And yet, in these stressful times, a little mindless action isn’t wholly unwelcome, and Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse—directed by Stefano Sollima, who not long ago gave us Sicario: Day of the Soldado—is moderately un-terrible, a diversion that hits every beat predictably, with a mighty grunt.

Along with other cast members, Penn takes ages registering his stares and scowls, until the movie is finally not about gangs but about actors' attitudes. Dressed up in '80s street slang, this is a '60s exercise in Method excess. [18 Apr 1988]

De Niro's is a domineering performance, a star turn that is both comic and menacing, but it unbalances Wolff's story.

Beauty ends before it has really dug into anything of consequence. Its heroine, whom we know is headed for trouble, is left stranded in the middle of her own story.

A film that's fun to argue with.

Apparently Bachelorette has been divisive, with audiences either falling hard for it or walking away disgusted. I'd have fallen harder for it if I'd walked away more disgusted.

There is no sadder genre than the tedious thriller, a movie that works hard to entice us with suspense, rough and tumble action, maybe even alluring locales, only to fizzle out far from the finish line.

Furiosa, rife with explosions, savage masculinity, and lots and lots of driving, is all spectacle and no vision. Its heroine deserves better.

There's no denying that Pan is one ambitious fairy tale. But what's being labeled a "wholly original adventure" feels far from new, never mind necessary.

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

Tries anything for a gross-out laugh — but feels oh-so-familiar

The movie is adept at portraying aimlessness, getting at the greasy anomie that was so much a part of that time. But there is a lack of ambition, as if no one involved in creating the film wanted to cut deeper than a little double-edged nostalgia.

The Girl on the Train is less a thriller than a morality tale reminding us never to make snap judgments. No matter how dreadfully some characters behave, we’re not allowed to dislike anyone for long. That kind of catharsis isn’t allowed.

Warrior's three principle characterizations are compelling - Nolte in particular gives a tempered performance as the shambling, sad-eyed wreck of a dad - but not enough to mask the film's lesser elements.

Stewart gives her all, as she always does. But she plays Diana as a mannered doe—all wrong, given that does are the most unmannered creatures on Earth. Her performance is clearly stylized, but it’s also packed with calculation and guile. Larraín turns this Diana into exactly the thing the royal family accused the real-life Diana of being, a willful and pouty constant complainer.

The movie, which Mendes also wrote, doesn’t live up to its setting. There’s a lot going on in Empire of Light—and yet somehow not quite enough.

Bakshi's animation is good, and the visuals—which marvelously capture the grainy, lowering look of the Manhattan streetscape—are raucous, ingenious and convincing. But Fritz the Cat is, for a cartoon, exasperatingly slow: Bakshi's sense of pace and editing is snail-like, and the dialogue mostly naive and muffled.

It's only when it takes an unfortunate wrong turn from playful wit into the dramatic and sentimental - Hallström's speciality - that the movie starts to unravel.

In terms of quality, though, Argo is just so-so.

Like Martin Scorsese’s "The Departed," a bloated Americanizing of the Hong Kong cop movie "Infernal Affairs," the Lee Oldboy will startle newbies with its story ingenuities and morbid revelations, while leaving connoisseurs of the source film wondering why Hollywood couldn’t have left great enough alone.

You get 45 minutes of awesome encased in 90 minutes of yawnsome.

If Another Round had been presented as a farce, a trifle, it might, paradoxically enough, carry more weight. Good comedies have a way of cutting deep, maybe because they relax us just enough so that we let down our guard. But Another Round is both too serious and not serious enough.

Crowe, despite his loutish rep, is forever surprising viewers by slipping snugly into the disparate characters he plays. This time he surprises by failing. Oh, he can do engaging as smartly as he does stalwart or tortured, but he gets sabotaged by the cloying script.

Nunez's film neither floats like a butterfly nor stings like a bee. It just drones on.

The Adam Project should be fun, but it’s sabotaged by its unwieldy ambitions. Forget the complexities of time travel, of wormholes and the laws of physics. This movie can barely get from point A to point B without tripping over itself.

It is a daring thing the director has done, this bleaching out of all the cheap thrills, this dashing of all the hopes one brings to what is, after all, advertised as "a masterpiece of modern horror." Certainly he has asked much of Nicholson, who must sustain attention in a hugely unsympathetic role, and who responds with a brilliantly crazed performance.

The movie is so assertively about the social issue at its heart – the way opioid addiction tears families apart – that it barely leaves room for its characters to breathe. At times it feels more as if they’re spokespeople with jobs to do. That takes its toll on both lead actors, especially Roberts: one minute she’s Denial Mom, the next she’s Tough Love Mom.

No deep thoughts here; this is a product of shiny surfaces and glittering patter, the cinematic equivalent of a derivatives offering. Instead of whacking Wall Street, Stone gives it a poke that ends up as a tickle.