When the tone goes from daffy to dour in the course of a harrowing plot point, the story becomes more forced than fierce.

Romero and his original partners apparently made no money from the original, and Romero admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the reasons for remaking the film were "purely financial." It shows...This Night of the Living Dead is resurrected, but it's never brought to life.

Compared to Escape From New York, the weapons are bigger and the violence is more extensive, although it’s toned down by today’s excessive standards. There are also greater special effects this time, involving holograms and nuclear-powered submarines. But Escape From L.A. is more enjoyable in a playful way.

Eddie the Eagle leaves viewers buoyed by satisfactions unique to classic come-from-behind stories. Even when it’s as ungainly and cravenly audience-pleasing as its protagonist, it soars.

Though creepy Jeffrey Combs and beach boy Bruce Abbott return as West and Cain, producer Brian Yusna has replaced Stuart Gordon in the director's chair, without bringing new life to the affair. Even the jokes in the Woody Keith/Rick Fry screenplay seem refried.

At 85, Ian McKellen doesn’t have many performances left in him, so any movie that lets the actor carve ham with such exuberant relish as “The Critic” is worth his time and ours.

Writer-director Gerard Johnstone and co-writer Akela Cooper, both returnees, keep the pace fast enough to paper over the incomprehensible plot and, more important, retain the first movie’s self-mocking humor. The result is enjoyably over-the-top summer junk, which, honestly, a lot of us could use right now.

Bobby, even if it suffers from a few silly scenes, gets more right than it does wrong.

The name is enough to clue you in that this is not highbrow humor. In fact, it will appeal mostly to those who can appreciate basic juvenile humor.

You know something's wrong when screen writers James Orr and Jim Cruikshank have to jury-rig a couple of chase plots, involving an over-the-hill hit man (Eli Wallach) and an aging detective (Charles Durning) just to move things along.

Arteta keeps the pace fast and frenetic and doesn’t mind spotlighting potty jokes... but even the bathroom humor is forgivable when the end result is a crowd-pleasing comedy and a surprisingly entertaining treat for the whole family.

Feels more like "Porky's" with marinara sauce than "Summer of '42."

"5" has none of the pizazz of "1" and "3" and is only marginally better than "2" and "4," the worst of the "Elms."

Yi's self-regarding, ironic tone makes the whole thing feel like a setup, designed more as an indie-chic calling card than a sincere inquiry.

The film has no discipline, but that's okay because it has no suspense, either.

It’s an engrossing, if complicated and twisty, story, with plentiful sci-fi action and a provocative subtext about the nature of the human soul. At times, however, the balance between those two things feels off.

A good-looking, engrossing, true tale, superficially much like 1981 best-picture winner "Chariots of Fire," but without that Olympic drama's themes of antisemitism and faith. If The Boys in the Boat is missing something, it's substance.

The humor includes enough slapstick and gross-out gags to keep the kids entertained, but there are clever callbacks and meta-jokes for older audiences to chuckle at as well.

Greta might pretend to turn the tables by presenting the sexualized predation of a young woman at the hands of a female malefactor instead of a male one. But the fetishistic leer is just as troubling and offensive. Disturbance eventually gives way to derangement in a story that grows exponentially more irritating the more preposterous it gets. As Morton might say: When it rains, it pours.

A work of either a profoundly transgressive genius or a goofball high on Pez and patio sealant. It could come from no normal collection of brain cells.

This isn’t a sports movie so much as a procedural about backroom dealings, double-crosses and high-stakes trades.

What starts out as a moody arthouse flick rapidly becomes an uneven B-movie yukfest (sometimes intentional, sometimes not), with low-budget concessions to the Hollywood cop-versus-killer industry.

Still, there’s something about Screenlife that’s not just gimmicky — like the found-footage craze that preceded it — but numbing. All this technological terrorism should be terrifying, but it mostly just feels like eyestrain.

Yes, it’s a coming-of-age story: If Boogie were fully evolved, woke and enlightened, there would be no "Boogie." But the film is just rough and unformed enough to suggest that Huang might still have some growing up to do as a filmmaker, too.

Another sentimental mushfest disguised as a movie.

The most screamingly obvious reaction to Gerry is: what a load of pseudo-arty you-know-what.

The idea of Sean Connery and Dustin Hoffman as a father-and-son act is daft enough to make Family Business an object of curiosity. [15 Dec 1989, p.E1]

During the lulls in which characters are talking (which happens with surprising frequency considering the film’s title), Cocaine Bear goes into snoring hibernation.