An attractively designed but narratively challenged, one-note film.

The director's sense of place counts for a lot here, and a sympathetic lead performance will have most who catch the film rooting for this underdog.

Although the film directed by Jason Moore (Pitch Perfect) mostly concentrates on over-the-top comic mayhem, it's actually funniest in its quieter, subtler moments.

An action picture with the emotional simplicity of a bedtime story, painted in the grimy colors of the London underworld.

Biutiful has a strong, linear narrative drive. Nevertheless, and most of all, it's a gorgeous, melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt.

Cohen employs a comic range that ricochets between wicked political barbs and the lowest anatomical farce, to often funny and occasionally hilarious effect.

The new picture allows hardly any flourishes of style and character in the 007 tradition, but moviegoers seeking an adrenaline rush will be well pleased.

Unfortunately, something at the center just doesn’t hold, and it flies apart over the course of 133 minutes into confusing shards of plot, legalese-heavy monologues and, perhaps most surprising of all given Gilroy’s bona fides, a touch of soggy sentimentality in the home stretch.

The movie is too much an act of hero-worship for there to be any critical distance.

Co-directors Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson balance humor and fun with a little fear in a thoroughly accessible way.

The spectacle of a dissolute hedonist suddenly acquiring a heart and a conscience late in life is shamelessly, and shamefully, contrived in its emotional trajectory.

Although clearly made with earnest good intentions, this shabbily constructed work feels way too thirsty for audience love as it strings together a series of life-affirming, message-laden and sometimes embarrassingly anachronistic moments that feel too unconnected to satisfy as a drama.

The director doesn't rely on cheap jump scares or trick editing. Instead, he builds and sustains suspense throughout the well-paced thriller with controlled camera movement, malevolent lighting, unsettling music and jagged, staticky sound.

The characters and settings are attractively designed, and the vocal performances have real color and a sense of fun that gently undercuts the treacly sincerity of certain obligatory kid-pandering moments.

In terms of rollicking wacky gorefests, "Freaked" has nothing on "Dead Alive," the superior New Zealand cult hit from earlier this year. Still, the uniqueness of the project will ensure a number of die-hard fans. [4 Oct 1993]

Shifting with grace and narrative equilibrium between the Arctic and a mission returning from Jupiter, this is a desolate elegy for a diseased planet and a prayer for the creation of life elsewhere in the universe. Flanked by a strong supporting cast, Clooney delivers a thoughtful reflection on the toll of environmental devastation.

This is a coolly efficient, tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy.

Audience’s tolerance for this kind of heavy-handed, occasionally very mannerist symbolism may vary, though Messina does ensure that the religious parallels never completely eclipse the contemporary characters.

There are moments when the film uneasily skirts the line between genre conventions and documentary realism, but the portrait it paints of Casablanca’s underbelly remains credible and bleak.

Manages to squeak by with enough charming set-pieces and amusing sight gags to compensate for a stalling storyline.

Jessica Biel has great fun with the American adventuress, while Kristin Scott Thomas is truly scary as her nemesis and mother-in-law.

Outfoxed would have benefited from a greater exploration of exactly why Fox News has become so popular and so trusted by its viewers.

Voices overcome some used story conventions to give it a very specific charm of its own.

The movie is well acted and mostly absorbing, but it spells out everything so painstakingly that there's zero room for subtext.

Ultimately, Happily seems to bite off more than it can chew, proving more successful in its insightful exploration of relationship dynamics than its bizarre storyline. That few of its narrative mysteries are resolved is obviously meant to be purposefully ambiguous, but the results are finally more frustrating than intriguing.

The overwritten script has so many subplots it’s hard to keep the stories straight, especially when the ending throws a truly unexpected twist. But little matter; the exceptional tech work gives the film plenty of energy and excitement.

Martin's Dean is more than funny enough to earn its keep, a gentle misfit tale that only gets baldly therapeutic at the very end.

At once understated and slightly pulpy, the film comes down squarely on the side of compassion. It’s no polemic, but neither is it as character-driven as it aims to be.

A lively and often enlightening documentary.

More stylishly compelling and seamlessly produced than it is imaginative.

The cartoonishness of it, while amusing at the outset, doesn’t wear well as matters deepen and progress.

Some might be willing to find depth in his stylish, stylized but gossamer-thin depiction of a woman at the height of her performative powers struggling to bear the weight of her stage persona. I found it a bore — self-consciously cool but distancing and empty.

Thanks to a rock-solid performance by Dennis Quaid, nice historical touches and energetic direction by Gary Fleder, the tried-and-true formula is given a welcome shot of adrenaline.

Stubby hardly shies away from the tough realities of what was known as the War to End All Wars, and it feels both proficiently documented and generally credible, even if it’s hard to believe that a dog did everything you see happening on screen.

It took three films, but The Twilight Saga finally nails just the right tone in Eclipse, a film that neatly balances the teenage operatic passions from Stephenie Meyer's novels with the movies' supernatural trappings.

Coming in a few notches below the terror factor of Wan’s most exemplary material, this somewhat less-satisfying variation of an ill-fated haunting nonetheless represents a solid debut for Swedish filmmaker David F. Sandberg

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy certainly makes many valid points, but they tend to be lost amidst the overriding cutesiness.

Miller knows exactly how the third act should play, and he manages (thanks in part to the increasingly intriguing creature work) to reach an emotionally satisfying conclusion without resorting to some big Gremlins-gore action climax.

It's a tour-de-force for an actor who's more than willing to be loathsome and will be welcomed by both Baker's fans and those of writer/director/provocateur Onur Tukel. But casual moviegoers may not find it as revelatory as comparisons to early Neil LaBute films suggest.

Large-scale filmmaking of this kind to some degree is probably always an adventurer's folly, with an unhinged visionary tilting at windmills in a valiant quest to tame fantasy and reality into companionable travelers that will live forever. But rarely have such brave deeds yielded so meager a reward.

This is a story so crusty and antiquated in its conveniently resolved conflicts, contrivances and drippy sentimentality that it should have been left on the shelf.

Splinter is a bad idea, borrowing body parts, as it were, from old horror flicks to genuinely unsatisfying results.

The plot leans toward conventional horror violence as it progresses, but Cresciman has Hogan and Crampton remain largely affectless, their blank-slate characters doing little to make us respond to the action.

While Body Parts is a smart film and a useful primer on big questions about filmic representations of sex and desire, one wishes its conclusions were more nuanced.

Wicked Little Letters swerves between comedy and tragedy without ever hitting its stride. The movie is at its best when it doesn’t strain to turn every moment into a joke, instead letting the story breathe a bit.

(Untitled) assembles a collection of vivid character-types, sometimes a breath short of caricature. But for all its sharp comic angles, Jonathan Parker's film takes its central questions seriously and avoids the pat follow-your-bliss answers Hollywood prefers.

Although most definitely an acquired taste, the David Lynchian Gozu delivers the goods in dripping, gooey gobs.

It is so outrageous with its ethnic caricatures, hokey plot and twin-brother mix-ups that you know the whole thing is a lark.

For all the earnestness with which the filmmakers replicate the muted colors and attitudes of the post-war era, they ultimately fail to say anything truly interesting about either the past or the present, resulting in a work that feels as superficial as it does slick.

Finding smart ways to bring novelty to the franchise without forsaking what made the original so much fun (and in fact doubling down on some of those qualities), Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black 3 easily erases the second installment's vague but unpleasant memory and -- though we might hope producers will quit while they're ahead -- paves the way for future installments.

A misfire. The film that wants to be lighter than air instead crashes to earth with the swiftness of a concrete parachute.

If the premise isn't as attention-grabbing as Rubber's was, the execution should help build the filmmaker's following.

Stone’s direction is measured, methodical, and totally lacking in the fire and flamboyance that sometimes electrified and sometimes ruined his earlier films. The story moves along without any real sense of urgency or suspense.

If Lawless doesn't achieve the mythic dimensions of the truly great outlaw and gangster movies, it is a highly entertaining tale set in a vivid milieu, told with style and populated by a terrific ensemble.

The film's slender conceit is given some weight by its 11-year-old leading lady Sydney Aguirre, whose portrait of a flinty, instinctively mischievous tomboy growing up without benefit of parental guidance provides gratification even when there's not much going on.

Viewers will surely have their curiosity piqued, but may not walk out convinced of Jobriath's place in the pop Pantheon.

Sticking mostly to one corner of the turf Berry has staked out, this unusual and quite beautiful documentary seeks to connect with him by getting to know the land and those who work it near the author's Kentucky home.

Nattiv's bio-drama has its flaws, but the performances across the board are outstanding. ... Nevertheless, there's something a bit queasy-making about the film's full-on plunge into melodrama in the last act.

Irish director Jim Sheridan, who has made his films in America in recent years, now delivers an American remake that hues closely to the original but loses some of its true grit.

When it isn’t trying too hard to be instructive or jokey, Tykwer’s film fluently conveys the hard truth of diminished relevance, geopolitical as well as personal. Hanks’ portrayal of a man caught between utter defeat and a yearning to begin again is pitch-perfect.

Although concentrating on delivering easily digestible situations and scene progressions, Landon does demonstrate some enticing visual flair that gets rather diminished by the repetitiveness of the plot.

It's the kind of plush, pleasurable comfort viewing that goes down as easily as a favorite artist's hits compilation.

Soulful performance by non-pro Pape Sidy Niang as the bicycle-riding police officer Z, gives the film a poetic tone, but cumulative impact is diffused rather than enhanced by the fractured form.

This is distilled Mamet, peeling back psychological layers and building characters exclusively through chiseled dialogue.

Trippy in the best sense, Vanishing Waves adds a healthy dose of eroticism to its familiar sci-fi genre.

As written by John Milius and Larry Gross and directed by Walter Hill, "Geronimo: An American Legend" makes interesting characters dull as dirt, makes a great story confusing (while taking predictable liberties with the truth) and, worst of all, trivializes the subject matter it tries to splendidly mount. [06 Dec 1993]

Complexly plotted, elegantly shot and orchestrated, this is the kind of long-winded, intermittently involving festival package that will earn the director of Tokyo Sonata more critical appreciation but will struggle to find a theatrical audience. For a film that requires nearly five hours of viewing investment, it feels terribly stingy on the emotional payoff.

The cast’s performances adhere to appropriately exaggerated comedic expectations, but could have benefitted from more specific character differentiation.

A prime example of a solid romantic comedy.

The whole project is saved largely thanks to the subtext of ethnic discrimination that runs through the film, and two riveting central performances, which overcome a wobbly start to find emotional balance by the final reel.

A large part of the first film's pleasure came from watching adult actors, very sure in their screen personae, pretend to be children who were awed (or disgusted, as the case may be) by their new bodies and abilities. This time around, that getting-to-know-you phase is much less fun.

While the highly anticipated follow-up features stunning animation, it lacks the cohesive narrative and emotional intimacy that made its predecessor special.

Narrated in unobtrusive fashion by Forest Whitaker and featuring a jaunty Afropop soundtrack, the film is crisp and economical, with the filmmaker carefully avoiding extraneous melodramatics. They are, after all, hardly necessary in a tale that already contains such inherently powerful drama.

All the effervescence and fun have been drained out of the material in this labored reincarnation, a movie musical made by people who appear to have zero understanding of movie-musical vernacular.

Roving Mars is bound to inspire hordes of young science geeks to dream about sending in their resumes. The rest of us may not feel so excited.

Co-directors Brent Hodge and Derik Murray go exclusively to interviewees who lived or worked with the oversized, overenergized man, all of whom clearly loved him, and if the tone of their remarks (affectionate, amazed at his charisma) is totally predictable, the specifics have enough color to hold the interest of a casual fan.

The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin.

The script by first-time director Li Yu and producer Fang Li introduces some degree of subtlety in the responses of the four principals, but the plot doesn't really hold up.

The actors, all strong, give the lyrical but never artificial dialogue the ring of life. Pearce is riveting as a go-getter who finds himself trapped between a murky past and a future defined by ambition.

Without a more psychologically insightful script and less predictable story developments, Our Son shows that gay couples’ problems can be just as uninteresting as any other couples’ problems. Welcome to post-marriage equality humdrum!

Despite knowingly blank performances and a heavily ironic tone, the story ultimately accumulates emotional gravity, ending with a sardonic refection on the seasonal cycle of life that is worthy of a Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller novel. Tragedy is comedy. Comedy is tragedy. So it goes.

A good-looking debut that's as obsessive as it sounds, Koki Shigeno's Ramen Heads celebrates those for whom Japan's famous dish is anything but a simple bowl of noodles and broth.

The Cat Rescuers can sometimes feel manipulative, with its endless shots of adorable felines calmly and happily responding to being petted and embraced.

For those not motivated purely by a desire for cinematic bloodlust accompanied by an abrasive musical score that sounds like electronic fingernails on a blackboard, there’s some fun to be had.

Hope Gap may engage the mind up to a point with its pithy dialogue and resourceful players, but it offers little insight into the complexities and wages of wedlock.

A purist's delight, something the millions of die-hard fans of his Lord of the Rings trilogy will gorge upon. In pure movie terms, however, it's also a bit of a slog, with an inordinate amount of exposition and lack of strong forward movement...There are elements in this new film that are as spectacular as much of the Rings trilogy was, but there is much that is flat-footed and tedious as well, especially in the early going.

Southbound should well please genre fans nostalgic for the likes of Tales From the Crypt and Creepshow.

Much of the bite and a good deal of the wit of the first two films are missing here. The rude send-up of beloved fairy tale conventions remains -- somewhat -- but these playful jabs no longer come as pleasing surprises. You expect them. And you expect better.

At the helm of this ultra-earnest entertainment, with its expository dialogue and meticulous visuals, Craig Gillespie isn’t able to conjure a stirring cinematic experience. The pieces don’t fuse so much as fit together, and much of the action feels instructive rather than immersive.

Riddle of Fire tries to capture the extraordinary way kids experience the world, but the results border on twee.

Although it is overloaded with backstory and often tries too hard, Aurora Borealis finds a reasonable balance between romance and family drama.

Throughout, connoisseurs of Cage's career should appreciate a performance that rides the edge of his crazy tendencies.

While the endless introspection may be therapeutic for those involved, it's not so wonderful for the innocent onlooker, who's subjected to the ponderous musings of the emotionally catatonic group while a series of similarly vapid flashbacks offer little in the way of relief.

Balagov is indisputably a filmmaker with his own distinctive vision, ideally matched with Evgueni and Sacha Galperine’s glowering score and with Fray’s nimble shooting style, which often takes its cue to get in close from the knotted bodies on the wrestling mats. Story-wise, however, Butterfly Jam is too diffuse to measure up to the brutally transfixing Beanpole.

Based on real-life events, The Lighthouse depicts its dramatic situations in credible and compelling fashion. But its single, cramped setting and leisurely pacing could definitely tax the patience of horror fans looking for a more visceral, scare-laden experience.

This Seagull proves a worthy if hardly definitive adaptation of the classic drama.

Stalls at the intersection of fantasy and science fiction.

It offers more than enough laughs to justify taking time out from TV marathons of A Christmas Story, and maybe enough, at least for younger audiences, to become a pinch-hitter each year when established classics like Elf grow too familiar.