Today it seems remote and overblown, with Bergman, Young's score and Ray Rennahan's muted color photography the chief compensating factors. [03 Dec 1998]

Akira offers moments as eerily powerful as anything I've seen in animation. (Highlights include the kiddies bringing toy animals to sinister marauding life, and Tetsuo's nightmares of disintegration.) Unfortunately, those moments are badly undermined by a weak script, a facile scenario and some wretchedly screechy voice-acting. [11 Jan 1990, p.G4]

The picture’s pyrotechnics are first rate, and the acting by the principals is more than serviceable.

For me, the biggest problem with the script is a mid-film plot twist that takes place almost immediately after we've been told the characters are in danger. The introduction of this possibility is too neat, too fast. [04 Jun 1999]

Take “Billy Elliot,” trade the refined world of ballet for the “soap opera in spandex” of professional wrestling, swap the preteen boy for a young woman, throw in The Rock — because every movie is better with The Rock, right? — and you’ve got Fighting With My Family, a shaggily likable underdog tale.

Bacon’s performance as well as Finn’s detailed craft manage to hold tension, and the audience’s attention, for the hour and 55 minute runtime of this horror curio, which is as opaque and somewhat silly as the smiles that drive it.

Good intentions are famous for paving the road to hell, but more often they just lead to well-meaning tedium.

These characters don’t seem like types chosen from a screenwriting manual but like people we might know, with quirks and feelings and flaws and hearts.

Thunderbolts*, one of the best MCU movies in years, delivers a much-needed jolt to the struggling franchise.

Most of the movies from the British stop-motion wizards at Aardman Animations are pure delight, full of endlessly replayable moments and the kind of enchanting silliness that seems to transport you, however briefly, to a better world. Early Man, their latest effort, is merely good, which is to say that it’s well-crafted and enjoyable.

Swedish director Roar Uthaug (“Cold Prey“) depends on well-crafted suspense, spot-on casting and ingenious special effects to tell the story of a dedicated geologist (Kristoffer Joner) who prophesies watery disaster in touristy Norway.

Yep, we’re in Tarantino territory for sure: way too self-indulgently long, and way, way overboard with that N-word.

Angela Robinson’s fascinating and surprisingly sweet-natured film is a different sort of superhero origin story, and an appropriate bookend to this summer’s “Wonder Woman.”

Thanks to its two central performances, Chuck is a solid contender.

The camera is fixated on the face of Alice, the lead character in The Girl in the Book. And no wonder. There’s a lot going on there.

Eastwood’s very good with actors, and the central trio of Richard Jewell make the film worth watching.

Heavy subtext aside, American Animals remains a slick, smart heist film that entertains from start to finish.

There’s a problem with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. It’s attempting to mock something that is beyond mockery.

There’s a lovely sense, throughout the film, of how real life sometimes interrupts things, the way a child’s prattling disrupts the pretty wedding ceremony, or how even in the midst of grief breakfast must be made.

Despite a plot twist you’ll see coming all the way from Vancouver, The Wedding Banquet is a worthy successor to Ang Lee’s classic, and a chance for a group of actors to shine together and separately. There’s plenty of silliness, but also time to be moved by quiet moments.

Thank You for Your Service is a harrowing, honest and beautifully acted film about lives blown to bits and then put back together; not entirely, not immediately, but piece by tiny piece.

Archangel, defying every contemporary cinema convention as it does, won't be to everyone's taste. But for those interested in the wilder possibilities of what film can do, it's an absolute must

Absorbing 1958 adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play about lonely people at a British seaside hotel. [20 Aug 1998]

It’s filled with moments that click, but it just feels too big.

Though it’s fun watching Pitt swanning about in his nonchalant way — and a delight to see Kerry Condon, as a F1 technical director, finding some playful chemistry with him — this movie is entirely about the driving, and the speed.

An Inconvenient Sequel is both a rebuttal and a rebuke to the voices who vociferously disparage him and his cause.

“Link” is fun as far as it goes, but from Laika we expect something with a little more depth.

Watching Avalon is like leafing through someone else's family album. It undoubtedly means a great deal more to Levinson, because he can make the associations we can't. [19 Oct 1990, p.28]