J. Hoberman

It's Rambo with a split hero -- Morse absorbing punishment and Crowe wreaking vengeance.

The neophyte director has a tendency to pose his actors and musically overscore each new dramatic development. The combination can border on the ludicrous.

Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there's no reason why you should.

Bronson is essentially a faux-operatic, music hall turn--a larky, lumpen version of "Lola Montès."

Performance seems more like eye candy than castor oil in the brave new world of "Freddy Got Fingered."

Were it not so soporific, Off the Map could easily drive you off your nut.

A largely mind-numbing experience.

That this mime show works better than it should is, in a sense, the ultimate dis.

An insufferable exercise in cutie-pie modernism, painfully unfunny and precious to a fault.

The Pillow Book's pretentions are boundless, for all its desperate fashion and layered imagery, it's a staggering bore-as vacantly petulant as Kate Moss's stare. [10 Jun 1997]

For all the tumultuous entrances and flouncing exits, the eight principals manage maybe three laughs among them.

Blackboards is both shrill and soporific, and because everything is repeated five or six times, it can seem tiresomely simpleminded.

Pale by comparison to an action thriller like "Children of Men" or gross out eco-catastrophe like "Land of the Dead," squandering its ready-made zombie scenario.

A tediously childish exhibition.

See it if you must, but don't forget to pack the Air Wick. These breezy doings are mustier than a Glitter Gulch casino at 4 a.m.

This smoothly odious piece of work, written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and directed by Michael Winterbottom, posits the self-consciously repellent Plummer as a sort of Valerie Solanas-inflected version of the Florida serial killer Aileen Wournos. [7 May 1996]

A tale of absolute self-absorption and unconscious revelation.

The Coens are uncharacteristically restrained. Indeed, given that the crime comedy is their preferred genre, The Ladykillers is remarkable mainly for its timidity.

Grim going.

A vaguely absurd epidemiological thriller filled with elaborately superfluous setups and shamelessly stale James Bond riffs.

Exceedingly slow setup and even more tediously static sequence that effectively terminates the movie well before its official running time.

Less awful than inert, Claire Dolan comes across as a willfully bad movie.

Hereafter is not just a stretch for Eastwood, it's a contortion. The irrationality of the premise is exceeded only by the strategic irrationalities of the plot.

The absurdity floods the banks of the filmmaker's intentions.

The least one can say for this costume action flick is that it hits bottom immediately.

Has little to offer beyond muzzy kismet and generalized amnesia, a bit of National Geographic and a lot of cocktail jazz.

A handheld and grainy exercise in cine-stupefaction...too spastic to connect...the movie just flails the air.

Overwrought and often hysterical, filled with distracting montages and portentous drumbeats, the documentary feels as cheesy as its subject.