Perhaps seeking to retain something of the book’s rhythm, Knight and Hallstrom let a very simple story meander for two hours and include episodes that serve no dramatic purpose.

On the plus side is the eye-popping production design, although that is also, like the plot, too, too much, dazzling the eye with more fantastical Atlantean technology and — inexplicably — underwater fire than a Las Vegas edition of Cirque du Soleil. Like the frequently shirtless Momoa, it’s pretty at first, then it just hurts.

Jack Black and Kyle Gass bring characters they created for the HBO program "Mr. Show With Bob and David" to the big screen with mixed success, depending on the age, gender and degree of inebriation of the filmgoer.

Behind all the gore-splattered walls and domestic rancor lies a sweet-and-sour bedtime story of good triumphing over evil. That said, please leave the kids at home.

Can contemporary romance be this flat?

It is, however, a baby boomer's treat to see Faithfull, romancer of Mick Jagger back in the day and a pop siren in her own right, show her qualities as an actor. One is hopeful she'll find her way to other, better projects.

If listing the cast of Love Actually is exhausting, it's even more tiring to watch it.

The film serves an effective marketing tool after all, with some lively footage and funny interviews. It’s just too bad viewers can’t see the actual play.

It’s John Goodman who steals every scene. As a scary loan shark who might cough up cash to get Jim out of his pickle, Goodman elevates the material, showcasing the dark humor that Wyatt was clearly going for. But, overall, that comedy just doesn’t land.

An inconsistent but good-natured ramble, Bustin' Loose looks like a secure investment for Richard Pryor fans.

Directing from his own screenplay, Alan Alda displays an alarming aptitude for the comedy of manners at its most trifling and synthetic. [22 May 1981, p.F1]

The disconnect between Barry’s mature and adolescent selves, a running gag, can be amusing. But coming on the heels of the parade of similar content that we’ve been subjected to for the past several years in the world of superhero films and shows, the device cloys.

Hardly a real pip (indeed, it has been rendered Pip-less), but then this loosey-goosey adaptation isn't aimed at those of us with library cards.

For all his patient, accumulative storytelling, Sayles yields little that doesn't feel trite or overly schematic.

What modest pleasure the film affords is largely thanks to the charisma of its genial stars.

John Frankenheimer has directed 52 Pick-Up in a style so devoid of nuance, the movie almost watches itself. From the crosscutting between Scheider and Ann-Margret that opens the film (an exchange of glances so portentous you think an earthquake is about to hit Los Angeles) to the way every emotion is underlined with tight close-ups, 52 Pick-Up is so aggressively explicit that it might have been made for an audience of trained apes.

By the time it glides -- not lumbers -- to the closing credits, it's also amazingly moving.

There’s a repetitive — but not necessarily redundant — quality to Zombieland: Double Tap, a violent, funny and satisfying sequel to the 2009 cult hit zombie comedy.

Despite their Everyman appeal, Damon and Krasinski don't create much by way of emotional investment, instead becoming mirror images of their most mild-mannered, white-bread selves.

Agora, Alejandro Amenábar's absorbing historical drama, proves that, in an era of movies made for iPhones with artistic ambitions to match, there are still filmmakers willing to swing for the fences.

Just good, goofy fun, for a generation too young to have met Bamm-Bamm.

Take a conventional, awkwardly arranged thriller, add one part meditation on the power of The Press, spice with crummy photography and crummier music, bake till inedible, and voila! "The Mean Season." [19 Feb 1985, p.B6]

It's uncompromisingly bad, single-mindedly off-target.

Reese Witherspoon paces and cries through Rendition in a performance that does as much a disservice to her talent as the movie does to the issues it raises.

Like the hit single on its soundtrack, “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” the movie Trolls is irresistibly charming because of a simple but catchy hook.

Has enough dog slobber, curdled hurl and toe-jam jokes to keep its target audience amused. Older kids and overgrown ones too probably will notice that nothing much ever happens in this belabored suburban variation on "The Little Rascals."

Writer Alan Sharp gets so caught up in the legend and the lush language that he doesn't seem to know he's written "Death Wish" in kilts.

A somewhat formulaic if nevertheless crudely effective manipulation of the figure skating themes that all of us girls love so much.