Whatever the cause, the movie turns sour when the singers aren't singing. And the first-person accounts don't work at all, even though much of their substance comes from the show.

Alien: Romulus occupies a strange position: It’s lovingly aimed at fans who have seen its Carter-era predecessor 15 times, yet it’s unlikely to scare anyone except those who are new to the “Alien” shtick. In space, it turns out, no one can hear you yawn, either.

Weaves a sensual spell of extraordinary delicacy, then sustains it -- up to a point.

Doesn't measure up to the depth of detail, let alone the drama, of "Unzipped," the 1995 documentary about Isaac Mizrahi. Still, this new documentary conveys an ample sense of the process.

Much of the fun is awfully silly. The story strains logic, as well as credulity. It's been cobbled together, often crudely, from pieces of classic predecessors. (Here snippets of Hitchcock, there stretches of "Speed," with wings on the bus.) Yet the silliness parades itself in a spirit of cheerful self-awareness, while Liam Neeson fills the thrill quotient impressively as an air marshal.

Terrific actors give glum performances.

The movie generates a pleasing fog of suspense as it makes the audience pay attention to each new audio cue. Seeing the movie in a hushed theater is ideal; viewing it at home would almost certainly bring in distractions that would dilute the experience.

As visually hypercaffeinated as the film is—mixing animation styles, cramming the screen with imagery, and cutting rapidly around each donnybrook—it’s a bit sleepy when it comes to the plot, which doesn’t really kick in until the second half of the movie.

If the film is ambitious, it is also inert.

Fatigue has caught up with the Warrens, and the question about the franchise is not where it can go from here, but how much longer it can be sustained by humdrum deviltry.

Takes liberties with its hero, which is hardly a crime (the real-life Barrie was extremely childlike), but the movie chases after magic with overproduced fantasy sequences, and a feel-good, literalist climax that betrays the very notion of imagination as a force superior to reality.

Two dramatic problems beset Roman Polanski's darkly handsome new film of the Dickens novel. The boy is as passive as ever, and bleak in the bargain -- instead of glowing like the Oliver of the musical, he takes light in -- while Ben Kingsley's Fagin and Jamie Foreman's Bill Sikes manage to make villainy a bit of a bore.

Remaking a cherished movie is not, to borrow a fancy phrase from the dialogue, malum in se - wrong in itself - but there are always losses along with the changes and gains.

A small story, a monodrama with a hero but no antagonists.

Once again, Queen Latifah survives some remarkably clumsy filmmaking. More than survives; she manages to prevail.

All of it amounts to a been-there-done-that-better recapitulation of Mr. Spielberg's career.

The whole dumb movie is a baloney cake, but the enticing icing on it is Reese Witherspoon, who manages to have a few moments of spontaneous fun in this half-baked store-bought comedy.

Though rousing in places, “Young Woman and the Sea” is a routine effort that feels made for television, and was (originally slated for Disney+). Clichés and predictability are more forgivable at home, but asking people to take the plunge on a movie ticket for this so-so offering is asking a lot.

A mixed bag of a thriller that exploits two primal fears—of artificial intelligence, and precocious children.

The folk-wisdom level is tolerable, just as the clichés and manipulations are palatable, because the story is full of life, and free of ironic additives.

Despite Mr. Molloy’s tapping into his inner Michael Mann and turning Wilshire Boulevard into a scene from “Heat,” there are scattered human moments in “Alex F,” thanks largely to Mr. Murphy, who has always been a provocateur capable of tenderness.

Though the first-time director, Gabor Csupo, has achieved distinction as an animation artist, he lacks experience directing actors. The best adult performance in the film is that of Zooey Deschanel; she comes off -- again, agreeably -- as self-directed.

Alternately precious and vapid, the movie attempts to wrest metaphors from a jar of house keys, and eternal verities from pastry. Slice the pie how you will, it's still half-baked.

It's a cheerful trifle tossed off by the Coen brothers in their self-enchanted mode, an approach to comedy that shrugs off comedy's cardinal rule -- Don't Act Funny.

Exhilarating but ultimately off-putting.

The action looks impressive, even when nothing much is happening beyond local explosions or shattering glass, and the drama turns, affectingly, on a mysterious female sniper with a partitioned soul.

What's good in the film, which was shot superbly by Matthew Libatique, is so good - so exuberant and touching and sweet - that you want the whole thing to be perfect, but Ruby Sparks is a closed system that gradually turns in on itself. There isn't enough of someone else.

The medium really is the message here, and it steals what there is of the show.