Desson Thomson

Honey's a little too darling for reality but, obviously, that's not what this candy-cane vehicle of a movie is all about. It's about the way Alba moves and how good she looks when she's backlighted and smiling.

William Shakespeare would need a sense of humor to view Jean-Luc Godard's "King Lear" without getting steamed up in his bodkins.

In a sense, this is a horror film, worse than anything Andy Kaufman could dream up, in which Green tries to outgross himself.

We're only a little spooked, only a little amused and, by extension, only a little entertained.

Just a few guilty laughs, a predictable resolution and repeated close-ups of that dog jerking its head to one side, doing the cute thing.

A galactic slump of a movie that stuffs its travel bag with special effects but forgets to pack the charm.

Surprisingly uninvolving, the least effective of Neufeld's Clancy-based movies. Surely he was not looking for this kind of film: one that bombs literally and figuratively.

Feckless and crude without any particularly funny redeeming value. If there's anything more to this poor excuse of a movie than immediately meets the eye, I'll get back to you.

The story, which features an apparently lobotomized Guy Pearce as an opportunistic explorer and hunter who learns the errors of his ways, is deeply dull.

We're really celebrating Hollywood's freedom to create biographies of anyone, no matter how high or low on the social ladder, and still come up with the same banal characteristics, messages and conclusions. In this sense, The People vs. Larry Flynt doesn't champion, so much as squander, freedom of speech.

Proof of Life isn't a movie. It's an overpriced scrapbook.

This is definitely for people who 1) love the video game, 2) think Slater and Dorff are eminently watchable, no matter what bad flick they're in and 3) are wearing industrial-strength ear plugs.

The story behind Hercules, Walt Disney’s insipid, lifeless, animated feature, is hardly the stuff of children’s entertainment.

It's difficult to concentrate on the story. Not that there's much to concentrate on anyway.

It is horrible. Time curls up and dies while this Hilary Duff vehicle wheels its weary, conventional way along.

About as funny as malaria.

There's more bathroom and slapstick humor than a sixth-grader could stand, and a veritable flood of drool, blood and less mentionable effluvia, most of it courtesy of Mr. Wayans as he tries to be – you know – funny.

The inside story is weak, dull and head-poundingly boring, and the outside story is only slightly better, thanks to the lukewarm likability of its two stars.

A second-rate romantic comedy.

There are two distinctive features to the movie: the mind-numbingly banal plot as one chases another who chases another, and all the offensive material.

Roll past this casino.

The movie, which is deadly slow and full of Japanese-bashing, is also an undisguised merchandising promo.

They (De Niro, Burns) look good together. But what a staggering pity they chose such a nasty, hackneyed movie to demonstrate their chemistry.

Heaven forbid a Hollywood romantic movie have any narrative surprises.

There seem to be about a half-dozen spiraling subplots that go nowhere in particular. But it's oh so hiply done -- at least, that's the idea.

These storied 13 days feel like the Hundred Years War.

You won't feel enlightened, just let down

After 9/11, few of us look at terrorist acts casually. It's insulting to watch this grandiloquent pornography, using shock value and Hollywood cliche to evoke poignancy.

Stumbles mindlessly in all directions.

Unfortunately, the drama operates on a see-through, easily shatterable metaphor: the frigidity of the WASP soul. [17 October 1997, p.N32]

I would rather have a more interesting group of desperate people to spend my post-apocalyptic time with.

These dramatic shortfalls make us merely worried that two human beings are in danger, but not two compelling souls. There's your missing ingredient, the human X-factor.

There's something secondhand about everything here. Hoge (this is his debut) seems to be mimicking the tone and fabric of other, better indie movies.

It's so laden with foreboding, you want to get out from under it and gasp for air.

It's gotten to the point where Gooding's presence on a marquee practically guarantees we'll be bashing our heads against the seat in front of us. Bonk, bonk, bonk.

A picture-book French film that's pretty and trite, rather than edgy and moving.

Tough guys snarl at each other or dive out of the way before some explosion reduces their biceps to gymboy tuna. Van Damme still talks like a Belgian choirboy. But he’s physically awesome, of course. He can do things with his body that it hurts to even contemplate. If nature intended for men to do the splits or high kicks, boxer shorts would not have been invented. As for Rourke, I am convinced he’s made entirely of leather. He is essentially a boxing glove with a heartbeat.

The Rookie is like one of those maddening, waking dreams when you spend the whole night thrashing in bed while tediously repetitive images batter your racing brain. But at least morning comes. This movie, directed by Eastwood, never ends.

A rambling disappointment.

It's a triumph of vile over content; mindless nihilism posing as hipness.

Director McGrath retains the novel's highlights, but he slices everything to ribbons.

There's little here to offend anyone, and even less here to excite anyone.

A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless -- sorry, we meant poetic-- and the false beard on the central character's face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.

Everything is tearful confessions, angry interrogations and breakups. But there's nothing underneath.

Its long-winded denouement, in which Grazia runs away rather than be sent to an institution, doesn't bring the story full circle. It just extends it.

Feels like a manufactured Asian "Chocolat," which drives the label 'art house movie' even further into mainstream banality.

It's just too lost in its own presumed self-enchantment.

Here was my question for most of this movie: Wha-? I was clueless. Did not understand. Count me among the stupid.

Needs more than happy thoughts to get off the ground.

An uneven collection of bodily function jokes, facial gyrations, sexual jibes and pedestrian slapstick, Dumb and Dumber appears to have been conceived by the leading lugheads themselves.

Ostensibly about the banality of youthful evil, Kids is simply about its own banality. At best, it's a misplaced aesthetic experiment. At worst, it's glossy exploitation—with enough controversy to launch a thousand trite radio and television talk shows.

The problem with this movie is the problem with most Renny Harlin movies: There's an excessive amount of excess -- a mind-numbing plurality of firearm battles, vehicular explosions and brutally frank sexual talk.

In a movie as unrewarding as this, there's really only one burning question: When does the spanking begin?

To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.

The film degenerates into an overly simplistic satire -- with moon-worshiping, Guatemala-visiting, lesbian aborters on one side, and fetally obsessive, meat-eating, gun-toting Jesus worshipers on the other.

It's just sort of trying.

Could have been a sensation if a director with a smidgen of moviemaking instinct had taken the helm.

It may give many viewers a licentious flutter, but the highbrow ingredient -- although it desperately wants to be there -- is missing.

Lacks the spirit of the previous two, and makes all those jokes about hos and even more unmentionable subjects seem like mere splashing around in the muck.

There's more suspense in On Golden Pond. And when the predictable ending comes, it has none of the titanic man-versus-beast struggle of the original. It all happens so quickly, you wonder if you've missed something. But, no you haven't, because there it is -- the familiar calm sea . . . of credits.

A snooze, despite all the sex and other gunplay.

Deception is another example of when genre-fication (the forcing of otherwise intriguing stories into the straitjackets of horror, thriller or other genres) reduces our entertainment to head-shaking banality.

The ultimate verdict on "City Hall" is easy: It's no good. The movie, a corruption-in-the-city saga starring Al Pacino, John Cusack and Bridget Fonda, ends on such a false, unsatisfying note, any faith you had built up in the movie is dashed. But that there's faith to lose in the first place is something of an achievement.

A truly awful and extremely loud scareflick.

A crashing letdown.

Director Leonard Nimoy does not use his ears for comedy -- nor his eyes, even. His three leads recite their lines as though they wanted to take their jumbo-sized salaries and run -- which, given this movie, maybe isn't such a dumb idea.

Although this script starts off with great zest, it's ultimately a disappointment.

The story, a half-baked one about treachery and greed, meanders to an unsatisfactory ending with a punch line that, well, doesn't punch very hard.

Roos and director Herbert Ross pave the long and grinding road to self-fulfillment with miles and miles of counterfeit poignancy.

Laugh? I thought I'd never start.

A pretty woeful affair...a sitcom disguised as a movie.

It's hard to tell if this thing's serious or parody and, if it is parody, whether or not it's intentional. Is it a winky joke, for instance, to have lightweight performer George Hamilton as Pacino's business attorney, or just ridiculous casting? Hamilton's performance points to the latter.

Love! Valour! Compassion!, an adaptation of Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play, which has piano music and exclamation points to spare, is excruciatingly predictable, creatively inane and almost offensive in its depiction of gay characters.

The scenario (written by Carl Binder, Susannah Grant and Philip Lazebnik) is disappointingly wan and obsequious.

At best, the movie is a problematic chamber piece; at worst, a misdirected, slightly misanthropic pretension.

If there's anything good to be said about Heights, it's Glenn Close's strutty, booming performance.

It's an eroticism of nastiness -- triple-X fare for dirty old men in raincoats. If you resist this sleazy gorefest, you'll be right to feel proud of yourself.

Though Hard Candy clearly believes pedophiles should be chopped into little pieces and buried in an unmarked grave, its only purpose is exploitative. Sure, it's a cautionary tale for all those sicko wolves out there, but it's nothing more than an unabashed lurk-and-dread fest.

It's too bad Chan's imagination and delicacy were wasted in this movie.

A disappointingly dull thud of a fantasy.

There's a deep, touching tale to relate about the man who went from Apache chieftain to circus has-been, selling his autographs for money. But don't look for stirring, touching or anything in "Geronimo: An American Legend." Look for the exit sign.

Even by its own please-the-mob standards, this movie is lacking.

Unromantic, nonsexual and hellaciously dull.

Awash in hackneyed old-time secrets and hydrophobic metaphor, never consumes us as it should.

There's something hideously pretentious about the whole thing.

From the get-go, the story remains bogged down in its rather limited morass.

Has its moments. In fact, it has too many of them. At 2 hours and 20 minutes and with enough characters to take up a few floors at a big hotel, it feels about an act too long.

The sequel's plot is laughably thin.

Suffers from melodramatic overkill.

It's almost too dull to pan.

This movie may appeal to the youthful, midnight-madness crowd, but there isn't enough in it to bestow it with classic B-movie glory.

Should we really be so moved and uplifted that a horny, ignorant young man begins to join the human race? Not when our voice of conscience is an off-screen filmmaker issuing pseudo-profound, and ultimately banal, pronouncements about the true nature of love and seduction.

Seems to avoid any kind of edgy, precedent-making attitude, some point of view that feels charged, divisive and consequently alive.

With conceptual misfires like this, Lee's best work recedes even more swiftly into the past.

This comedy, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, is as stalled as Fox's Porsche. It's too flat to be funny and too trite to be meaningful.

So taken with its own love of cinema, it forgets to lead you down the necessary dramaturgical path to make you fall in love, too.

The movie's one-note broadness seems suited more to cable. And the story takes the wrong routes -- leaving Crystal's Larry nothing more than likable, and capitalizing callously on the irregular facial features of Anne Ramsey as the villainous Momma.

This saved-by-an-angel story is redeemed mostly by Smith's comic instincts.