The director is chasing a mood here -- a mood, an atmosphere and feelings -- much as he did in "In the Mood for Love."

Gives these canines the sensual elegance of the Calvin Klein models Weber has so famously photographed. Would that the substance of the film have come close to having the impact of its visuals.

Listening to one of Smith's speaking engagements would be a much more entertaining way for a fan to spend 115 minutes, and non-fans or fence-sitters will likely find this piece too puffy to be very useful. But few will deny that Smith is good company — an always-likable guide happy to make jokes at his own expense while he works to be the "Kevin Smith-iest" Kevin Smith he can be.

As detrimental as anything to the film’s effectiveness are the visuals, which are murky, lack compositional interest and do the actors no favors.

An unambiguously partisan profile of controversial economics whiz Martin Armstrong — who spent a decade in jail on technicalities relating to fraud charges — it plays like a slickly elaborate sketch for a future Hollywood retelling in the Wolf of Wall Street mold.

The doc delivers enough arresting Neapolitan moments that many viewers will consider tracking down the source material — still in print, nearly four decades after Lewis published it in 1978.

Perhaps because it wants to play to both sides, the film's viewpoint is awfully muddied when it addresses conflict between traditional DJs — who know how to handle turntables, read a crowd's mood and do their thing for many hours at a time — and those who premix a whole set to a USB stick, hit play and just bounce up and down onstage.

It's as if a bunch of horny grad students decided to loot a costume store and then remake Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom with camera phones, but less fun.

Lewin and co-screenwriter Allen Palmer don’t exactly raise the dramatic stakes very high. The formulaic storyline fails to sustain interest, not helped by the sluggish pacing and predictable gags and characterizations.

The doc is slickly packaged, but it suffers from the pat reality-TV feel of manicured sound bites where greater candor and fly-on-the-wall observation might have been welcome.

Though the screenplay, based on Laurence Benaim’s biography, is all build-up and no payoff, there is just enough emotional insight to compensate for the lack of narrative fireworks in the last half-hour.

Winslet’s mix of grace, gumption and private sadness is the chief reason to keep watching, but she deserves a more dynamic film.

It ticks nearly every box in the checklist of films you wish you could like more than you actually do.

Moland delivers a sharp-looking, well-paced movie with a moody score.

An unsparing look at child prostitution is a hard sell for audiences, but this movie is a memorable achievement, far superior to the recently released "Trade," another movie about sex trafficking.

It's problematic, however, that we learn very little here that wasn't more stirringly conveyed in the earlier film. In its mesmerizing, propulsive drive, "Tarnation" was a heartfelt scramble to make sense of messy lives. Walk Away Renee is an occasionally illuminating patchwork.

Very much bearing the creative imprint of Robert Rodriguez, but directed by Nimrod Antal, the new edition, in its best moments, is an unabashed B-movie that plays like a jacked-up "Twilight Zone" with award-winning actors delivering the pulp-infused dialogue.

It's a pretty lazy film in the creativity department save for the dogs.

That it squanders a terrific cast in the process -- one that also includes Common, Phylicia Rashad and Pam Grier -- makes it all the more disappointing.

An old-fashioned doc about a sailboat race is well produced but lacks urgency and true insight

Exciting in its big game scenes but excessively dreary in the undercoached dramatics, the seasonal offering will score some quick points at the boxoffice and then fade quickly. [24 Sept 1993]

Comes across as Almodovar lite, but the film, from director-screenwriters Ines Paris and Daniela Fejerman, offers some pleasures along the way, including an engaging performance by Leonor Watling ("Talk to Her").

Designed to maximize the visual opportunities for Imax's cameras even as it minimizes the dramatic conflicts that make for a satisfying moviegoing experience.

If only adapter-director Gavin Hood's movie had been tempered with craft and care and wasn't such a blunt instrument, one that seems designed as a delivery system for CGI derring-do instead of the heartbreaker it should be.

The Six Triple Eight relates a little-known story that fairly demanded to be told, and does it full justice.

Half of a Yellow Sun is the kind of ambitious literary adaptation that wants it all kinds of ways, not all of them compatible.

Indian Summer is about a camp, but it isn't camp. There are a few funny bits, but they are strung together like a poorly constructed lanyard. [23 Apr 1993]

Holy Rollers squanders a fascinating premise with predictable execution.

A feel-good tale with undeniably good intentions, this Canadian comedy-drama doesn't really manage to convince on any level.

Russell leans into his iconic role with admirable commitment, providing just enough winking to let us know he's in on the joke and thoroughly enjoying it, while Hawn remains as adorable — albeit now in a more grandmotherly way — as always. When they're onscreen together, it somehow feels like this year's pandemic-threatened Christmas will miraculously still be one to celebrate.

Miss Taylor needs something stronger than this to display her talents, and so does Burton.

Featuring a stellar ensemble cast headed by Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery and Colin Farrell, Ritchie's homecoming is a fairly familiar affair, but also refreshingly funny and deftly plotted, with more witty lines and less boorish machismo than his early work.

This is Shakespeare as action film --- furiously paced and unapologetically cinematic.

The Expendables 2 offers the sendoff adrenaline junkies are seeking before the more sedate pace of fall releases.

A paranormal mystery without a spine. It has no suspense because it has no belief in itself.

The effectively deglamorized Cattrall is terrific, investing her portrayal with a complex mixture of vulnerability, toughness and still-powerful sexuality.

It is Monaghan who keeps the movie on track, capturing Judy’s fire along with her sometimes aggravating tenacity. This honest actress is incapable of idealizing the characters she plays, and her modest, energetic performance makes Saint Judy — which might have been a dry textbook lesson — engaging and moving.

The world's most famous acrobatic troupe delivers a feast of surreal beauty and moments of breath-catching wonder in the skilfully staged 3D film Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away.

The Call for the most part is a tense, extreme-jeopardy thriller that delivers the intended goods.

Going the Distance is, in a way, a remarkable film: It's hard to imagine any romantic comedy going wrong in so many different ways.

Andy Serkis' decidedly non-Disney Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle may have intended to offer a darker, grittier take on the classic Kipling stories, but the end result proves to be more of a murky muddle.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates rates medium on the grossness scale (an all-body, pre-marital naked-Indian-guru-administered massage for the bride with a happy ending, anyone?), and pretty high in crude talk. But it's kind of a dud when it comes to endurance and imaginative moves.

In his second feature as a director, Gallo acts as writer, director, producer, star, cinematographer, production designer and editor. Thus, the failure is all his.

The movie’s premise has the potential to bring something fresh to the horror genre, and Balinska and Asbaek commit fully to their characters. But the script is flat and unimaginative; there’s at once too much information and not nearly enough that reflects how people actually talk to each other.

A splendid idea for a film goes largely wasted despite a brave performance by Naomi Watts as a struggling actress trying to figure it all out in Hollywood.

Sincere performances and well-intentioned scripting should help it with vets eager to see their stories told on-screen, but the film's dreary, secondhand feel is hard to overcome.

While nothing in The Nun feels inspiring or truly groundbreaking, it’s certainly a well-handled package, and the strong performances are abetted by superb technical contributions.

While this effort directed and co-scripted by Georgina Garcia Riedel lacks true comic inspiration, it provides some genial laughs along the way.

Cheang does his able best to balance a love story with the heightened fantasy action expected of the previous two films, and after a rocky start he largely succeeds.

Overall, Ordinary Magic is not a bad film. Those looking for family entertainment with a tinge of radical revisionism could do a lot worse. [01 Nov 1993]

The film might have been outrageously bizarre fun if it displayed any humor or ironic self-consciousness, but everything is played so straight that viewers will find themselves laughing not with the film but at it. The characterizations are paper-thin, the dialogue is perfunctory, and the performances are, to put it charitably, adequate at best.

There’s no real voice in the storytelling, nothing distinctive about the imagery, if it’s not a doubling up on the violence and gore, and the result doesn’t remotely resonate in the same way.

A rambunctious, strange and occasionally humorous action-thriller-comedy.

Although the film’s overstuffed, overpopulated storyline proves only sporadically interesting, it’s notable for at least providing an alternative view of a city more commonly associated with wintry gloom, corruption and heavy drinking.

This time, tedium sets in early and never loosens its grip. The gags are obvious, predictable and dull.

An affecting portrait of a young widow and her two teenage daughters.

Delivers an easily digestible and amusing portrait of youthful hijinks that should well please its target audience.

Plays like an Alfred Hitchcock thriller but is nevertheless a movie of ideas. It bristles with intriguing thoughts about the realm of fiction, how one loves, issues of identity and questions concerning how one transfers a real-life incident into big-screen fiction. This is a film that can crawl inside your skin.

While it’s neither a masterpiece of gender politics or contemporary romantic relations nor designed to elicit belly laughs, it is a pleasant diversion for fans of the form.

Peninsula suffers the same type of sequelitis that suggests a second entry must be more/bigger/louder than its predecessor. Where Train to Busan’s two hours were impeccably paced and every frame meticulously used, Peninsula spins its wheels in between its admittedly impressive key set pieces.

The ever-righteous profile maintained by Boseman’s detective gets to be a bit limiting after a while; if anything was going to have multiple dimensions in this film, it should have been him, but the script is instead built around the goal of providing maximum movement and hoped-for tension. It’s got the former but only sporadically achieves the latter.

Given all the ways a project like this could have gone wrong, the result is surprisingly good on several fronts, beginning with a shrewd structure that fosters an intelligent dual perspective on the public and private aspects of the Deep Throat phenomenon.

Those hoping the film might push the genre to its most extravagant limits may be surprised at how (relatively) low-key their love story ends up being. But sometimes that’s the most pleasurable kind of fairy tale — one so close to convincing, you can forget for a spell that it’s all just a dream.

It’s all harmless fun, containing enough mild laughs and genuinely sweet moments (if you can contain your emotions during the reunion scene between Lyle and Hector, you’re made of stronger stuff than I am) to keep its target audiences entertained.

Hardcore blasts along like a supercharged computer-game shoot-em-up, bursting with sick humor and splatterpunk violence.

Engrossing, quietly revelatory, and often profoundly moving as it retells a story we only thought we knew.

Director Andrew Stanton's Disney extravaganza is a rather charming pastiche.

Might do good business at home and abroad among audiences unconcerned with the finer points of characterization or psychological insight.

If you're going to make a weepy, there's no reason you can't make it with intelligence and insight as the makers of My Sister's Keeper have done.

The only thing that can explain middle-aged men acting like 6-year-olds is mental retardation, and there's nothing funny about that. The idea of middle-aged actors playing adolescents isn't much funnier. Put it this way: Such an idea does not make for an inexhaustible source of comedy.

Will best be appreciated by those who are already firmly in Earle's camp.

The primary appeal of Americano lies in witnessing the attempt of a famous progeny to forge his own creative path, as Demy's struggle with artistic inheritance resonates throughout unmoored Martin's voyage between past and present.

The film grabs at historical facts, mangles them into a plot worthy of a John le Carré spy novel and takes the viewer on a breathtaking ride through ye olde London.

Tom Cruise is in fine form as mysterious tough guy Jack Reacher finally reaches the big screen.

Bad cop crosses paths with even badder hit woman in the stylistic but ultimately unsatisfying"Romeo Is Bleeding. Gary Oldman's gritty lead performance is not enough to save writer Hilary Henkin's modern-day noir fable from shooting itself in the foot. [4 Feb 1994]

Drawing on the prowess of Donnie Yen, the first 35 minutes of gimmick-free martial arts revives the sinewy action aesthetics of '70s Shaw Brothers classics.

Handsome and weighty-feeling but less substantial than it seems.

Despite a low-rent aesthetic that (like Grant's all-caps-happy website) doesn't sufficiently distance it from the tinfoil-hat world, Soaked presents evidence one has a hard time dismissing.

A giddily over-the-top, super-entertaining goof on the Everyman crimefighter flick written and directed with evident relish by James Gunn.

Disenchanted lacks the charisma and curiosity of its predecessor.

While the systematic corruption of innocents under an outwardly benevolent protector makes for a disturbing scenario, Australian newcomer Ariel Kleiman dulls the unease with his studiedly enigmatic approach.

Instead of exploding into crime-clan war, the picture trickles into a kind of shrugging, "it is what it is" look at life on the wrong side of the law.

Honey Buddies is a comically contagious tribute to male bonding in the great outdoors.

A good-natured cross-cultural romp in which you can barely be expected to take any human interaction seriously, save for those in which humans smack up against each other with force.

Overlong and overdramatic, the two-hour-plus biopic does feature some exquisite filmmaking, in scenes where the romanticism of Tchaikovsky’s music is met with flowing camera movements that capture the action in artfully staged tableaux.

Whatever one's view of Christian evangelical beliefs, from strictly a horror-film standpoint the movie needs a better villain.

This intriguing if hardly revelatory account offers some provocative moments, even if the personal access doesn't really add very much.

Tykey Michael J. Fox is Mikey in Life With Mikey, a charmingly scruffy story about a former child star whose career and life are rejuventated by a feisty street urchin. Impish and good-hearted, this Buena Vista release should delight elementary school kids on summer vacation and stake out a lively life at the boxoffice. [1 June 1993]

There’s no shortage of intensity or gore, not to mention brisk efficiency in the way the script isolates a fragile family unit before plunging them into lycanthropic mayhem.

A pedestrian chronicle of an eventful true story.

While Billabong Odyssey ultimately resembles an infomercial more than a coherent cinematic exercise, its spectacular images of well-toned athletes battling with the world's largest waves should find a receptive audience of those so inclined.

Doesn't quite manage to elevate its subject to a sufficiently interesting level for anyone who isn't already one of its frequent visitors. A good stroll inside your nearest city park would provide a more edifying experience.

It’s a romantic comedy, and whatever its flaws elsewhere, it works best where it counts most — in the chemistry between the two leads.

The cast is fine, but the roles are superficial and too concentrated on the film's theme.

Arriving three decades after the fact, this docudrama doesn't quite do justice to its important subject.

Here’s a quick tip: If you’re old enough to be reading this review, you’re too old to enjoy the childish pleasures of PAW Patrol: The Movie.

Goold's work never feels stagey; a smart and varied visual sense opens up even settings as basic as a jail's visiting room. But what happens in that room isn't as convincing as might be expected from these actors.

An above-average number of laugh-out-loud set pieces compensate for the resulting wobbly narrative.