In its agreeably eccentric spirit, Tommy’s Honour evokes the Scottish comedies of Bill Forsyth; here it’s oddballs among the handmade, undimpled golf balls.

Either you buy their Vaseline-lensed visions of the hereafter, or you watch in stony silence, as I did, wondering why there's no one to care about.

Exceptionally likable and affecting as well as entertaining.

Like so many parties, this one goes on too long.

Provides a reminder of the power of unadorned drama and language -- whole torrents of eloquent words -- in the service of a nifty idea.

In fairness, the movie is good for more than a few laughs, but little substance lurks beneath the antic poses and frantic shenanigans in this remake of the classic 1955 English comedy.

In Troy, and in overreaching, underachieving productions like it, digital imagery is fast becoming both a Trojan horse and Achilles' heel.

Not even she (Patricia Clarkson), however, can save a movie that suffers from terminal self-enchantment.

Hiring France’s Louis Leterrier to direct was a bit like managing the pandemonium at a toddler’s birthday party by bringing in a soda machine.

This icon of witchcraft can't save a production that's suffocatingly elaborate yet insufficiently bewitching.

A bizarre, overcooked broth that combines a broad sitcom style (the banter goes rat-tat-tat like a steam drill) with a preposterous succession of plot complications, plus solemn questions of identity, adoption and the nature of happiness.

The gothic sense of unease that informs the early stages of The Pale Blue Eye gives way to hysteria—not the kind that Poe used to underlie his various narrators’ incipient madness, but just a horse-drawn trip to Crazy Town.

Mr. Powell remains one of today’s most promising leading men, but he’s running in place here.

Pathetically unfunny most of the time.

Al Pacino is his own venue as yet another flamboyant, self-ironic, self-dramatizing, self-parodying, self-selfing quasi-Mephistopheles. His performance isn't very good, but it's big.

Joy is at its annoying worst when it’s clamoring to be antic, and at its brilliantly funny best when Joy and her adversaries — including one played by Bradley Cooper — are deadly serious about business as mortal combat.

Ms. Arterton gets to play a few scenes worthy of her art before the film turns into a milking machine designed to wring feelings from a link between past and present that, once again, amounts to a construct.

Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini show the same appreciation for eccentrics and humanity they brought to "American Splendor" and Mr. Dano's Louis is a delicately wrought wonder.

The biggest battle in Monsters vs. Aliens is banality vs. originality, and banality carries the day.

In spite of Josh Brolin's heroic efforts, W. is a skin-deep biopic that revels in its antic shallowness.

It's really dumb, even though it starts promisingly and continues, in a self-infatuated way, to consider itself quite bright.

In a film that has the courage of its absurdity but not much else, Mr. Pattinson gets the best of what passes for style.

The great strength of Concussion is its star’s performance.

Edge of Darkness was one of the most enthralling, intricate and genuinely thrilling productions in the history of the small screen. The big-screen version--directed by Martin Campbell, who did the original--offers an example of why the studios' numbers often add up, and why, at the same time, so many of today's Hollywood movies leave us cool if not downright cold.

Ms. Macdonald works modest wonders within these constraints -- she's a lovely actress, and a skilled one -- but too much is asked of her; Kate's innocence finally wilts beneath the camera's fixed gaze.

I just can't hide my disappointment, though, that the movie doesn't sustain anything like the brilliance of its best scenes, or even the promise of its preface.

Doc says: "I can't believe this is happening." …That sentence may be the only one uttered in the entire film that contains an ounce of true feeling. Certainly that was the thought on my mind as I watched this depressing rehash of material that seemed original just five years ago, when it was. And "I can't believe this is happening" seemed to be what most of the actors were thinking as they gamely trudged through their paces yet again. [31 May 1990, p.A12]

The result is heavy and humorless, despite a smart, skillful performance by Brooke Smith.