The finished film has no thematic or emotional integrity. It flip-flops withdesperate hypocrisy between clownish antics and indignant orations. [09 Feb 1978, p.B13]

Accompanied, appropriately enough, by Bach piano pieces, The Children Act is an unmitigated pleasure to watch and listen to, primarily as a showcase for Thompson’s incomparable gifts as an actress.

If Reilly’s presence gives Kong: Skull Island its playful, gonzo edge, it’s the title character himself who gives it soul, morphing from a monster into a brooding symbol of the colossal folly of military belligerence and hegemonic hubris.

The ultimate verdict on "City Hall" is easy: It's no good. The movie, a corruption-in-the-city saga starring Al Pacino, John Cusack and Bridget Fonda, ends on such a false, unsatisfying note, any faith you had built up in the movie is dashed. But that there's faith to lose in the first place is something of an achievement.

Your children are almost certain to have a great time.

Mike Myers unleashes (or seems to unleash) the entire contents of his comic mind.

Blessedly free of the self-righteous histrionics and sentimentality that so often cheapen powerful personal stories.

A mousy little nothing of a picture.

The movie lacks some of the verve and chemistry that made the series a must-see. I guess that makes the movie more of a good-to-see.

I don't care what Dylan said, everyone must not get Stoned.

The film ultimately becomes too contrived to be anything but a fleeting diversion, but kudos to these emerging filmmakers for daring to make something a little bit different and, for the most part, intriguing.

How about a well-sustained argument for saving the planet instead of this round-robin approach? And where are those holdouts of humanity who believe humans shoulder no blame for carbon dioxide buildup? Let's hear from them, too, and draw our own conclusions.

This trio of losers somehow forms a kind of loony family. Like the one in "Little Miss Sunshine," which also used the metaphor of a broken-down car to drive home its point, the interpersonal dynamics are out of whack, but not unworkable.

In the tradition of such bracing musicals as Kinky Boots, Billy Elliot and Prom, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has exuberance to burn, high spirits galore and a brand of message-driven escapism that’s as insistent as it is worthy. Resistance, in other words, is futile.

It's low-budget, rough-cut documentary, stained-sheet ugly moviemaking, suited to Borden's simple-minded message.

Alligator, the most amusing variation yet on the Jaws formula, finds plenty of room for incidental humor and romantic byplay while sustaining a breezy suspense plot. [20 May 1981, p.B1]

Taylor Hackford's film version of the Stephen King novel, has a whopping list of shortcomings -- and yet it still manages to be an engrossing, unsettling and, at times, powerful psychological thriller.

Like their previous movies, it emerges as an interesting disappointment, reflecting a cultivated and audacious taste in material inhibited by a stuffy approach to filmmaking. The advantage of their intelligent, literate, methodical style is that it may accommodate novel themes and impressive performances. [28 Jan 1982, p.C11]

Where the film might have found its greater meaning is in the interplay between Sarkozy's public and private lives - an especially fertile ground here, given that wife Cecilia (Florence Pernel) was a key adviser and their very public separation threatened his eventual run for president.

Part comedy of manners, and mostly gender warfare, "Something" is designed to get the partisan juices boiling. Screenwriter Callie Khouri, who wrote the marvelous "Thelma & Louise," has a gift for catching the oppression of women in everyday situations and putting a sanguine comic twist on it. But in her zeal to portray a world full of male scum, she creates a morally mismatched, pandering scenario.

Dizzy, delightful and just a bit deviant, "The Rugrats Movie" blends all the sarcastic sensibility of "The Simpsons" with the old-fashioned silliness of Soupy Sales.

The halfhearted attempt to tweak the boxing-movie formula is a diversionary tactic. No amount of feints will change one fact: Bleed for This has no new moves.

Writer-director James Ponsoldt's film treats big subjects -- loneliness, coming-of-age and father-son relationships -- with such half-baked conviction, it's a wonder the screen doesn't redden with embarrassment. Which makes it all the more gratifying to watch Nolte pulverize the dramatic banality around him.

Despite amazing access to Seinfeld backstage, we don't get a peek into the real man.

If you appreciate fine animation and edgy material, this blood's for you.

Manages to take the cerebral act of literary creation and make it exciting, sexy even.

The film feels inauthentic, a cardboard version of other epics that's cast for distribution to various world markets.

A gem of a movie, all its adversity and wickedness a backdrop for a story about the remarkable resilience of children

As love interests go, Shepherd and Downey are about as hot as Ike and Mamie Eisenhower, though the apoplectic Downey does have his comedic moments. Always a standout, Masterson is pensively provocative as Miranda, something of a teen-age Kim Novak.

The framing device of the conversation between Henry and Celia, which includes a bit of flirtation, necessitates a certain ennui, though director Janus Metz (“Borg vs. McEnroe”) does his level best to open up the claustrophobic setting with frequent jaunts to other times and locales. Come to think of it, there’s an air of a tennis match to the proceedings of All the Old Knives, with its two protagonists playing a mental game of volley and return, as it were.

Wise Guys, a surprisingly sweet, but sluggish Mafia farce, teams easy-going Joe Piscopo with driven, dangerous Danny De Vito in a neo-Abbott and Costello Meet the Godfather.

With surprisingly good production values and sly, underhanded wit, Willmott never tips his hand, steadily guiding the satire to a genuinely stunning, back-to-reality conclusion.

A provocative, but extremely profane work, it is surely Allen's bawdiest since "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex."

Echoing Liam’s review of Sinclair’s work in progress, I’d call the first two acts of the film cleverly constructed, fresh and fascinating, yet marred by a climax and conclusion that are unworthy of what came before.

The only thing parents need fear is utter boredom.

Lots of people pay good money to endure the kinds of thrill rides that make them wish they were back on solid ground. Fall does the same thing, but with the added benefit of being entirely vicarious.

Alternately a celebration and sendup of cowboy conventions, the movie lingers over a stunning Western landscape only to be spurred on by the principals' inexhaustible supply of escapades. The burr under the saddle: There's just too much of everything.

Guts-and-green-beret saga.

Thanks mainly to Bell's abundant charisma, Hallam makes for a strangely likable antihero.

After the film's first few minutes I watched, neither entertained nor illuminated, with something close to total indifference... (Greenaway's) extravagances and attacks on taste seem less like the bravery of the courageous artist than the empty desperation of a charlatan.

Unfortunately, the film's stalking hordes of zombies aren't the only lifeless things about it. [03 Nov 1986, p.B2]

No, it's not great. No, it's not a disaster.

The atmospherics are wonderfully dark and film-noirish, if overly violent.

It’s as a satiric bourgeois psychodrama that “Armand” works best and reveals its genetic heritage to the works of Bergman and Ullmann (the latter no slouch as a director herself).

Eventually MacFarlane's formula -- consisting of filthy, ethnically offensive jokes, scatological humor, tacky pop culture references and random cameos -- begins to wear thin.

For those willing to join Reggio in his extended meditation, Visitors offers a sublime, even spiritual experience, as well as a bracing reminder of cinema’s power to create a transformative occasion.

Baghead provides a diverting showcase for actors you may never have heard of but who deserve a shot at fame and fortune.

Director James Watkins knows how to make a body jump out of its skin, even if he does use the face-reflected-in-the-mirror/window trick once too often. At the same time, the film is kind of, well, silly.

Mostly, The Bookshop is a pretext to watch three great actors do their thing: Mortimer, as the film’s mousy but surprisingly formidable heroine; Clarkson, as her smiling adversary, Violet Gamart; and Bill Nighy, as the town’s reclusive loner — and its only voracious reader — Mr. Brundish, who comes to Florence’s aid and advocacy.

The real star of U-571 is its sheer visceral atmosphere.

Its splendor cannot be denied, but then again neither can the emptiness of this Henry James adaptation.

If you're mocking holier-than-thou-ness, you can't very well strike a hipper-than-thou tone.

This is sweet-natured fun for the very young.

A slight but sure-footed, live-action comic fantasy.

Cranston is consistently watchable in the title role, although Howard’s journey into — and, at least potentially, out of — madness is a tough one to keep up with.

Miike sets up entire sections of Yakuza Apocalypse like an endurance test. If the film’s title and the promise of ear fluid are not deterrents, then maybe you’ll be able to appreciate the sheer energy and audacity of his unapologetic vision.

The movie captures the city vibrantly, in moments of beauty and brilliance.... But Jude, our narrator, is paper thin.

What's important is that Major Dundee, not a great movie but a great star-driven, big budget 1965 studio western, is back in all its fractured glory and confidence.

You can make a good movie about a bad marriage, as countless directors, the latest being Ozon, have discovered.

The movie, a frenetic, explosive experience full of car crashes and gun battles, is original and exhilarating. But more often, it's so overwhelming, it'll make you want to watch "Die Hard With a Vengeance" for peace and quiet.

Edel gives us the grungy details of the atrocities without providing a context to give them relevance. In the end, the film's ugliness becomes ugliness for its own sake.

I liked The Five-Year Engagement, and then I didn't, and then I did.

It’s hard not to imagine that there could have a better version of this movie’s premise: one that upped the cultural satire, while still having fun tossing low-key, cheeky references at the audience. In the end though, disappointingly, Free Guy only plays itself.

About Last Night may be about Daniel and Debbie, but it’s Hart and Hall who make it worth watching. They take palatable but not exceptional cinematic hay and turn it into comic gold.

Behind the trademark fancy package is a troubling sensibility, too. Spielberg seems unable to come to terms with anything real.

Micmacs brings an infectious note of caprice to the old-fashioned caper film.

Patchy, underbudgeted pop-music satire a la This is Spinal Tap but lacking its professional assurance. [30 Jun 1994, p.M28]

Fright Night is really "Fright Lite," a film promising more than it delivers, and even that delivery is so late in the game that you may want to arrive fashionably late and skip what passes for plot development and concentrate on Richard Edlund's special effects. [05 Aug 1985, p.B3]

Ultimately, “Loving Highsmith” provides a valuable addition to the larger record of the author’s enigmatic life, rather than a comprehensive chronicle itself. Which might be altogether fitting for a woman who always seemed to prefer to remain just out of reach.

Plane is a shot of adrenaline and fast-paced, brain-free fun.

Lynch/Oz possesses undeniable value, if only to remind viewers that cinema is worth dissecting, thinking about, arguing over, mulling around.

Labyrinth of Lies is an eye-opening story about the importance of seeking the truth — even when it’s complicated, ugly and buried beneath years of secrecy and deceit.

Albert Finney is a beautifully mannered, lilting charm; he's more than ably supported by Dubliners Michael Gambon, Brenda Fricker, Tara Fitzgerald and others. [27 Jan 1995]

Like a fat slab of pastrami, Deli Man is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food: warm, generous and made with love.

As affectionately as Taylor has brought The Help to the screen, and as gratifying as it is to watch Davis and Spencer bring Aibileen and Minny to palpable, fully rounded life, their narrative, like "The Blind Side" a few years ago, is structured largely around their white female benefactor.

It's deeply vapid, with the emotional consistency of styling mousse.

We may not get to their innermost feelings, which would have taken this documentary to a deeper, maybe darker level, but the movie's purpose is celebratory. As such, it's a satisfying experience.

If Loggerheads sometimes feels too forced, it features some unforgettable performances, especially by Hunt, an accomplished comedienne who makes an impressive debut as a dramatic lead here.

Horror works — or it doesn’t — in the flickering, moving images of the screen, not the page. Sandberg knows that. His artistry, for that’s what it is, is like that of the dollmaker Sam Mullins: to take inert material and create a living, breathing thing.

It's all too zany and madcap and Woody Allen-redux to be remotely credible, but Ira & Abby turns out to be witty and winning, in large part because of its cast.

Viewers anticipating side-splitting guffaws will be disappointed: Stuck on You is a strangely lackluster, flaccid string of fitfully humorous episodes.

Daddio may stay too long at the fare, but its maker is hardly a hack.

Although he comes across as a sort of elfin crypt-keeper in this intriguing portrait by documentarian Belinda Sallin, Giger was also, quite literally, close to death.

There's enjoyable chemistry between the two, but not the sort that sequels are made on. Aykroyd's straight man gets most of the laughs with his hilarious variation on the late Jack Webb's hard-bitten dialogue, with Hanks playing less often off the priggish, ever-positive Friday.

You leave Creatures with the unsettling sensation of being highly tickled yet greatly dissatisfied.

We find ourselves in the fascinating no man's land between horror and comedy -- right where this movie wants us to be.

The Cursed is stylish and scary enough for what it is. That’s an old-fashioned creature feature, effective enough to give you a mild case of the heebie-jeebies but nothing chronic.

For all of its foodie appeal, however, Ramen Shop is a wispily sentimental enterprise, full of perfunctory transitions, maudlin plot twists and awkward time shifts between past and present.

In this case, director David Michôd — working from a script he co-wrote with actor Joel Edgerton — doesn’t make the material distinctive or provocative enough to merit a second, far more dramatically inert go-round.

For Kidman, Destroyer is simply the latest in a long career of fascinating, often nervily risk-taking career choices, in which she submerges her lithe grace and porcelain beauty to inhabit the toughest characters and stories.

It's not art, this movie. But it's much more amusing than you'd expect.

A sort of thinking-person's cornball movie.

About as understated as a 21-gun salute... What's missing is anything of Reiner himself.

Less-than-scintillating spin on "Life Is Beautiful."

I was hooked from beginning to end.

Doesn't connect with its audience in the one place that matters most: the heart.

Hovers frustratingly somewhere between charming and only mildly amusing.

[Craven's] stroke of genius is to offer the horror movie in an ironic mode. He's winking at viewers and inviting them to share a clever conspiracy that we on the cholesterol-clogged side of 30 cannot begin to understand.