Furiously raunchy, occasionally bright and eventually benumbing comedy.

The only reliable source of energy is Homayoun Ershadi, a powerful actor who plays Baba, Amir's Westernized father.

"Witty and brisk" is not the name of a French breakfast cereal, but it does describe a certain brand of French film, the type that coquettishly flirts with comedy while sprinting in the direction of dry, sophisticated charm. Such is Haute Cuisine.

A thoroughly serious film, full of vivid details, but also a relentlessly serious one that requires Mr. Wilson to spend a great deal of time looking disconsolate.

Once again, though, the film is defined by the strengths and weaknesses of the source material. While Bruce is working on anger management, you may find yourself working on boredom management, and matching his rate of success.

The production’s shrill insistence on scandal-mongering as the poison of our political process is trivializing, too. Given the profound currents and countercurrents that have transformed — and menaced — the news media in the last few years, this story plays like quaintly ancient history.

Like everyone else on hand, Mr. Woodall deserves a better director than he gets here, just as the audience deserves a better script than one that asks us to believe Göring was so clever he nearly dodged blame for the Holocaust.

Beast of War is a rare animal—a hybrid shark movie and a war film—and it takes care to deliver some tweaks.

Though it may have some novel elements, the franchise already feels tired, and isn’t much more promising than recent DC efforts “Black Adam” and “The Flash.” This beetle doesn’t have much juice.

Thus does a book of literary distinction become not-so-grand-Guignol.

I was put off by the acting, or more properly by the spectacle of good actors dutifully following leaden direction, and equally by the writing, which is as thin as the veneer of civilization it purports to peel back.

I floated in and out of states that included suspense, surprise, delight and shock, all of them adding up to steady-state enjoyment.

Sumptuously produced and beautifully visualized, this is a filmmaker's meditation on the culture that nurtured him. As a piece of entertainment, however, it's hoist by its own paradox -- an almost thrill-free thriller that seems seductive, yet stays resolutely remote.

For almost two hours of car chases and car wrecks and extraordinary animated transformation sequences that meld fluidly with live action, the welcome mat is out for Michael Bay's cheerfully dopey saga.

It’s the definition of guilty pleasure.

A symphony for tin ears, a sniggering assessment of human nature delivered with the faux-lofty tone of a Lexus commercial.

Ghostface tends to veer from fiendishly brilliant to unbelievably thick depending on the writers’ limitations.

Here's another film, along with "Mud," that's in the American grain, but a genetically conditioned grain of unforgiving fathers and overweening ambition. It's powerful stuff.

A solid success, primarily though not entirely because of Jeremy Renner. He's a star worthy of the term as Aaron Cross, another haunted operative who, like Jason Bourne, is as much a victim of the government's dirty deeds as a covert super-agent. But the production is impressive too.

Mr. Damon brings both a weary optimism and convincing physicality to Max, who is no revolutionary. He just wants to live, and is willing to don an exoskeletal combat suit and fight robots to do it.

You could also say it's like they're likable tourists on a quest to plunder an endearing movie that didn't need this mediocre remake.

There is injustice here, but Mr. Hallström doesn’t push too hard on the theme; instead of interjecting what’s happening in the script, he simply allows us to experience Af Klint’s dignified frustration.

It’s easy to smile at The Thursday Murder Club, with its veteran performers chewing the scenery and still having the teeth to do it. Does that sound ageist? It might, if the charms of this lighthearted, star-studded confection weren’t all about its main characters being advanced in years and still as sharp as an insulin injection.

Mr. Firth gives his all, and then some. He’s very funny, even touching, when the material allows him to be. Yet the production, directed by Matthew Vaughn (“Kick-Ass,” “X-Men: First Class”) from a screenplay he wrote with Jane Goldman, can’t contain its centrifugal force.

Much of this R-rated movie is chaotic, yet it’s a richly hued, madly inventive, gleefully violent and happily slapdash contraption with a formidable female at its center.

This kinetic, documentary-style, fly-on-the-wall and in-the-halls tale proves that in the hands of capable dramatists the rack of suspense can be tightened to an almost unbearable degree even when the outcome is known.

The denizens of Judd Apatow’s Funny People have been pulled every which way to fit a misshapen concept, yet they remain painfully unfunny, and consistently off-putting.

Everything in The Light Between Oceans is deeply felt and dramatically precise, in a way that seems destined to become profoundly personal for each and every viewer.

Ms. Campion has shown a gift for pictorialism -- static pictorialism; she's not a fluid filmmaker - and an abiding fascination with sexual repression. She brings both to this long, slow, distanced version of the Henry James novel. [27 Dec 1996]

The blithely dishonest script would have us believe that the real Napoleon can't prove his identity when the fake Napoleon refuses to come clean. Not only is that patent nonsense, it's cockeyed dramaturgy.

While the romantic comedy is hobbled by the lack of onscreen chemistry between the stars, it’s never in doubt that both actors are giving these exertions their all—each excels individually, but they just can’t kiss like they mean it. Instead, their rapport is that of professional colleagues who complement each other’s work, and Ms. Bullock allows Mr. Tatum to showcase his brilliance at playing dumb.

Once Lisbeth has her day in court, though, the buildup pays off and then some.

This Danish-language film about a Copenhagen commune in the mid-1970s pulses with screwy energy and antic confusion.

Perhaps some of the goofiness was intentional — you can’t always tell from this production’s wavering tone — but Spectre is full of not-good things, and some oppressively bad things that may come to feel like drill bits twirling in your skull.

A two-hour documentary that feels like three, it certainly has a worthy subject, and a charismatic one; it commits a trove of valuable cultural lore to posterity. But it also commits a sin in never finding its rhythm, or a through-line on which to hang one of the great stories of American popular music.

Of the 7,000 Jews who resisted, about 1,700 survived. The stories of these four don’t constitute high drama; there’s none of the dramatic clarity of “Schindler’s List.” But they testify to that part of the human spirit concerned with ironic humor, improbable daring and unlikely generosity.

Silly is endangered these days, and normal has come under withering fire from stupendous, yet tedious, visual effects. Busting ghosts used to be a lot more fun.

Goofily funny, and silly, and in many ways follows the currents of contemporary comedy into the gulf stream of inanity. And yet Ned turns out to be a strangely moving figure, a comic foil worthy of affection, perhaps even respect.

An absurdist fantasy on a solemn theme, Where Do We Go Now? suffers from a serious clash of styles, but it's also brave and startlingly funny - at one point verging on "Mamma Mia!" - when it isn't bleak or shocking.

The tone is that of a telenovela -- soap-operatic at heart -- even though the film was adapted from a 19th-century novel.

His story is instructive, as well as chilling and occasionally hilarious -- a brief, probably foredoomed career during which a would-be Orson Welles, playing shamelessly to the camera, draws from a bottomless cesspool of hubris, bile and rage.

As directed by Tom George from a script by Mark Chappell, See How They Run hits like a watered-down cocktail rather than a bracing belt of intrigue.

If the screenplay to Kill the Messenger were a news story, any capable copydesk would have kicked it back to the reporter — not for a shortage of facts, but a lack of dramatic soul.

Surprisingly, though, most of the material avoids the treacle zone, while Jason Segel, as the man-child in residence, gives a performance that I can only describe as gravely affecting.

Mr. Doremus is an exceptional director of actors; almost every scene in Breathe In comes alive, with or without the help of music. But the film needs more help than it gets from the script, which turns on facile coincidence and dwindles in originality as it moves toward its climax. Next time around, let's hope this gifted filmmaker hangs his characters' lives on stronger dramatic bones.

The plot beats are so dull, contrived and poorly engineered (for a few minutes the wolves must pretend to be rivals who don’t know each other) that the movie becomes an onerous chore comparable to the one that launches the action. Who can I call to make this dead movie disappear?

Ms. Findlay’s work is nevertheless so delicate as to be slight, so unassuming as to be unsatisfying. The friction between the two leads could form a strong backdrop to the film; instead, it is the film.

Ms. Kawase’s sweet, slow film — very slow, I’m obliged to say — becomes a meditation on solitary lives lived at the margins of society; on old age, and on the urgency of telling our stories, which may sometimes include recipes.

The intentional and unintentional absurdities of the plot do pay off, with a happy ending that's outlandish enough to be entertaining.

Pays off in surprising ways, when love of music, and fame, plays second fiddle to love of family.

The Clearing has been directed by a successful producer. In this case it's Pieter Jan Brugge, who brings seriousness and intelligence to his newly chosen craft, but little verve.

Reconstruction means to be confusing, and is. It also means to intrigue us, and does.

Even the pleasurable sight of Michael Gandolfini —son of the late James Gandolfini, who played Tony in that series—as young Tony was never going to make up for the complete absence, in this film, of anything remotely reflective of the tone and color of “The Sopranos.”’ Or of anything resembling a credible character or plot line.

What’s mysterious about this film is why, with so much on its mind and such gifted stars to express it, the drama should be so unaffecting — even when the two women finally meet, as they neglected to do in the less shapely drama of real life.

What's exceptional is the orchestration of color, form, light and dark (lots of dark), 3-D technology and digital effects into a look that amounts to a vision.

Two movies for the price of one, though only one of them-a fragmented romance within a ponderous parable-qualifies as a bargain.

It’s nice to know that Team Pixar can still recognize the importance of fun. Though Lightyear isn’t as funny as the original “Toy Story,” nor as emotionally potent as “Toy Story 2,” and hence probably won’t be rewatched nearly as many times as those two classics, it’s a plucky and rousing little sci-fi saga.

Mr. Fraser looks so spectacularly awful as Charlie in the film, directed by Darren Aronofsky, that this chamber piece amounts to a variation of torture porn for highbrows, with a fat suit rather than a meat cleaver as the bringer of cinematic shock.

The script is dreadful and everything else suffers from its impoverishment. Yet Kevin Costner, wily veteran that he is, makes the tale affecting, if not inspiring.

Who knew that one of Billie Holiday's most haunting songs was written in Budapest in the 1930s? I didn't until I saw Gloomy Sunday, a German film, shot in Hungary and directed by Rolf Schubel, that I enjoyed quite a lot, even though it's all over the map in more ways than one.

Matt Damon, in the central role, confers a somber grace on a man who always thought he had none.

This wonderful little film, directed by Fernando León de Aranoa and set “somewhere in the Balkans” in 1996, is extremely witty and light on its feet, yet it manages to be thoughtful, even philosophical, in an absurdist way, about the roots of human conflict.

The sensibility of the earlier production has been transformed, despite Ms. Gadot’s continuing authority. Wit has been replaced by feverish caricature, feeling by sentimentality, and Wonder Woman is left with almost nothing to do for long stretches of a very long and disjointed story.

Grotesque doesn't begin to describe Ms. McCarthy's new character. Scarily insane comes closer; repulsive occasionally applies. Mullins's insanity can be extremely funny from time to time, but her anger grows as punishing for the audience as it does for the victims of her unrestrained police work.

Universal conscription for every able-bodied man from 18 to 40 is about to be instituted, and the events of this shallow, cheap and corny story seem unlikely to offer much in the way of comforting memories for those who get sent to the trenches.

Manipulative, but confidently so, and improbably but consistently affecting.

Sandra Goldbacher's gorgeous debut feature (shot by Ashley Rowe) stars Minnie Driver in a lovely performance as Rosina da Silva. [31 Jul 1998]

The whole film is an argument about nothing less than the future — can we fix our troubled world or not? But for all of its vaulting ambition, its sumptuous eye-feasts and its leapings back and forth in space and time, Tomorrowland never comes together as coherent drama in the here and now.

The movie blurs into a continuum of cars pounding one another and closeups of faces showing disgust, happiness, fear and outrage. It's the kind of shorthand imagery that works best in brief spurts, say, the amount of time it takes for a television commercial to implant a spark-plug brand into your brain. [5 Jul 1990, p.A9]

What's remarkable, though, is how Ms. Bier's film, in Danish and English, finds beauty in its quiet moments, which are many and close between.

I can't recommend it without reservation, but it's a must-see for those who have followed Mr. Troell's career, and a should-see for those who can look past its oddities to its cumulative power.

The power of the film lies in how it crafts excitement out of a granular understanding of Russian state brutishness and the degree of determination it will require to evade it. It will take a spy’s level of resourcefulness to emerge from the labyrinth, and Kompromat has the punch of a first-rate spy thriller.

The best part of Red is the spectacle of terrific actors being terrific in novel ways.

Though the affair dragged on so long before Dreyfus was finally cleared that Mr. Polanski confines the resolution to an epilogue, he has nevertheless made an oft-told tale lively and urgent. “An Officer and a Spy” is Mr. Polanski’s finest work in many years.

Somewhat unshapely, though not shapeless; often repetitive; gleefully reckless with facts; probably too long (I say “probably” because I enjoyed every one of its 126 minutes); at times demandingly dense, with the kind of sizzling crosstalk that hasn’t been heard since Robert Altman, and as madly fragmented as its hero’s mind must have been.

May be something of a stunt, but it's a fascinating stunt that holds your attention from the start to shortly before the finish.

Fresh and flip and enjoyable, it's a sci-fi-tinged romantic comedy that I urge you to seek out.

Feelings play second fiddle to stylized attitudes in Spartan, and fancy style can't conceal the film's clumsiness.

In her casually daring - and mostly endearing - debut feature, the Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky mixes and purposely mismatches light and dark moods to tell the story of a rural wife and mother looking for happiness in the wrong places, and finally in the right one.

Still, the two main performances count for a lot. Ms. Hayward, who was so endearing as Suzy, the tween lover in “Moonrise Kingdom,” is touchingly winsome as Iris, though she’s sometimes allowed or encouraged by her director to be busier than an actor need be. Ms. Liberato has the best of both worlds, and makes them better; a natural at comedy, she’s adept at serious drama.

I say don't bite unless your taste runs to thin gruel, and grueling gruel at that.

Bizarre and belabored, yet grimly fascinating.

Very funny and surprisingly likable until it goes Hollywood.

A heavier-than-air adventure, set in Victorian England, that seldom rises above the level of elegant hokum.

There are a few speedbumps of illogic along the gnarled route of Night Always Comes, but they can’t negate the pace of the storytelling, Mr. García’s gymnastic shooting, or the sense of there being no bottom to the well of darkness explored by Mr. Caron.

The action is impressive and the stars are personally as well as gladiatorially appealing, but the filmmakers seem to have shot the treatment instead of the script, or never bothered with a script.

Madagascar 3 is all about exuberant motion, cute characters and gorgeous colors. It aims for the eyes, not the heart.

All four performances are first-rate, and the action is staged with shattering intensity.

The main reason to see Bandits is celebrity actors riffing with each other. That's not a bad reason, though. These two actors are also skillful comedians.

Comes briefly to life, after many longeurs -- many large longeurs in IMAX -- with the discombobulated entrance of B.E.N., a dysfunctional, hyperverbal robot voiced by Martin Short.

I found the film so insistently campy yet painfully mirthless—its style lies somewhere between opera buffa and telenovela—that my mental state of acute anguish may have skewed my perceptions of whatever the story has to offer.

Why so gloomy? Well, this is a serious movie, for better and, more often, worse.

The glee is industrial-strength, and the ABBA-fueled production numbers are so far over the top that the film is at once topless and chaste. Yet there’s a wellspring of genuine feeling in this time-hopping sequel, framed as an origin story.

One of the brighter aspects of Life of Crime, which otherwise ambles along good naturedly, is the casting.

It is Mr. Kinnear's slippery charm that keeps Thin Ice from sinking into the frosty Wisconsin slush toward which it seems to be heading from the start.

Ms. Jacknow, finally, finds herself with little room to move except into a full-blown nightmare hellscape and turns Clock, for all its thoughtful moments, into one movie for two very distinct audiences.

For a movie with such a nose for nuttiness, its human element is genuine and warm.

The more these two likable people rattled on, the more I found myself thinking about the elusive distinction between characters talking genuinely smart talk and simply chattering for the camera.