Lawrence Toppman

As a film, it's flabby and utterly predictable.

If this project is some kind of huge in-joke, I’m willing to admit I didn’t get it. But if I did get it (and I’m afraid I did), it’s a huge disappointment.

The assault is against our ears, as the soundtrack pours forth a stream of thrash and Goth music.

If they decided not to give us Camelot, did they have to leave us with so Camelittle?

I'm afraid it just stinks.

Speaking of sounding Southern, I have to admit that the accents didn't match, and half the actors couldn't even do accents. But since we all sound alike down here, that's no big deal.

A three-hour-and-10-minute exercise in slight characterization, pointlessly showy editing and vapid plotting.

Slater narrates as if reading a restaurant menu. Reid seems to have learned each long sentence in segments, so she wouldn't be overtaxed.

Sandler proves even a hardened Israeli secret service agent can be an imbecilic juvenile.

Writer Guillermo Arriaga earns most of the blame. He played similar games with narrative in the vastly better "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," jumping back and forth in time to show relationships among subplots and characters. But "Burials" barely has one plot.

Studios can release movies even more insultingly dumb, crudely assembled and cheaply produced than this one, though such an achievement will require some effort.

Wilson brings low-wattage amiability to his part, as always. Hudson's mismatched with him but tries to set him afire.

It's ploddingly directed, indifferently acted and insufficiently frightening.

I think Baumbach and Gerwig mean Brooke to be a life-affirming free spirit who can’t find a place in our mercenary world. Instead, she comes off as selfish, rude, deluded, irresponsible and mean-spirited.

Here’s something I never expected to say, something I doubt I’d have believed if someone else had said it to me: Martin Scorsese can make a three-hour movie without one fresh perspective or compelling character from end to end. The proof, for three agonizing hours, can be found in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Everything here has been done better in other books, other movies. The lone remarkable thing is the level of violence, which exposes the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system.

It's the poster child for bad taste, not to mention bad construction.

As Disney-fied as "Pinocchio," barely challenging the images Americans have treasured for 150 years.

For all the talk about passion, the main feeling Youth conveys is self-pity.

The storytelling is inept and illogical.

Hamlet has audacity, intelligence, a provocative visual and musical style, virtually no poetry, a garbled story line weakened by savage cutting of the play, and a great yawning hole where a Hamlet ought to be.

Kilmer is adequate, though he's always more interesting when allowed to play a character with a dark side; Patterson's too squeaky-clean for Kilmer to exploit the most useful part of his range. [12 Oct 1996, p.4G]

Allen's laziness is startling, even in so mechanical a filmmaker. He uses a monotonous narrator to tell us what the characters think and do, though he then shows them performing the actions that have just been described.

Movies can certainly be worse than bad sitcoms, and this is one of them.

Bertino directs at a funereal pace. Speedman remains comatose, though Tyler flickers fitfully to life. The mournful look on her face suggests she's remembering the days when she was given more psychologically complex scripts, such as "Armageddon."

This movie is made by and for people who don't care about good storytelling.

Whenever the music subsides and the characters speak the Coens' lines, the film turns back into mush.

Spike Lee's films have been provocative, blunt, thoughtful, misguided, daring, sentimental, funny, honest and silly. But 25th Hour earns the director two new adjectives: irrelevant and tedious.