Given the creative recession in the movies, you could do worse than sit through Patriot Games. If this would-be blockbuster slavishly follows summer movie guidelines, it does so well -- or adequately. Neither poisonous nor great, it never loses sight of its mall-movie mandate, to defend American hearth and home against invincible boy-toy bogymen.

The movie's nowhere near the inspired funniness of its predecessors. But it often displays the same spirit. It's strung end to end with sight gags. Some fall flat on their faces. But, by sheer weight of numbers, many of them work. It depends on your ability to lower yourself into -- or steer stoically clear of -- the idiocy pit.

On the big screen, and particularly in the close-ups, it's not hard to see why Murphy's the current box office champ. He may have an adult's vocabulary, but he's still got a kid's frenetic energy and a wildly elastic face that demands both laughter and attention. His material, which trades on racial and sexual stereotypes even as it skewers them, may be offensive to some, but for others he remains a hell of a good yuck.

The script of Three Amigos (Martin's collaborators were producer Lorne Michaels and singer Randy Newman) plays like it was slapped together by a few friends with a tape recorder enjoying a charming weekend at the beach. You can't tell one amigo from another, the gags are silly (a "singing bush") and far between, the dialogue full of inane wordplay. Sample: "We could take a walk and you could kiss me on the veranda." "The lips would be fine."

What's wrong with The 'Burbs? It's not funny. Why is it not funny? It's just not. Not remotely, momentarily, intermittently or otherwise funny.

Sami Blood is a beautiful, haunting film, anchored by a startlingly accomplished lead performance.

Breakneck chases, high-altitude jeopardy and split-second rescues upstage everything save for a flowery moral: No technological breakthrough is more disruptive than a mother’s love.

O’Reilly’s ambitions notwithstanding, “Moscow” is uneven because of the inescapable nature of such interlocking narratives: some land better than others.

For all its late-in-the-game silliness, The Exception is a solidly acted, well-told tale about how love of country holds up in the face of other, less nationalistic passions.

Despicable Me 3 disappoints, if only mildly, not because it’s bad, but because it only aspires to be good enough.

It’s a movie that not only puts human imperfections and incongruities on display, but also revels in them.

On its own terms, The Beguiled is a finely crafted, gemlike exercise in surface tension and subterranean stirrings. Seen through the prism of history and culture, it’s difficult not to feel that some essential truth has been lost in translation.

Blame It on Rio, ha. Rio is innocent. Let's put the blame on executive producer Gelbart along with Caine and Bologna. Unlike the starlettes they've taken in tow, these three guys are old enough to know better.

The charismatic comedienne pulls the slipshod spy adventure Jumpin' Jack Flash out of the fire. [10 Oct 1986, p.N29]

As charming as Baby Driver strives to be, the appeal starts to curdle once Wright makes his fetishistic aims clear.

Much of the film’s appeal is from the quiet determination of the patriarch Sung, unflappable under the stress, and the family and community who rally around him.

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

Hawke is good at playing bad, but Hawkins is better, rendering, in Maudie, a portrait of a woman that feels raw, real and revelatory.

Watching “Transfomers” is like sitting in a car that’s revving its engine while stuck in the mud. It sounds like it’s getting somewhere, even though all it ever does is spin its wheels.

Although the film ultimately strikes a celebratory tone, the stark divisions it reveals offer an unsettling look at the state of public discourse.

What little dancing we do see is lovely to watch, but it’s also lovely to see a performer who once seemed to have an iron grip on the barre finally learn how to be gracious and let go.

Feelings of displacement — of loss of home, country and language — are balanced by the vivid imagination of a better existence. In other words, Radio Dreams is a quintessentially American stor

Past Life is a family melodrama in the guise of a murder mystery. Strong performances and the shadow of the Holocaust lend the story poignancy.

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

It’s the filmmaking equivalent of a monkey with the head of a goat, the tail of a fish, wings and teeny-tiny rat claws.

As touching as Hayek’s performance is, Beatriz at Dinner too often forsakes nuance for caricature.

There isn’t quite as much pep to the film’s narrative engine on this trip.

"Farewell to Europe” is a little like Zweig himself: smart, overly fastidious and remote to a fault. By avoiding Zweig’s inner life, his eventual collapse seems all the more perfunctory.