Declarative sentences are as scarce as detectable feelings in this stylish, emptyish thriller -- it's Tarantino with the vital juices left out.

A scattershot, repetitive documentary about the creative minds ­behind some of the most arresting ad campaigns of the past 40 years.

Fur starts stylishly, and confidently, but the film dwindles down to a chamber piece in a claustrophobic chamber. Enter at your own risk.

The star of this fantasy adventure for young audiences is a charmer from the moment she is hatched (from a huge blue egg that starts to rock like a Mexican jumping bean). Her name is Saphira, she speaks with the voice of Rachel Weisz, and it doesn't matter that she's too young to breathe fire -- at first -- or that she waddles a bit on the ground, because she lives and breathes the joy of flight, which is exactly what was missing from most of Harry Potter's solos on a broom.

Both in its content and production values, Interview has the feel of an undergraduate project -- all intensity, no never mind. Pierre is such a weasel, Katya is such a narcissist and the outcome seems so pre-determined, it's hard to care whose belt gets the notch. The adroit performances of Buscemi and Miller almost make it matter.

Ms. Wood, who made a potent impression two years ago as a naïve adolescent led astray by a sophisticated and psychotic classmate in "Thirteen," has the whip hand this time around -- and she's wonderfully persuasive. She needs a movie to match.

Here she accomplishes something her father has done many times: making two-thirds of a reasonably compelling supernatural thriller. But that’s like saying the “Agony of Defeat” guy had two-thirds of an excellent ski run before things went amiss.

After two flat-out triumphs in a row, "All About My Mother" in 1999 and last year's breathtaking "Talk To Her," Pedro Almodóvar hasn't done it again. Yet lesser Almodóvar -- in this instance "Bad Education" -- is better than most of the movies we see.

If only the showmanship were equal to the scholarship. As beautiful as the film is (despite notable variations in the quality of the cinematography), it is also sluggish, underdramatized after that initial suspense, and for the most part emotionally remote.

It's a lovely pretext for dazzling visuals, yet the production is diminished by the clumsiness of an 8-bit script.

Sensitive as the film is, it might be most effective to those who haven’t sat through scores of iterations of what has come to be known as the Sundance Film.

This soft, sedate mystery comedy seeks nothing more than to be like its heroes: warm and fuzzy. Less attractively, it’s also a bit cloddish and tame, falling into that unsatisfying category of children’s entertainment that seems to be styled in accordance with the tastes of old people.

The problem lies with the central role. The character may be comic, as conceived, but Mr. Landry’s performance is flat. Pierre-Paul is certainly likable in his earnestness, amusing in his confusion and touching in his innocence. Yet he isn’t very funny — there’s no sparkle, no buoyancy, no surprise — and the blame doesn’t lie only with the actor, given the underlying earnestness of the writing and direction.

Pretty bad, and pretty funny.

Making his film debut, Richie Merritt plays Rick as a sullen, evidently stupid and certainly uncharismatic schemer in possession of a modicum of animal cunning and perhaps a hint of personal insight. But there’s no life in his eyes. And little life in his acting. Which is too bad for Matthew McConaughey, who gives yet another terrific performance.

The narrative engine leaves the rails when Irving, like Hughes, plunges into paranoia (though Irving actually is the object of a high-level plot) and the style turns to the sort of intensely manipulated surrealism that Charlie Kaufman practiced, not successfully, in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind."

I loved watching this sci-fi spectacle’s moving parts. I just couldn’t get past its brain.

Without Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush, who play two rival pirate captains, "Pirates" might have gone straight to video. The two are a pleasure to watch, rescuing an otherwise forgettable film.

Impressive landscapes, plus Kristen Wiig's appealing Cheryl, the fellow worker who inflames Walter's passion, make the movie enjoyable enough. Yet its style is a constant bafflement.

One unwelcome surprise is how shopworn the story's components prove to be. Still, they're enhanced if not redeemed by Mr. Washington's stirring portrait of a skillful, prideful pilot hitting bottom.

The technology is seamless, the movements are eloquent and the problem may be my own misprogramming, but the robot still looked to me like a man in a robot suit.

As bright as Ms. Cody’s imagination is, she deserves a director who understands comic tempo. Instead, the third act, which should be frantic, seems ponderous, with a clunky ending. Lisa Frankenstein may celebrate the undead, but it’s not lively enough.

A cast this good would have a hard time delivering something less than watchable, and Goodbye June is watchable, even if little of it works.

At least the film has a sense of humor and a degree of energy... [but the] film never carries any of its characters or situations much beyond weary cliche. [10 Sept 1982, p.29(E)]

The Last Duel is often ponderous, and no wonder, given its ambitious but erratic script.

It's formula stuff, to be sure, but full of feeling for the sweep of the past as well as for the unsettled, yearning present.

Visually Hugo is a marvel, but dramatically it's a clockwork lemon.

While there’s not exactly a lot of plot in The Goldfinch there is a lot of stuff, too much for even a 2 1/2 -hour movie.

It simply never comes together with the sort of gathering force that we witness in its own scenes of artistic creation. Mr. Kaphar might yet make a movie that vibrates with the power of a great painting. Exhibiting Forgiveness, though, still feels like a jumbled sketch.

"Wrong" is the operative word with Death at a Funeral, which in the first very funny 30 minutes shows its hand and then, unfortunately, continues to wave that hand frantically for the next hour.

The drama is almost stillborn, thanks to a slow, deadly dull romantic preface, and it’s subverted by incessant switching between spectacular struggles on the Atlantic and generic anxieties on shore.

The most serious flaw, and one that will irk a lot of Bel Canto enthusiasts, is the too-obvious lip-syncing of Ms. Moore to Ms. Fleming’s glorious singing. They simply don’t match up, and the music takes place at points in the film when viewers really don’t want to be thrown off. But thrown off they will be.

Eloquent acting -- in fits and starts -- can't make up for the movie's glib, off-putting calculations.

In Hollywood’s franchise game, sequels are seldom the best they can be. This one isn’t, but it’s pretty, perfectly pleasant and good enough.

Once Mr. Cregger starts to let loose his revelations, though, disappointment creeps in, and the scale and soul of the film shrink before our eyes. It’s impossible to say how without getting into spoilers. But the movie’s potential richness, kept in play by its ever-circling narrative style, is finally brought crashing to the ground by its denouement.

The kind of inspirational movie that Hollywood made about the Army, Navy and Marines during World War II. Now, with inspiration in short supply, it's the Coast Guard's turn.

Mark Andrus's script is built on soggy sandstone, and Irwin Winkler's bulldozer direction keeps unearthing toxic epiphanies. That's not to say the movie isn't occasionally moving, as well as exasperating.

Alice and John are good company — especially Alice, thanks to Ms. Temple's buoyant humor and lovely poignancy. The problem comes when the couple gets greedy, the gods grow angry and the tone turns dark. It doesn't stay dark, but getting back to the brightness is a painful process.

Actually, maybe the movie is better than it seems to be -- I just couldn't understand what anyone was saying. The dialogue came across as clear as schoolyard chatter during recess -- and just about as pleasant to listen to. There is a water slide, a pirate ship and an amusing little chubbikins (Jeff Cohen) who squirts Reddi Wip directly into his mouth. [20 Jun 1985, p.1]

The show is redeemed by its co-stars, up to a point. They struggle womanfully, and sometimes successfully, to find truth in the script's silly symphony of false notes.

The good news is twofold. Ms. Foy, an accomplished performer, is appealing throughout. And Keira Knightley, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, gives the film several desperately needed jolts of edgy energy.

The title isn’t “Broken,” so there’s not much doubt of the outcome. But it’s certainly regrettable, because this long and increasingly sluggish film version of the Laura Hillenbrand book celebrates an American life of singular heroism.

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.

Mr. Gilroy’s new film doesn’t try for lean. When its lawyer hero isn’t citing legal precedent, he uses spectacularly florid language that reflects his unusual mental state. But there’s a disconnect between what we see and hear and what we’re meant to feel.

Director Anne Fletcher (“The Proposal,” “Step Up”) aims for the tear ducts, directing for maximum anguish, righteousness and/or schmaltz, and much of the Dumplin’ message arrives with postage due.

Fresh Kills could have been a psychologically penetrating character study but settles for merely reiterating that it’s unpleasant to be a gangster’s daughter.

The deeper problem with Rock Star is its insistence on turning a heavy-metal fairy tale into a morality tale that's as heavy as lead.

Ali nails its subject's anger and courage, but not his lilt; his swaggering boasts but not his sly self-irony; his power but not his grace; and his inner turmoil but not the outward joyousness that has made us come to love him.

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.

It’s largely a two-character drama with two capable actors, though neither Mr. Teague nor Ms. Richardson (who is usually quite good) are given much with which to win our sympathy.

Thanks to a few sweet father-daughter moments and a relatively direct plot, this entry is a notch better than some even-more-febrile recent efforts such as “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Thor: Love and Thunder.” But overall it’s another lackluster blockbuster.

Nothing about the emotionally unmoored Inglourious Basterds adds up. Whether it's parody, farce or a fever dream is anyone's guess.

It has a classical moral that would have made Aesop salute: Greed is not only corrupting, it can be self-defeating. Moreover, suspense lies both in wanting to know whether Miller’s quest will succeed and in what lessons might be learned. Though Miller’s actions drive the story, it is mainly an education for Will, the observer.

Before long, though, things take a turn from simplicity to sententiousness, then to surreal silliness, and finally to a mano-à-mano contest, on a parched desert floor, over which man gets the best close-ups.

Affecting, even touching, provided you can put up with its sclerotic pace.

The film, for all its visual felicities, comes to life only sporadically.

Almost every sequence contains references to other films. Spotting them is a pleasant distraction from figuring out the plot, an absurdly rococo structure that rivals the most flagrant befuddlements of “Inception” or, for that matter, the latter stretches of “Westworld.”

A 3-D fantasy that's lovely to look at but less than delightful to know.

Storytelling problems surface toward the overwrought climax, but the worst problem is the unrelenting grimness. It's hard to like a movie that leaves you with no hope.

The gentle, ambling Ang Lee comedy that's a few tokes short of groovy.

Under the Same Moon comes most vividly to life when Adrian Alonso is on the screen.

It’s an unwieldy subject Ms. Tragos has taken on, and the results are somewhat scattershot.

The movie lacks a resonant center. The script seems to have been written by committee, with members lobbying for each major character, and the action, set in vast environments all over the map, spreads itself so thin that a surfeit of motion vitiates emotion.

The film has so much visual imagination that it tends to squander it.

Ms. Piani is too scattershot a storyteller for the eventual, inevitable romance to feel earned.

Asteroid City may be infused with the powers of the Atomic Age, but no Anderson movie except “The Darjeeling Limited” runs so low on energy.

It is not a good sign when a film keeps evoking superior examples of its genre. And a worse sign still when the genre itself seems more remote from current concerns than it deserves to be. Such is the case with The Courier.

Mr. McCanlies's style lurches between the lyrical, the fantastical (flashbacks to the uncles' youth) and the clumsily antic, and Mr. Osment's performance is woefully stiff and inexpressive.

The third iteration of a franchise that began so well becomes a hollow hymn to martial gadgetry. The suits and story clank in unison.

Mr. Soderbergh, who directed one of my favorite films, “Out of Sight” (from Scott Frank’s brilliant screen adaptation of a terrific Elmore Leonard novel, I should add), has made a number of features, with varying success, that were partly or wholly improvised. This one, though, feels flat and slack, with scenes that drift off oddly, or aren’t there at all.

If you're looking for logic or finesse, The A-Team can be numbing. If you're looking for good cheer, hold out for egg nog at Christmas. But if you're a fan of causeless effects, consequence-free causes and digital Dada, let the silly times roll.

Austen comes off here more as stenographer than writer. Worse, the movie has Tom Lefroy as her condescending guide.

Mr. Davies’s wit is admirable, but his structure is nonexistent. He devises no problem to be solved, no goal to be met, no riddle to be answered. Occasionally we hear bits of Sassoon’s beautiful war poetry in voiceover, but it is irrelevant to most of the action.

As for Ms. Fey, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot doesn’t serve her fully, but this is her best work yet on the feature screen.

Plays like "Norma Rae" on blood thinners. The movie is by no means bloodless; every once in a while a stirring scene comes along, though it's seldom a scene labeled as stirring by William Ivory's formulaic script and Nigel Cole's insistent direction.

The stars are obviously having great fun in their roles, and we’re up for sharing it: Who doesn’t want to see a cast like this succeed? Yet the characters and situations are oversold from the opening scenes, and it’s not a problem of technique—these virtuosos can do anything that’s asked of them—but of directorial choice in a movie that still has one foot on a theater stage.

Scurlock's documentary serves up cautionary tales of epic abuse, though the overall tone is faux cheerful and sometimes genuinely entertaining.

Devolves from an electrifying character study into a disappointing tale of trackdown and revenge.

By all wrongs, though — beginning with a single-minded script and clumsy direction — a movie with a compelling story to tell turns into a blunt-force polemic that can’t stop hammering its message home.

[Barry's] search for an identity is the ignition and combustion of the film. The exhaust, however, comes courtesy of Philip Morris. And the odor, like that surrounding the film itself, is of provocation in service of no cogent point.

Ultimately, Traitor is a movie at war with itself.

As it is, Ticket to Paradise is tolerable, but to make it a true pleasure would probably require some priming with a few glasses of arak.

"Could be worse" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Pacific Rim, but my head is still ringing, and hurting, from long stretches of this aliens vs. robots extravaganza that are no better than the worst brain-pounders of the genre.

The story is a shallow-draft bark with flat characters on board: Josh, in particular, is de-energized to the point of entropy. Night Moves suffers from a lack of mystery and a deficit of motion.

Pixar, which is notable for its emotionally rich soul and its irresistible fancy, this time comes up with almost none of the former and very little of the latter.

The director Penny Marshall has a gently persuasive touch that keeps the movie's most brazen manipulations from being too offensive. [02 Jun 1994]

The neutral news about “Solo” is exactly that, its dramatic neutrality. Time ticks by at a drifty pace while lots of action of no great consequence grinds on.

This latest iteration of DreamWorks's money machine has its ups and downs, its longueurs along with its felicities, plus an abiding preoccupation with poop.

To those who, like me, are ever so slightly beyond the young-adult cohort, it may seem silly and derivative but sometimes affecting as well, a high-school pageant version of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Rumpled, hangdog and literally kicked around, Mr. Pitt wears indignities the way Marilyn Monroe sported a potato sack; he’s delighted to make a joke of his appeal. With him as his canvas, Mr. Leitch elevates visual whims into art

Bobs and weaves between gross-out comedy and violent psychosexual drama, ultimately sliding into parody.

Mr. Cailley is interested in the allegorical implications of his story, but not interested enough to pursue them very seriously.

Still — and with the full knowledge of committing an atrocious pun — the whole thing left me cold, partly because there’s no actual villain and thus very little concrete drama.

Qualifies as a pleasant time-killer, but it's 20,000 leagues beneath what it might have been.

The story has the hollow ring of artifice, even though Ms. Hawkins shrinks quite remarkably into the physical aspects of the role and opens up its spiritual dimensions.

We can all use more magic in our lives, and that promise is fulfilled quite delightfully at first. But extravagant creatures of digital descent can’t sustain a story that does little more than set the scene for a long string of sequels.

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.

Little by little, though, unfunniness takes hold. Stephen’s training grows interminable. The mysticism turns deadly serious. The effects turn repetitious: Worst of all, the plot loses its way just as Stephen is coming into his own as a worthy antagonist of Kaecilius, a villain — or is he? — played with hollow-eyed intensity by Mads Mikkelsen.