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.

If Honeymoon in Vegas is funny -- and it is -- it doesn't exactly ring with structural perfection. You wouldn't go to see it again. But with wonderfully bizarre Nicolas Cage scrambling and screaming his way through the proceedings, "Honeymoon" never attempts anything greater than goofy.

The jittery, scattershot camerawork of Greengrass's longtime cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, was used far more coherently in Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker," and the constant blurry close-ups of computer screens and street-level scrums lose their power with each successive cut.

It grinds on and on without mercy. You're in the cross hairs. There is no escape. Where is that Secret Service when you need it?

There's so little authenticity between them, it destroys the story's most crucial element: the love between father and daughter. And finding the gold becomes our only reason to watch.

In Damsel, sibling filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner have created the perfect western for the #MeToo era, delightfully twisting and torquing the traditional woman-in-jeopardy narrative to create a clever, comical and uncannily relevant allegory.

Big, dull and empty -- nobody associated with this production appears to have thought hard about storytelling.

I wanted to buy this story. I really did. But its protagonist floats through the action — filled with jealousy, lust and violence — as though he were anesthetized.

Schrader's second feature, Hardcore, is more confidently made than his first, Blue Collar, but it slips into a similar category: absorbing but unsatisfying. [10 Feb 1979, p.C1]

Inside Moves is sneaky-funny and sneaky-affecting. It's an artfully old-fashioned morale booster celebrating comeback kids: apparent losers, outcasts and hard-luck cases who manage to pull themselves together, buck the odds and reaffirm their pride, dignity and masculinity. [18 Dec 1980, p.C1]

Sometimes a movie comes along that, devoid of a noisy publicity push or festival buzz, quietly ambushes the unsuspecting viewer with an absorbing, skillfully executed, meaningful and thoroughly entertaining experience. Ladies and gentlemen, Borg vs. McEnroe is just that kind of film.

The picture almost beats its theme to death -- the first hour is enough -- but the imaginative designers dreaming up a cleaner future end this Cassandra cry on an upbeat note.

The film would be utterly banal without the novelty of the high-toned Streep in an action role.

One of the snazziest, wittiest productions in the history of the serial.

Viggo Mortensen makes a sensitive and assured directing debut with Falling, a meditation on aging, mortality and slow-drip loss that will resonate deeply with anyone going through the agonies it depicts.

A straightforward, B-movie horror flick — “The Snake Pit” without the prestige — complete with intentional overdosing, electroshock torture and patients threatening each other with a sharpened spoons, when they’re not either screaming or catatonic. It also is very, very bad.

The film's flaws are nothing compared with the pleasures it offers, chiefly in its unapologetic pursuit of old-fashioned sweetness and romance.

It's just sort of trying.

The narrative shifts from romance to adventure the way Cheetah used to hop from foot to foot, but Sommers nevertheless delivers a bully family picture.

Schroeder's refusal to choose moral sides gives the psychological confrontation between the women the kind of weird, mutually accepted form of diseased codependency that Claus and Sunny von Bulow shared in his previous film, Reversal of Fortune. In Single White Female, Schroeder leaves the subtext unresolved, but manages to strike a very raw nerve.

How on earth is it possible for one film to be so tiresome? Spring Breakers isn’t deadly dull despite all the nudity and violence, but because of it.

It’s not the familiarity of this setup that irks, but its silliness.

If you’re a fan of broad black comedy — the kind in which someone blasts a hole in someone else’s head, and then the next camera shot is framed by that gaping aperture — Villains may be your cup of strong tea. The dialogue by writer-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen is less than witty, and peppered with a heavy sprinkling of dully numbing f-bombs.

An elegant drama about power and its frightening uses, The Cat's Meow is the bee's knees.

The film's maudlin focus on the young woman's infirmity and her naive dreams play like the worst kind of Hollywood heart-string plucking.

These dramatic shortfalls make us merely worried that two human beings are in danger, but not two compelling souls. There's your missing ingredient, the human X-factor.

Elemental speaks to the importance of protecting the natural elements: water, air, earth. It’s a beautifully filmed piece, even when it’s showing us white clouds of pollutants billowing out of a smokestack.

This is a movie that imbues even the hoariest quest-peril-life lesson tropes of family animated films and imbues them with new life and rhythm.

Malkovich has a role that coulda-woulda-shoulda been a sensation if he had had a different director and different co-stars.

As always with Östlund, his most profligate flights of fancy tack close enough to reality to ring queasily true.

Surprisingly gripping and moving modern western.

Batkid would be easier to swallow if it focused less on self-congratulation than on the epidemic of unselfishness that inspired the magic in the first place.

Del Toro will probably get an Oscar nod for his Jerry, because the film is so full of Oscar moments, including a cold-turkey detox bit. He rumbles and shivers and screeches and bangs his head on the wall and takes a shower in his clothes. I never believed a second of it.

So much emotional traffic streams through this City of Men that it's easy to miss a narrative turnoff. You won't get lost, but your sense of direction might be profoundly changed.

Basically the filmmaker reminds us of his affection for social misfits, but without much conviction. He's simply too hip to commit himself to his beliefs, and a relentless frivolity prevails. Still Cry-Baby is not without its spit-curled charms, its amusing lines and its funky famous-name cameos.

The result is a movie that, while no classic, can be credited with giving the audience something a bit more substantive than the usual disposable summer fare.

Maria is still worth your attention for the spectacle of a statuesque actress playing a woman who willed herself into statuary.

Hello, My Name Is Doris is a weirdly off-plumb little movie, one that manages to be condescending and compassionate, knowing and blinkered, reassuring and unsettling all at the same time

Vreeland’s film, for the most part, is structured around spoken passages from Beaton’s voluminous diaries, which are read, expressively, by Rupert Everett. The actor ably channels the persona of the self-described “rabid aesthete.”

Fails to generate a real plot, and the awkward moments work better in a context of adolescence. Quirk isn't funny when accompanied by adultery and brutality -- though a couple of lines zing.

In the end, A Tout de Suite leads to not much more of a point than one woman's loss of innocence.

For all the outrageousness of Kevin’s alters, the movie falls oddly flat: less tantalizingly enigmatic “et cetera” than “blah blah blah.”

Wenders weaves all his thematic and narrative threads together into a coherent, philosophical whole. Even with the apocalypse, though, his view isn't despairing. A new direction, a new beginning emerges out of the ashes of the old, image-overloaded world, and with it, a sort of muted optimism.

This French film has a breezy, documentary air that belies the important issues is raises.

Could have been a sensation if a director with a smidgen of moviemaking instinct had taken the helm.

Sweet, strange and at times slightly scary.

Feels as if it's inspired by the old "Road" comedies of Crosby and Hope. Except that it's "On the Road to Hell."

It feels like a retread of several better movies, with a nastier, more bitter edge.

It may give many viewers a licentious flutter, but the highbrow ingredient -- although it desperately wants to be there -- is missing.

The director, Patricia Rozema, has a rare talent: She gets third-rate performances out of first-rate performers with almost startling efficiency. All are bland, some hardly exist at all, and as performance, the whole thing seems a waste.

The result is a big, gushy, emotional, secret-driven, family-obsessive casserole, perhaps facile in some of its resolutions, but so full of good heart and love -- the real kind, which is scratchy, awkward, difficult to express and doesn't conquer all but just some -- that the movie is difficult to resist.

If you like your movies with smooth skin, this might not be your cup of Neutrogena. But if you appreciate satire that reaches out and squeezes you where it hurts, you're going to enjoy yourself thoroughly.

Laggies possesses irrepressible cheer, optimism and an innate sense of ease that often go missing in angstier productions loosely organized under “Aging, fear of.” Unlike its sometimes annoyingly wishy-washy heroine, this is a movie that knows just where it’s going, and finds joy in the journey.

If you go for this kind of fare, you’ll have a good time. If you don’t, you’ll probably find it off-putting.

Deceptively labeled a domestic epic by writer-director James Cameron, the $100 million movie is, in fact, a weird hybrid of action juggernaut, buddy cop caper and reactionary soft-core pornography.

Linklater, who introduced the blithe, but bemused slacker subculture to America in 1991, gets bogged down not only in Bogosian's for-stage structure, but especially his middle-aged perspective.

With his cultivated air of nonchalance, the trivialized, consequence-free violence and reverse-engineering of a plot threaded with convenient twists and unexpected arrivals, Wheatley seems intent upon lowering the stakes at every opportunity.

You’ve got to give Wheatley credit: In the Earth is like nothing else you’ve seen — although some might wish it were a little less, er, original.

The sad truth is that, for all his ambition, cinematic prowess and hyper-confessional candor, Aster doesn’t stick the landing. Instead, he’s made a movie about unresolved ambivalence that itself goes confoundingly unresolved.

A Haunting in Venice isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. But that’s no doubt as intended by Branagh, who seems intent on rescuing Poirot from the reassuring, too-cute world of “cozy” mysteries and grounding him in the real-life loss and emotional dislocation of the postwar eras from which he sprang.

Megamind has presentation in spades. But it also has something even rarer than that. It's got heart.

In a movie about perception, misperception and the ramifications of misunderstanding, it's a bit ironic that the directors can't get out of one another's way.

Oh, the high-octane cast works hard. But there's nothing to suggest anybody off camera tried that hard, which is fatal to a Coen outing.

There's too much slow-mo and too many music cues, but there's a low-key buzz to Wahlberg's scenes with Greg Kinnear.

Wachowski seems to be at war with her audience, rewarding them with deep-cut callbacks one moment only to roll her eyes at the entire enterprise the next.

There are pleasures to be had here, though it wouldn’t be accurate to call “Peter” fun, by any stretch of the imagination. At times this admiring but uninspired making-of movie feels like the cinematic equivalent of the Karl/Marlene character: fawning to the point of sycophancy.

If Shutter Island, a gothic thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, were put to a free association test, the word most likely to come to mind would certainly be "weird."

As a piece of journalism then, Boiler Room is first class.

The argument in Amigo is so heavy-handed - and its execution so crude - that by the time the movie winds its way to a predictable but uninvolving conclusion, nobody will be listening anymore.

The actors make the movie’s memorable characters all the more indelible, even when Love at First Fight loses its sense of originality.

Michael Keaton's the live wire and Henry Winkler's the deadbeat in director Ron Howard's new hit, Night Shift, a whorifying undertaking that solicits its laughs by pairing the quick and the dead.

These delightful movies provide just the right blend of humor and adventure and lack of big-bang special effects to make viewing an enjoyable experience. They rank among the best of Disney's live-action comedies. [06 Aug 2000, p.Y05]

A rousing and scenically breathtaking romance about ranch life in the 1880s, the film should recommend itself strongly to families. [24 Dec 1982, p.14]

The possibilities are intriguing, but more might have been realized. [17 Aug 1984, p.23]

Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough aren't interested in creating a coy whodunit so much as evoking the deeper, less romantic mysteries of people -- and it's riveting.

Notwithstanding the melodrama and the often ham-handed directing, ATL somehow works. A large part of this is thanks to Robinson's skill in evoking the hickory-smoked flavor of the ATL.

The film loses courage (or imagination) and hews to the Spielberg school of climactic denouement, so that teen farce and special effects take over. By the time the thing has played out, that subtle scare/laugh mix is a thing of the past and you feel as though you just walked out of "Breaking Away" or Goonies. Ah well.

A movie that feels written rather than lived; from "The Catcher in the Rye" to "Rushmore," it's a story we've seen in better versions before.

But the greater credit goes to writer/director Towne. In this adult adventure with a twist, he has mixed a good one. [2 Dec 1988, p.n41]

Kristin Canty's surprisingly engrossing documentary, a worthy addition to the growing annals of movies and books advocating for sustainable farming methods.

The callousness with which the terrorists operate is palpable and conveyed with a degree of verisimilitude that borders on sadism. Hotel Mumbai is a clockwork thriller, but man, is it hard to watch.

None of the killings has any suspense, and the capital I irony -- that these people make their living selling death in small mechanical packages and munitions to the world and are now being hunted down by the same devices -- never begins to produce any results. Put it on a level with a mid-series "Halloween."

May not rock the joint. But then, it isn't trying to.

Along with a lot of 10-gallon laughs, Happy, Texas rustles up plenty of goodwill for its larcenous, sexually ambiguous leading men.

A piece of pulp claptrap; it has no insights whatsoever into totalitarian psychology and always settles for the cheesiest kinds of demagoguery and harangue as its emblems of evil. They say they want a revolution? Then give us a revolution, one that's believable, frightening, heroic, coherent and not a teenagers' freaky power trip.

For the uninitiated? Man, it's a bummer.

A suspense comedy as breezy and noncommittal as its title, this sophomore feature from writer-director Sophie Brooks is a deceptively low-fi affair, but it keeps a cheeky premise going for longer than it has any right to.

If you can get past the "Big Chill" setup, there is a fine piece of moviemaking here.

Simon and the Oaks is not merely the story of two boys from opposite sides of the tracks. It's also a larger meditation on life's hardships and what endures: love, art and civilization.

As portrayed by William Moseley, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley and especially Anna Popplewell as Susan, the Pevensies still make for terrific tween protagonists, and Aslan, the majestic mythical lion voiced by Liam Neeson, is still a breathtaking manifestation of the Cat Upstairs.

Jackie Gleason and Tom Hanks team entertainingly in Nothing in Common, a sugar-coated variation on "Death of a Salesman." It proves an uncommonly funny drama, its painful truths brightened by Hanks' clowning glory and Gleason's glowering deadpan. [1 Aug 1986, p.25]

Solo: A Star Wars Story gets the job done with little fuss, but also with precious little finesse. It might arguably succeed in teeing up the cinematic narrative that would change movies forever. But in both substance and execution, it bears but a whisper of the revolution to come.

A frantic, occasionally funny, finally enervating bricolage of special effects, explosive set pieces, sardonic one--liners and notional human emotions, this branch of the Marvel franchise tree feels brittle and over--extended enough to snap off entirely.

So drippy and slippery you'll feel that you're hiding in Kevin Costner's nasal passages during the filming of "Waterworld."

And though brilliantly acted, it's not. For some reason, the director and the writer (Paul Bernbaum) have chosen an exceedingly awkward path into the materials. They break the narrative into two strands and play them off each other in cheap and easy ways for insubstantial effect.

Writers Jim and John Thomas and first-time director Stuart Baird have come up with a surprisingly deft variation on the airplane hijack genre, one that relies on subterfuge and suspense rather than explosives and body counts even though Steven Seagal is in it.

The result is a film that’s engaging enough, but choppily paced and oddly inert. Beyond an audacious opening shot and some period-appropriate needle drops — Nancy Sinatra, Malvina Reynolds and Vanity Fare among them — Call Jane is also decidedly unstylish.

For a while, the film is screamingly funny, but the further it goes, the more muddled the narrative becomes.

A double fish out of water structure -- first she's the fish, then he's the fish -- but the movie doesn't go anywhere with it, mostly because the characters are such nullities.

The actresses work hard to give spark to some of the predictable scenes and dialogue in the screenplay by Kate Lanier and Takashi Bufford. Their fine work eclipses the fact that the film gives us very little information about most of them.

If you didn't know that it was based on a true story, Skin would be a little hard to believe.

Harrison plays Rickey with a jutting jaw, squinting eye and hoarse bark straight out of the Irascible Old Coot playbook, his character constantly invoking God and the almighty dollar to justify what became known as Rickey’s “noble experiment.”

LaBeouf is appealing as the frustrated shut-in, and comic-relief cred goes to Aaron Yoo, who plays his neurotic buddy Ronnie. The ending, though, drags, and the film quickly shifts from a clever homage to "Rear Window" to a bad parody of "The Silence of the Lambs."

The Good House has a lot of potential and features some attractive amenities, including dramatic conflict and a seasoned cast. But like a subpar property, it just doesn’t show well in a highly competitive market.

The film occasionally drags -- a money transfer scene set in a department store lasts longer than several geologic epochs -- but it's so funny and the plot twists are so sudden and violent it's great fun.

Sure it's slight, but also as cute as the curly tail on its tender protagonist.

Fitfully amusing but nothing remarkable

Dual takes awhile to get into gear, ending on an unresolved note. But it’s a funny and provocative struggle over the meaning of life.

Despite all the talent, form triumphs over substance. Director Hugh (Chariots of Fire) Hudson clutches, and climactic scenes miss their mark. Greystoke is curious entertainment, less satisfying than Planet of the Apes, which begs the same question: noble savage or naked ape? [30 Mar 1984, p.21]

Fortunately, the monsters are actually kind of a kick. And isn’t that why you go to see a movie like this anyway?

Often funny (just listen to Becky fulminate against Harry Potter), but it's also a scary.

Seems to me, teenage suicide isn't that funny, and nothing in this movie changed my mind.

Here, Lyne indulges more in misdirection than in direction; he's a magician turning a sleazy trick. But even his technical skill breaks down. The picture is garbled and cliched.

Thanks to an accomplished cast, anchored by Elsner and Wepper, and observant filmmakers, very little in Cherry Blossoms is lost in translation.

The action and dialogue find the same squalid level in time for the climactic scene, the cruel humiliation of a central character. That's when sensitive viewers should do what the bloody-minded Joe could never imagine: Walk away from the mess he has made.

Tells Yuri's story with the same bravado and stylishness as Scorsese at his finest, with bigger-than-life characters and situations splashing across the screen in breathtaking scale.

Adapted by Craig Lucas from his Broadway play, "Prelude" is worth watching for the human interaction, and for the pleasure of watching a love story with engaging partners.

Bad movies have a way of writing their own epitaphs.

With its musty scenario of a dissolute middle-aged man and a clingy, devouring child-woman, 60-year-old co-writer/director/producer Polanski's film smacks of wish-fulfillment and self-justification.

Visually, it’s spectacular. Conceptually, it’s jaw-dropping to simply considering the effort that went into this. The story, however, doesn’t always hold its own.

Puenzo has a knack for plumbing the heads and hearts of teenage girls. The director coaxes a mesmerizing, unmannered performance out of Bado, who is making her feature-film debut.

It’s rote, sure, but undeniably rousing.

To his credit, Heinz leaves their relationship hovering in a state of unresolved potential. If only more of the movie’s scenes were like that: left to play out naturally, without the need to hammer home a theme of coming together.

Though slow and overlong, the movie is at least scenic family fare. This easily understood yarn should appeal primarily to boys who still think girls are yucky.

Begin Again may not always swing, but it makes up for that in sincerity and a welcome willingness to ambush expectations.

A small, self-contained gem of incisive writing, superb acting and rich, expressive visuals.

You keep expecting Shopgirl to get funny or sad or poignant; it never does. It just starts, then it's over.

Director Phillip Noyce has made a serious movie that switches to almost popcorn entertainment.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is like the family movie equivalent of a Krabby Patty: It tastes fine and will satisfy some cravings. But it’s ultimately a product cranked out to make money and keep our consumer-driven society, much like Bikini Bottom’s, chugging along without significant disruption.

Ocean's Thirteen is too complicated for its own mediocrity.

There are laughs -- lots of them, too -- but at some point the source of the laughs -- Vaughan's Ricky, a yammering loose cannon -- goes from entertaining to obnoxious.

If Southpaw leaves you hungry, this much is also true: The "food" was good in the first place.

The complications of international diplomacy have been ridiculously simplified -- a bare room with an obviously pasteboard view symbolizes Soviet duplicity. Scenes that ought to be suspenseful are put into flashbacks, so that you know in advance that the dangers were survived. [18 Apr 1980, p.19]

The wispy premise of Newlyweeds, written and directed by Shaka King, is kept afloat by its attractive, youthfully vital cast (along with some well-timed comic relief by way of some familiar faces).

It's too bad there's not more substance to The Duchess, because there's lots of acting and, as is required of a Brit-styled period piece, lushness galore.

New Order recalls 2019’s Oscar-winning Parasite, but unlike that film’s superficial rich-people-bad/Quentin-Tarantino-good message, this one is far more grounded, both in reality and genuinely original thinking.

Though the movie suggests that Hearst was brainwashed -- or at least coerced through fear to act as she did -- it maintains a safe distance from any definitive position. In the end, we have not come any closer to an understanding of Patty Hearst. But ambiguity, in this case, isn't an indication of complexity; it's a refuge. It's an admission of failure.

Resourceful, if occasionally forced, teen melodrama.

As the chief avatar for parental distress, Carell is sympathetic if not always entirely convincing: The toughest moments of Beautiful Boy simply seem out of his range as an actor, especially when he takes reportorial zeal one step too far by trying hard drugs himself.

Starting out as a wacky little comedy about a mousy Spanish couple who become unwitting porn stars, Torremolinos 73 suddenly morphs, during the third act, into a far more sober and tender story about the lengths to which a man will go to give his wife what she wants.

It’s sprightly enough to make a lot of audiences and Warner Bros. bean-counters happy, but it also confirms that one of the most distinct visionaries in American film history has become a corporate repurposing machine. It’s not insane, and that hurts.

As provocative as the questions it raises are — questions about connoisseurship vs. populism, personal expression vs. the market, and the dark arts of press, publicity and shrewd self-invention — the film’s achievements stay on the surface of those themes rather than plunging deeper.

It's a love letter to the myriad ways, large and small, that mail handlers change lives the world over.

Takes its absurd premise and keeps itself narrowly focused, pushing its heroic cast through obstacle after obstacle.

The comedy is strained to the point of lameness, most of it exaggerated clumsiness, stupidity or inappropriateness.

So chock-full of stereotypes as to be a filmic Southern Country Safari.

The film’s patina of richly textured grime lends the film a gloomy, claustrophobic beauty that serves its mood, as well as its satisfyingly misanthropic message: Greed isn’t good, and most people aren’t either.

Like so many modern movies, The Bounty appears interesting and even spellbinding when preoccupied with settings and textures, but maddeningly obtuse when obliged to clarify basic dramatic conflicts. [17 May 1984, p.E8]

It's pretty elementary.