The weather is always inclement, the protagonists are all muddy when they're not bloody, King Arthur's Christianity is muscular but joyless, and Guinevere is often daubed with blue paint. No, folks, we're not in Camelot anymore.

The smartest, funniest, most cleverly structured comedy of the year.

Sometimes intelligent, often cuddlesome and ultimately bland.

Capone is an odd little film, at times weirdly engaging but often so bizarrely muddled that you might identify a little too closely with its perpetually unglued protagonist. But Hardy is always worth watching.

Howard and Goldsman have efficiently touched all the bases. But they haven't found a way to replicate the book's page-turning urgency.

Is comedy a young man's game, like skateboarding or sex? Writing jokes, creating droll characters -- these take ambition, ingenuity and energy, and after decades of devotion to this voracious muse, a fellow can get pooped.

Statham is the real thing, and he’s key to the effectiveness of this good-natured and often highly ridiculous adaptation of Steve Alten’s 1997 sci-fi potboiler.

Yes, he ends up being felled by a heroic dog, but the film nonetheless creatively imagines the horrors of power in the wrong hands.

All this magical switcheroo plot nonsense is just a formality anyway: everyone who comes to Irish Wish—friend, foe or neutral observer—will have come for Lohan.

Yet he just kept going and going, and the slick, proficient Knight and Day is proof that you should never count Cruise out.

Neither great nor terrible. It quavers in that middle ground of pictures you think you might watch on a plane someday, and you could make a worse choice.

For all its superpower simplifications, White Nights has discovered in Baryshnikov a keen and passionate movie hero. Giggle at the film's naiveté; then feast on Misha and dance down the steppes.

A lot of the gags are pretty good. It's not that Star Wars is less worthy of satire than horse opera or gothic horror. It's not that Mel Brooks has lost his cunning, though he does need a freedom of speech not to be found under a PG rating. What's missing is that zany old gang of his. There is simply nobody like them on this trip. [13 July 1987, p.68]

Though the movie is no more than agreeable, it does provide a swell showcase for New Zealand wundercomic Rhys Darby (Murray the hapless agent on HBO's Flight of the Conchords) and gives the astrally adorable Zooey Deschanel a rare shot at a lead role in a big Hollywood movie.

The film, though, lies dormant in its own decency.

Not a bad concept, and Martin Lawrence is appealing. Unfortunately, the writers have no gift for comic writing.

It's like a giant sculpture that is so strange and off-putting, it's instantly, intriguingly post-modern. Swept up in the film's pile-driving self-assurance, even Bay-haters may absorb the pain to enjoy the gain.

Both girls deserve a better vehicle than Little Darlings. The film has an amusing premise: the two heroines race to see who can lose her virginity first. But Director Ronald F. Maxwell, who has done superior TV work (PBS's Verna: U.S.O. Girl), settles for slogging his way through a threadbare script.

Somehow, by a narrow margin, the film doesn't quite make it. Potter recolored his work a little more sunnily, and it is, perhaps, too compressed; it needs TV's room to digress.

It's kind of fun--if you have the stomach for its more grisly passages.

Maybe Wellesley isn't the only injured party here. Can an audience sue for cruel and edifying punishment?

But this Evita is not just a long, complex music video; it works and breathes like a real movie, with characters worthy of our affection and deepest suspicions.

Rarely have so many gifted women labored so tastefully to bring forth such a wee, lockjawed mouse.

Unhappily, Producer Walt Disney tells his shaggy-dog story so doggedly that he soon runs it into the pound.

No kidding: this is the feel-good movie of the year and a cinematic soul massage.

Unfortunately, Girl in Progress doesn't upend anything; it just makes us weary of its wisecracking, oblivious teen and her ditzy mom.

Non-headline-making but often entertaining docu-travelogue.

The Greatest often feels like a mash-up of Sarandon's greatest grief hits.

Where to lay the blame for Justice League’s just OK-ness? The movie is a jumbo-sized blur — not terrible, just underwhelming even amid its desperation to impress us.

This is Meyer's worst offense - her disturbingly Victorian attitudes about sex and love, which this particular movie falls modestly in lockstep with, even though it concludes years of cinematic foreplay.

To make something like Firewall good, you have to make it at least a little bit new--or add more than an unending patter of rain and techno-talk.

The movie proved to be an exasperating, fitfully enjoyable jumble of Perryana, full of insult humor, a gospel choir and, not to give too much away, plot elements borrowed from "Chinatown," "Precious," "Imitation of Life" and "Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke" - all restitched and Tyler-made.

Pfeiffer restores honor to the family drama.

Maid in Manhattan is not so much a movie as a collection of career moves. J. Lo needs a comedy hit to support her principal activity, adorning magazine covers. Fiennes needs to warm his austere British image if he hopes to become a true international star.

Will the movie end in an orgy of sentiment? Why do we bother to ask?

Jolie Pitt, in her third film as a director, infuses her original screenplay with a sparseness reminiscent of Hemingway’s tales of mislaid love and Michelangelo Antonioni’s cinematic alienation. But By the Sea is its own lovely creation, deadly serious about how grief divides, conquers and possibly unites.

All the actors rise or bend to the challenge, giving juicy performances and seemingly having a fine old time.

Intentions don’t equal fully fledged works, and Folie à Deux stumbles on nearly all fronts. Even if the movie’s ambitions are admirable, you might end up too bored to care.

It's a faux epic -- swell costumes, historically authentic settings, a certain amount of bustle and skulking, but very little dramatically gripping activity.

The film (directed by Andy Tennant) has more problems than Melanie, and they're insoluble. Its lazy calculation telegraphs each plot turn and underlines emotions with corn-pone music.

It's as if everyone was just a little too much in tasteful awe of its subject, who is played rather stolidly by Nick Nolte.

Somehow Neeson makes the ridiculous plausible. A mature, real man in an era of superhero fantasy, he radiates something rare in movie musclemen: a haunted gravity to match his outsize physique.

I Love You to Death lacks the precision, ferocity and guts needed for black farce.

Every ambitious picturemaker should be allowed one wild misfire at no lasting cost to his reputation. Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) can now put this aside and go back to making good films.

The sections detailing the men’s childhood in Sacramento, with Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer playing beleaguered moms? Not so exciting. But then, the very averageness of these conscientious, gutsy guys is precisely the point.

The novelty of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wears thin in the last third: How is it that the threat of a zombie apocalypse is always more thrilling than the event itself? But Riley and James help carry the picture to the finish line.

An ambitious but sub-ordinary SF epic in which, as so often, Willis is better than his material.

The 70-minute movie -- which was co-written by the British-Pakistani commentator Tariq Ali, author of the 2006 study "Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope," and photographed in part by docu-doyen Albert Maysles -- is amateur night as cinema, as lopsided and cheerleadery as its worldview.

The result is Soderberghs liveliest experiment since the strenuously weird "Schizopolis" six years ago -- except that this one works.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is less about zapping ghoulies than it is about Family, Reconnection and Forgiveness, which by now should be trademarked entities like Pepsi, Saran Wrap and Legos. Never funny or disreputable, Ghostbusters: Afterlife feels fully parent-approved—and where’s the fun in that?

Because director Adrian Lyne takes all this so slowly and seriously, Indecent Proposal is an inadvertent comedy. As such, it is much funnier than "Honeymoon in Vegas", which tried in vain to be funny about the same idea.

After an agonizing first half-hour designed to empty the theater, Lynch unleashes his patented perfervid style, puts the familiar dwarfs and feebs on display and elicits a nicely horrifying turn from Lee. [7 Sept 1992]

The Mother would be more effective if she could wink at the audacity of the material instead of just playing it all straight. But then, Lopez can get away with things that other mere mortals can’t, and if you approach it in the right spirit, The Mother could be ridiculously good fun.

The movie is at its best when it’s sopping with sentimentality and when it goes right over the top in its depiction of dorky destruction. Everything in between is a drag.

Alas, The Outsiders is not quite a good one. Because it falls in with the undulating rhythm of the life of its heroes, for whom a fatal fight and a quiet night have almost equal importance, the picture never manages to reach the peaks of satisfying Hollywood melodrama.

What you will find is both familiar in its contours and unique in its casting: the definitive alterkocker action picture. Call it "The Old Dogs of War," or "Incontinent Basterds."

It's a modest little fantasy. But it's also well made, unpretentious and refreshing.

Chasing Mavericks may treat its characters with a little too much reverence, but it gives its titular subject its awe-inspiring due.

We're left with our stifled laughter and a very long movie.

Cherry feels like a movie made by a teenager, a bright kid who doesn’t leave his room much but still has plenty of thoughts about, you know, experiences and stuff.

Given that this holiday film season has come up more than a little short on love and laughter, one can easily forgive Kate & Leopold the slightly excessive lengths and complications to which it goes in search of those rare commodities.

Raimi, who launched his career with the cheapo horror mini-masterpiece "The Evil Dead" before helming the blockbuster "Spider-Man" trilogy, can’t infuse the story with much verve or joy.

The critic in me can authoritatively declare that the film is crap. The fan in me sent his shirt to the dry cleaners for tear removal.

The first Rush Hour was a pretty good movie, the second one pretty lame. The threequel is somewhere in between: nothing special but with a high amiability quotient. The two stars know they click; it's no crime for them to extend and exploit that good vibe one more time.

The net result of this mighty effort is perhaps predictable: near total inconsequence.

Heart of Stone is quite glossy and beautiful to look at, and though there’s not much that’s dynamic about her, Gadot at least has a charming insouciance. Even if you’ll be hard-pressed to remember any of it three hours later, the runtime of Heart of Stone flies by quickly enough.

As a kooky fantasy, it’s all fine, if just fine is what you’re after. But at what point does just fine become soul killing, or at least just soul numbing?

Nine out of ten gags in this crude pub crawl of a comedy are indefensible. Maybe ten out of ten. Tragically, perhaps, I laughed anyway: It’s so hard to know what to laugh at anymore, and what it’s OK to laugh at.

So a tip of the hat to A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, a frequently very funny movie about planning and executing exactly what the title describes.

A sloppy mess that stumbles toward oblivion like a drunk on a losing streak

Visually, Made in Italy is reminiscent of another escape-to-Italy romance, Audrey Wells’ 2003 "Under the Tuscan Sun," starring Diane Lane (and also featuring Duncan). As these types of fantasies go, that movie was as satisfying as a deep sigh. Made in Italy is less so. But remember — we came for the scenery! And on that score, Made in Italy is a low-cost souvenir of the Tuscan-villa dream so many of us harbor, without the headaches of rewiring old electrical systems or fixing broken shutters.

Warm-hearted humanism is glopped all over Renaissance Man in the hopes that we won't notice that the story makes no sense.

Last Action Hero starts out mostly nuts, and winds up mostly bolts. Or, rather, winds down. That's a problem with pastiche: it must be constantly jump-started with ingenuity, and even that ultimately pales. By the end, nothing matters. [21 June 1993, p67]

"Wanna see something really scary?" asks Guest Star Dan Aykroyd at film's end. The Miller and Dante episodes are. So is the epic waste that informs much of this movie. [20 June 1983, p.73]

The enterprise is sluggish when it's not grinding toward the preposterous.

Until The Raven almost literally loses itself during a chase in the city sewers, it nicely balances its literary gamesmanship with a R-rated thriller's mandatory gross-out tableaux.

The chemistry this trio has is special; the premise of the sequel seems worn, but the way they work against and with each other is what provides the pleasure.

Despite Jackson's typically bravura turn, this Valentine massacre marks a step backward for the gifted director of Eve's Bayou.

Batman v Superman lunges for greatness instead of building toward it: It’s so topheavy with false portent that it buckles under its own weight.

So put it this way: If the Altmans were a real family sitting shiva, I’d drop by to commiserate and give a cheek-kiss to a few of the mourners (Bateman, Driver, Fey, maybe Fonda). I enjoyed seeing them, but I’d hate to be sentenced to being with them for the full seven-day stretch.

The film's payoff raises more questions than it answers, which may be Shyamalan's intent in this political parable of fear.

We forgive Bridget the movie its obvious flaws because of its equally inescapable charm.

A decent sampler for Americans who've never seen a full-out Bollywood musical, since it goes heavy on the action scenes and light on the big dance numbers.

Kutcher, whose acting chops haven’t been tested in all those pretty-boy lead roles, was a welcome surprise. His movie-star glow distracts, but there is a strong physical resemblance. Moreover, he’s got many of Jobs’ mannerisms down cold, from that T Rex–like walk to the fingers that fan the air and the yoga-style postures left over from his bohemian youth. It’s a good impression, but Jobs itself is all too impressionistic.

Essentially a liberal soap opera.

Half comedy, half action piece, the movie runs sputteringly on the not inconsiderable charm of its stars. But basically it is languid, indeterminate and uninvolving.

Neither lurid nor especially compelling. This is the triumph, and the limitation, of 9 Songs: it makes explicit movie sex ordinary--as ordinary as the sexual activities of most of the folks watching it.

This sugary sweet chick flick is so rich in its ripeness and full in its foolishness that I look forward to groaning in happy horror when I inevitably see it again, whether while drinking or when laid low by the kind of flu whose symptoms include a desire to watch Meg Ryan rom coms on cable.

Bush and Renz keep careful control over the tone: this is a tense, thoughtful picture that seeks both to entertain and provoke, rather than to simply punish its audience. It’s also very clearly a work of cathartic fantasy-horror with an underpinning in history, not a historical document, and it leans hard into its pulp sensibilities.

See it for the inventive, elaborate costumes (designed by Ellen Mirojnick), for the tiny — albeit slightly creepy — mushroom people and the miniature fairies wearing dandelion tutus, and for Jolie.

Writer Shane Black mines his thriller premise while musing on issues of identity and redemption; he also shaped the itchy camaraderie of Davis and Jackson.

When it sparkles, which is often, it’s perfectly enjoyable.

A movie featuring Kevin Hart is going to be a Kevin Hart movie: at this point, his personality is too big to fold up; his jackrabbit energy dominates. That doesn’t leave much oxygen for Haddish, whose loopy, billowing spirit needs lots of airspace. And still, somehow, she’s the movie’s guiding presence.

The new PG-13 movie is a fairly close adaptation of the Verhoeven, and lacks not just the earlier film's newness but its vigor, density, humor and R-rated juice. It's like the dinner-theater revival of a classic play, whose single asset is to remind those present how good the original was.

Redford underacts, Gandolfini overacts, and this movie is directed with the same air of unreality, the same grim passion for cliches, both cinematic and emotional, that Lurie brought to his first film, "The Contender."

It is somewhat repetitive, but it is also wonderfully acted, especially by Barrymore.

This isn't a love story, it's a misery story that drags on, not to a dramatic conclusion but a tepid moment.

The Lady is still titled away from the churning melodrama of Suu Kyi's country and toward the intimate dilemma of a loving couple forced apart by circumstance.