The movie's ambitions (to pay tribute to the Czech pilots who fought for their country only to be interned later) are not matched by the actual story.

Take Me to the River includes just enough history of the civil rights era to lend it gravitas. The color-blind recording practices of studios like Stax were an anomaly at the time and are well worth noting. But it’s the music people will want to hearken to.

It’s the film’s exploration of the ethical bartering conducted by van Meegeren — not his expertise as a copyist or his skill as a swindler — that linger after the closing credits.

The movie finds charming humor in a world full of sectarian strife between Protestant and Catholic.

It's plenty entertaining, but the ending is disappointing, given the buildup.

The Funhouse begins with a lamely facetious reprise of the shower sequence from Psycho and slides steadily downhill there. [18 Mar 1981, p.B4]

Concussion suffers from a chilly detachment that feels all too clinical, when all we want, like Abby, is connection.

The hero's feats are implausible even by action standards, but screenwriters Tony Puryear and Walon Green have concocted one of the summer's most spectacular action sequences.

It's almost too dull to pan.

If viewers are left feeling just as impotent as many of the characters, that may be precisely what Jolie intended for a film that asks nothing more of its audience than to bear witness.

Straw has all the feels it wants and little of the art it needs. But there’s nothing to suggest Tyler Perry would have it any other way.

Winter Passing is one dull, extended encounter session among hackneyed characters -- although Deschanel gets the most points for almost imitating a human.

The best way to appreciate this fitfully funny collection of japes and jests is to treat it like any teenage boy in your midst: Focus on the positives and know that even its worst is only a phase.

The documentary’s greatest strength is its ability to humanize Paulson.

Director Ron Underwood, who came up with a happy marriage of schmaltz and shtick in "City Slickers," can't quite disguise the mechanical superficiality of the story.

Migration will be remembered as neither great nor terrible. It will simply fade into the cinematic ether like so many ducks in the wind.

A yawn and most unforgivably features some appalling arrangements of the Beatles' best-loved songs.

The film amounts to a harsh and perpetual assault on viewers' sensibilities -- not only because of its violence but because of its overall bleakness.

This is a gassy, overbearing, pretentious little bit of art-in-your face, from the director of "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover," and it revisits some of the filmmaker's favorite places (the men's room, for example) and favorite themes (life as consumption and elimination). Most of the film's meanings are buried inside the artist's big, intellectually high-rolling metaphors.

Jackass is also a touching ode to male friendship at its most primal.

The action scenes are beautifully mounted and photographed and offer a sense of the rigors of the sport.

After some promising leaps, bounds and swings through a fascinating jungle of possibility, Charlie Kaufman's movie misses an all-important creeper.

Buffed and waxed to within an inch of its life, Stella registers as more of a sequence of slick commercials than an actual drama.

John Waters may not be a great filmmaker, but he's usually onto something, and A Dirty Shame is onto something big.

What The Two Jakes makes us long for most is the earlier film.

Douglas again takes on the symbolic mantle of the Zeitgeist. But in Falling Down, he and Schumacher want to have their cake and eat it too; they want him to be a hero and a villain, and it just won't work.

Waterworld isn't "Fishtar," but Kevin Costner's pricey, post-apocalyptic sloshbuckler isn't a seafaring classic either.

The Dogs of War can be recommended only as a desperate snack for rabid tastes.

Unfortunately, the dramatic potential of such a moral quandary is left largely unmined in director Joseph Ruben's monotonous parlor game of will-he-won't-he. [14 Aug 1998, Pg. N.39]

Posse is a great idea for a movie, but rarely has such a solid idea been exploited with greater indifference or lack of imagination.

Capital is too cynical to ever really suggest that redemption is possible. Not that anyone watching will even care.

Statham isn't the best thing in Transporter 2; he's essentially the only thing.

Million Dollar Arm doesn’t break the familiar mold of come-from-behind sports movies — indeed, it obeys every convention of the genre. But it does so with understatement, style and an exceptional group of actors who bring just the right balance of humor and restraint to their roles.

Del Toro, expanding on a short story by Donald A. Wolheim, isn't able to invest his version of a familiar horror convention with either the supple wit or deep humanity he brought to "Cronos."

What sticks in my craw -- just a bit -- is the way the film doesn't fully trust the true story's inherent power.

Funny? Scary? Entirely logical? It all depends on your point of view, of course, and "What's the Matter With Kansas?" isn't likely to move viewers one way or another.

One of the rules of satire is that you can't mock things you don't understand, and Religulous starts developing fault lines when it becomes clear that Maher's view of religious faith is based on a sophomoric reading of the Scriptures and that he doesn't understand that some thoughtful people actually do believe in some sort of spiritual life.

Thank goodness for Tasha Smith's character, Shonda. She supplies the only reliable laughs as Pam's fun-loving best friend.

Ironweed is decent fare, not excellent. It gets by on the strength of the unexpected.

There are many ways to define the shrieking awfulness of The Family Stone, from the general lack of wit to the cheap exploitation of cancer to its casual cruelty, but it's writer-director Thomas Bezucha's casting that really goes awry.

The movie often undercuts itself by spelling things out rather than hinting at them, belaboring emotions and ideas to ensure that the audience understands what the characters are feeling and thinking.

Genius may be a bit stodgy and safe, but it tells a story of beauty — as it plays out in an improbably fruitful friendship, and as it’s discovered within vast expanses of raw language by a craftsman who was arguably an artist in his own right.

What's disappointing about The Crazies, though, is the lack of care that Eisner and screenwriters Scott Kosar and Ray Wright put into their film's atmosphere. There's little in the way of Romero-esque dread; Eisner substitutes a grim lack of humor and frequent splashes of gore.

As always, the teen actors are disposable, and even Robert Englund seems to be sleepwalking through Freddy. In the best Nightmares, Parts 1 and 3, the bad dreams not only made sense, but reinforced the idea of pattern psychosis and brought viewers into the dreamscapes. In 4 they're just cold splashes in the face.

In between its hokey setup and its overwrought climax, Disney's dog-sledding adventure Iron Will is brisk and involving and surprisingly adult, its cinematic strength drawn mainly from the beauty of panting teams of huskies muscling their way across snowy landscapes. Which is a sight you can never grow tired of.

At its best, Adam makes the viewer understand the frustration of living in a world in which everyone is a stranger -- not least by making us work as hard to understand its hero's feelings as Adam himself must work to understand Beth's.

Falters when it falls into exploitation (Irena's flashbacks to scenes of depraved sexual torture) and fatal contrivance.

It's just a loud, derivative grade-Z horror film of no particular distinction.

It has great mood and a sense of the toughness of the London underworld, but it never really gets into gear.

Rahim delivers a fairly strong performance. Yet the last third of the film loses some focus and emotional resonance.

Alternately fascinating and disappointing biopic about French scientist Marie ­Curie.

The film is handsomely mounted and provides a window into the tough choices Owens faced, yet its dramatic licenses oversell its message.

It’s too bad that the premise hints at more of a horror twist than the movie actually delivers. Heller frequently interrupts a thin story with ambiguous dashes of magical realism that only serve to confuse.

Watchmen is a bore. Sad to say, after a wait of more than two decades, the much-anticipated adaptation of the world's most celebrated graphic novel is long, dull and subject to what might be called the "Lord of the Rings" problem: It sinks under the weight of its reverence for the original.

Opportunities for dramatic tension, comedic effect, erotic energy, even just flat-out weirdness -- all are squandered by Brocka and the actors in a haze of blandness that gives the film all the edge of a particularly gay Gap commercial.

Despite all the life-threatening situations, warrior deaths and heroic feats, it's hard to get behind characters who feel like lazy archetypes.

Might have gone down as an endearing fable, if only the route to its finale had been less cliched.

With the whole super-racket on the ropes, the cast of “Deadpool & Wolverine” seizes the opportunity to prove the power of their own charisma.

This movie, set in the '60s and starring Cher, Winona Ryder and Bob Hoskins, doesn't come of age so much as die of it. It's awash in mediocrity, waterlogged with innocuousness and redeemed only occasionally by sweet-faced Ryder.

Has all the energy and spontaneity of a bowl of waxed fruit. If watching "Dogtown and Z-Boys" was tantamount to witnessing history itself, watching "Lords of Dogtown," which Peralta wrote, feels more like watching a stiff, meticulously choreographed reenactment.

Kids who realize they're fully ordinary -- that is, pretty much all of them -- will be pleased to see a world they recognize on the big screen.

Despite its occasional sparkle, Invaders From Mars is an overlong movie with a tiny spirit. It plays to a certain smug superiority of an audience nurtured on junky television, and while that smugness is in some ways justified -- movies like the original "Invaders From Mars" had their obvious failings -- it's also, over the course of a feature film, more than a little annoying. The original "Invaders From Mars" did something this spoof never even comes close to -- it scared the heck out of you. That's something Hooper might try accomplishing, before he sets about sending it up.

Will Smith and Margot Robbie bring low-key erotic chemistry to an easy simmer in Focus, a smooth, sophisticated, often amusing little caper flick.

An unpredictable, occasionally amusing, wildly uneven portrait of a neighborhood struggling to hold on to its identity.

Igor may be the most important composer of the 20th century, but he is a mere human. Coco, in this beautiful but indulgent French film, is a work of art.

Good message, mediocre movie.

Unfortunately, screenwriter David Shaber hasn't laid the sort of tracks that can support a clever or gripping vehicle. The rickety foundation might be finessed by swift, dynamic direction -- the sort of approach William Friedkin brought to The French Connection or Walter Hill to The Warriors, an urban thriller Shaber also helped fabricate -- but newcomer Bruce Malmuth isn't agile enough.

There's a flatness about the whole enterprise -- like drinking champagne, but from an old house slipper. Re: his performance, Clooney is terrific. His comparison to old movie stars is not just hype. He really does possess the combination of supreme confidence and humility that has been the hallmark of the biggest male Hollywood stars.

If it’s a bit dull, and too dependent on a what-I-learned voice-over to make its points, it can still be applauded for resisting the temptation to overreach.

Strang plays him as someone who’s almost crippled by a life lived in fear. It’s a moving performance, rendering a character who, even when the sun is out, can’t quite bring himself to emerge from the shadows.

Narratively club-footed but directorially assured.

The movie isn't about anything except acting, and although the acting it shows is brilliant, it makes exactly the point that is the opposite of the point it thought it was making: Acting isn't enough.

The original was about social manipulation as blood sport. Amazing how easily it transports, themes intact, to our blighted decade, and to our children.

However many millions of dollars Rodriguez set aside for blanks and exploding squibs was a waste. Depp's salary, on the other hand, was money well spent.

Although it boasts three crackerjack action sequences, Cold War 2 won’t wow Hong Kong cinema buffs who crave nonstop mayhem. This clever drama features more bureaucratic wrangling than criminal scuffles.

This is a film that rides on its spiffy cleverness, its swift wit and smart talk. There's an unexpected, not-tightly-screwed-on sense of comedy on display here that's bright and original even when the story falters.

“Fate” gives fans of the franchise exactly what they want, provided they can ditch logic as easily as the movie does.

Just inspiring enough, just scary enough, just sappy enough and just funny enough to get by.

As a screenplay -- as a story -- Change is a silly mess. Its direction is also perfunctory, a bland rendition of the usual chain of Hollywood events. But the main reason to watch Change is for Murray, of course. And no matter what formulaic claptrap is around him, he always redeems it with something comic.

Collet-Serra, who directed Neeson in “Unknown,” has a knack for keeping things lively and moving forward. There are moments of humor, gripping action and real terror.

Like the South, the movie is sumptuous and somnolent.

The acting across the board is top-notch, especially by Banks, who is probably best known for her comedic roles. She doesn’t get to flex any of those muscles here; Little Accidents is a serious movie, but, to its credit, it’s never entirely bleak.

A light inoffensive satire that brings God back to earth as crusty, caring George Burns to tell mankind to stop mucking up the river-fouling the air, killing each other off, preaching exclusive paths to heaven and to get back to the business of loving. [14 Oct 1977, p.11]

Crass commercialism aside, the valiant voice cast and championing of animal companions earn “Super-Pets” a slightly longer leash.

Decoding Annie Parker could have shown much more effectively and deeply that the fight against an often ruthless disease can be won by women attacking it from multiple sides. Instead, it sticks mostly to one track, taking audience members on a journey that, sadly, via the movies or their own lives, they already may know a little too well.

Storks delivers its package, but it’s a bundle of just-okay, not joy.

A brutally efficient bit of storytelling, and it makes no unforced errors. It is admirably free of any Spielbergian effort to squeeze sentimentality or inspirational lessons out of what is a complicated and morally complex story.

Feels retro in all the right ways; it's a bump-in-the-night tale that, if not for the occasional glimpse of a cellphone or reference to Adderall, could have been told decades ago.

Curiously flimsy and forgettable.

Regardless of the silliness of the situation -- or, in truth, because of it -- they're a joy to watch.

There is but one reason to sign up for Driving Lessons: to watch Rupert Grint -- Harry Potter's redheaded pal Ron Weasley -- squaring off with Julie Walters, Queen of the English Scenery Chewers.

Between its grating heroine, strident speechifying, derivative plot and draggy tone and tempo, it’s like the redheaded stepchild of “Mean Girls” and “Freaky Friday.”

A brilliant film has been made about the spectacularly corrupt administration of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. It’s called “Videocracy” and it’s available on a streaming service near you. Loro, on the other hand, is a much more mixed bag.

There are times when French Exit beggars belief and tries the viewer’s patience. But as long as the camera stays on Pfeiffer, we’re all hers.

Should we really be so moved and uplifted that a horny, ignorant young man begins to join the human race? Not when our voice of conscience is an off-screen filmmaker issuing pseudo-profound, and ultimately banal, pronouncements about the true nature of love and seduction.

Sylvia plays it safe, and in doing so it becomes little more than just another domestic melodrama devoid of life and, of all things, poetry.

Fails as the big-screen romance it wants to be. The main problem: There's only one heart between the principals, and it beats solely in Chow's chest.

It is piffle done well. A (literally) lighter-than-air story, full of goofs and creeps and fools and silliness, it manages to delight without simpering, make points without lecturing and break hearts and mend them again without turning you weepy.