Why an Oscar-winning screenwriter would make a film that makes so little attempt to dig into its central character is baffling. That an Oscar-nominated director with a celebrated eye for the ethereal, strange world of girl-women living in beautiful boxes could make a film as workaday as this one is frustrating.

Talented as they are, the wheelchair-bound stars of Rory O'Shea Was Here can't transcend a manipulative script.

It’s hard to believe that human minds conceived the story line of Godzilla vs. Kong—not because it’s so intricate, elegant or spiritually elevated, but because it’s so incoherent and idiotic.

Has density enough for several films. What's missing is spontaneity, and variety. And, throughout most of the narrative, velocity.

Uneven though it is . . . No Hard Feelings devises some smart new twists for the teen sex comedy while expertly counterbalancing Mr. Feldman’s doe-eyed innocence with Ms. Lawrence’s vamping.

By the end there isn't anyone to cheer for, except the makers of this thoughtful and absorbing piece of work. [02 Aug 1984]

J. Edgar, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, is at war with itself, and everyone loses...Mr. Eastwood's ponderous direction, a clumsy script by Dustin Lance Black and ghastly slatherings of old-age makeup all conspire to put the story at an emotional and historical distance. It's a partially animated waxworks.

Nothing if not ambitious, yet at war with itself stylistically.

Déjà Vu is pretty dazzling, as action adventures go, even when it's wildly, almost defiantly, implausible. Movies can make us semi-believe the damnedest things.

Occasionally the movie does offer up a pleasing little nugget about the creative process, as when Springsteen changes a lyric from the third person to the first: There is glory in such little adjustments. But most of the movie’s backstage material is uninspired.

Total fluff, though its totality is reasonably agreeable, and Pascal Chaumeil's comedy cum scenery-mainly Monte Carlo-gives the mercurial Romain Duris a chance to show his chops as an homme fatal.

Is the film worthy of her? Not really. It’s informative, in a didactic way, but basically an exercise in hagiography, a skin-deep celebration of someone who has never settled for superficiality in her life’s work.

The film is enjoyable enough, at least for young children.

Mr. Shyamalan is a new national treasure, as attuned to our sensibilities and everyday life as Steven Spielberg.

Of all the performances in a patchy production, only one achieves perfection. We get to see it through the modern medical miracle of ultrasound.

It’s a reasonably clever contrivance built around a pair of droll, skin-deep performances that are smart and entertaining, yet oddly lacking in intensity.

Thanks to Ms. Witherspoon's artful portrayal of a winning, if beachless, Gidget, I found Legally Blonde very enjoyable.

The first film wasn’t bad, though it had its lapses. “Cars 2,” an aberration, was readily forgotten. This one feels like the series, at the end of the road, is running on fumes of nostalgia for its earliest self.

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

The violence is graphic, the dialogue can be awfully arch and the style is often mannered, but this long, dense adventure takes surprising side trips into thoughtfulness, ruefulness, whimsy and romance. It's high-grade entertainment sustained by a buoyant spirit.

What begins as a chamber piece, directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin from a screenplay by Dennis Kelly, becomes a full-fledged movie with a pair of marvelous performances at its claustrophobic center.

Didn't see through it, though I had a rough sense of what was coming, and didn't have all that much fun. I did enjoy the movie's cheerful preoccupation with style.

Some movies are toxically misconceived, and “The Drama” is among them. It wants to be wicked and outrageous but it’s really just dismal and depressing.

It’s a lot of fun, but nothing special, another in a long line of semi-comical fight movies.

Mr. Pratt’s charm is no match for the crude filmmaking or the stupid plot that keeps him running around in a constant state of artificial animation.

Writer-director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, who in his feature debut has lashed together a sturdy vehicle for unadorned morality and pragmatic justice.

The material is hardly original, but the moment is affecting all the same.

Impressive for Patrick Tatopoulos's production design but depressive for the juiceless story.