This hugely elaborate production is supposed to be the reboot of a foundering franchise, but rebooting a computer wipes the silicon slate clean. In the movie, what's old is old again.

Since Mr. Stone is a prisoner of his penchant for pop-psychologizing on a cosmic scale, his movie has the astounding effect of absolving President Nixon of personal guilt for his crimes and misdeeds without bothering to explain what he did wrong. [21 Dec 1995, p.A12]

Marshall — a terrific performance by Chadwick Boseman — comes off at the outset as full of himself to overflowing. In other words, here’s an irreverent movie with a quirky ring of truth.

The film takes itself frivolously when that's appropriate--some of it is charmingly silly--and seriously when, as is often the case, all sorts of good surprises are unleashed.

If you stick with it through the somewhat plodding first half of this overly long retelling, you’ll be rewarded with a rousing final hour.

The worst part of Ms. Zellweger's plight is that she, along with others in the cast, has fallen victim to a first-time feature director whose vocabulary doesn't seem to include the word "simplicity."

Why, in our drum-thumping, ritually trumpeting time, did so little fanfare precede the opening of a movie with so much to recommend it? This is grand entertainment.

An exciting caper, though sometimes a trying one, with great dollops of self-parodying dialogue that will test your loyalty to Mr. Mamet's way with words.

Attempting to keep so many stories aloft, the film ends up making them all seem superficial.

Most of those hardships are familiar to movie lovers; that's a reductionist view of a serious and ambitious production, but it is, after all, a movie on a screen. (And a movie with a dreadfully clumsy ending.)

The music is shamelessly entertaining, and the warmth of Morgan Freeman's narration conveys the possibility that, for all the imminent peril, the lemurs of this enchanted forest still have a fighting chance.

The second half, in particular, exemplifies science fiction at its best: thoughtful, exciting, provocative and pointed. It’s fantasy wrapped around ideological substance, making “Kingdom” the best of the franchise films to make it to theaters so far this year.

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.

Though the movie is consistently fun and has some clever ideas to go with its marvelous look, its story is thin and episodic, without much in the way of momentum.

Mountainhead teeters on a precipice of dramatic irony and intentions.

The summer's first action epic does exactly what it's supposed to do, more clearly than "M:i:I," and more likeably than "M:i:II."

The filmmakers may have refashioned the book to make it a vehicle for Mr. Murphy, and done so successfully. But they were right about the POV: Witnessing the turmoil of these very troubled youths through the frustrations of their teachers makes for more convincing drama than would a delinquent’s-eye view of the same situation.

With his co-writer, Randy Sue Coburn, and composer Mark Isham, director Alan Rudolph has created a sense of time and place that authentically conveys what it might have been like when writers were celebrities and special effects came from words. [10 Jan 1995, p.A18]

Mr. Assayas has crafted a beautiful and moving tableau of how one small group dealt with a bewildering change. The time when Covid-19 ruled our lives is one many of us might prefer to forget. May our most gifted artists resist that impulse.

It’s overstuffed, and essentially empty.

Taken on its own terms, the film is beautifully crafted, a sequence of events, many of them stirring, along a road to redemption that intersects with a winning group of high-school kids on a losing basketball team.

Puzzle is less puzzling than exasperating. What’s good is exceptional — a meeting of minds, and then more, between two jigsaw-puzzle prodigies — while the rest is perfunctory or lifeless.

I defer to no one in my admiration for Ms. Pike and her fellow cast members, but it’s no fun watching them soldier on through this heavy-handed and mean-spirited charade. I Care a Lot is a good title for the film that might have been. In the film that is, you can’t find anyone to care about.

Untold billions are laundered in The Infiltrator, while Pablo Escobar’s Medellín cartel moves mountains of cocaine into U.S. markets. But the drug of choice here is acting, and the highs in this hurtling, often violent thriller are doubly intense, since two of its stars play flamboyant double roles.

I found this sequel deeply slumping, not to mention unnecessary, unmagical and often unfunny. The misuse of talent is what slumped me the most.

The heart of the film is the emotional triangle of Petey, Li’l Petey and Dog Man, as the two erstwhile enemies both find something like love for the kitten (voiced by Lucas Hopkins Calderon and full of disarming innocence) and something like forgiveness for each other.

If you emerge from this movie with a strong urge to rewatch the entire saga, you won’t be alone. Neither will those who emerge with tears of gratitude in their eyes.

At times, it’s scary how derivative it is. Still, as crepuscular weirdness seeps across the story and leads to a delirious ending, it’s largely effective.