Caryn James

In the end, Now and Then doesn't work well enough as nostalgia for adults or as a story that girls today might identify with. Yet its young ensemble makes it vibrant and enjoyable, even when it fails to surprise.

The Hunt is a smart satire that uses genre tropes to explore volatile social issues.

The deepest flaw in My Policeman is that we grasp too little of the characters' inner lives.

It’s an intriguing premise. ... But The Greatest Hits is the kind of film that should sweep you away with its charm and emotion. Instead, it’s too transparently button-pushing to go beyond the stale tropes of the weepy drama.

There is plenty to admire technically in his drama . . . But its substance is a mashup of ill-fitting parts, indebted to both Romeo and Juliet and Douglas Sirk.

Casper is not the kind of smartly written movie that works on children's and adult levels at once. But with its lively pace, smashing visual tricks and one of the cutest heroes on screen, it is an engaging fantasy for very small children.

The film is lively and detailed enough so it is never boring, but it never takes off dramatically or realizes its intriguing possibilities either.

Anyone looking for a true sense of his importance in the history of rock-and-roll will be let down by Great Balls of Fire. But though the film may skimp on the truth, it is loaded with terrific music and outrageous fun.

Directed with pedestrian competence by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, The Miracle Club is about secrets that are all too obvious, and forgiveness you can see coming from the start.

The director, Roger Donaldson, best known for the Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out, keeps the film moving. But there is only so much suspense he can generate from this stock story and familiar-looking special effects. Species may work best for viewers who don't like to be too scared by horror movies; it's reassuringly familiar.

While it lacks the ambition to turn its obvious plot into a film that feels new, it also avoids the pitfalls of moral smugness and stereotyping. It flows along easily, bolstered by Taraji P. Henson’s and Sam Rockwell’s vibrant performances.

The movie The Baby-Sitters Club offers the same comfort factor as the books, but suffers from a definite lack of excitement.

This huge cliche of a movie isn't even a distant relation of films like The Color of Money, which can actually make you root for hustlers. The Big Town only proves we've gone back to the 1950's one time too many.

Critters 2 piles up every stock movie idea you can remember about small-town heroism, macho sheriffs and alien invaders. But whenever it shows a glimmer of wit about those cliches, it leaps back to its safe, dull, derivative style.

Prison has a generic, low-budget name, and for once you can judge a movie by its title. This prison-drama-meets-ghost-story turns out to be an object lesson in how cheaply and badly a film can be made.

Richard Tuggle's new film wants to be a realistic thriller, but it merely acts out kids' fantasies of heroism and adventure, with drugs and rock music thrown in for a contemporary twist.

Some films can re-energise a genre, like last year's huge hit Godzilla Minus One . . . Godzilla x Kong is the opposite, a dazzling visual accomplishment that already feels old.

It is the laziest sort of action comedy, with lumbering chase scenes, a dull-witted script and the charmless pairing of Mr. Eastwood and Bernadette Peters.

This new Rebecca feels as if someone at Downton Abbey were having a bad day.

Their best moments are some throwaway routines; they weep in the car as they sing along to the Carpenters' "Superstar." More often, the movie goes for stale, obvious sight gags like Tommy's slow destruction of Richard's precious car. As mismatched-buddy teams go, Felix and Oscar have nothing to worry about here.

Death Wish 4 is as efficient and predictable as Kersey himself, and inoffensive as long as you can root for a sociopathic hero.

The very best I can say is that Witchboard should encourage struggling film makers. Watch it and think, ''I can do better than that!''

This slick movie proves how much fun it can be to watch first-rate actors challenge our credulity and rise above a second-rate script.

Satisfaction is a typical, low-budget summer movie, where everyone has a hot romance, a good body and an expensive haircut.

Foe plays to the strengths of its actors, two of the most natural and subtle on screen, and is endlessly engaging even though it eventually stumbles into head-spinning narrative problems.

Though ''Roxy Carmichael'' is never as fresh or powerful as it might have been, it is a sweetly engaging film in the Barry Levinson school: just when you think it might fall into a bottomless pit of sentimentality, it stops short.

Deadly Friend is stylish and sardonic enough to offer horror fans some knowing laughs and a pleasant relief from shrieking.

The best that can be said for the film is that it leaves Ernest behind now and then to focus on Santa, who is played by Douglas Seale with sweetness, sincerity and an amazing amount of dignity, considering his surroundings.

Captain Kirk and his crew go where too many film makers have too often gone before.

These robots transform in a flash; the colors are shocking pinks and electric greens; the film is packed with one-to-one combat, large-scale battles and exploding planets. Despite these improvements, though, the movie is not for anyone too grown-up.

The background is energetic; too bad the foreground is just as chaotic...Mr. Lowenstein - whose work includes many rock videos and ''Strikebound,'' a film about Australian miners - prefers sensory overload to coherence.

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a lame attempt to cash in on her character's success.

Shaped by a near-constant monologue from a golden retriever named Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain is watchable but flat, with only occasional flashes of wit and feeling.

There are some grotesquely stylish and scary moments in Phantasm II, the sequel to a 1979 film that Don Coscarelli made as a precocious 25-year-old. Unfortunately, these episdoes seem to take as long to arrive as the sequel did.

An uninspired circus film for children.

With a little more wit and a little less blood, Renegades could have been Lethal Weapon Jr. It is a fast, violent, implausible film about mismatched partners, and though it doesn't exactly break the bounds of its trashy genre, it's not at all bad for what it is.

Stargate is a clever adventure that should find its audience.

Though it is meant to be whimsical and touching, the film's style is leaden, and its story has more danger than excitement.

Fortunately, Candyman isn't powerful enough to do much harm. The credits are more intriguing than the film.

The cast, though, is full of extraordinary actors, who do what they can to redeem a lame script and style.

Though the script for Hellbound is related to the Barker story, the film drops its plot whenever a fake-looking monster walks on the screen. Ogling strange creatures is the film's true reason for being.

Would have been better if it had been sleeker and shorter. After all, this film isn't aiming for high-toned drama, just high-energy entertainment, which is what it delivers.

Noisy and meant for children only. A bored grown-up's only consolation is that the Rangers' popularity has probably peaked, and the next kiddie phenomenon must be on the way.

The acting is stiff, the dialogue is stiffer and the action scenes are laborious. Even the presence of professionals like Sheree North and Richard Roundtree, in small roles, tend to diminish them rather than improve the film.

Surrounded by Mr. Barker's visual clutter and lack of narrative energy, Mr. Cronenberg's presence only highlights the difference between a gruesome but first-rate psychological horror story like Dead Ringers and a mediocrity like Nightbreed.

When a gigantic octopus tentacle reached out of the ocean to grab Meiying, it suddenly made me think of a very good octopus dish at a local restaurant. I wasn't even hungry. It's just that easy to lose interest in anything going on in this movie.

Ernest Goes to Jail so resembles a high-spirited cartoon that it is likely to be more amusing to children and less painfully obnoxious for parents than its predecessors.

As it turns out, two Jean-Claude Van Dammes are pretty much the same as one. Fans who like their action unadulterated by story, character or acting know where to find it.

What's the differences between the Care Bears television show on Saturday morning and The Care Bears' Adventure in Wonderland...? The movie is longer, and you will have to pay money to see it - about as much as it appears the producers spent to make it.

The sequel suffers from a lame, saccharine premise and a fatally earnest manner.

It might have helped if the film makers had had the humor to see they were turning out ''Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Seals.'' As it is, they take their explosives and their silly roles much too seriously.

This misadventure of a project is a blip on the actresses’ résumés.

It isn't [Hanks's] fault that the five writers don't come up with five funny lines or one exciting scene.

Lover Boy should have had the courage to admit it is hopelessly tacky.

Martin Short can do anything, it seems, except find the right movies to star in.

With its sluggish script and unaging characters, The Karate Kid Part III has the rote sense of film makers trying to crank out another moneymaker.

In Road House, Patrick Swayze has the most laughable role since Tom Cruise juggled a few liquor bottles and danced to ''The Hippy Hippy Shakes'' in Cocktail...Next to Dalton, Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing seems like Hamlet. Mr. Swayze does some dirty fighting here, but mostly the role requires a blank expression. At this point, Road House makes his career look like a bad joke.

Johnny Mnemonic looks and feels like a shabby imitation of Blade Runner and Total Recall. It is a disaster in every way.

Anyone old enough to have a license is probably much too old to be amused by License to Drive. Though the plot and action never get better than a television movie of the week, the engaging cast brings much more style to the material than it deserves. [06 July 1988, p.C17]

Can't Buy Me Love has an identity crisis that's a mirror-image of Ronald's own. He thinks he wants popularity at any price, though he's really a sincere guy. The film thinks it wants to be sincere, when all it truly wants is to be popular, just like the other kids' movies, so it sells off its originality.

Comprised of so many derivative bits and pieces that it's not surprising the movie has too little narrative coherence or momentum to keep us going, and no characters we care about enough to root for.

For a film so exhaustively loaded with silliness, Kansas is remarkably dull. [23 Sep 1988, p.C17]

Major Payne takes about an hour and 10 minutes before it wallows in sappiness. That's not a bad record for a formula family comedy in which the ending is clear from the start.

It is a competent, occasionally witty genre piece that never tries to be anything more.

In this film, suspense and psychological horror have given way to superhuman strength and resilience...The one effectively handled scene is the last, which promises a sequel with a feminist twist.

While Mr. Destiny is not technically a remake of anything, it's hard to find a glimmer of originality, much less wit or emotion.

Sluggish and low-energy.

What has been lost is more than Bogart's gritty presence.

Both Mr. Danson and Mr. Culkin make the film's predictable ending far more effective than it might have been. They are warm without being sappy. It's too bad that the audience, parents and children, are likely to have grown restless long before then.

With a predictable trajectory and cringeworthy metaphors, The Starling is so slushily sentimental it makes the typical tearjerker look like a noir. Despite the lived-in performances from its three high-profile stars, this attempt at heartfelt drama is hopelessly by-the-numbers.

Despite a few lighter touches, the film is still a gory waste of time that plays its murders for all the blood and guts they're worth. There are plenty of cliched reaction shots of faces in terror, more than enough frames filled with bloody knives and severed heads. There is not, however, any suspense about Jason or his victims. He stalks, they scream, he kills. None of it is enough to make you jump out of your seat, though it may be enough to make your stomach churn. [2 Aug 1986, p.9]

Hot Pursuit is just what you'd expect from such a stale formula: a misadventure in paradise that makes ''Gilligan's Island'' look like ''The Night of the Iguana.''

Chris Weitz (most famously About a Boy and most recently Operation Finale) works hard to make Afraid a smarter-than-average horror movie, but the effort is conspicuous, and in the end the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can’t make us feel frightened in a way we couldn’t imagine ourselves, why bother?