Caryn James

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

The film, from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, is a typical action-comedy that benefits greatly from its two stars, and slightly from their unexpected characters, before plunging fast into explosive but trite set-pieces.

With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.

Only the comic parts soar, and they fit uneasily with the pallid romance and half-hearted family drama.

Mr. Romero, who adapted the screenplay from Michael Stewart's novel, wraps up more loose ends than anyone cares about, yet leaves some nagging bits of illogic.

Darkman sustains mild interest throughout, but it never takes off, partly because a real-estate scam, gangland shootouts, city corruption and a love story clutter up the sad story of Westlake's strange mutation.

Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.

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

It is a quirky, ambitious, praiseworthy project that somehow becomes a victim of all the cliches it was invented to avoid.

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

The new film is much pokier in its pacing, with duller characters. Despite some highlights, including Branagh in top form as an even more somber than usual Poirot, the film is watchable but it is also something lethal to a mystery: uninvolving.

Elm Street 4' does have an endless onslaught of astonishing, often grotesque special effects .Mr. Harlin only has to keep things moving, which he does with restless camera work, swirling high above Freddy and his victims. Freddy, who says I am eternal, seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, immune to directors and scripts.

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.

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.

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.

Although Manville and Hinds are always worth watching, it’s obviously a problem when the actors and the scenery so thoroughly overshadow a film’s story.

For all its clever updatings, stylish action and witty escapism, Licence to Kill is still a little too much by the book. Mr. Dalton is perfectly at home as an angry Bond, and as a romantic lead and as an action hero, but he never seems to blend any two of those qualities at once.

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.

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.

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

From characters to camera angles, this story of a self-absorbed jazz trumpeter is one long cliche, the kind that might make his most loyal admirers wince and wonder, Spike, what happened?

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.

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.

Though the film hints at psychological intrigue, it never moves beyond the limits of its genre.

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

Mildly informative but superficial, Shooting the Mafia is much less dynamic than its title.