Fake or not, Unknown White Male doesn't live up to its tantalizing potential.

It’s not hard to imagine “Transformers One” connecting with preteens whose pubescent bodies can be as unwieldy as Orion’s first, clumsy transformation, with wheels where he expects legs and arms where he expects wheels.

There’s nothing unheard of here: a bad guy, a haunted house, a hero. But it’s what The Black Phone does with those simple parts that sparks a spooky connection.

This refreshing alternative to the usual potted biopic provides an absorbing look at a singular, steely determination as it was forged and annealed, long before it made itself known to the world.

Though we were wooed by Diesel -- notwithstanding that rug -- we were less enamored with the film's scraggly script. Find Me Guilty is a courtroom drama (much of the dialogue is culled from court transcripts) without a whole lot of drama going on.

Although it’s intended as a satire, director Feng Xiaogang’s movie has a literary tone, a leisurely pace and relatively few laugh-out-loud moments. It captures not only Lian’s frustration, but also the exasperation of the authorities who must deal with the demanding woman during her 11-year quest for justice.

Telling Lies in America may not be terrible. But it flickers inconclusively between ordinary and not-so-good. [24 Oct 1997]

Although much about In the Fade is compelling, there’s a tonal imbalance to the three-act structure. The gritty early events are followed by a courtroom procedural that drags somewhat, with the film shifting into a devastating climax in the thrillerlike third act.

A decidedly medieval enterprise, darker in text and tone than a Gothic cathedral by the light of the moon.

Most vividly, The Swell Season captures the insistent, borderline-disturbing energy of fandom at its most rabid and psychically intrusive.

For a movie drenched in foreboding in menace, there’s very little narrative tension in “Eddington,” a problem Aster solves with an intrusive sound design and dissonant, clanging piano chords.

A Letter to Momo is unquestionably lovely to look at, but viewers may not be able to shake the feeling that they’ve seen much of it before, and done better.

Fox's film seems to say that the kind of saintly purity that would enable one to walk on water -- or to kill with impunity and without repercussions -- doesn't exist.

Oppenheimer has made a chamber play of and for the damned, and while it never fully escapes the laboratory of ideas, it shows a daring and lethally sharp creative mind at work. More, please.

Its long-winded denouement, in which Grazia runs away rather than be sent to an institution, doesn't bring the story full circle. It just extends it.

It's still pretty darn good, despite its smarty-pants aura.

In Burton's hands, Washington Irving's spooky classic is reincarnated as an overripe, grisly Goth cartoon.

SWEET DREAMS is like "Coal Miner's Daughter," but without the grit. It's a slow, insensate musical biography, with the unfortunate Jessica Lange miscast as country singer Patsy Cline. The physical and emotional opposite of the coarse Cline, Lange looks like a refugee from a dude ranch in her western gear, her delicate features overwhelmed by a raggedy black wig and a rhinestone cowgirl's hat. She croons into the smokey, liquor-soaked night of a honky- tonk saloon, "I Fall to Piecessss . . . ." [11 Oct 1985, p.29]

A Brilliant Young Mind is less stuffy than the usual cinematic ode to British smarts and schooling. But that still can’t save this tale of eccentric genius from being profoundly conventional.

Darkman, as unnerving as a gargoyle, is a classic nightmare, elegant and sumptuous, everything "Batman" should have been. But we're numbed after a while, as we are by the grotesquerie of the nightly news. Then again, maybe that's Raimi's intention. His work is beautiful in its scary way, and never only skin deep.

Vincent & Theo is more than art appreciation, it is a treasure in its own right, unframed and arcing in the projector's light.

Top it off with Pinaud’s final dedication, and The Rose Maker turns into a film that wears its emotions lightly but generously, like dew on a blush-colored petal.

The fact that there's nothing wrong with it -- that there's nary a scenic detail or scrap of dialogue or performance that isn't utterly on the nose -- is precisely what's wrong with it.

With his hard-bitten squint and studied air of scowling detachment, Bale seems to be channeling Clint Eastwood at his most enigmatic and reserved; like Eastwood and his characters, Bale allows both the camera and his fellow characters to come to him, rather than proving his bona fides through more obvious and eager means.

Thorpe doesn’t flinch from whatever awkward or controversial findings his subjects offer up, especially when they concern himself. The filmmaker’s curiosity as a reporter is tempered by an unapologetically subjective perspective.

In the case of Sharper, we’re treated to puzzle boxes within puzzle boxes, each one delivered in sequential chapters — titled after the film’s main characters, Tom, Sandra, Max and Madeline — and unpacked, initially in reverse chronological order, with satisfying, if somewhat predictable, style and suspense. If you’re seeking substance, look elsewhere.

The question that looms large here, lingering long after the closing credits, is whether, despite our human need for forgiveness, absolution is ever truly possible.

Despite its light subject matter, “Phantom” is about something more than an obscure British folk hero (although it is also that). It’s a story about following your passion, not because of the heights this path will take you to, but because it makes you happy.