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.

Crouse is stiff and Hutton's a bit sappy, but Lone's performance would melt an iceberg's heart. Despite a rubbery forehead and crude make-up work, Lone is convincing. With grunts, moans, howls and mime, he presents a stoic, depressed, trapped human being. [13 Apr 1984, p.21]

This often macabre comedy allows us to doff such civilized traits as taste and decency. We're free to laugh at anything, and we do. Oh, the shame -- and the good time.

On Chesil Beach can feel like observing a deli worker slice a small piece of rancid cured meat, in increasingly transparent slivers of prosciutto-like thinness, and then holding them up to the light for inspection.

It would be nice to know if the troubling images we see are a sweeping problem or just a small glimpse of a minority.

Seven Veils doesn’t crash to Earth, but it also never quite frees itself from the notebook of its ideas to become the gripping emotional thriller it seems to want to be.

Gets more and more complex until it's almost laughable; it has too many beats, too many reverses, and in the end seems unbelievable.

The ending is neither outlandish nor foreseeable, which is its own impressive accomplishment.

An American teen encounters peculiar horrors at a remote German resort in Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo,” a kooky sci-fi genre hybrid that crackles with offbeat turns and creature scares as it unfolds against a backdrop of deceptively serene forests and cheeky Euro-kitsch.

It’s a fun movie to see with a rip-roaring midnight crowd; watched on its own, it’s a little depressing. You can only shock the monkey so many times before the shock wears off.

A blandly middling crowd pleaser.

In addition to presenting a parable about the collapse of society, Amirpour’s film is also a kind of postmodern Adam-and-Eve story.

The problem with S.O.B. is that it reveals another sort of failure on Edwards' part: his fondness for dwelling on this low point in his career. He neglects to update the scenario or liberate it from the self-pity he overindulged in at the time. In fact, it's residual self-pity that undermines S.O.B. as a promising satire of Hollywood mores and hypocrisies. Edwards' tendency to feel sorry for himself keeps intruding on the potential wackiness. [2 July 1981, p.C1]

By lovingly examining these dishes’ cultural underpinnings, Hawk serves up an insightful introduction to a food scene at the cross-section of political strife and culinary excellence — not a full meal, exactly, but an enticing appetizer.

Passionately anticipated and much ballyhooed, the film, alas, is little more than a foppish, fang de siecle costume drama. Its pulse barely registers.

How many times can we be awestruck by Day-Glo Gumbies? And why do these creatures always travel with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?

A whodunit so bafflingly constructed that you can't even figure out what it is, so the whodun part is superfluous.

Although “As I AM” sometimes gets lost in the weeds of the club scene and Goldstein’s personal entanglements, it approaches the central irony of his life with both clarity and sadness, honoring its subject with a frankness he would have appreciated.

In The Man Without a Face, Mel Gibson reminds us that he doesn't need one-liners and explosive special effects to warrant our attention. Gibson, as actor and first-time director, is not only self-assured in these dual roles, but he seems relieved to let the drama carry him, rather than the reverse. The result is a movie that's both heartwarming and heart-wrenching.

In some ways, Contact is just like the universe: big, star-bright and seemingly endless. Not to mention that it begins with a big bang, gradually falls into a lull and finally succumbs to entropy.

Major League is shamelessly formulaic. At the beginning, when it uses Randy Newman's ironic ode to Cleveland ("City of light, city of magic"), the movie has a lovely tone, and briefly, you feel a surge of anticipation, as if the people making it might actually have an original point of view or some feel for the game. All hope is dashed, though, early on, when you realize that they are cannibalizing every other baseball movie. (Newman wrote the music for "The Natural.") This is movie-making by rip-off.

Streep makes it work. Streep makes it fun .

Hello I Must Be Going isn't heavy lifting, to be sure. But it's still worthy of a little end zone dance.

Touched With Fire is by no means a perfect film. The production values and melodrama sometimes seem better suited for a small-screen movie. But the drama deserves points for its measured, realistic view of mental illness.

An action thriller that adamantly refuses to deliver action or thrills, instead engaging in a brand of arty, self-conscious formalism rarely seen outside repertory theaters or cinema-studies classrooms.

Ultimately, this is a universal story about how these wild mothers, like their human counterparts, sacrifice again and again - all to make sure their children are happy, healthy and well fed.

A sometimes inspired but sputtering parody of the fashion industry. It's desperate to please, yet never unzips the fancy pants of haute couture.

Hoffman introduces a memorable sensuality to the movie.

Nicholson looks severly overmatched against Lange but the basic problem is that the filmmakers miss the mutuality of the obsession envisioned by Cain -- an attraction that enslaves Frank and Cora, inspiring murder and betrayal in the wake of adulterous passion. [20 March 1981, p.C1]

It's a remarkably entertaining movie, thanks in part to a first-rate cast and a director who knows you can't make a point without calling everyone to attention.

When Words on Bathroom Walls is at its sunniest and most blithe, the moral of the story feels a little more like a punchline than is appropriate.

The film's real problem is that it can't seem to make up its mind about whether it wants to frighten us or make us laugh.

Dragon imparts these pearls of wisdom with verve and delight, in a telling that is as visually impressive as it is emotionally stirring.

The Good Shepherd is serious adult moviemaking, a truly surprising effort from De Niro, a man deeply interested in the art, craft and psychology of espionage. He seems to believe that we'd better be interested in it, because it's interested in us.

Surprisingly mawkish teen film.

Efficient, precise, carefully calibrated and terrifically entertaining.

A crashing letdown.

In the end, we're treated to an overture of possibilities rather than a satisfying film.

As the minutes tick down, the sentimentality picks up. But chalk that up to the enigmatic creatures, which grab hold of human hearts no matter one's politics or affiliations. Whales just have a way of bringing people together.

For audiences interested in an earnest, inspirational story, full of timeless messages and beautiful animation, this is a lovely reminder of how to live life with purpose and joy.

Ambitious, affecting, unwieldy and haunting, it's an eccentric, densely atmospheric, morally hyper-aware masterpiece that refuses to follow the strictures of conventional cinematic structure, instead leading the audience on a circuitous journey down the myriad rabbit holes that comprise modern-day Manhattan.

Though there’s no reinvention of the genre here, Louder’s mesmerizing mouse proves more than a match for the assembled tomcats — all exuding machismo — with whom she must deal.

Under the direction of George Tillman Jr., these two young performers exercise remarkable restraint, never milking the material for unearned tears.

Reinhold, as a little boy in a big man's body, looks and acts more like a sheep in shell shock. Savage, however, is an able comic when he takes on his father's yuppie persona, demanding Grey Poupon at the school cafeteria and downing martinis after a hard day in the principal's office.

Part cop caper, part coo-fest, it is a feel-good movie, a jolly little button-pusher about a street-smart cop who brings law and order to a classroom full of unruly but adorable youngsters.

Stallone is feral this film, physically powerful; he's muddy and bloody, but he's still pretty even in a tarpaulin. He's the wild child coming home. First Blood is good to the last drop, if you like that sort of thing. [22 Oct 1982, p.17]

Full of visual dazzle, engaging characters and a reasonably sprightly narrative.

The story of The Boxtrolls, in lesser hands, might have turned out only so-so. Under Laika’s loving, labor-intensive touch, it takes on a kind of magic.

As a rule, the filmmakers manufacture fake climaxes every 10 or 15 minutes, poop out and lapse into forgetfulness, just as if they were structuring the material for television. Norma Rae seems to reflect the confusion of veteran filmmakers so eager to please that they cease to think straight.

All the world is a farce, Ansari seems to say, while suggesting that it can still be saved. But like a breezy sitcom episode, his big-screen creation doesn’t feel the need to offer solutions.

If there’s a quibble with the film, it’s that it glosses over what it’s like to grow up in the glare of worldwide celebrity.

An animated feature (showing in 3-D in select theaters), has a couple of clever tricks that make it worth wearing those dumb, uncomfortable glasses. But this would be as delightful and attractive a production without the gimcrackery.

There are corners of this quiet little film — less a plot-driven narrative than a two-person character study — that feel powerfully true, in ways that surprise.

The question is why the time, talent and treasure of such energetic and even gifted artists have been marshaled in such a disgusting and trivial genre exercise and what viewers are supposed to get out of it. Isn't life hard enough?

A boring, choppy dramedy.

A truly satisfying holiday picture, the kind everyone can enjoy.

The Natural is a likable baseball saga, a big, old messy metaphor that says: You may be middle-aged, America, but you can still hit one out of the park. [11 May 1984, p.25]

The movie's very smoothness may set viewers up for a letdown. It's a low-key exercise in genre suspense and romance that fails to generate a high level of excitement or deliver classic dynamic thrills. [06 Mar 1981, p.C1]

The dopest thing about The Wackness is Thirlby, who, after supporting turns in "Juno" and "Snow Angels," is quickly becoming reason enough to see any film she's in.

A diverting hit-and-miss satirical anthology in the same spirit as The Groove Tube and Tunnelvision. [13 Oct 1977, p.B15]

There’s no doubt that Villeneuve can make a movie; he’s developed a strong cinematic voice. It’s tantalizing to imagine what he could do with a really fine story.

A low-key, high-tech, out-of-touch tale of a teen who builds his own personal nuclear projectile for a science project. It's an ambivalent adventure patterned on the likes of WarGames, but without the humor or action. [13 June 1986, p.29]

Tost can’t match the oddball inspiration of his influences, and the results simply feel forced.

Sad to say, the new Matthew Barney opus, Drawing Restraint 9, made in collaboration with his main squeeze, Bjork, doesn't advance the Barney oeuvre an inch past where he left it with his massive, megalomaniacal opus known as the "Cremaster" series.

Even at its most contrived, The Hero exerts a soothing attraction not unlike the man at its center.

A film that gets in your face and stays there, it ultimately subverts all that effort with its improbably upbeat conclusion. Still, the performances are technically knockouts, the kind that leave your underbelly churning.

"Spring, Summer" fans should only have their appreciation of that film expanded by seeing this rougher take on similar themes.

Slap Shot comes at you like a boisterous drunk. At first glance it appears harmlessly funny, in an extravagantly foul-mouthed sort of way. However, there's a mean streak beneath the cartoon surface tha makes one feel uneasy about humoring this particular durnk for too long.

Listening to “Sweet Caroline” feels like a hug — warm and fuzzy to some, smothering to others. Watching Song Sung Blue has a similar effect.

Before You Know It isn’t a deep movie, or a hilarious one, and Utt and Tullock probably don’t expect it to be. But it is, in its undemanding, almost effortless way, warm and wise and watchable enough to be just this side of wonderful.

Even as Brick Lane manages to sidestep one formula, it falls prey to another.

Once Were Brothers is enormously valuable, if only as a reminder of what an extraordinary run this extraordinary convergence of talents enjoyed until their final show on Thanksgiving Day in 1976 (meticulously captured by Scorsese in the magnificent documentary “The Last Waltz”).

10 Years doesn't completely avoid the road-not-taken theme. It does, however, neatly navigate around many of the potholes, finding a novel and nuanced approach to addressing the ways that our mistakes make us better, wiser and more human.

The plot simply doesn’t have enough juice.

This is a one-riff movie and instant cult classic.

A mediocre production that nevertheless will strike a deep and resonant chord with viewers.

Like most plays transferred to screen, Oleanna still bears traces of grease paint. Actually, all the cold cream in the world wouldn't make this verbose material in the least cinematic -- not that Mamet has put much effort into adapting the original anyway. Most of the action takes place in the professor's office. Luckily, it has a window through which we, like bored grade schoolers, can escape from time to time.

Broken Arrow, a deafening, brain-deadening action thriller, takes a mighty blase approach to nuking Denver.

Binder has set a difficult bar -- to make a funny, sad, original movie about the healing power of not necessarily healing -- and he just manages to clear it.

The love language of the Russo family is shouting — one of several cliches deployed here — but Romano and his co-writer, Mark Stegemann, deftly deflate and dodge most other stereotypes, creating a funny and touching father-and-son tale about aspiration and finding your own path.

The humor is generic. And the film’s most obvious comparison — it’s been called “Toy Story” with animals — only points up the one thing “Pets” lacks, and that any animal lover will tell you their furred and feathered friends have, in spades: personality.

Buried inside this grab bag of hits and misses is a pretty good point about the descent of television news into a miasma of 24/7 speculation, fluff and, most of all, hype.

The "Godfather" films transcended their mobster genre; New Jack City doesn't, but it's a great genre film, edgy, vibrant and full of urgent color.

For my taste a little bit of Steve Martin goes a long way. Moreover, a rickety vehicle like The Jerk is apt to wear out as aspiring comic star's welcome in one swift stroke.

For all its melancholy and grey, snowy landscape, The Motel Life never feels totally hopeless, thanks in large part to colorful ancillary characters (not to mention occasional trips into Frank’s mind).

As the tropes pile up faster than tears in a Nicholas Sparks novel, so do the bodies, dispatched in increasingly inventive and grisly ways.

Servin and Vamos clearly have a healthy sense of the absurd, which they use, like good satirists, to highlight hypocrisy, greed and corruption.

Like so many recent films — “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” “Belfast,” “The Fabelmans,” “Empire of Light” — Babylon wants to pay tribute to the medium that brings us all together in the dark. But it also doesn’t miss an opportunity to alienate the audience at every turn.

Some of it sounds, quite frankly, nuts. And a few of Lomborg's enemies have said as much. But throwing tons of money at the problem with little result? That also sounds kind of crazy.

As filmmaking, the movie is straightforward enough — unobtrusively shot, sensitively scored, lacking only a sense of urgency in its pacing. As a memory play and a launchpad for both a writer-director and the young actress playing her, it’s a very good start. And as your latest reminder that Laura Linney can do just about anything, it’s a bracing kick in the pants.

A misbegotten marriage of sweet and sour.

Red Heat is poorly, or even indifferently, made. It's a joyless exercise, and too much angry resignation seeps in for it to be very funny or very entertaining.

Oculus director Mike Flanagan has crafted a satisfyingly old-fashioned ghost story that, in its evocation of shivery dread, is the most unnerving poltergeist picture since “The Conjuring.”

Without the benefit of deeper psychological spadework, The Kings of Summer stays resolutely on the surface, resembling more of an extended sitcom than a memorable movie on a par with the films it references.

The film only succeeds in establishing a remarkable new low in remakes.

If Broken English occasionally falls prey to a bit too much self-conscious lethargy, it's still a welcome chance to see Posey at her flighty, edgy best.

The filmmakers’ focus-shifting approach to telling this story is smart and effective. But its true power lies in the history lesson it eventually segues to, landing with a gut punch.

Director Geoffrey Wright, who also wrote the script, is thoroughly ambivalent in his storytelling. It's in his deft filmmaking that Wright slips: By whipping up a visceral ride through a tunnel of hate, and by making several characters likable, he creates a parable of race and rage that offers no moral position.

Let it swindle you; it's part of the fun. In fact, it's all of the fun.

The worst mistake is the screenplay, which not only cuts everything into superficial pieces but fails to make authentic moments of anything. In the end, White Oleander isn't an adaptation of a novel. It's a flashy, star-splashed reduction.

It never really feels like we've gotten to know the man himself, leaving the figure at the heart of I'll Sing for You a cipher.

The one thing The To Do List lacks is emotion. Carey is wise not to let the movie get bogged down by too much drama, but Brandy’s scientific approach to losing her virginity makes her seem almost robotic. That being said, it’s an amusing twist that the most emotional characters are Cameron and Brandy’s father.

There isn't much conceptual or stylistic integrity in Tightrope. It's calculated to function at the most expedient and spurious levels of nightmarish artifice. [17 Aug 1984, p.D1]

It's a fascinating film, but after a while, the digital photography wears out its gritty welcome.

Madsen is a much better actress than is usually found in such a role. However, if you don't like splashes of blood or bees swarming out of bodies, you may want to think twice about this one.

If a hero is one who perseveres and never gives up, this is one Hero that should have quit when it was ahead.

“Iron” opens a window to an exclusive club and gives valuable insight into a small, dedicated and proudly unique community.

The tussle between David and The Needle seems to release a Pandora's Box of outrageous scenes. [24 July 1981, p.D8]

The Last Rodeo may not be bodacious, but it’s a satisfying ride.

The inherent superiority of the written word notwithstanding, Batra has done a credible and even commendable job of translating Barnes’s intricate prose to the screen, opening up some of its corners, burrowing into its time shifts and, most gratifyingly, elaborating on a few otherwise marginal characters.

All the modest virtues of the original film have been discarded in favor of lurid excess. What was once unpretentious, suggestive, implicit and erotically tragic has become bombastic, literal-minded, explicit and erotically stupefying.

This may be a buddy comedy on its surface, but Bicycling With Molière also gives some insight into the way art imitates life, and also the way life informs art.

The Karate Kid can't really brushoff the conventional showdown it's incited, so the movie adds the obligatory action payoff to its less expected and more substantial rewards. The filmmakers can't help overbalancing on melodramatic excess from time to time, but their mistakes never obliterate the civilized wisdom of Miyagi's outlook: "Have balance, everything be better." [22 June 1984, p.B1]

While “Dog” is often funny, it’s not a comedy. Though it’s often sad, it’s not a tragedy either. Instead, it’s a sensitive, engaging, realistic look at what happens when a soldier’s toughest battle starts when they come home.

Some of the intuitions and sentiments shared by Ashby and the cast result in affecting interludes, but on the whole the material is too diffuse and complacently wistful to accomplish its ultimate goal of getting you there, breaking your heart, scaling the summit of old Mt. Pathos.

Ultimately, the movie tells a story about two lives: complicated, filled with both love and pain, but well and fully lived.

It's an uninspired blend, integrating the boys from "Porky's" and the girls from "Foxes" into a vehicle resembling the worst of "American Graffiti" and the best of "Rock and Roll High School." [13 Aug 1982]

Star Maps has youthful flaws -- all the Anglos, this film’s "others," are impotent or at least twisted -- but it is itself evidence of filmmaking’s power over Arteta, and his future power in the fantasy biz.

Unfortunately, the experience of actually watching the movie is less compelling than the circumstances of its making.

The tale is propelled by its characters and buoyed by the film's warm and loving spirit.

Ultimately, the movie's biggest crime is its inability to convey the delicate, damaged texture of Kahlo's life, but also the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat.

The camera, freed to glide, flows as if through the old man's memory, discovering both the glory of his life and the tragedy.

The notions of the good man's complicity through inertia and of innocence tarnished by association are ones that have been more powerfully explored before.

Magic Mike XXL tries mightily — if unsuccessfully — to match its predecessor’s stature as a camp classic, the epitome of trashy summer fun for the whole pansexual, polymorphously perverse, omni-libidinous family.

Rocky II doesn't merely recall its Oscar-winning predecessor, a modestly produced but astutely calculated inspirational fable about the rehabilitation of a down-and-outer. It slavishly repeats the plot of Rocky, achieving differentiation only in dubious forms: soap opera detours, delaying tactics and an ugly new mood of viciousness surrounding a rematch between the boxers. [15 June 1979, p.B1]

Produced by the New York Times, which broke the story, and with its authors Melena Ryzik, Cara Buckley and Jodi Kantor appearing on camera and listed as consulting producers, “Sorry” sticks a finger in a wound that, for some of those involved, hasn’t quite healed.

There’s the potential for some real emotion here, as well as a touch of real-world commentary about a woman with 21st-century sensibilities trapped in a 19th-century world that feels, at times, medieval. But we can only catch glimpses of it beneath all the flickering layers of paint.

Impressive, big-scale scenes, such as a train derailment from a snow-covered bridge. And the vocal performances of Ryan and Cusack give us a real sense of romance.

There isn't enough magic in the bag this time. Although Parkes and Lasker produce a set of primates guaranteed to charm the upholstery off the theater seats, there is little else.

What Rulfo needs, unfortunately, is what too many trendy directors forsake: some social context, some succinct voice-overs and some talking heads to put the serious issues (urban poverty, urban stress, environmental degradation, corruption) into perspective.

Hollywood loves the heroics of good intentions, but this movie is just as interested in the road to hell.

A poignant portrait of one woman who has loved and lost, and another who never had a love to lose.

Epitomizes the best and the worst of what animated filmmaking has become in an era dominated on the one hand by ever more sophisticated computerized imagery and, on the other, by the grasping, increasingly grating desire to be hip.