In the end, it’s a rather conventional feature that satisfies expectations rather than challenging them. As a result, this adaptation looks unlikely to stir the passionate devotion that could confirm it as first-rate comedy material.

It all ends up being a half-hour too much of a just okay thing.

Flawed but imaginative film.

An odd little comedy drama set in Ireland that boasts more onscreen talent than it deserves.

Heijningen doesn't display the instinct of the best Hollywood action directors to give the audience what it craves at the big moments, except for a few gory in-your-face shots.

The most compelling thing here by far is the film's vision of Assange, by all accounts a man of enormous self-regard and slippery ethics. Benedict Cumberbatch has the character in hand from the start.

The degeneration into familiar genre tropes reduces the impact of the wittily satirical set-up, with the result that Starry Eyes fails to live up to its initial promise. But the film indicates genuine talent on the part of its directors/screenwriters, who infuse the proceedings with a dark, gothic creepiness that is further enhanced by Jonathan Snipes' retro, synthesizer-infused score reminiscent of John Carpenter.

Despite its technical gloss and effective performances, Den of Thieves never manage to feel other than hopelessly derivative.

This Canadian indie mostly avoids the sort of vulgarisms attendant to films of that ilk, displaying a slyly droll humor that proves consistently engaging.

The filmmaker's grip on the storytelling could be tighter, especially in the second half, which at times seems to lose focus, much like the floundering protagonist. But when it clicks, the film is a provocative combo of emotional fumbling, droll asides and shrewd insights.

While Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock 'n' Roll too often feels like a promotional video created by a local tourism organization, it nonetheless provides an engaging history of the town and its once-vibrant music scene.

The wild card in all this remains Seann William Scott's Steve Stifler, the rampaging id whose indignation at his peers' maturity provides most of the film's real laughs.

While the violent sequences are very effectively staged, the results are a strange hybrid that doesn't quite work. Lacking the antic, witty humor of something like the similarly conceived Gremlins or the full-out gore of a traditional horror flick, Krampus never really finds it niche.

Desert Dancer too often lapses into generic cinematic clichés, failing to live up to the dramatic potential of its subject matter.

Though it begs for a little lightening up, a moment of irony, a wink at the audience, this dead-serious fairy tale about a mysterious young woman (and a phantom automaton straight out of Hugo) is worth watching for Geoffrey Rush’s sensitive, never pandering performance.

A slick enough thriller about a presidential assassination attempt. It is also a rather mechanical, soulless affair that avoids politics or anything else that might clearly define who these characters are and why we should care.

It’s a breezy charmer — the kind of movie these obits have been mourning over the years. The film returns to the genre’s blueprint and sticks with it. There are a couple of instances of subversion, moments when Your Place or Mine winks and pokes fun at itself. But for the most part it doesn’t want to surprise or be more clever than the viewer; it aims to please, and in doing so helps re-energize the romantic comedy.

While the movie itself may prove nearly as unmemorable as its hero ostensibly wants to be, it’s anything but inconspicuous.

Most of these linked "shorts" succeed remarkably in nailing the serendipitous flavor of love, New York-style.

Filming a truly immersive and dimensional adaptation of a Kerouac novel remains an ongoing challenge for any filmmaker, but Polish’s film comes closer than most, while adding another layer of complexity to the author’s venerable reputation.

It’s not so much a prequel as it is a parallel story that continues underscoring the limited autonomy of women. Restrictive social mores trap both Rosemary and Terry, albeit in different ways.

Even if the sophomoric Porno doesn't make the grade, it represents a promising start for the talented filmmaker.

As overcranked as it is -- the film is directed as if it were an action drama, with two or three times more cuts than necessary -- People Like Us has a persuasive emotional pull at its heart that's hard to deny.

A just-OK second feature from Ami Canaan Mann – daughter of Michael Mann, one of two credited producers here – and the latest outing for "Avatar" and "Clash of the Titans'" Sam Worthington.

Watching Gerrymandering is like taking a course on a subject you keenly want to learn about only to discover the lecturer is a boring, old windbag.

Unfortunately, writer-director Rebecca Miller's script tries so hard to be nervous and edgy that it ultimately succeeds only in making its viewers nervous and edgy.

A handful of plot twists are not enough to compensate for an overtly heavy, often dreary affair that rides straight into the final standoff with little elegance and a wagon train of pathos.

Anyone looking for subtlety, character development or layered plotting will be disappointed, but action fans will find plenty to amuse them with this film that makes "Hard-Boiled" look restrained.

Would have made for a fine film noir 60 years ago but feels rather contrived and unbelievable in the setting of contemporary New York.

Directed with pedestrian competence by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, The Miracle Club is about secrets that are all too obvious, and forgiveness you can see coming from the start.

Mostly, Good Boy! exists for the middle section where youngsters and dogs speak the same language. These escapades, all taking place under the adults' radar, generate many sound laughs.

Slightly less frightening than the original, but it's still a scary psycho-horror that effectively replicates its bleak and crisp shocks.

Benji is back, which is good news for youngsters and pet-loving families. Film lovers perhaps should steer clear, however, as hokey melodrama and sloppy comedy fill the gaps between neat dog tricks.

It's hard not to have mixed reactions while watching Ted Balaker's documentary Can We Take a Joke? about how political correctness is stifling free speech, particularly when it comes to satire and stand-up comedy.

The frenetic mayhem becomes tiresome in its repetitiveness, although kids already hopped up on candy and soda will presumably not mind at all.

In Arnold's absence, an important ingredient of the "Terminator" iconography -- namely, the fun factor -- is in short supply.

Darlin’ is the kind of movie that hits you like a bus, and the whiplash you’re routinely recovering from throughout makes it hard to enjoy the ride.

To the filmmakers' credit, and even though they don't entirely avoid the clunky factoid-itis that often plagues the genre, this is a biopic that favors sensory experience over exposition. It understands what pure, electrifying fun rock 'n' roll can be.

It's familiar, drawn-out shtick, and the humor lacks the subtlety of the first and best Ice Age, but there are some visually inventive high points.

A slick action drama that rehashes most of the cliches of the boxing picture tradition. However, it does so with enough energy and -- particularly when it comes to Tak Fujimoto's cinematography -- style, that the hard-hitting feature should get some profitable rounds in at the boxoffice; no knockouts predicted, however. [2 March 1992]

The visual effects are stellar, but the true star is Smith, who again demonstrates acting chops as well as effortless charisma in a vehicle that's only occasionally worthy of his superhuman skills.

Mary Shelley is a luscious-looking spectacle, drenched in the colors and visceral sensations of nature, the sensuality of young lovers, the passionate disappointment of loss and betrayal. But above all it is a film about ideas that breaks out of the well-worn mold of period drama (partly, anyway) by reaching deeply into the mind of the extraordinary woman who wrote the Gothic evergreen Frankenstein.

Shah Rukh Khan's foray into bad-boy territory is all swagger with not much substance.

Overlong and aimless documentary.

A fair-to-middling little date movie.

The film offers some diverting background on the man.

Alexs Stadermann, directing from a script by Marcus Sauermann and Fin Edquist, keeps the story humming along genially, while the voice cast, also including Miriam Margoyles as the kindly Queen and Jacki Weaver as her conniving royal advisor, provides the spirited uplift.

A neatly contained crime whodunit with a nifty setup and an expert lead performance from Samuel L. Jackson.

Director Isaac Florentine, a veteran of this sort of direct-to-video violent fare, not surprisingly proves more effective with the action than dramatic scenes, but he keeps the pace moving nicely.

Paradise is predictably problematic for the protagonists of Jet Trash, a flashily seductive and darkly comic crime-thriller that sidewinds between grimy London and the sun-kissed coasts of Goa.

At times disarming, at others plain silly, it takes a few daring leaps without quite avoiding middle-of-the-road sitcom territory.

What captures the audience's attention is Ardent's mesmerizing performance.

Visually gorgeous to a fault and teeming with grandiose if often fascinating ideas that overwhelm the modest story that serves as their vehicle, this may be the least artistically successful film von Trier has ever made.

A bankable cast, a hint of controversy and high production values may play in their favor commercially, but Bosch and her producer-husband Ilan Goldman have come dangerously close to making a feel-good movie about the Holocaust.

For a movie with so much volatile physicality and bruising punishment, there’s an inertia about the whole thing, a soullessness that makes every contrived smirk grate. We don’t care about who gets pounded to a pulp or shot to pieces because there are no characters to root for — good guys or bad.

If you take any of this seriously, you are not going to enjoy the movie very much. But as an absurd riff on baadasssss gangsta movies, Four Brothers has an undeniable visceral kick.

Mooney eagerly mines the trove of Y2K cultural references to shape a narrative fine-tuned to a particular millennial sensibility, but struggles to meet the very low demands of its internal logic.

Despite top-flight acting from Michael Caine and Jude Law, it loses its grip in the third act and let's the air out of what might have been a memorably gripping film.

Vigalondo’s film has a compelling premise, but the story (he also wrote the screenplay) gets away from him, resulting in a film that never quite hits its stride.

David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a lot of movies inelegantly squidged into one — a zany screwball comedy, a crime thriller, an earnest salute to pacts of love and friendship, an antifascist history lesson with fictional flourishes. Those competing strands all have their merits, bolstered by entertaining character work from an uncommonly high-wattage ensemble

The three most important things in movies are story, story, story so the movie never comes off as the considerable achievement it truly is.

This semi-fictionalized account rings false whenever it eschews reality for a WWII cloak-and-dagger intrigue, trying too hard to dazzle us with plot instead of letting the music speak for itself.

What starts out seeming like a poor man's Woody Allen morphs into something closer to an American version of "Scenes From a Marriage."

More a filmed haunted house than a movie, the picture is in love with the cobbled-together monsters on offer and will engender similar emotions in many horror buffs.

This is not only one of those cases in which a U.S. makeover adds nothing to a memorable foreign-language film, it's the doubly dispiriting variation in which the more commercially minded overhaul relentlessly drains everything that was distinctive, edgy and original about the source.

If it wasn’t for the charming top-liners who can make literary dialogue sound sexy in their sleep, the war in Fred Schepisi’s Words and Pictures would have to be called off after the opening skirmish.

This unflinching yet compassionate depiction of marginalized misfits boasts a few pleasingly poetic flourishes, but it suffers from some common first-time director flaws, notably a listless narrative, thinly developed characters and a relentlessly somber mood.

This assemblage of star-filled shorts makes for a generally rewarding grab bag.

While its protagonist is believably eccentric, the people surrounding her look more like transparent plot devices the more of them we meet.

This is a very enjoyable middle-of-the-road adventure, especially for moviegoers willing to see just about anything starring Rudd.

What really works about Little easily surpasses what doesn’t.

Chapter 2 proves to be more fun to watch than 1, at least for this critic.

A sustained balancing act between dry upper-crust cynicism and pent-up passions, Donald Rice's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding maintains its uneasy stasis long enough to frustrate some romance-hungry viewers while tantalizing those for whom withheld pleasure is the whole point.

A feeble medieval epic with a lackluster romance at its center.

The scares are as hit-or-miss as the filmmaking in the second installment of the “VHS” found-footage horror anthology series.

Writer/director Nick Sandow finds a tailor-made lead in Vincent Piazza, who both looks the part and makes sense of his character's ridiculous aspirations; with Patricia Arquette playing the girlfriend who stood by his side, the picture of debased ambition is almost too convincing to enjoy.

Spirit Untamed is beautiful to look at and occasionally genuinely funny. The stunning and detailed animations saturate Lucky’s world with an impressive array of colors, from the crimson apples she feeds Spirit to the pistachio and emerald-green leaves on the swaying trees.

Degan's first film, the effort often suffers from hazy storytelling, but its real difficulty for many viewers will be its protagonist, who isn't the most sympathetic proxy for Americans curious about the plant extract's suitability to treat depression.

The scripting is painfully thin in all aspects of character relationships, patched together consistently with low-level goonery (outlandish driving, drunkenness, stereotypical fringe characters). The forced hilarity of the proceedings leads one to believe that neither the story team nor the scripter have natural senses of humor. [27 May 1993]

A workmanlike but fan-pleasing picture.

A giddy romp that never takes itself seriously in the slightest, and that makes Taipei look like the center of the gay universe.

Leo should satisfy serious older filmgoers, even if it suffers from wobbly storytelling.

It helps that the characters are all sympathetic and appealingly played, with Monroe terrific as the beleaguered Kenna, desperate to meet her daughter, and the charismatic Withers making the most of his character’s agonizing over his torn loyalties.

Slickly made -- in the good sense -- and most entertaining.

Endearing performances buoy predictable film about love in the wake of divorce.

In I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock does something entirely unexpected. He isn't funny.

What is most interesting is hearing the directors speak of their work in general, rather than any film in particular.

Playing it safe with a script that offers Riddick up as a lone avenging hero, Twohy passes on the opportunity to effectively shade the character’s distinctive dimensionality.

Star-stuffed, well paced and very funny.

The film's antic comedy is superbly centered by the talents of the technical team, who have nicely imbued "Dennis" with an old-fashioned, all-American feel. [21 June 1993]

Spenser Confidential seems to be aiming for a buddy-film, action-comedy vibe, but the problems are that there's virtually no chemistry between Spenser and Hawk, the gags (many of them revolving around Spenser's deepest relationship seeming to be with his dog) are lame at best, and the action is strictly pro forma.

Any resemblance between Jules Verne's marvelous science fiction novel or Mike Todd's enjoyable 1956 movie is pure happenstance. This is simply a Jackie Chan movie pitched to youngsters who enjoy slapstick fights and goofy caricatures.

The second half feels heavy and unfulfilled, potential greatness reduced to a good movie plagued with problems.

"Gift" comes across as a television-ready effort that would work perfectly for Hallmark.

Despite its fast pacing and well-staged action set-pieces, the film fails to make much of an impression.

Being haunted by a ghost here is less like a horror movie than like many of the other secrets teenagers share -- working out matters of life and death that no one around them has a clue about.

Lacking the flash of big-budget blockbusters or the originality of a uniquely imagined world, First Light is left trying to make the best of overly familiar sci-fi themes.

It's a role very well suited to Liam Neeson, whose righteousness fills the screen and sometimes seems all the movie can offer.