Reminiscence has imagination to spare, but it doesn’t deliver the precious memories it promises.

you sense that "The Hangover" loomed large over this production. Still, Eve has a true flair for zingers, and the movie’s heart survives intact.

Unlike a truly daring movie like Lars von Trier's "The Idiots" - about a gang of clever jerks who pretend to be mentally retarded - The Comedy never musters an articulate indictment, nor does it have much to say on the subject of free-floating fatigue.

[Eva] Green is the only one able to excite this silly material into the spiky shape it’s supposed to take. You wish the rest of the cast was as clued in.

Listen to the rhythms of "Broadcast News" - from Holly Hunter's daily crying jags to William Hurt's cock-of-the walk patter - and you'll hear how romantic comedy can approach an art form, a roundelay that requires the ear of a conductor. How Do You Know, James L. Brooks's latest, has such tone-deaf passages that it feels made by a totally different man.

Hardcore genre fans will appreciate visual shout-outs to shriekers like The Exorcist III and City of the Living Dead, while Conjuring devotees will enjoy the “aha” moment of a concluding callback that brings the saga full circle.

Adults forced to accompany three-year-olds to the movie would have had a little moment of satisfaction when the time came to shovel the Care Bear toys out of the house into landfill sites.

For a drama pretty much aimed at 12-year-old girls, it’s less superficial than you’d expect.

In the absence of real substance, Donaldson's stylish direction borders on the self-conscious, though cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr captures images of startling richness and clarity.

In many ways, this effervescent drama from Susan Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan) upends conventions, even when it sticks to a familiar narrative path.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a sex-positive but hopelessly soft-core erotic drama that fails to be even a fraction as titillating as the E.L. James books that inspired it. And yet, that’s exactly why it works.

Disappointingly infantile.

The way Earwig (which was actually made for Japanese TV) sacrifices Ghibli’s visual USP is less of a problem than the way it surrenders the studio’s accustomed emotional beats.

In the mood for two hours of relentless fights, gory kills, clichéd McGuffins and unmemorable characters, all served up in a weightless CG environment? Mortal Kombat II punches a hole in all those boxes.

Gail Morgan Hickman's complicated script manages a couple of nice twists, but it's too formulary to pursue the ambiguities it reveals. Most enjoyable is the clear thread of self-parody, which keeps the laughs and bullets coming thick and fast.

The Meg proves only that, at least cinematically speaking, great-white movies may have finally jumped the shark.

An engaging attempt to take the piss out of the crocodile tears that have been gleefully exploited since Love Story.

Self-touted as an authentic picture of Sioux manners and customs, the film to some extent delivers the goods (despite sacrificing a great deal of credibility by absurdly casting Judith Anderson as a malevolent old crone). But the Sun Vow sequence, lingered on in enervatingly gloating detail, ultimately defines it as exploitative.

Grier is an actress able to convey an amazing and unflinching strength, and she reveals the film for the dross it is.

The film has its moments, but is rendered virtually unwatchable by Furie's mania for weirdly mannered camera angles (you spend half the time peering round, over or under obstacles behind which the action is strategically placed) and enormous, pointless close-ups.

The script, which labours under polysyllabic mumbo-jumbo at times, is infantile, while the performances, apart from a sprightly Danner as Fonda's TV cohort, are spineless.

It's gruellingly long, the four-track stereo relentless, and the music a mechanical recreation of Zeppelin standards (eg. 'Whole Lotta Love', 'Stairway to Heaven).

A film which creates drama more out of gesture and nuance than dialogue, and employs a lush setting which overwhelms instead of pointing up the characters' emotions.

A pathetic shadow of the Frank Tashlin/Jerry Lewis Artists and Models.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga bring music but zero merriment to a bold and often brilliant sequel.

Deeply irresponsible, this a film that will give parents seizures-and Roger Corman a big old smile.

You could get whiplash watching this bipolar drama jerk between extremes: For every extraordinary scene - such as an authentically awkward exchange between Bosworth and estranged dad Thomas Haden Church - there's a sequence or three that might be extended collegiate acting exercises.

The message of continuous hardship is somewhat at odds with the same impulse towards idyllic lyricism that Rydell brought to On Golden Pond. Vilmos Zsigmond contributes his usual handsome photography, but this is one river that seems unlikely to run.

The movie sags after Mary’s weak-willed acquiescence to crime, instantly turning her into a dull-eyed monster. You know her procedures are bound to stray from elective, but it’s hard to care.

Once the undead start walking, however, the film loses some of its footing: Most of the bloodletting is staged with quick-cut inelegance better suited to the hack horror production of your choosing, though there’s still a potent air of hopelessness that lingers as the cast is winnowed away "Ten Little Indians"–style.

This smug and callous action-comedy is about nothing but teeth.

This really is an incredibly cheesy remake—the original was already pretty cheesy—starring Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart, doing their best with a script that cranks out all the odd-couple movie clichés.

Though the story's wrapped-with-a-bow finale is never in doubt-ol' Meathead remains a populist, pandering Hollywood man through and through-Belle Isle still manages to cast enough of an enchanting spell.

The script gradually falls apart into a mess of philosophical pottage under the whimsically pretentious Tolkien influence. But visually the film remains a sparkling display of fireworks, brilliantly shot and directed.

Screenwriter Boyd has turned his laugh-out-loud novel into a groan-out-loud movie.

Top-notch computer graphics, star voices and a gaggle of gadgets cannot disguise the fact that this family of the future is stuck firmly in 1962.

Dodgy business magnate Cioffi is up to no good in the armaments world, but even he can't ship an extra consignment of charisma to a picture that suffers from able character performer Ward's lack of leading-man presence or physique.

Second Act is an aspirational Pinterest board of a film, too bland to make an impression. If only the world saw street smarts as equal to book smarts, Maya wishes on her birthday. It’s a nice idea, but Second Act doesn’t possess smarts in either category.

There's something of a soft shoe shuffle to avoid treading on national sensibilities. But the climax, in particular, manages to be more than just a shoot-out, with Fleischer's intelligent direction generating a real feeling of chaos and apocalypse.

Codirector Ami Horowitz hogs the screen like a cut-rate Michael Moore, bringing a numbingly simplistic irony and smug self-satisfaction to his faux–rabble-rousing exposé.

Though Reeder's attempts to unnerve sometimes veer close to enfant terrible posturing, The Oregonian knows how to work its unpleasantness to primo psychotronic effect.

"Amadeus" it's not, but as light transitional music, the film-which has Pete Postlethwaite's final performance, as a swishy landlord-is tuneful enough.

Though the dialogue rings too chirpy ("Gee whiz!") and faintly anachronistic ("Get over it, man!"), the acting is wonderfully subtle, especially John Mahoney's turn as Bryce's grimly clear-eyed grandfather.

Ditching the mock-doc aesthetic is a bold formal move, but without its immediacy and realism, [REC] 3: Genesis becomes just another walking-dead movie-and clocking in at a mere 80 minutes, one with no time for character development.

Strong on stunts and special effects but often rambling and ponderously lurching into comedy, it's not the greatest of Christmas treats, but does have enough cherishable moments between the wordy longueurs; and in Lysette Anthony's Princess Lyssa, a heroine for whom many a young Turk would walk through fire and ice.

It would be kind to call this satire; what it comes off as is a pummeling, testosterone-fueled sensory assault that the film then makes minor variations on for two very long hours.

Director Spheeris (Wayne's World) seems to have taken her obsession with youth culture beyond the limit, including a scene of dancing teenies in pink leotards that would make John Waters blush.

This one barely musters a pulse.

If you can get over the moralising, there's a treat from Kristy McNichol as the rough talking, Marlboro-smoking kid who can deliver a kick to the cobblers to rival Paul Newman, while Matt Dillon as her 'gentle giant' initiator and the soundtrack (Blondie, Bonnie Raitt) also provide welcome relief.

At best, the formula works like vintage Bond (explicitly so in the title sequence). But too much time is wasted with stale Star Wars plagiarisms, including the screen's dullest robot.

Mad axeman action yet again, cravenly conformist in every department.

The casting, from lead roles to supporting, is uniformly terrific.

Playwright-turned-fillmaker Florian Zeller continues his one-man war on the world’s tear ducts with another hard-hitting portrait of domestic life in extremis.

Still Life constantly threatens to become a better movie: John’s scrutiny of photos feels vaguely serial-killer–esque, and there’s a late-inning love interest (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) that you privately cheer for.

Radnor tries to pin a tail of significance on this donkey, but he seems content with light comedy and mere proficiency. To which we can only reply: Nothankyounomoremilquetoast-please.

Granted, Boyle may be a competent director, but he’s missed the mark by not focusing on anybody with real heart: the father and his son, the cousin and her beau--basically, every person here who isn’t a cretinous, developmentally arrested creep.

Sadly, “Get out of my lab!” is not the new “Get off my plane!”

Uneasily poised between glib irony and earnest melodrama, Patricia Riggen's coming-of-age tale is as scattered as its manic pubescent protagonist.

There still hasn’t been a truly great film based directly on a video game, and the characterisations here are more likely to annoy than delight the hardcore fans, but the jetsetting and sunshine here is a welcome break from more serious action movies, and Holland will just about hold the interest.

The gallery of eccentric ex-lovers provides a few yuks, but the fact that the film's trajectory sees going from sexuality-owning independence to conventional respectability as a quantum leap is remarkably depressing, even if Angela's final resolve complicates such an easy progression.

The burgeoning relationship between both the athletes, bonding over a kindred "otherness," is handled tastefully by director Kaspar Heidelbach, though the lack of new insights on the subject of National Socialism's wickedness ultimately reduces a well-staged film to a historical footnote.

The story of a young woman (Juno Temple) discovering that she is both a lesbian and a werewolf, Bradley Rust Gray's oddball horror parable starts with an irresistibly trashy premise and proceeds to treat it with the po-faced pretentiousness of a film-school thesis.

The story is classic - a pair of childhood friends go their separate ways as adolescence gives way to manhood - the treatment pure Hollywood.

It may well satisfy a low IQ, pubescent (probably) male Iron Maiden fan, but the rest of us are poorly served.

Young Mac is decisively upstaged by Wood, but the film's strongest selling point has to be a cliff-top finale in which the tyke's own mother has to choose whether he'll live or die. A summer camp classic.

Only the mighty Fonda cuts through the claptrap; the rest is just a long, predictable trip.

Given that Sarandon played this same role so sublimely before in "Moonlight Mile," her devolution into theatrical rending of garments and gnashing of teeth is particularly disappointing, but no one--not Brosnan’s shell-shocked–by-numbers patriarch nor Mulligan’s wide-eyed waif--comes out of this steroidal pity party unscathed.

The jittery aesthetic is a bit grating - there's a three-cut minimum per roundhouse kick - but the spectacularly named Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3) still manages to deliver the action-film goods.

Justice League gets the band together but remembers to bring the banter along with the boom.

"Rosemary's Baby" it's not, but color us stoked that a Twilight movie even strays into evil-fetus territory.

Epitomizing the shrill franchise's schizophrenic tonal shifts, Madea metes out Christian life lessons with one hand-and righteously bitch-slaps with the other.

Typically mild-mannered Disney live-action frolic. [04 Aug 2004]

Morgan and preteen dybbuk host Calis draw some pathos out of their father-daughter discord, but you can't have a possession without a soul.

A perfectly boring movie from Julian Schnabel - is it possible?

The new movie is simpler plotwise (a race to the Fountain of Youth), while at the same time being somehow more deadening.

By the Sea is a so-so film, but its meandering stretches of decaying glamour make it about 10 times more interesting than most Oscar bait.

This sequel lacks the bravura pacing of the original, and though it tries to maintain the biblical tone in following the adolescence of its antichrist anti-hero, immense problems emerge.

The problem is that the filmmaker brings D-grade craft to these B-movie exertions, making his florid maximalism more entertaining to talk about than endure - despite the best efforts of his ardently slumming A-list cast.

This one’s unforgettable indeed, just not for the right reasons.

At least Thomas gives a suitably burned-out performance as Williams. He's almost enough to melt your cold, cold heart.

A virtual two- hander, the narrative proceeds by contrasting Berenger's edgy pragmatism with Zane's unwilling induction to the art of murder, though the director's inventive bullets' eye-view shots still fail to dispel the suspicion that the film has little new to say.

A coda shifts to video footage of Cleese's irreverent eulogy; you wish the whole film could have been as slyly somber. It's what the colonel would have insisted upon.

The movie builds to a particularly deflating anticlimax, passing over an inevitably apocalyptic confrontation between spheres with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge bit of dialogue that’s like a rejected punchline from a Douglas Adams novel.

A cynical film which has only been made, apparently, to squeeze the pockets of anyone who enjoyed the first movie. Why give them the satisfaction?

Fresnadillo, working with screenwriters Nicolás Casariego and Jaime Marques, might be angling for the same YA fantasy as "Pan's Labyrinth," but they've forgotten about that film's violent underpinnings, a mistake that leaches their movie of suspense.

From the auteur of "Torque" (2004) comes this instant headache: a panicky snark-schlock horror-comedy that reduces everything to a hyperactive squall of white noise.

It's a contemporary movie musical that makes you feel genuinely sky-high.

A largely sexless sex romp, has such a winning sense of middle-aged exhaustion to it that you might want to add a star or two, especially if you're familiar with the banalities of matrimonial bliss.

Marvin Kren’s enjoyable if ephemeral horror movie gets by for a while on its dopey premise.

Through it all, Henney is an appealing screen presence, but he’s trapped in a movie that puts regurgitated sitcom shtick and regional economic boosterism ahead of character and humor.

Four-letter words and gags about periods fail to disguise the adolescent wish-fulfilment quality of script and direction.

Retains the essential elements that first turned the world Turtle - the affectionate squabbling between the four, the pantomime villains, the cracking one-liners - and the bigger budget is a blessing.

Dramatically inert and flatter than a buzz cut, the movie ends up diminishing their moment of heroism by turning it into a defiantly amateurish piece of junior-high-grade theatrics.

What follows is pulp made near-profound through director Jonathan Mostow’s sure-handed guidance.

The aural and visual overload that marks most of the director's work is here in spades--few documentaries look and sound so distinctive.

Lively remains impressive throughout, but with plot-driven fare like this, such lapses are a let-down.

This film’s greatest accomplishment is that its theatrical gestures manage to feel preposterous, pretentious and routine at the same time.

Like the vampires that cavort throughout it, this horror-comedy doesn’t have much chance of surviving the harsh light of scrutiny--but as a loopy, antiserious lark, it should prove plenty alive on the midnight-movie circuit.