While the movie occasionally stretches too far to maintain thematic coherence, its momentum is sustained by the urgency of its case studies, as well as the sense of outrage at the injustices perpetuated at the behest of powerful monetary interests and its striking imagery.

Enacted against the stunning backdrop of the Amazon jungle, the action has a rousing, epic quality. What it doesn't have, however, is passion. The climax is brutal, De Niro and Irons are impressive as the opponents who become soul mates; yet The Mission manages to be both magnificent and curiously uninvolving, a buddy movie played in soutanes.

What really hurts is seeing Jamie Travis's name attached; for those of us who love his extraordinary "Patterns" trilogy, watching the talented Toronto filmmaker add his characterically kitschy touch to such a witless, faux-edgy movie can only be described as a Travis-ty.

The unspoken theme underlying Dickens’s prose--that the money-grubbing Ebenezer is conversing with semblances of his own self--finds near-perfect cinematic expression through Carrey’s efforts.

Offers an intriguing outsider's document of Russian culture reinventing itself from the outside in; its main export, however, seems to be good old-fashioned Ugly Americanism.

A British Blackboard Jungle that bears no resemblance to school life as we know it.

Hunt is a film stuck entirely in fifth, racing from one sudden shootout to another at the expense of the labyrinthine plot.

Menopausal male Wilder gets the frustrated hots for comely Ms Le Brock in this broad, unfunny Hollywood remake of the broad, only vaguely funny French original Pardon Mon Affaire (which at least had long-faced Jean Rochefort in its favour).

Wuthering Heights was never written as a traditional romance, rather a tale of obsession, revenge, bitterness and betrayal. Still, it helps if you're made to care about its doomed lovers.

Cavill’s band of rebels are drolly enthusiastic, which is really all that’s asked of them. Kinnear’s Churchill impersonation falls flat, but Til Schweiger’s chief Nazi is aptly villainous, and Elwes is a delightfully dry M. Aside from the overlong denouement, the action zips by so quickly that the end notes – about the remarkable true-life team – pull us up short. These extraordinary heroes had no time for larking about. But they’d probably be chuffed to see themselves as spies insouciant enough to inspire 007 himself.

Mainly, it’s a fun and boisterous countdown to the big meal.

Lee and Schamus make history blandly palatable; in the process, they rob the times and the people they’re portraying of their complications.

God Told Me To overflows with such perverse and subversive notions that no amount of shoddy editing and substandard camerawork can conceal the film's unusual qualities.

Do you like movies about gladiators? Well, lend me your ears: The Eagle will more than gratify your sword-and-sandal cravings.

Schepisi is deft with the social-strata stuff, introducing a large Gosford Park–like ensemble to tease out the central trio's dysfunction. So it's a shame that both book and film tilt away from the tart-tongued exchanges, giving increasing weight to a buried trauma that feels a little soggy.

The plotline is classic Western morality-play stuff, with the goodies and baddies clearly delineated, but the set pieces are well constructed, and the whole thing is beautifully staged and shot.

For all of Cloud Atlas's pseudorevolutionary blather about upending the "natural order," the execution couldn't be squarer.

In using the urban poor and the queer community as punch lines, Casi Divas ultimately succumbs to its own criticism.

Apart from a fascination with the hate-spitting mouth and throat of Lyubov Petrova’s vocally pyrotechnic Queen of the Night, the visual gimmicks are individually tolerable. But they don’t add up to anything particular.

Too-cutesy conceits such as Hitch's imagined conversations with serial killer Ed Gein (Michael Wincott) feebly attempt to ground the story in psychological terra firma, while horribly on-the-nose dialogue flatters those viewers who prefer to keep their sense of cinema history on fan-mag frivolous levels.

A mid-way twist seems like it’s going to up the ante but the film ultimately drops the ball in the final act, where there is a lot of huff and puff (Fire! Demons! Body horror!) but little in the way of a satisfying conclusion. Ironically, Never Let Go becomes less interesting the more untethered it gets.

Hyde Park could have been fawningly ponderous; that it's merely an airy trifle puts it a cut above the usual Oscar bait.

A proper profile of Hefner would start and end with sex, and not merely glance on casualties like Dorothy Stratten (and even the loveless Hef himself). The movie can't seem to get it up.

A few of his labyrinthine concerns and much advanced animation work (plus optical assistance from once-celebrated avant-gardist Jordan Belson) spice the thin conceit, but it's a doomed project.

Shyamalan has never excelled at dialogue, but the mangling here is gobsmacking

Burton, as usual, is great on atmosphere and comic timing (these are his weirdest moments since Ed Wood), but less so at reining in an overcomplicated plot and dimly lit action scenes.

If violence ever comes into the picture-and considering the illegal millions made from trafficking, it strains credulity to imply it doesn't-we don't hear about it, as Corben wants to paint the subjects as drug-war martyrs.

Sorvino's Bronx bawler veers from mascara-streaked monster to outer-borough sage as each scene requires, while Savoca's agitated camera strains for handheld immediacy but ends up just looking amateurish and ugly.