Jami Bernard

Beyond its baby-sitting capabilities, Power Rangers doesn't morph into anything special. It hasn't a single fresh idea.

The plot is contingent on everything going perfectly in ways no one can possibly predict, right down to the most outlandish happenstance of timing and human behavior.

The story offers an interesting twist, but the only really spooky part is when a Benny Goodman record insists on playing without human aid. More scares, please.

The movie has some of the washed-out look of David O. Russell's excellent "Three Kings," but none of the edge. That's part of the point - that nothing leads to anything, at least not in this particular war.

A feast for the eyes. But not, alas, for the ears.

An on-again, arf-again comedy. [26 June 1998, p. 54]

The story and humor are so tame the movie barely merits No More Tears.

Charlize Theron's Gilda in Head in the Clouds invites comparison to Rita Hayworth in 1946's "Gilda," which adds a touch of the ludicrous to this already strained material set in wartime France.

Very much a freshman effort, lacking focus, edge.

Stanze is to be congratulated on raising the bar for horror avant-garde filmmaking on a shoestring.

The film itself is a bit on the talking-head side, evoking none of the passion and anguish that are the music's trademarks.

It's a slight story to begin with, and the movie teeters on camp with its jokey filler material -- the typical King stuff including colorful locals, small puns and asides and a faint whiff of the supernatural.

Can't cope with its own weirdness.

Gives cinema vérité texture to a fictional story of trailer-trash dysfunction (minus the trailer).

Pleasantly cheesy but undistinguished martial-arts and horror fare.

Characters seem phony.

The story's unnecessary and unconvincing Russian spies are out of "Rocky & Bullwinkle," but Blair is quite enjoyable as a sassy, capable idealist.

Watch out for space junk.

The movie clearly portrays how the glory and salvation of being a team hero is ephemeral.

The hand-held camera is much too insinuating for what is essentially a story we have seen many times before. And the cuts and transitions are dizzyingly abrupt.

The French may be guilty of some bad behavior, but that's no reason to punish them with the shapeless, deceptively crass Le Divorce, a Merchant-Ivory production in which all things Gallic are reduced to quirks of snobbery, misogyny and haute selfishness.

Lane...is as stunning and changeable as that Tuscan countryside. Without her, this movie would be irksome, pandering as it does to stereotypes, including that of the American woman who goes abroad for easy sex with limpid-eyed hunks.

It has incest, sweaty armpits, nipple rings, drool, an amputee, a stroke victim and an engagement ring stuck in a sticky place. And Heather Graham. All that, and it's not very funny.

Chronicles of Riddick is half cheesy, brawny adventure and half … something else. That something else involves a lot of leather, bondage, studded armor and heavy machinery.

This fictional "what if" scenario is a bit campy and stagey, like a session of Opera 101. But it has one great thing in its favor: Ardant.

There's plenty to appreciate here but the story is tedious and some of the overacting runs into cultural translation problems.

A ­movie that takes impartiality to new places artistically. The film is infuriating.

If Sacred Planet helps kids appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature and animal life, it will be worth it. But surely civilization can come up with a more generously entertaining delivery system.

Grueling and bleak, but not unintelligent...although it's hardly groundbreaking just because everyone's face gets pulpy.

A mediocre fright-fest.

Ho-hum, another serial-killer thriller. Even with Angelina Jolie thrown in for forensic sex appeal, this dog won't hunt.

Needs someone to roll down a window and let in some fresh air.

Lean's wonderful 1946 movie are taken down a peg with a tawdry update of Great Expectations set in modern-day Florida and New York. [30 January 1998, p. 44]

(Rourke's) nearly unrecognizable presence is characteristic of the odd pockets of talent (and, sometimes, lint) in Steve Buscemi's film.

The superior animation we've seen over the last few years has raised the bar for family entertainment like Hoodwinked, which features lackluster character design, so-so animation and only fitful bursts of cleverness.

The overly broad martial-arts comedy Kung Fu Hustle was obviously made with skill and affection for its many cinematic sources, yet I found the tone, timing and emotional involvement off by just enough to irritate rather than enchant.

The whole nutty crew finds it rollicking good fun to see themselves lampooned. But there is an unmistakable sorrow behind the humor.

Family gatherings in the movies are shorthand for brutal trips down mine-strewn memory lanes. The Sisters doesn't disappoint in that regard.

There are two movies vying to occupy the same space here: a teen comedy about artistic pretension and academic double standards, and a darker, nastier movie about a serial killer. They share Zwigoff's trademark misanthropy, but it doesn't delight as it did in the perversely sweet "Bad Santa." Now it just feels mean.

Has something going for it that you wouldn't expect from the tired mechanics of the story — and that is the star-making appearance of 15-year-old rapper Shad Moss, who goes by the name Lil' Bow Wow.

An "American Pie" wanna-be that, in trying to be as tasteless as possible, sometimes succeeds.

Under different direction, Orange County might have drawn a savvy cult audience that would appreciate the black-comedy possibilities of Shaun's idolatry of a certain writing professor (Kline), the homoerotic overtones inherent in best-buddydom and pyromania as a sexual turn-on.

Hasn't a single original idea in its bird brain. But it clowns around just enough while sitting in the dunce chair that after a while it's mildly amusing.

Stiller and Aniston have zero sexual chemistry. But they have impeccable comic chemistry in a movie that features some stellar bits of business.

With We Don't Live Here Anymore, it's the audience that may want to leave and start a new life.

The movie awkwardly tries to present Bullock and King as an interracial odd couple. But the overall result is charmless, even insulting.

You can't go wrong with an uplifting, anti-war story like this, but director Christian Carion trowels on the schmaltz, and the movie's emphasis on Christian values actually seems to spell doom for solving today's conflicts with the Middle East.

This sob story is a tough sell.

This movie's attempt to reinvent Mizer as a First Amendment hero isn't as effective as its triumphant display of beefcake, which is, after all, the movie's raison d'etre.

The far too whimsical God Is Great, I'm Not leans heavily on the charms of Audrey Tautou -- As adorable as Tautou is, miracles are beyond her.

Manages to look very good for its limitations, and features solid actors doing their best with a very sketchy script.

What sets Bootmen apart from the vast competition is its exuberant, sexy tap-dancing, but that's mostly relegated to the grand finale.

Sappy and improbable.

Prepubescent girls might get a few safe giggles while others around them are yawning.

Feels like any number of forgettable American teen comedies in which the nerd gets the girl and/or the money.

There are absolutely no psychological insights into sick minds in The Minus Man, a poky, opaque drama with a good cast and not much going on upstairs.

An adequate but none-too-thrilling star vehicle for Jennifer Garner in flame-colored bustier and low-riding pants.

May be the biggest gathering of high-decibel performers in one movie. But they work well together and some are truly excellent.

It's a diary, collage, meditation, elegy. But, unless you're going for a Ph.D. in code-breaking, it's also a bore.

Christensen is a bold actress with chilly frosting. For much of the movie, her character seems determined, sophisticated and bemused, rather than just plain nuts.

You don't mess with perfection. That is the main reason why The Singing Detective, a virtual remake of the ­brilliant BBC-TV series of the 80s, falls flat on its psoriatic face.

Mildly pleasant movie.

The drama never gets too deep or the comedy too funny in this L.A.-centric story that feels more like a pilot for a "Friends"-style series.

A sluggish sequel.

Strangely unengaging.

Is it possible to have too much Anthony Hopkins? Believe it or not, the answer is yes. Hopkins' quiet power and perfectly formed vowels overwhelm the rickety, falsely sentimental Hearts in Atlantis.

An admiring but overly simplified walk down memory lane.

Concludes in a shower of ashes, which is fitting because this movie is a billowing bonfire of ugly human behavior. Rarely have there been so many characters in need of timeouts, cold showers or house arrests.

A brutal and preposterous action movie about a guy, a kid and a secret code. And a whole lotta shattering glass.

A grade better than the made-for-cable market whence it came.

A formula movie that is way beneath Murphy's talents.[17 Jan 1997, p.45]

The movie is full of puzzling celebrity cameos, as if Brazilian director Bruno Barreto called in all his chits.

Juices up the visuals with fancy camerawork and split screens, but it can't distract enough from the vulgarity of the material.

An unimaginative schoolyard-bully comedy.

The production is as gaily colored as the margaritas, but the overall result is wan.

You may not realize just how much it takes to make a great mockumentar like "Waiting for Guffman" until you see Never Been Thawed.

A gangsta rapper without fire in the belly isn't terribly interesting, cinematically or musically.

The wordless six-minute animé shorts - at the end of which our double-jointed heroine would always die - don't lend themselves to a 95-minute action movie where viewers might rightfully expect something to make sense.

It tries to be more existential than gumshoe but falls way short.

It's hard to care what really happened on Wonderland Ave. when the audience hates the neighborhood.

Cedric is certainly the bright spot in this movie - personable, silly and lovable, with just enough of Gleason's girth, timing and humanity to make you wish he'd driven Ralph Kramden's bus onto the lot of a different movie.

Crudup gives it his best, but his character is so economically drawn, there's hardly anything there -- certainly nothing likable.

Lacks the charismatic presence of Vin Diesel, who has priced himself right out of the franchise. Without Diesel, there's not much gas, at least not from the nonvehicular elements.

A preposterous action movie in which a Navy SEAL makes the world safe for democracy one continent at a time.

As in "The Edge," in which Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins were stranded in the wilds, you can earn a wildernesssurvival merit badge just from watching.

Never gives us what it promised: a glorious, totally new sense of horror.

Dysfunction seeps from every pore of this family, and the anger and ugliness of the characters overwhelm not just the story but the movie's stunning National Geographic location.

About as many characters, dragons and force fields as "Pokémon" has pocket monsters, so it may be difficult for the uninitiated to keep track.

A waterlogged bagel, hardly the valentine to New York it imagines itself to be.

The story has a definite ick factor that detracts from even the small pleasures the movie might offer its teen audience.

The movie creaks and groans, weighed down by clichés.

Shows that there's a limit to how much mileage one can get from offbeat, creepy and symbiotic.

There are some nicely gory touches for genre connoisseurs...But JC2 lacks the all-important character development we got in the first installment.

The picture's a dud... Instead of Chow's gravitas rubbing off on the kid, Scott's dude-ness dilutes Chow's authority.

The humor is supposed to stem from the clash of kids who have been raised so differently and of partners with opposing views of child care. But there are just so many jokes you can make about who gets to use the bathroom when.

If you think you're tough enough, go ahead and sit through the endurance test that is Bad Boys 2, a brutal, 2 1/2-hour display of production overkill.

The screenplay has no idea how to modulate the banter between the movie's talented stars so that it approximates affectionate and playful sparring.

The award for hardest-to-watch movie of the year.

Falls short of the mark, content to shoot fish in a barrel.

A perfect example of an "art" movie that is so lugubrious and soul-sucking that it's hell to sit through.

A slice of life that adds up to exactly the sum of its parts, no more, no less.

In documentary footage played over the closing credits, the real warrior is introduced to American fast food and returns to his people too fat and sluggish to spear himself a snack, let alone a missionary.

An underwritten drama.

A dreadful animated movie stuffed with bad puns and little internal logic. More dangerous than the world icing over is the danger of eyeballs rolling back into the heads of parents accompanying kids to this.

A serious and thoughtful movie that probably does not mean to trivialize the Holocaust and blame the victim. But it is playing with fire nevertheless.

Director and co-writer Steve Suissa misses every opportunity to go deeper, either for laughs or pathos.

Caught with a shaky hand-held camera, this aimless diary glides indifferently along Weber's stellar collection of photos.

If only half as much attention had been paid to story and character as to set design, the cast wouldn't be playing second banana to a gut rehab.

The problem comes when the movie turns into a tedious, faith-based diatribe against medical science.

If you're looking for cinema, skip this. But as a religion-based self-help workshop for victims of ­childhood abuse, it'sa deadly accurate button-pusher.

It's hard to take this oddball movie seriously.

Some of the jokes will elude Americans while the movie's hip quotient gradually fades away.

The dullest exorcist movie ever made.

Did Lane and John Cusack really have to put themselves through this? Here are two first-rate actors in the embarrassing situation of playing blithering misfits in a lame comedy of errors.

Lohan's good work in movies like "Mean Girls" and the "Freaky Friday" remake is a faint memory as she struggles through antics, unfunny pratfalls and squirmingly bad set pieces.

A movie needs more than a few sexual innuendos and throaty purrs to keep us from taking a catnap. How about a strong story and credible characters?

The movie equivalent of a medical experiment gone horribly wrong and kept in a jar of formaldehyde as a warning to others: Comedy can be a deadly weapon in the wrong hands.

It features an insane amount of violence and a number of visual references to the comic, but it lacks the original's humor and spirit.

All the magic at the disposal of today's filmmakers cannot bring to life this unappealing animated children's movie.

After 45 minutes of incomparable boredom, the movie gets slightly better when it stops reaching for cheap yuks and lets the actors do what they do well.

The main theme is the loneliness of the social outcast. That, plus a soundtrack to wake the undead, and the morbidly entombed presence of Aaliyah, will attract an audience despite the movie's intrinsic cheesiness.

The movie walks a tightrope between playing this misunderstood malady for laughs and sentiment.

The only intriguing character is the manager of the diner (and de facto fairy godmother), played by Regina King.

Even a soccer-savvy audience has better things to do - like instilling unsportsmanlike behavior in their kids or sabotaging rival teams.

Structure overwhelms everything, but it's not as if Wicker Park has nothing to say. It's full of ugly truths about emotional frailty, and implies that stalking is a bad thing only when you're not charming enough about it.

It's strictly amateur hour.

Kinsella, in his feature debut, milks cliches, caricatures and an unlikely set of coincidences to tie things up in a neat bundle.

Brutal but somewhat endearing.

Flimsy and forgettable, but it does have a few worthy action and special-effects sequences.

The teen actors grin twitchily as if tickled by sudden growth spurts, but apparently nothing can hurt their chances with the females in this libidinous zip code.

If the Founding Fathers had known National Treasure would be the result of their efforts to forge a new nation, they might have reached for the Wite-Out.

The movie is quite off its rocker: Jerry Springer, Chrisopher Walken, Tom Waits as a roadside prophet, a miscast, nervous Lucy Liu as an FBI agent -- it's a feverish, violent jumble that's shot as if high on mescaline -- the drug, not the salad.

Jazz is a good metaphor for Robert Altman's movies they're often improvisational, free-form and full of unexpected dissonance. Unfortunately, his movies also fall prey to the hazards of jazz they can be boring, screechy and endless. Thus, Kansas City. [16 Aug 1996, p.49]

Rickman and Richardson are excellent actors put to ghastly waste.

The story is a mess, some of the images offensive, the acting under par and the dialogue silly.

Don't see The Inheritance if you're already depressed. This airless downer from Danish director Per Fly is about an heir who makes one wrong decision from which even lousier decisions effortlessly flow.

Crude and giggly.

A desperately unfunny comedy that wastes a brand-name cast.

An abysmal comedy that should have been strangled in its crib.

In his new concert film, a train wreck of self-regard, self-pity and not-so-humble pie, Martin Lawrence doth protest too much.

"On Deadly Ground," "Out for Justice," "Marked for Death" these are the last times Seagal gave us nothing. With Fire Down Below, he outdoes himself. [6 Sept 1997, p.32]

Jackie Chan finally has met his match, an opponent so deadly that none of his considerable talent or charm can fight it -- a bad movie

The movie is paint-by-numbers with several numbers skipped.

It's a humiliating comedown for Ford, and he looks creaky and grumpy, obviously aware that he is miscast and dreading every scene.

It is not the worst movie ever made, as some critics claim, but it does a passing imitation.

Unfocused and shrill.

The movie then becomes John's story, making an unbelievable leap of psychodrama to do so.

There ought to be a law about transporting humor internationally.

Hell is sitting through a movie in which you have no respect for the protagonist and the "surprise" ending is as clearly lit as the exit sign.

The audience for this chaste teen romance won't be film lovers, as the movie is sappy and listlessly paced. But it's just the ticket for people who want their movies sanitized.

See it only if potty-training is still the most vivid life experience in your book of memories.

A dreary comedy in the same mold (as "The Bad News Bears," only moldier.

Exhaustingly manic but curiously unfunny movie.

There's definitely room for a female Woody Allen, an accolade garnered by a previous film. However, Amy's Orgasm is chirpy, shrill and coarse, more in the vein of one of Allen's more depressed periods.

Excuse me, but didn't Bette Midler already play this role?

A remedial comedy for idiots.

Thanks to that dog-torture element, Garfield may be too upsetting for younger kids. Meanwhile, older kids (let alone parents) will want to put this movie behind them like yesterday's hairball.

What if you made a pornographic movie with a real story line and better acting but didn't show any sex? You'd get The Fluffer, a movie that sounds and feels like the real thing but isn't.

It's brain-dead start to finish.

Recycles the most obvious jokes from similar comedies that preceded it, such as "Tootsie," but with the most rudimentary characters.

Satire works when it's sharp and funny. When it's not, you get New Suit, an unremarkable sour-grapes comedy about the obsequious players and inconsequential products of Hollywood.

Certainly a dark spirit is hovering over this inane production. Something has sucked the life out of it.

This self-conscious movie by Katja von Garnier is shot like a music video, stocked with quick cuts, lip-synching and fantasy performances.

The story is tired, the comedy forced and the mother's larger-than-life quirks are an acquired taste.

A gore movie with no teeth.

A movie that shouldn't be allowed on the same campus as "Animal House."

Its shapelessness and the cultural differences in acting style will keep this version filed under "cult oddity."

Has some good music and hot dancing -- filmed choppily -- but it completely lacks the magic of its predecessor.

This amateurish drama about street-dance contests and busted friendship is about as real as Lil' Kim's chest.

Screenwriters look to many sources for inspiration. In the case of Saving Silverman, they looked behind them, and liked what they saw.

Gigli is a disaster.

Filmmaker Josell Ramos has his heart in the right place, but his camera is usually in the wrong place, complete with bad lighting and all-around lousy tech credits.

It's just as well that John Carpenter makes horror movies, because here's a horrifying thought picture James Woods as an action hero. [30 October 1998, p. 44]

What Short does not deserve - and neither do we - is a feature-length movie about Jiminy.

The bubble-boy niche is thankfully small. John Travolta began his career playing one in a TV movie, but this movie will undoubtedly finish off the genre for good.

You might want to sit out this season.

Gore fans will dig the makeup effects and some of the tongue-in-cheek slice-&-dice.

Evans fumbles through painfully extended homophobic jokes, weak double entendres and agonizingly contorted double-takes.

It's a movie that should have been called on account of boredom.

Silly supernatural Viking epic.

Ben Affleck's goose is cooked with Surviving Christmas, a movie that makes "Gigli" look like one of the crowning moments in his career.

A depressingly hollow vehicle.

Overall the tone is dark and nasty, exemplified by the inelegant signature kung-fu move of the good guys -- a backward kick to the groin.

The screenwriters claim they got the idea for this dreary thing by glimpsing a besieged Chelsea Clinton in the stands at a basketball game.

The fog also does something genuinely eerie: It causes everyone in the cast to deliver dreadful performances and display inappropriate reactions when their friends are drowned, burned, stabbed or thrown into glass display cases.

What really makes the jaw drop is the presence of so many talented actors in what seems like traditional TV treacle. Saddest of all is Debra Winger, reduced to playing the wife-as-wallpaper role. For this she came back to Hollywood?

Not only achingly dull, it has no respect for its origins.

A cheaply voyeuristic story whose "twist" is hardly worth the wait.

A failed experiment in magical realism that makes you wonder where the magic went.

Witless, insulting satire of sorority girls that shamelessly ridicules the mentally challenged. The filmmakers aren't exactly Mensa candidates themselves.

To pay for all the explosions and stunt work, the filmmakers must have decided to skimp on the screenplay. The rule of thumb is that one page of script equals one minute of movie, but there is so little dialogue in Ballistic that it could have been written on a matchbook.

Cuba Gooding Jr. can just return his "Jerry Maguire" Oscar right now. He has no excuse for making Boat Trip, a perniciously unfunny comedy.

It all makes the head spin -- in the direction of the exit sign.

Gross, nearly unwatchable comedy.

It's a difficult issue, one that is not well served by a hollow confection like I Am Sam.

The esteemed actor Derek Jacobi goes slumming as someone who pulls that metal badge from the chest of a cadaver. Shakespeare it's not.

If you want pretentious and unsavory, check out Buddy Boy.

If you haven't had enough of the Central Park rampage videos showing human nature at its worst, you could always pay to see Boricua's Bond.

Macaulay Culkin still can't act, and it's no longer cute. His performance in Party Monster is so embarrassing one doesn't know where to look.

Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant are distilled to the very essence of their annoying tics and quirks.

A tepid comedy whose only saving grace is the face of Jennifer Tilly in a crystal ball.

A weird, unpleasant little movie.

The main problem with this whole Jerry Bruckheimer-produced mess is that they took a promising comedy setup and squandered it by trying to make a legitimate spy thriller out of it.

Just about every race and creed come off badly in this small-scale thriller.

For devout fans of the greenish monster and for those looking to shoot fish in a barrel.

Both a fan's dream and a moviegoer's nightmare: It ends up being all about those who remember and interpret Philip K. Dick and not about the man himself.

Features even more toddlers acting in a way only collectors of velvet paintings will consider irresistible.

It's enough to encourage the aspiring film makers in the audience, no matter how wee in age, to yell "Cut!"

A really lame attempt to expand the marketing reach of the PBS-TV series.

There are lame comedies, and then there is Big Fat Liar, which is so lame that it merits its own reserved parking space.

In this unpleasant mess of a movie, a heroin-like drug called "blue" is said to be "more addictive than air."

Lame children's entertainment.

The funny thing about this unfunny movie is that the cast is brimming with actors who are usually quite engaging. The Whole Ten Yards must be very potent chloroform, indeed, to make Willis, Perry, Peet and Pollak such zombies.

A hellacious stew of romance and tragedy that gives the words "screwball" and "pathos" a bad name.

Attempts a coolness quotient it can't pull off.

It wastes no time getting to the punching, kicking, stomping and zapping that passes for a cinematic event. [22Nov1997 Pg. 35]

There's no drug potent enough to make Grandma's Boy worth 87 minutes of your life.

Everything to treasure about that magical, slightly malevolent feline of childhood verse is obliterated in the coarse, charmless Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.

If you like your burger well-done, you're in for a disappointment.

Serving Sara is D.O.A., with nary a laugh to be found.

Shot on digital video, made on the run whenever Watts was available between gigs, the movie is a pointless, tedious eyesore.

Unless you live and breathe exhaust fumes, there isn't much to sustain a viewer through a lame story and dialogue so pathetic.

The film would be totally unwatchable without the very real charisma of Diesel.

The gimmick is that the script is based on the real-life experiences of actress Stephanie Bennett, who plays Samantha.

So lacking in insight and gravity that it makes Dahmer seem like a pesky, pasty-faced loser who just wasn't popular enough.

This dismally strained comedy defies laughs and doesn't contain an ounce of internal logic.

This stripped-down premise made the first "Transporter" fun: It's all about driving skills and choreographed fights, not logic. Even with so few requirements, Transporter 2 runs on empty.

It has a distinctive look but a few too many recycled ideas; better luck on the next crash-landing.

Never gets at what makes Quek tick.

Irritating wish-fulfillment movie.

Dismal time-travel comedy that makes "Big Momma's House" look like "Citizen Kane."

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II. It is sickening.

This movie is not just bad, it is breathtakingly, spectacularly, awesomely bad. You might want to see it out of curiosity. [23 Aug 1996, p.40]

Does the testosterone fly? Not as fast as the potty jokes. Ditto the homophobe jokes zing! zing!

Virtually plotless, the movie does its best to be offensive, but not in the service of any particular theme. The use of mentally impaired youngsters as actors is cheap and exploitative. You can only wonder about the emperor's new clothes, and how much Hollywood paid for them. [17 Oct. 1997, p.52]

The actor's directorial debut is a lugubriously poetic homage to the famed Chelsea Hotel, which is to New York's artistic and beatnik past what Ellis Island is to the story of American immigration.

Profoundly depressing.

A painfully unfunny vehicle for Norm Macdonald, who here shows exactly why he was ousted from NBC's Saturday Night Live. [13 Jun 1998, p.27]

When is a holiday stocking more like a smelly gym sock? When it's the malodorous Christmas With the Kranks, a so-called comedy stuffed with bigotry, intolerance and bullying.

Talk about waste products; think of the time, effort and money that went into this movie.