In brief, I fell cheated by these clever, narrative-disrupting films. They seem to miss the point. After all, every fiction film is magical--an artifice devoted to “What if?”

The experience of watching Bottoms is weighed down by the movie’s thin drama, hit-or-miss comedy, and merely functional direction—pictures of actors acting.

The Bubble (which Apatow co-wrote with Pam Brady) is a sort of good bad movie, in which the aesthetic falls flat but the personal motive, the emotional core, is authentic, pugnacious, derisive.

A huge, mawkish, trite circus movie directed by Cecil B. De Mille in a neo-Biblical style.

Hardly even a shadow; Myrna Loy, William Powell, and Asta go through their paces for the fourth time, but the jauntiness is gone.

Directed by James Fargo, this third in the series doesn't have the savvy to be as sadistic as its predecessors; it's just limp.

The subject - the romantic life of an American Communist - may be daring, but the moviemaking is extremely traditional, with Beatty playing a man who dies for an ideal. It's rather a sad movie, because it isn't really very good.

You should see it just for Chester — the adventurous sham, running ever deeper into a maze of his own devising.

When Wright literalizes the fantastic, the movie turns squalid. He does better when he lets his visual fancies roam free. [25 April, 2011 p.88]

The story can’t keep still, shifting from year to year and place to place, and, whereas "Mr. Jones" appalls you into wanting to know more, Wasp Network is so temperate in its political approach that you start to forget what’s at stake.

We're supposed to be overwhelmed by magic, but what we see is fancy film technique and a lot of strained whimsy.

Emma Stone, in Chazelle’s “La La Land” (2016), was granted a beautiful lull in which to deliver her saddest song, but Margot Robbie has no such chance to breathe. Her performance isn’t over the top, but her character, as conceived and written, most definitely is, and she has no option but to follow suit. Such is Babylon. It goes nowhere, in a mad rush.

Arnold’s very strength — the mashup of grime and epiphany — is in danger of becoming a shtick. Then, there’s the length: an elasticated plot doesn’t really suit a director who is at her best in specific locations, where people get stuck like flies.

It's noisy and brutal, with sentimental flourishes.

Herbert Ross directed, unexcitingly; there's no visual sweep, no lift.

The movie is ungainly – you can almost see the chalk marks it's not hitting. But it has a loose, likable shabbiness. [19 Oct 1987, p.110]

The over-all effect is bizarre, daring you to be amused by something both brilliant and bristling with offense; if you sidle out at the end, feeling half guilty at what you just conspired in, then Stiller has trapped you precisely where he wants you.

The movie doesn’t stick together in one’s head; this thing is like some junky fairground show—a chamber of horrors with skeletons that jump up.

This is a visually claustrophobic, mechanically plotted movie that's meant to be a roguishly charming entertainment, and many people probably consider it just that.

If only Kim had a sense of humor to match his visual wit. Instead, we get rusted gags and rubbery acting.

Cedar plays Norman’s story for tragedy but never develops his inner identity, his history, or his ideals; the protagonist and his drama remain anecdotal and superficial.

The Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it’s a thoroughly queasy experience.

This disposable date movie is not so much written and acted as cast—just about every young actor in the country is in it.

A mixed-up and over-loaded American spy thriller by Alfred Hitchcok, with the unengaging Robert Cummings in the lead and an unappealing cast, featuring Priscilla Lane and Otto Kruger. Nothing holds together, but there are still enough scary sequences to make the picture entertaining.

The movie is gorgeous, as you would expect from Sorrentino, but beauty this great can lead to suffocation. The plot goes round and round and nowhere, and the highlight is a couple of blistering monologues — one from Weisz, delivered while she is cloaked in mud, and another from Jane Fonda, as an aging screen goddess, encased in her own crust of powder and Botox.

Lavishly detailed yet dramatically vague, opulently produced but blandly depicted.

The movie, bad as it is, will do as a demonstration of a talented man’s freedom to choose different ways of being himself.

It sounds promising, but Bogdanovich attempts an exercise in style, and the result is sustained clutter.