Under Our Skin has a major ax to grind, but if even half of what it alleges is true, it's more deeply terrifying than any slasher film you'll ever see.

Van Dormael has crafted a saga that, even at two-plus hours, is endlessly, enormously watchable.

Except for pedophiles, it's hard to imagine who'll be drawn to this irresponsible Little Bo Peep show.

No ordinary horror film. If it were, it might be a bit better than it is. As the movie stands, it's a less-than-compelling relationship drama, with aliens.

Overloaded with incidents, effects and explosions, “The Creator” fails to develop the personalities and relationships that would give its central characters an affecting humanity. The movie’s attempt to touch the heart comes off as, well, artificial.

What comes through in "Backbeat," along with the amphetamine-fueled adrenalin of Hamburg, is confusion, bruised feelings and the dawning understanding that life isn't just fun and games -- and neither is rock 'n' roll.

Admittedly, Niccol succumbs to the temptation to make mini-billboards out of his dialogue, in which arguments follow neat “on the one hand” trajectories. But for the most part, Good Kill asks pertinent, enduring questions, not by way of polemic, but through the study of a character.

Southern Comfort sets up a potentially compelling switch on The Most Dangerous Game, but Hill's tactical maneuvers prove too diffuse and uncoordinated to carry out a successful variation. [16 Oct 1981, p.B1]

There is still a self-consciousness and a forced quality to much of the humor that this TPT redux just can't shake.

A mesmerizing and weirdly manipulative experience.

Director Won Sin-yeon skillfully emulates the you-are-there-but-where-the-heck-is-that? style of the “Bourne” movies.

The only thing wrong with John Woo's American debut, Hard Target, is that it's too American and not enough Woo.

The movie, for all its uneventfulness, is intensely memorable.

After a fairly promising getaway, Romancing the Stone gradually chases its tail into enough melodramatic dead ends to deteriorate into an expendable runaround, all too easy to shrug off as a miscalculated clone of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Until that sugar coating at the end, Out of Time is clever, believable and gripping, and seems to be headed to a wondrous, bad place as it carefully modulates classic '40s themes.

Wickedly clever.

In a movie as unrewarding as this, there's really only one burning question: When does the spanking begin?

Shakes, rattles and rolls the house, building to a climax that makes you almost forget you're in a movie theater and not a football stadium at halftime.

Mostly, the movie is riveting, well-done fare -- the stuff of Hollywood epic adventure.

While A Perfect Getaway, like "The Sixth Sense," recaps itself, to indicate to the audience what they may have missed (and when), there seems to be plot holes large enough that one could paddle through them in an outrigger canoe.

The movie is called Love Crime. But its hidden message has more to do with business than with passion. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially one in a power suit, who knows how to work a room.

One may feel limitations on the dramatic side, but Bridge is an unqualified pictorial achievement.

The best part of Walk Hard, oddl enough, is the music. I might not care to see Walk Hard" a second time, but I can't wait to hear it again.

For all the energy and personality of its subjects, Planet B-Boy tends to drag, especially toward the competition finals.

For its eventual lurid machinations and hyped-up emotionalism, the film winds up being a handsomely efficient one-man show. Like the man Gyllenhaal so convincingly embodies, it gets the job done, even if it inevitably goes over the top.

[Leven] keeps the film's tone light and ingratiating. And, though the material is thin, the actors do seem to be getting a kick out of playing off each other.

What’s missing from this production is the darkness — the perversity, even — that informs du Maurier’s work, and that would elevate an attractively illustrated story into aesthetically and psychologically vivid cinema.

A pleasantly seedy crime thriller.

Ozon has created a monster that he can’t seem to let go of. Isabelle doesn’t just frighten her mother (and us). She seems to terrify Ozon, and I’m not sure I want to know why.

The movie serves as product placement for a brand of toys but also as a form of creative brick-olage, one that reflects a modern music producer’s ability to weave small units of musical noise into an epic canvas that gets the whole world up offa that thing.

As cinematic storytelling, it works.

Despite its over-credulous willingness to go along on what through one lens amounts to a massive ego trip, Nyad manages to be a celebration of perseverance, self-belief and learning how to be loved.

It never ventures close enough to the victims to inspire profound reflections on the pity and terror of it all. [12 Nov 1983, p.C1]

To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.

As a director, Minahan knows his way around a track, but on the evidence of this film, he’s not yet ready to run wild.

She is so funny she should come with a seven-day waiting period.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain tells its story with sympathy, but too many quirks and try-hard flourishes. In the welter and spin of tics, voice-overs, set pieces, images, flashbacks and dream states, the man himself gets as lost as a kitten in the rain.

Although it's often difficult to discern amid a schematic plot and overheated, sanctimonious denouement, an undeniable reality underlies Cronicas.

Although "Hitchhiker" starts out a total gas, it doesn't have enough fuel to sustain the ride, ultimately amounting to little more than some amusing gags strung together in search of a story.

The movie has a big payoff; it's the setup that's the drag. But Kevin's antics will touch the budding subversive in every kid. My advice? Hide the car keys.

The movie may be competent at telling its story, but it’s missing one key ingredient: feeling.

Its one-sidedness flirts with propaganda.

Simple without being slight, and profoundly moving without dipping into mawkishness.

A well-acted, beautifully filmed, utterly depressing chronicle of revenge and thwarted dreams in post-industrial America.

Malek’s talents serve a much more personal, ultimately touching story.

Hey, I never said The Covenant wasn’t manipulative. It is — skillfully, entertainingly and at times almost overbearingly so. But oh, boy, does it work.

A comedy that, if not always better than the first, is certainly more uproarious.

Yes, “Honk” picks some low-hanging fruit. But it also, as it turns out, leaves a sour aftertaste in the mouth.

The subtitle refers not only to the twilight of the 1920s but to a changing of the guard in this entertainment franchise as well. In that sense, maybe Downton Abbey isn’t really giving its fans what they want, but what they have always needed to accept in this epic saga: that time doesn’t stand still.

Landau and Wuhl give especially heartfelt performances under the obviously sympathetic direction of Barry Primus, who based the story on his own attempts to finance a project.

In this stirring portrait, it’s possible to see evangelism not in hectoring words or holier-than-thou bromides, but in loving action. Who wouldn’t say amen to that?

Certainly handsome, well made and for most of its running time gripping, the film ultimately turns into a $60-odd-million piffle.

It manages to make an entertaining story out of nothing in particular. And just when you get comfortable passively observing a passive observer, the minutest of twists becomes its own call to action. It urges the audience to consider this small story in a broader context.

Within this overly familiar trope, there's plenty of room for small surprises, not the least of which are delightful, understated performances all around.

Ultimately, Atomic Blonde is, like its heroine, something of a machine. Lit by glowing neon, fueled by the rhythm of ’80s power pop and fashioned from stiletto heels, cigarettes, guns and sunglasses, it looks and sounds good, but it isn’t much of a conversationalist.

I’m Your Woman isn’t so much off-kilter as it is ballasted by a different, perhaps lower center of gravity. The title sounds exploitative — perhaps even silly — but the tale it spins is one of power and, ultimately, of coming unexpectedly, satisfyingly, into one’s own.

The cast is superb, especially the young actors who portray Vitus; Gheorghiu is a real-life piano prodigy, lending an extra frisson to the intoxicating music that plays throughout the film.

Has a refreshingly original attitude.

The movie, which is burdened by a rather mediocre script by Annmarie Morais but boasts some terrific performances -- is not just a sports movie. It's a girls-can't-do-it/girls-can-do-it/girls-do-it/girls-beat-the-boys-at-it movie.

While Wright's self-conscious theatricality and dollhouse aesthetic conjure comparisons to Baz Luhrmann and Wes Anderson, he outstrips both those filmmakers in moral seriousness and maturity.

A surprisingly tame and humorless effort by director Curtis Hanson of Hitchcock-spoofy The Bedroom Window, the movie does provide a couple of good jolts.

This is pure, escapist fun -- skepticism and naysaying are best left at home.

Cheri looks terrific, if a bit gauzy at times, and Frears, who directed Pfeiffer in that other Frenchified frolic, "Dangerous Liaisons," is never at rest. Still, the movie bogs down by going nowhere other than inside its characters, who are intensely passionate but of an era more curious than emotionally relevant.

If Kunis gets the showier role in Friends With Benefits, Timberlake proves a quietly charming stalking horse, finally claiming and fully owning the spotlight with a hilarious homage to the 1990s rap duo Kriss Kross.

Although the movie adheres more closely to history than "Quills," it lacks dramatic punch and depth.

Hogan seems skittish about going all the way with the darker side of his material...It's a bright, buoyant comedy about a very sad young woman -- and, regrettably, the mix just doesn't work.

Director Joe Johnston, a veteran of Industrial Light and Magic, brings a wry Rube Goldberg approach to his first-ever feature. The sets are definitely plastic, but that slightly homemade look is refreshing in the hardware movie decade.

The documentary might make you believe in miracles, considering how tedious — if not impossible — this interactive artwork comes across.

Stamm creates an anxious psychological horror that's vaguely familiar yet refreshingly original.

The film degenerates into an overly simplistic satire -- with moon-worshiping, Guatemala-visiting, lesbian aborters on one side, and fetally obsessive, meat-eating, gun-toting Jesus worshipers on the other.

There's very little that's even kind of funny in It's Kind of a Funny Story, which can't accurately be described as a comedy but isn't a true drama, either.

A documentary that uses Pierson's self-congratulatory mission to explore a deeper story about cultural clashes and the complex dynamics of the modern American family.

Human Capital is a well made but ultimately rather facile tragedy for the globalized age of vertiginous wealth disparities. It’s suffused with beauty, guilt, regret and impunity that only the most obscenely overprivileged and dimly self-aware can hope to attain.

Howl mixes a number of story lines and aesthetic approaches: We get glimpses of Ginsberg's early days as a poet, including his relationships with Kerouac and Neal Cassady, as well as a depiction of the trial, where a parade of critics and professors pronounced Ginsberg's creation either a work of genius or irredeemable filth.

The meat is supposed to be the most beautiful thing in the documentary, but I found myself more drawn to the lingering shots of shaggy cows, silhouetted on European mountainsides, with their tousled bangs blowing in the wind.

Considering it's anime, Summer Wars starts out more like a bad romantic comedy.

At the core of the movie is the message that the real lonely hunter is the heart.

The Eyes of My Mother looks marvelous.... But that’s about all this absurd, illogical and underwhelming thriller has going for it.

For better or worse, though, this adaptation of the mega-hit Broadway musical fits neither description, largely because it lives in that kinda-sorta, okay-not-great, this-worked-that-didn't in-between for which words like "better" and "worse" fall woefully short.

The raunchy, guy-centric comedy Hot Tub Time Machine makes a vertiginously high-concept bid to be this year's version of "The Hangover" and darned if it doesn't succeed.

Writer-director Stephen Bradley may make some missteps, but he capitalizes on this underdog story’s inherent thrills.

With its cast of back-stabbing functionaries and desk jockeys, Spy Game makes the sport and hard work of espionage seem chillingly real.

Wonderfully silly all the time.

The story, which features an apparently lobotomized Guy Pearce as an opportunistic explorer and hunter who learns the errors of his ways, is deeply dull.

Self-respecting humans with strange kicks, such as family values or an aversion to nasty sex and violence, already know not to see this movie, but those with strange axes to grind (like, you hate Richard Gere, for instance), or too much time, or demented senses of humor, and you know who you are, may just have a fun time of this.

Despite a mysterious title, Changeling isn't a mystery. It is, occasionally, agony.

To anyone who feels, at times, so overwhelmed by the drumbeat of climate disaster, economic collapse, crime, mass shooting and terrorism, deadly viruses, and political polarization that it feels as the apocalypse is upon us, Knock at the Cabin will resonate powerfully.

Because The Summit jumps around in time and because the events on the mountain happened over two days and at locations often far apart, the already garbled chronology of deaths is made even more confusing.

Williams, might have been more aggressive. Otherwise, director Roy Hill has done about as well as you can when translating word to image, not only through plot, but via the repetition of symbols: primitive, obvious ones -- the toad, a death's head costume, a child's clumsy drawings. After two hours and 20 minutes, all the parables and paradoxes join in a sluggish whole. And we wind up where we began, up in the air without a tail gunner. [23 July 1982, p.11]

J-Lo is essentially an elaborate distraction, which is just fine as the story goes, but not exactly a kinetic position for a star.

"Him” and “Her” make for a remarkably powerful film experiment, retaining the insights into relationships of “Them” while filling in many of its invisible storytelling fissures.

It matters because this boxer taps into something deeper in our collective souls than the desire for entertainment. It's the hope that one day we're going to win big, too, after everyone's given up on us. It's as hokey as it's true.

Not enough to keep this celluloid ship from sinking under the weight of its own stupidity.

In many ways, Jimmy’s Hall shows what the pursuit of happiness can look like, and why it’s worth a revolution to protect it.

The film is ambitious and heartfelt, with pressing concerns about the virtualization and fantasization of reality. But it’s a blunder, one interesting mostly for what it might have been.

Tends to speculation, conspiracy theories or, at best, circumstantial evidence.

The veteran English actress, 72, a onetime femme fatale who has matured into a peerless performer, gives a first-rate lesson in the art of acting, as a woman crumbling under duress after her husband is incarcerated. And yet the Belgian-set drama, by Italian director Andrea Pallaoro, could also be called self-indulgent, plodding and minimalist, in a big way.

Directed by the touchy-feely Henry Jaglom, this is film as purgative -- a hens' party from hell, gorged on its own self-importance and damned hard to swallow.