Danny Boyle has great and plainly evident fun adding twists and curves and tunnels and endless style to his modern London noir Trance, but he makes so many left turns that the film turns in on itself rather than going anywhere.

Ang Lee's lugubrious spy epic Lust, Caution brings to mind what soldiers say about war: that it's long periods of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement.

Transformers is a wet dream for fanboys, with vehicles that whiz and whir into alien robots, spectacular sci-fi stunt chases, glistening military hardware, overheated computer software and brainy, hot girls who love Popular Mechanics.

For all the technical prowess on display, Notes on an Appearance proves too fragmentary to hold the viewer's interest. Its minimalist aesthetic quickly becomes wearisome, lacking sufficient variety or substance to warrant even a brief running time.

From its actual and figurative scenes of cockfighting to its copious use of throbbing Brazilian music, there's little here that rises above the level of formula. But director Machado displays a sure touch in his ability to convey the sultry atmosphere of his exotic setting, and he has elicited admirably naturalistic performances from his highly attractive, youthful performers.

Though convincing in its argument that pimps and clients are treated much better than they should be in our legal system as compared to prostitutes, the film presents a picture of America's sex-trade landscape that will feel incomplete to many viewers.

The scrambled narrative, listless pace, clumsy stabs at profundity and severe lack of humor will limit the film’s appeal to existing converts and cult movie connoisseurs.

Although Coup! has a small cast and unfolds mostly in a secluded mansion during the 1918 influenza pandemic, it packs a lot of flavor, suspense and droll comedy into its slim 97-minute running time, making it fun enough to deserve an exclamation point in its title.

More absorbing than your average streamer fare, but it also makes you wish the film went farther in exploring its ambivalence about the relationship between creative expression and greed.

What makes the film work as well as it does, at least up to a point, are the perfectly calibrated performances. Folkins is superb as the socially maladroit Andy, making his character sympathetic in his genuine satisfaction in being a caretaker despite the personal toll it enacts. And Wheaton, whose entire performance consists of sitting in a chair and talking directly to the camera, uses his innate likeability to at first disarming and then chillingly creepy effect.

While largely predictable in its approach, Ejiofor’s film still evokes a genuine emotional response thanks to strong performances from its cast, especially lead Jay Will.

There’s enough fun, writerly glee and actors enjoying their little rampages to make Velvet Buzzsaw a decent distraction for a couple of hours, but also something of a schizophrenic case all its own.

This blood-soaked melodrama -- a far cry from most foreign films -- has been a festival favorite and might well develop a cult following, though it's far too gory to reach beyond the core audience.

In terms of its form, the film is rather classically assembled, combining a voice-over narration with archive material (some of it never previously seen) and spectacularly filmed and staged shots of the now 83-year-old Lorius as he witnesses the havoc caused by the climate change he saw coming some 30 years ago in various locales around the world.

A small, sympathetic story of a teenage girl’s rough coming out is smothered by a pile of far-fetched melodrama, a loathsomely obnoxious male lead character and far too much unsteadicam visual randomness in First Girl I Loved.

[A] bitterly funny, clear-eyed debut.

Scream VI will probably prove as popular as most of its predecessors, proving that if you give the people what they want — namely lots and lots of gory stabbings with a little satire thrown in — they will come.

While the drama comes up a little short in emotional payoff, this is a thoughtful, nuanced film that vividly evokes life in a Midwestern community in which business often trumps friendship. It offers a rueful snapshot of the changing face of a quintessential element of American life.

Does a fairly good job of laying out the basic political motives behind Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, as a drama, it has its narrative peak in the middle and quickly runs out of story afterward.

The same tone and look are maintained, but the visceral excitement is muffled by familiarity, an insufficiently conceived lead character and the sheer weight of backstory and multiple layers of deception.

All the interest and good will built up by the sharply conceived preliminaries is washed away in a succession of scenes that feel crushingly routine and generic, not to mentioned guided by ideological urges.

A thoughtful and nicely observed dramedy about a group of AARP-sters grappling with life, loss, love and -- gasp -- sex in a South Florida "active adult community."

An engrossing, low-budget documentary, is a powerful examination of voting rights in America.

A brilliantly honed tale of dementia, starring a skeletal Christian Bale as a tormented insomniac wasting away and terrorized by his irreal existence.

Quite powerful despite relying on familiar storytelling tropes.

All of these beasties are "scary." Though they'd be much more so if they felt less like franchisable IP and more like fervent expressions of the ills of the eras on which the film aims to comment.

Until a third act that collapses in a harebrained heap, the director largely succeeds in keeping the more cartoonish aspects at bay, roughing up the surface with organically staged fight scenes and, crucially, raising the stakes by stripping his hitherto indestructible hero of his self-healing powers.

Emerges as a dynamic action drama in its own right. Making sure of that is writer Taylor Sheridan, who's hatched a compelling new yarn that triggers rugged, full-bodied work from returning leading men Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin.

It's a measure of the times that the new version of The Karate Kid manages to be longer and bigger-budgeted than the original while having lesser impact.

Fennell is adept at pastiche, and at least she goes for sources worth plundering. But this is a movie that’s all surface cleverness, with nothing terribly insightful to say about its rarefied milieu and those gazing in longingly from the outside. Even so, Saltburn is juicy stuff, a revenge thriller that’s often wickedly funny and wildly enjoyable.

The romantic comedy, is the weakest of the trio. It stands as something of an interlude, detailing the paranoid obsessions of Cecile and her husband.

A straightforward spectacle motored by relentless high-octane action sequences between simplistic heroes and grotesque villains.

A work that is very recognizably Serebrennikov’s, which is to say it’s nostalgic for the Soviet era, outlandishly celebratory of the callow charms of bohemian youth (compare with his pop-music-themed Leto), baggy to the point of undisciplined (see Petrov’s Flu) and full of long, fluid, roaming, handheld single takes (applicable to nearly all his works).

The subject of mentorship is not treated frequently onscreen, but Mr. Burton may be remembered as one of the definitive explorations of the theme. All the technical credits help to ground the film — cinematography by Stuart Biddlecombe is especially striking — but it is the performances that truly mesmerize.

The documentary offers little to further the national discussion on this divisive topic, but its evenhandedness and unstrident tone will go down well with viewers accustomed to more heated treatments of it.

In Hilma, Hallström delves into the fiery and sometimes messy personal story as well as celebrating, in fittingly enthralled, immersive fashion, the singular fusion of nature and spiritual mystery that drove her.

Mildly informative but superficial, Shooting the Mafia is much less dynamic than its title.

It's never remotely involving, and you can feel the lead performers straining to handle their acting chores. The exception is Haddish, who is so convincingly scary and menacing here that you wish her character were in a better, dramatic movie.

A mystery about retirees who solve cold cases for fun, it is as gentle as a game of Clue and as cozy as an Agatha Christie novel, but its glittering cast and a touch of self-awareness make up for that lack of originality. This modestly entertaining film is uncool and filled with stock tropes, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything more.

Bringing a much needed personal perspective to a war that has claimed thousands of American lives, the film nonetheless suffers from a hagiographic quality that, from everything we hear expressed about its self-effacing subject, would have disturbed even him.

The film just looks a mess, apart from some of the rather pretty shots of banana slugs and redwoods. It doesn’t help that the characters, even accounting for how little developed they are, come across as entitled, self-absorbed brats, and that the very title is, on a first viewing, a complete enigma. At least it’s only 72 minutes long.

Writer-directors Calori and Testut have selected a significant challenge for their first feature, which succeeds more on its charm and determination than the classic attributes of movie musicals.

Director Matthew Vaughn strikes an energetic balance between cartoonish action and character-driven drama... The mix grows less seamless and the story loses oomph as it barrels toward its doomsday countdown, but the cast’s dash and humor never flag.

For all the movie’s quite credible conjecture about technology rendering nature obsolete and procreation becoming the privilege of the wealthy, The Pod Generation never fully hatches.

Extravagant action choreography makes the most of colorful set design, unlikely gimmicks and wrasslin'-style brutality. But Hodson's script offers far less diverting banter than it might've between the fight scenes, and has a hard time imagining the unconstrained id that makes Harley Quinn so magnetic.

A cast of young actors is uniformly strong, as is Lance Gewer's photography.

An interrogation of Australia's history of racial violence that also takes on gender, identity and domestic abuse against a backdrop right out of an archetypal high country Western, the engrossing thriller is admirably ambitious but choppy, at times eluding the director's grasp.

The comedian's delivery, high-energy throughout, helps him put over material that is funny but hardly justifies the record-setting receipts of Hart's 2016 tour.

If his new movie feels 25 years too late, it’s also a reminder of what made the original so special in its day. Those who manage to discover The Killer through this serviceable remake would be better off revisiting the one that started it all.

This film, so fresh and enterprising at many moments, ultimately disappoints.

Apatow is on the right track. In moving his adolescent male comedies into more adult realms, the humor sharpens and characters deepen.

A performance film, but sadly the majority of the performers are not the acts that have played at the long-running pop festival over 35 years, but the exhibitionists who make up the crowd.

The film, poised awkwardly between costume-drama prestige and all-out schmaltz, is so busy sweeping us up in a swirl of music, scenery and beautiful, suffering faces that it forgets to do the actual work of earning our emotions.

Morbidly fascinating Swedish doc about Berlusconi's Italy hits the mark.

A compelling tale even for viewers with no interest in the sweet science.

There's definitely a tighter, more disciplined movie trapped in here begging for a more rigorous edit. Like a head full of split ends, it needs trimming.

There are many pleasures along the way, including the effective evocation of Victorian-era London.

Good Neighbors is a film of acquired taste. If one is willing to accept humor in a movie about a serial killer, if one likes a thriller than emphasizes character over thrills, if one is susceptible to a cast of characters that includes three cats, then the movie has found its very selective target audience.

Robert Mockler's Like Me, while hardly for every taste, rises above the pack in a few ways — ranging from its ambitious style to the out-of-whack humanity of its two lead performances.

Miller Costanzo’s debut is more than promising. It should stand as a wonderfully accomplished launch to a bright career.

No One Will Save You proves a singularly intense experience.

Its topic is unquestionably a crucial issue for our age and its approach to that topic both has journalistic rigor and represents a thoroughly admirable depiction of journalistic rigor at a moment at which we put too little value on such things.

Solid and informative... the affectionate film benefits from plenty of face time with its frank, amiably plain-vanilla subject.

The insanely self-indulgent running time of two hours and 40 minutes and the tendency to undercut tension with fussy dialogue that continually draws attention to its cleverness make Zahler’s third feature a lot less fun than it seems to think it is.

While the dialogue rarely crackles the way the original screwball films did, the Nees and their two co-writers find some pleasing little bits of action to demonstrate how the heroes’ increasing reliance on each other is destined to grow into love.

The movie features a great finish, where three movies' worth of subplots and characters dovetail into a breathtaking climax and final confrontation that is positively soul satisfying.

The movie never really achieves the claustrophobic, under-siege atmosphere of Night of the Living Dead. And it's kind of a good thing we're not trapped with this family, since, despite some fine acting by Mille Dinesen (as Gustav's mom) and others, Mikkelsen's script offers too little character development to keep us interested in them.

Christopher Nolan's noirish thriller is an uncommonly polished and assured feature debut, highly clever textually and supremely accomplished technically. This ultra low-budget exercise marks the emergence of a significant directorial talent. [13 April 1999]

Proves too anticlimactic for the audience to maintain interest.

The Commune effortlessly entertains at a TV sitcom level, with its pithy dialogue, its chorus of thinly drawn caricatures and its cozy sense of mockery towards the failed social experiments of past generations. But as serious cinema, it feels limited for the same reasons.

Will intrigue art house audiences unfamiliar with modern Chinese history. But sinophiles and followers of Chinese cinema will be shocked by the lack of historical detail and context.

Cleopatra is not a great movie. But it is primarily a vast, popular entertainment that sidesteps total greatness for broader appeal. This is not an adverse criticism, but a notation of achievement.

Amusing, uplifting and about as sugary and teeth-sabotaging as caramelized popcorn, The Beautiful Game celebrates the healing power of team sports for those who might feel more pushed to society’s margins by misfortune or choice.

The first act is great, full of dark portent and bravura film-making flourishes. However, the final hour disappoints, with too many off-the-peg plot twists and too many characters conforming to type.

While the arguments obviously will be digested differently according to the viewer's preconceived notions, the impressive credentials of the witnesses, most of them former insiders rather than mere pontificators, give their arguments an undeniable credibility.

Mostly one wishes for a more concise edit that would pull this impressive avalanche of memories and faded photos together a lot sooner.

Quincy is an unapologetically partisan insider's portrait. The material is rich and the cast list starry, but the overall package veers a little too close to gushing vanity project in places.

Genesis 2.0 is a double-stranded helix of a real-life thriller, chilling and unforgettable. An inquiry into the brave new world of "synthetic biology," it moves between two filmmakers in very different locations. Their twinned subjects, whose connections are gradually revealed, are past and future, superstition and logic, a hunter and his scientist brother.

There isn’t a predictable moment, and Cotillard (who last worked with Desplechin on Ismael’s Ghosts) and Poupaud (who played a far more even-keeled Vuillard in A Christmas Tale) inhabit their roles with bracing fearlessness.

It is Curtis’s first foray into animation and although the characters are digitally rendered, the story taps into the same authentic energies that made his earlier works so beloved.

It's all busy-ness, noise and chaos, with zero thrills and very little sustainable comic buoyancy.

The ending underscores the old cliche about the banality of evil but getting there is meant to be the whole fun. For some people at least.

Though unsatisfying in some respects, the film is enough fun to make one wish for a portal to a variant universe in which Marvel movies spent more time exploiting their own strengths and less time trying to make you want more Marvel movies.

This is a deliciously entertaining and perceptive take on Cardin’s life and how he shaped both the silhouette of fashion and branding in the fashion world and beyond.

Nisha Ganatra’s “freakquel” (blame Disney for that one, not me) swaps the earlier film’s buoyancy and charm for manufactured chaos that’s far more strained and aggressive.

One wonders if a more seasoned filmmaker might have tightened it up a bit. But the cast goes a long way here.

Greenaway’s habitual approach is perfect for this material, constantly externalizing the director’s ideas about Eisenstein’s life and work and the way the two are connected in a way that speaks directly -- often quite literally -- to the audience.

Shambles along with all the purposefulness of its title character, a kind of near-beer Lebowski who's neither reckless enough to cheer for nor misguided enough to disdain.

Unquestionably, there is a good story here — as Universal itself demonstrated some years ago in Seven Bridges to Cross. But Friedkin has failed to tell it.

9 never adds up to much. It's a dark adult film that gives itself over to the chases and frights of a kiddie movie.

The film's blend of pathos, broad comedy and the occasional musical number is a little lumpy. But with sectarian violence continuing to scar the globe, its light tone provides a refreshing response.

A pitch-perfect pastiche that never mocks its inspirations, the picture is silly fun to warm the hearts of aging fanboys and delight hipsters who weren't yet born the first time Mel Gibson donned Max's leathers.

A quintessential Hollywood story that might have just as easily been called "Karma."

Its chief merit is the rare opportunity it provides Saoirse Ronan to showcase her skills with bubbly comedy, making her the standout in a ridiculously overqualified ensemble. But despite the promise of that title, this wheezing romp slows to a limp.

The story is certainly predictable, but it contains just enough conflict and drama to engage the viewer.

Renner appears completely immersed in his role and when the clouds of doubt accumulate and the man becomes a professional pariah, it's a painful thing to see.

Pure joy for Beatles fans and, one guesses, charming enough to seduce some viewers who wouldn't mind never hearing "She Loves You" ever again.

The pile-on of frenetic action sequences, especially toward the end, eventually becomes more wearisome than thrilling. Nonetheless, White Snake, a Warner Bros. co-production and box office hit in its native country, proves a superior effort that should find enthusiastic audiences on our shores.