Carrie Rickey

Rian Johnson's film is a scam wrapped in a sham.

Fortunately, even when star and story are ineffectual, Fears' supporting players are all thrilling, especially Morgan Freeman.

Peppy, painless and -- happily -- not altogether brainless.

Over-orchestrated and underdeveloped interpretation of Jeffrey Hatcher's play.

Roughly an hour in, Transformers 2 morphs from teen adventure into lumbering war movie. Bay and his screenwriters squander their human capital in order to show us scenes of 20-ton toys crushing 10-ton toys.

Salvadori's choppy film never establishes a comic rhythm.

Half enjoyable goof, half an uncomfortable panorama of urban terrorism that just doesn't sit well after Sept. 11.

A mostly charmless affair.

She may not be the most cinematic of film artists, but Heckerling will make you smile.

That a detente between the cliques is unthinkable, that they could never eat at the same table, is one of many assumptions that makes Sleepover such a downer.

Less the blistering satire it imagines itself than a blustering, bloody, blundering melodrama about bottom feeders nibbling each other.

Not a movie, it's a museum catalog of gorgeously rendered portraits and landscapes. What a crashing disappointment.

It is diverting but insubstantial.

If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see.

What makes the new movie almost bearable is the byplay between Sandler and Chris Rock.

Given the filmmaker's privileged perspective of hindsight, to not consider the real-world repercussions of their theater, to not connect the dots between 1968 and 2008 is a squandered opportunity.

Structurally and narratively amputated, Volume 1 retains head and guts but loses its heart and gams to the second installment. Maybe Tarantino figured that Thurman's legs, as long as the Mississippi, were sufficient to carry this half of a movie.

While Last Days succeeds as a nature documentary, Van Sant fails to penetrate human nature. The result is a portrait without a face.

Funny things, images. While to depict something visually is not necessarily to endorse it, when Bigelow shows rape as she does in Strange Days, she does so from the rapist's point of view. It's kind of like making a movie about the dangers of the atom bomb that glamorizes the aesthetic beauty of the mushroom cloud. [13 Oct 1995, p.05]

Miami Vice, the movie, is an atmospheric muddle, as gorgeous and unintelligible as raven-haired stunner Gong Li.

To the delight of gadgetheads and the dismay of the rest of us, Spy Kids' paraphernalia is better developed and considerably more fun than its story.

Thornton swills the Matthau role with the unslakable thirst of W.C. Fields and idiosyncratic sexuality of Johnny Depp. So this is what Bad Santa does during the off-season.

While these individually diverting factors add up to a good time, they don't add up to a good movie.

So deadpan a film is Napoleon Dynamite, the story and the name of a gangly high school misfit in Preston, Idaho, that I can't say whether it was intended as a character study or a comedy.

The twist of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, a laugh-out-loud if not-exactly-good stoner comedy, is that its heroes, an entry-level investment banker and a brainiac pre-med student, are not dimwits.

A haunting allegory about the rise and fall of a figure who possesses powerful charisma, if weak karma.

Unfortunately, Turner's performance is as forced as Serial Mom's humor. Both boast false smiles but can't mask the fact that there's something sinister in the suburbs and about this movie. [15 Apr 1994, p.03]

A movie that by turns is wincingly awful and heartbreakingly fine. It boasts an unforgettable performance by Björk.