The film's chief distinction is Julie Christie; she's extraordinary--petulant, sullen, and very beautiful.

Singleton's plot is disappointingly conventional; it obeys screenwriting-class rules. The experience he's dealing with here deserves something more than the tidy dramatic structure that he has imposed on it.

Considered as a sequel, Be Cool is not an insult, but it’s a lazy, rhythmless, and redundant piece of moviemaking.

The pieces are clever enough that the film is rarely boring—it keeps a viewer hoping that the spark of life will strike sometime before the lights go up. But it’s not to be: it remains a movie in search of an animating spirit.

The line between the dispassionate and the dull can be ominously faint, and when Rohmer kicks off his film with ten or fifteen minutes of solid anecdotal chat, you fear for the stamina of the audience. [13 May 2002, p. 96]

A junk-food mixture of poetry, black anger, bathroom humor, and routines that have come through the sit-com mill.

People hadn't seen anything like it; that doesn't mean they needed to.

And that's it, really: two hours of loneliness, interleaved with havoc. The dialogue has been distilled to expletives and grunts. [16 Sept. 2013, p.74]

With its clean lines and precise assembly, it's nearly devoid of fundamental practicalities, and, so, remains an idea for a movie about ideas, an outline for a drama that's still in search of its characters.

The film is redeemed only by the dour, weary, mournful, stubborn, and wise performance of Nicolas Cage, which is not so much a star turn as the project’s sole raison d’être.

The movie is of minimum interest; the story of the movie, however -- or, rather, of the way in which it has been engulfed by its own publicity -- is bound to fascinate connoisseurs of cultural meltdown.

Every Bay film is cheesy, but this one counts as high-speed cheese, grilled to the max by Danny’s thoughtful advice: “Just. Drive. Fast.”

You can read a lot into it, but it isn't very enjoyable. The lines are often awkward and the line readings worse, and the film is often static, despite economic, quick editing.

Even as Cold Weather approaches nullity, it gives some pleasure. [7 Feb. 2011, p. 83]

Near the end, we get to hear John Barry’s “The Persuaders” — not only one of the catchiest TV themes ever composed, redolent of moneyed innocence, but a key to the tactics of this movie. It is at once damnable and debonair. It seduces as it repels.

It's pleasant to see these two in a picture where they're not carrying all the sins of mankind of their shoulders, but they've gone too far in the opposite direction--they're not carrying anything.

What’s lost is the way a colossal spirit such as Dylan confronts everyday challenges with a heightened sense of style and daring.

Elegant nonsense. For some years, it's been clear that De Palma's work has lost the jolting intellectual energy and wit of his "Carrie" and "Dressed to Kill" days, and in Femme Fatale the Master is just diddling. [25 November 2002, p. 108]

Almost nothing engages us emotionally. [8 Oct. 2012, p.86]

There is something willed and implausible at the heart of L’Enfant, beginning with the child himself--the first non-crying, non-hungry infant in human history, let alone in cinema.

Hysterical twaddle.

The curious thing is that, as with many big-budget horror flicks, this small French-Belgian movie feels too pleased with its own outrage; the grosser it grows, the less interesting it becomes. When the carnage was over, I went out and had a steak.

The movie’s heart is certainly in the right place--it’s a quietly outraged work--but I wish there were more excitement in it from moment to moment.

Walk Hard runs down quickly, and suffers further from having the wide-eyed and weightless Reilly as its star.

BlackBerry plays like a prototype still waiting to be realized, a sketch that’s still undeveloped.

When Logan and Laura unleash their furious scythes nothing feels settled or satisfied. The world grinds on, fruitlessly weary and wild.

Given the upheavals of the past two years, along the fault line between electoral and sexual politics, Reitman could have told the sorry saga from Rice’s point of view — her brush with fame, and her demonization as a temptress, or worse, at the hands of the media. Why must the fall of man, rather than the survival of woman, still be the main event? Can’t we have the business without the monkeys?

The one element Zeffirelli removes that the other bowdlerizers also removed is Shakespeare's language. Only about half the play is left, and what's there doesn't build up the rhythm of a poetic drama. Heard in isolated fragments, the lines just seem a funny way of talking that is hard to understand.