A great deal of human drama underlies all this, but not all of it makes it to the screen.

One unfortunate effect of the jumbling is that it cools off Statham’s slow-boil performance, and prompts us to question the logic behind H’s plan.

A likably low-rent, low-ambition entry into a genre whose standard-bearer, Meatballs, doesn't set the bar very high, Mike Stasko's Boys Vs. Girls goes to summer camp for its promised battle of the sexes.

It's an odd match of a screenplay (adapted by Berman and Pulcini) that's too obvious, telegraphing rather than teasing out its twists, and direction that's overly timid; one gets the sense that the filmmakers are checking off genre tropes and tricks from a list instead of finding ways to invest them with fresh chills or shivers.

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.

This trying-to-please-everyone Jennifer 8 is likely to disappoint viewers on every level, from the cerebrals who enjoy a brainy, cop-and-killer psychological duel to the clunkheads who savor a bloody, bump-in-the-night, mechanical scarefest. [5 Nov 1992]

Here Today doesn’t fully succeed in any department. But it does provide some alternately amusing and touching moments, thanks largely to the heartfelt performances by Crystal and his co-star Tiffany Haddish.

The brisk pacing and capable cast still can't quite mask a certain routine feel in a movie without much heart.

The doc pads out its assertions of malfeasance with personal scenes that fall flat, never giving much insight into its subject's personality or deepening the sympathy we may have started off with for the children she left behind.

A heavy-handed reimagining.

Bettina Oberli is more interested in the interplay of her characters than a barbed look at geopolitics, an approach that clicks only to a point in this well-performed but overlong and uneven feature.

Viewers who can take it at face value may find a chill or two here, but ultimately Old can’t escape the goofiness of its premise long enough to put its more poetic possibilities across successfully.

Though not without its moments, the film offers too little of interest for its leading ladies to do, and feels throughout like an adaptation of a comic book that was written for the sole purpose of being sold to an IP-hungry film studio.

The film’s true stars are the stunt and fight coordinators who render these clashes in visceral, mostly realistic fashion, although they eventually lose impact through their sheer repetitiveness.

Despite fine performances by Stephen Fry and Jude Law, Wilde is a disappointingly predictable and uninvolving film portrait of Victorian wit and writer Oscar Wilde, who was imprisoned for being homosexual. [01 May 1998]

This bloated finale (running almost 2 hours long) perfunctorily ties up the narrative loose ends with little finesse or energy — a shame because the earlier two entries, chock full of pop culture references and subversive thematic underpinnings, had immense potential.

Where the first film offered genuine scares, this one is suspenseful at best, snicker-worthy at worst, and will beg viewers to recall the time Fonzie got on water skis and tried not to get eaten by a shark.

The film does something unexpectedly audacious with its last few moments, making me wonder if there’s at least a little nutrition in cloying fluff.

Where there should be intimacy, we get distance. Where one might expect steady meditation, the narrative jitters impulsively.

Making an atypical foray into commercial film territory (the Star Wars films being a notable exception), Driver proves a formidable action movie hero, his imposing physicality (and, perhaps, his former experience as a Marine) serving him well here.

A haunting glimpse into the horrors of mental illness as well as the harsh world of mental-health care, "Mr. Jones" is, unfortunately, sugarcoated with a glossy doctor-patient love story that diminishes its emotional strengths. [6 Oct 1993]

It’s just too bad there’s not more of a personal stamp on the material to rescue it from its indie-film clichés. Flag Day is not a complete misfire, and if a no-name director had made it, the movie would probably get a pass. But considering the emotional stakes involved it’s neither terribly memorable nor moving.

One feels the lack of an underlying original idea that makes the director’s work so quirky and identifiable, and that also goes for the missing element of ironic-iconic humor that has been slowly disappearing from his films.

What Jolt lacks in originality and subtlety it at least somewhat makes up for in verve.

Ridley Scott’s film is a trashtacular watch that I wouldn’t have missed for the world. But it fails to settle on a consistent tone — overlong and undisciplined as it careens between high drama and opera buffa.

Shaheen Seth’s libidinous, compelling cinematography beautifully complements Nora Takacs Ekberg’s lush “haunted dollhouse” production design. But while Birds of Paradise is a worthy sensory experience, the visual and aural pleasures are not enough to sustain the tension.

As adept as Together is at capturing the challenges of the pandemic — the uncertainty, the anger, the bone-deep exhaustion — it’s rather less convincing as a love story.

Blood Brothers struggles under the weight of its subjects.