Regrettably, Storm Over Brooklyn is only a rudimentary primer on the case, rather than a particularly comprehensive or insightful one. Many of its shortfalls have to do with director Muta'Ali's (Life's Essentials With Ruby Dee) narrow focus on the Hawkins family, especially since the film is most compelling when it evokes the pressure cooker of racial hostilities that New York City had become by the late '80s.

While scribe Zac Stanford's premise invites a Charlie Kaufman-like, reality-bending take, Schwartzman plays things straight enough that one has a hard time believing the action. But viewers who get through a credulity-testing second act may laugh enough in the third to be glad they did.

Like the ambitious The Wandering Earth, the last Chinese epic to make a play for international glory, and indeed Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, The Eight Hundred is thin on characterization, and too often slips into rote narrative and war movie cliches (really, a runaway white horse?). And that's despite eight writers working on the script. The sheer volume of men fighting and dying in the face of overwhelming odds and stellar technical spectacle step into the gap where emotional connection should be.

While some characters on the ever-escalating guest list provide the pair with welcome comic distraction, this day-to-night hangout pic doesn't really take flight.

Although Landon and co-screenwriter Michael Kennedy have latched onto a winning concept, pairing the body-swap conceit with serial killer thrills, they’ve freighted the film with so many trite life-lesson moments that the fun gradually drains from the narrative, like blood from a murder victim.

A little bit like finding an eyewitness to history and then describing everything he feels but not much about the event itself, it leaves the viewer with a sense that something very important has been left out.

It’s beautiful to look at, but the story of a young man on the run who encounters death at every turn of the winding road doesn’t really make much sense even in metaphorical terms.

It's a messy, childish scrawl of a film, but it is high on energy.

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.

It’s not quite enough to prevent this B-grade rendition from feeling rather familiar and unsuspenseful, even if stars Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) and Madison Iseman (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) provide a decent level of tension throughout.

Despite its value in providing superb starring turns by Lena Olin and Bruce Dern, the film never manages to overcome its air of familiarity.

There's contemporary currency in Lister-Jones' point that women, already marginalized, should refrain from victimizing one another. But the point becomes strained once the external adversary emerges and the protagonists — of which only one really counts — take down a very literal embodiment of the patriarchy as pure evil. This is less an issue with the blunt theme than its limp execution.

It's a fun conceit trapped in a broad and retrograde flick.

A sloshy swill fermented in the hacked-up viscera of superior fantasy features — including Labyrinth, Hocus Pocus, Monster's Inc., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Adventures in Babysitting — the film often sinks beneath the weight of its viscous plot. However, it burbles and thrives in moments that rely on aesthetics over story, director Rachel Talalay (Tank Girl) infusing genuine creepy tension with an à la mode witchy/techy visual motif.

Johnson creates a magnetic antihero, volatile and antisocial. He doesn’t fly so much as stalk the sky; he swats opponents like the bundles of weightless CG pixels they are. And this passion project serves the character well, setting him up for adventures one hopes will be less predictable than this one.

That the film proves intriguing despite its overly familiar themes is a testament to the acting more than the writing. Eaton delivers a compelling, highly physical performance, using her endlessly expressive eyes to communicate her character's complex range of emotions and making us care about Liv despite the contrived plot mechanics.

It’s all quite watchable and not without suspense, but the characters reveal too little emotional depth or complexity to make us care much about either their losses or their hard-fought victories.

There are some undeniably amusing moments, thanks largely to a cast unafraid to throw themselves into the raunchiness and violence with full abandon, but it's hard to avoid the feeling that the film represents a missed opportunity.

A critique of post-millennial journalism is one of several ideas raised but mostly abandoned in this genre pastiche, which never really coalesces despite some promising elements.

The film spreads itself too thin to offer a thorough political portrait.

As it moves toward a climax that will require Santa to connect with his inner action hero, the film works better than it should without being as enjoyable as its predecessor, the brothers' much less ambitious Small Town Crime.

Once the outlandish premise is established, there's little to enjoy in the increasing body count, leading you to wish that Mr. Peterson had simply murdered his victims in their sleep. That at least would have made for a blessedly shorter movie.

Elegy . . . embraces the emotional messiness of a heart-wringing country song, but lacks a haunting refrain to get under your skin.

Pixie is a trigger-happy comedy road movie that relies more on boorish energy than wit or charm.

The problem isn't that some jokes fall flat; invariably that happens in this format. It's just that there are no big, hold-your-sides-till-they-hurt sequences. [5 Feb 1993]

Dispiritingly generic in both appearance and tone.

As it is, the family pic's light tone never lets its themes of addiction, abandonment and poverty hit home, instead focusing on its hero's unlikely accomplishment and the brotherhood of sport.

Even Gandhi (maker of 2016's Obama-early-years feature "Barry") admits that what he hoped would be a cautionary tale is probably just one more way for the infamous celeb to get the attention he craves.