The film prizes style, but has no higher ambition than to entertain, with an economy of means and no fussy pretension. That’s a noble mission, especially in this time of auteur worship, when so many genre movies seem determined to be something more.

One of those infuriating comedies that practically nudges you in the ribs while you're watching to remind you how cute and funny it is.

Shallow is a mild word for it. Others would be silly, miscalculated, unconvincing, artless, pandering, hokey, ridiculous. Or just plain awful.

More reliant on atmosphere than action to build suspense, Duncan Skiles’ The Clovehitch Killer offers an intriguing perspective on the darker side of American values, but lacks the conviction to entirely expose the cultural contradictions that often enable compulsive murderers

Torn approaches its incendiary topical issues with intelligent modesty.

The film is not always subtle in its portrayal of a family ripped apart by tragedy, but remains captivating as a pure procedural that raises questions about the Paris police's handling of such situations, as well as about the state of race relations in contemporary France.

The film trades the agreeably limber storytelling and seeming spontaneity of Leon’s previous work for a narrative both aimless and inert.

Cunningham's 1990 novel makes an assured, if not entirely satisfying, transition to the big screen in this terrifically acted exploration of the bonds that transcend traditional notions of family.

All of the cast members deliver smooth, capable performances, but this sequel clarifies why Howard has become the biggest star from the original ensemble. (He also gave one of the strongest performances in Lee Daniels’ The Butler this past summer.)

The picture never successfully comes off the written page.

In this intense twist on the American Dream, director Andrew Dosunmu vividly captures the pulsating dynamic of New York city's pan-African community, a robust aggregation that subsists amid an often hostile foreign environment.

Two Plains & a Fancy is a cosmic joke forged on a Kickstarter budget. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, it made me laugh.

Pine is fully committed to Robert's mission, but the film has a hard time making him a compelling character, even with a wife and daughter on hand to make him relatable. And it takes forever for his military campaign to get rolling.

Subject matter this powerfully charged shouldn't feel like a study aid.

Yeo isn’t experienced enough to convincingly pull off genre acrobatics this complex, delivering a film that often feels derivative in terms of its style and that doesn’t have the storytelling goods to let all these different influences coalesce coherently.

There's a playful exuberance on display in Better Than Chocolate, a bright, funny and sexy romp set in the heart of Vancouver's vibrant lesbian community. Although it has a little trouble deciding what it wants to be when it grows up - romantic comedy or full-throttle farce - the picture's tonal ambiguity also happens to be part of its unpredictable charm. [12 Aug 1999]

It’s no surprise to learn this was developed from a short film; it has a short’s fragmented, tone-poem quality, but not the sustained coherence of a feature.

Lemon represents a feature debut of unusual assurance and control with a style all its own.

Despite a number of trenchant scenes and some startling depictions of sexual degradation, the film has little that's particularly original or enlightening to say about living with a chemical, genetic or emotional imbalance, making its primary function as a showcase for the lead actress to stretch her range.

Little Monsters irreverently builds enough good will and comic energy in the early-going to carry it to its conclusion, so it’s bound to gather a cult of some dimension.

A smoothly engineered crowd pleaser.

The movie gathers momentum with a steady, assured pace, accumulating incidents, characters, secrets and lies until the rush of events is absolutely transfixing. Cinema can sometimes rival the novel in compulsive intensity and Sarah's Key is one such example.

The final stretch of The Battle of the Five Armies possesses a warm, amiable, sometimes rueful mood that proves ingratiating and manages to magnify the good and minimize the bad of the trilogy.

However intrinsically fascinating the Gibbons sisters’ story might be, Smoczynska and Seigel’s interpretation of the material feels off somehow — a little too pleased with its own quirk, and too preoccupied with surface texture and color to help viewers truly understand its troubled protagonists.

Despite being an alt-comedy Funny or Die production — far from the mainstream ethos of TV's 45-year-old sketch comedy king — Netflix's Between Two Ferns: The Movie is a modern-day SNL flick.

Raimi has not lost his knack for stylish action, and a couple of the pieces -- particularly the concluding scene in the discount department store where Ash works in the present -- are audience-rousers. [19 Feb 1993]

A labor of love, to be sure, but a simple, small-scaled domestic drama with none of the broad appeal of the hugely popular "Shakespeare in Love" of 1998, this thoroughly respectable Sony Classics pickup will command the interest mostly of older-skewing art house habituees.

So much is unspoken and this slice of reality is so thin and slow as to make the film downright unsatisfying.

The freshness and ingenuity of this techno-thriller should spark a cult following among sci-fi fans at the very least, but the film could make inroads among cineastes, adult adventure-seekers and the Latino community as well.

An appealing coming-of-middle-age comedy, My Afternoons With Margueritte exhibits a pleasantly light touch even when dealing with some fairly weighty issues.

Beautifully acted by the largely unknown cast, This is Where We Live is as reticent as its characters, its emotions emerging as much from what’s unsaid as expressed. Its admirably understated approach infuses what could have been an all too predictable, feel good drama with an intriguing complexity.

Bert Marcus offers more sociology than boxing fans may expect, using mean-streets origin stories not just for biographical intrigue but to comment on hardships his subjects faced later in life.

The proceedings too often smack of melodrama and, with the profusion of characters, some inevitably come across as stereotypes.

Barbet Schroeder offers up a touching look at unrequited love and neglected memory with the simpatico two-hander, Amnesia.

The ace cast provides delicious moments, to be sure, but mainly they're playing caricatures in search of a compelling plot.

Skirting the line between documentary and fiction in a manner reminiscent of the Jalalabad-based Aussie filmmaker George Gittoes (thanked in the credits), the filmmaking could most charitably be described as artless, with a medley of shaky thousand-pixel close-ups providing a sense of detail that doesn't quite extend to the script.

Utterly bonkers but also sort of brilliant, Judy & Punch creates an origin story for the traditional British puppet show (usually known as Punch and Judy,) resulting in a tonally complex comedy-drama about spousal abuse, infant mortality and misogyny told with magic tricks, puppets and slapstick.

The film is an optimistic yet affecting exploration of how fatherhood has evolved over the years and how far it still needs to go.

With its tight structure, adequate level of suspense and inventive plot, The Manor more than fulfills the requirements of a thrilling horror flick. But its clumsy and at times repetitive script, along with its beautiful but predictable cinematography, kept me from feeling fully immersed in Belgian writer-director Axelle Carolyn’s project.

Despite all the insider’s access, though, in the end the behind-the-scenes episodes offer the illusion of intimacy, rather than anything really illuminating.

It might not possess the robust charm of its 2009 predecessor, but Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 nevertheless gets an amusing boost from a genetically modified, marauding menagerie of Tacodiles, Watermelophants, Sasquashes and assorted other "Foodimals" that have overtaken the once-tranquil island of Swallow Falls.

The kind of inspirational movie that actually earns its crowd-rousing response as opposed to merely pushing the same old, emotion-coaxing buttons.

Despite an undernourished thread connecting key characters by their experience of loss, seldom have the human figures and their interplay been as peripheral to the headline action in a popcorn blockbuster. The good news is that even if the convoluted kaiju mythology tends to trip over itself in a plot that only barely makes sense, the Monsterverse face-off delivers plenty of visceral excitement.

Shaky story and predictable developments make this an off-key ballad.

A return to form for John Sayles.

What’s Love Got To Do With It? serves as a master class in how to adhere faithfully to the classic romantic-comedy template and yet still emerge with something that delivers delightfully on both sides of the hyphen.

This airy and refreshingly low-stakes comedy will have you steadily chuckling, if not necessarily rolling on the floor laughing. But it also has a surprising amount of heart.

It doesn’t have Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick or even much of the Overlook Hotel, but Rebecca Ferguson and other good actors provide some shine of their own in Doctor Sleep, a drawn-out and seldom pulse-quickening follow-up to The Shining that still has enough going on to forestall any audience slumber.

Refreshingly devoid of politics.

Original and thrilling martial-arts choreography, a lean, hard-driving story and solemn atmosphere make The Princess Blade -- a futuristic tale -- stand way above the pack.

The film doesn't manage to achieve for hip-hop what the great rock concert films of the past have done for their musical genre.

The pic may have an unlikely story (in real-world love affairs, this kind of second chance rarely ends happily), but benefits from unusually authentic performances.

The result is a riveting portrait, one that doesn't quite dispel what's maddening about Dolezal.

This surprising collaboration between director Clint Eastwood and "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black tackles its trickiest challenges with plausibility and good sense, while serving up a simmeringly caustic view of its controversial subject's behavior, public and private.

A pleasant, polished, but somewhat by-the-numbers effort.

With its sharp script and bittersweet humor, the audacious premise feels fresh enough to earn a large word-of-mouth audience among moviegoers who would normally avoid a more conventional rom-com, potentially becoming a left-field breakout hit in the mode of "Juno" or "Little Miss Sunshine."

While director David Fincher drills out some perfunctory, generic scares -- not counting Weaver's buzzcut -- Alien 3 is amazingly dull and humdrum. [20 May 1992]

I spent the first hour of Happy Happy Joy Joy guiltily feeling like I needed a rewatch of Ren & Stimpy — it's an important series and there's no pretending otherwise — and the next 35 minutes feeling dirty about the whole thing and the last 10 minutes getting actively angry about how the entire story had been framed and reduced to "difficult genius" cliches.

The Railway Man is well-acted and handsomely produced, but its honorable intentions are not matched with sustained emotional impact or psychological suspense.

Deeply frustrating because of its brevity and its lack of solid information and historical context.

Though it is convincingly played and sensually shot, the film has about as much narrative as the characters have parts of their bodies covered on the beach.

Engrossing enough but also a bit meandering and underpowered.

Illumination’s latest plays to the company’s strengths, with inventive character and background design, hyper-rendered animation that pushes the technology envelope, especially in the realm of lighting and cute sight gags. But just as with, for example, The Secret Life of Pets or Minions (and let’s not even go there with Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax), storytelling remains the outfit’s weak spot.

Unlike the last Scott-Washington matchup, "Man on Fire," Deja Vu boasts a muscular, fast-forward story that won't be overwhelmed by Scott's need for speed in the form of rapid cuts and all that visual fusion that have become his stylistic trademark. Here, the approach is perfectly suited to the picture's time-shifting, multitasking structure.

Not everything is spelled out too literally, and both the screenplay and Macneill's sensitive direction leave it to the lead actors to fill in the foreground colors.

The next time you're invited to a French dinner party, you might want to give it a pass, if the tedious proceedings in Change of Plans are any indication.

A sense of admiration and responsibility courses through the doc, an orientation that eventually curdles the narrative.

A rare example of a grown-up story compellingly told from the perspective of children, The Playroom is a modest gem.

Movies about depression are tough, but fans invested in the subject during a transitional moment of artistic and personal catharsis will be rewarded.

[Hartnett's] charisma and surprising flair for physical comedy elevate this B-movie into something approaching A-level status, even if it’s ultimately undercut by its low-budget limitations and awkward tonal shifts.

With a tightly structured script and Nanjiani and Rae’s raucous yet down-to-earth performances, The Lovebirds makes for a delightful and unexpected ride.

The dramatic approach here is clear, efficient and entirely on-the-nose, with little time for anything that might distract from the hagiographic effort in play. Its sole purpose is to ennoble and proclaim a hero, which its subject almost certainly is. But it makes for notably simplified drama.

Enjoyable but incomplete-feeling bio-doc both celebrates the Milius myth and tries to undo the damage it did to his reputation.

Supernatural shenanigans and amateur sleuthing add up to mild-mannered entertainment in Jackson Stewart’s affectionately quirky directorial debut.

The story keeps everyone in motion all night long, and frantically so, to the point that it could easily have been titled Non-Stop 2.

While not as balanced or fully satisfying as it should be, Matthew Barney: No Restraint will fit naturally as a pairing for future theatrical and DVD exposures of Barney's controversial works.

A more accomplished film than "Yards." Yet it will fail to satisfy police movie buffs, as procedures are de-emphasized, and the drama is too perfunctory and obvious.

Offers a litany of images and sound bites that are all too disturbing. Although Ever Again lacks the dramatic focus that would make it truly distinctive, it offers a timely wake-up call that should be well heeded.

The Gutter’s humor rarely misses. The Lester brothers deploy jokes with precision, taking aim at everything and everyone.

Raucously fun, fluid follow-up with ecological message.

An interesting twist on a classic plot, Dangerous Liaisons is essentially a deluxe soap opera. But with its beautiful cast and gorgeous production design, it is still a highly enjoyable way to waste two hours.

Cartoon violence and action, gore and humor, all rolled into one schlocky but enjoyable package.

Lacking the charming eccentricity of a "Turbo Kid" or the compelling mood of many retro-horror successes, the picture has little to recommend it as a theatrical experience.

There are crisply folded lines, and pleasingly peppery performances from the supporting cast especially, but where its beating heart should be there is a splinter of ice, the sense that no one involved is really doing this for that much love.

A Very British Gangster is not only Noonan's story but a profile of a community dealing with poverty and drugs, and seeing no way out. In a sense, Noonan and his cronies are born into a life of crime.

A professionally mounted but bluntly misanthropic character-study, the director's second solo outing wallows in the worst of human nature with little reward at the end of a mechanically inexorable downward spiral.

Featuring hilarious yet acutely observed performances by Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey as the titular characters, Elvis & Nixon, receiving its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a hoot.

Predictable, cutesy and surprisingly short on genuine humor, Legally Blonde gets by thanks to the magnetic presence of Witherspoon.

Strauss-Schulson brings an appropriately wacky comedic style to The Final Girls. Co-writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller have shamelessly raided the horror-movie canon, efficiently repurposing familiar references to amusing effect, without neglecting nods to Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and similar fare.

The chemistry between Awkwafina and Oh proves to be more layered and touching with each leg of their characters’ zany mission.

The sleepy-paced, elementally simple plot initially requires a degree of patience, but the story ends up gently absorbing.

While visually dynamic, Lightning McQueen’s newest challenge still feels out of alignment with a languid end result that lacks sufficient forward momentum.

Daniel Levy has made a first feature that’s a glossy drama of love and loss and the restorative power of friendship. But it’s more earnest than affecting.

Stuffed to its statement earrings with celebrities, fashion folk and comedian chums making cameos, this breezy blast of bawdy jokes and Bollinger product placement should lift spirits in a post-Brexit Britain.

It’s a remarkable film experience in several ways.

Cameron Crowe's feature documentary is among his most effective and deeply felt work.

Savages represents at least a partial resurrection of the director's more hallucinatory, violent, sexual and, in a word, savage side.

An aesthetically arresting hit man story that gets by more on its craftsmanship than on its minimalist, borderline ham-fisted narrative, Salvo nonetheless marks an impressive feature debut from Italian writing-directing duo Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza.