. But for all its promises of unheard insights, it seldom goes much deeper than an E! True Hollywood Story.

Despite the premise's admittedly thin motivational set-up, "Act 2" skits along on exuberant charm and zippity humor. [10 Dec 1993]

While it starts out promisingly, it seriously devolves in its second half into a surreal phantasmagoria that’s more gonzo than chilling.

In the film's most flamboyant role, Peter Sarsgaard's devil-ish charisma and cold bluster is frightening.

This gonzo premise doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and to compensate, Twohy pads the screenplay with quirky antics that tax viewer patience and expose a narrative thinness that’s hard to ignore.

Like an athlete who leaves it all on the field, the film leaves it all in the moment and on the screen, and there's really nothing to take away afterwards. There is nothing to think about, no nuances to contemplate, no connection with these characters who exist only in moments of hyper-tension and crisis, no greater truths to consider other than to prevail.

Though the intended hilarity is forced and flat, there's a sweetness to the silliness.

This particular reconceptualization actually does an impressive job of capturing the nasty dread of the original. It certainly is a vast improvement over those previous remakes/sequels.