Lawrence Toppman

Audrey Wells's script and Turteltaub's presentation ring true just often enough to prevent the comedy from descending forever into Cutesy-Wutesy Hell.

The setup doesn't make sense from the get-go.

The Rock isn't always comfortable delivering dialogue. He's handsome, physically sculpted and farther along dramatically than Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Conan the Barbarian," but he's still learning the simple acting skills an action hero needs.

Thornton and Heder perform at about half their maximum wattage, which isn't enough to power the inert script.

Has the sex appeal of a Road Runner cartoon, one-tenth the laughs and equal plausibility.

What we get here is Oz the Amiable and Unthreatening.

Though the movie's a shade shorter than the first two, it feels longer.

Writer-director Lisa Krueger bends over backward to make everyone happy.

The filmmakers would have been better advised to stick with the Zeroes and spend less time making up heroes.

It draws you into its grim and mysterious world through the first half of the movie, then falls apart like a house of cards in a hurricane.

The sequel to the 2008 hit “Twilight” makes no effort to satisfy outsiders. It's strictly for devotees who won't balk at plot absurdities, clunky dialogue and patchy characterizations.

Director David Yates, who did the last four “Harry Potter” films, delivers both big thrills at the climax and small, spooky ones when Tarzan and the others move through a world of beauty, terror and mystery.

If inciting boredom is the worst sin a filmmaker can commit, being timid is right behind it. Whether I agree with your point of view or not, I want to hear it.

Willis, who'll turn 50 a week from Saturday, has this kind of hero down pat. He may never again get or demand the complicated dramatic roles I think he could handle, but he's well-cast.

The whole thing seems to have been faked up for our amusement, like a circus freak show.

Satire's funniest when it's true, but Rock exaggerates and mistimes too many jokes.

Many movies require us to turn off our brains, and many rely on clichés and/or coincidences. It takes a special kind of shamelessness to do both, and Into the Storm has that in spades.

What seemed laugh-out-loud fresh in its unpredictable rudeness (at least intermittently) is now chuckle-to-yourself funny with about the same regularity.

Polly works best when writer-director John Hamburg gets his mind out of the water closet, and it's in there about two-fifths of the way. The rest of the time, he's assembling a hit-and-miss comedy with reasonable numbers of laughs and lots of personality from its two leads.

Goes wrong in less than two minutes, which may be a world record for sequels to decent movies.

The details of the story, crucial in a picture that's at least partly a mystery, remain a tangled blur.

I recommend “Batman v. Superman” to anyone who thought director Zack Snyder showed too much restraint in “300,” who felt “Man of Steel” whisked by too briefly or who wondered how Ben Affleck could be made to seem one of America’s most animated actors while clenching his jaw as tight as a Christmas nutcracker.

Where "Wedding" introduced us to a Greek family most of us had never seen before, "Connie" plays out like a clumsy episode of "Laverne and Shirley:" familiar, phony and forgettable.

This picture has an ugly habit of humiliating Bridget, which "Diary" did not.

The Bronze is one of those faux-naughty comedies that simply doesn’t have the courage of its lack of convictions.

What comes from the mouth of Johnny Depp...not the crucial spark of wit or insight that could encourage us to spend two hours with this cruel bore.

Reflective, deliberate, building gradually to a climax that left me touched.

The filmmakers' ineptitude is staggering.

I groaned at cliches and grinned at jokes in roughly equal measure.

Monaghan gives a solid performance, and Billy Bob Thornton has sarcastically funny bits as an FBI agent.

John Hancock must be the best filmmaker working in LaPorte County, Ind.

It’s hard to stay connected to a disaster film where the biggest disaster is the script.

The casting is weaker this time. Watching Peck crumble under fear and doubt was like seeing a skyscraper implode; Schreiber's more of a whipped puppy for most of the film.

Gandolfini's fans expect something quirky whenever he shows up, and they'll get what they've bargained for.

Smith has called friend Ben Affleck his muse, and this picture is just as bland and superficially pleasant as its star.

Maybe Hollywood has used this "uptight guy liberated by free spirit" idea too many times. Either way, this is a form of recycling that no longer pays off. [9 May 1997, p.1E]

Once again, something that might have been a faintly amusing sketch on "Saturday Night Live" -- maybe even a tolerable 30-minute short, had the writing been more clever -- gets tortured into the shape of a feature film.

The best acting comes from the enigmatic, always urbane Freeman, who has recently enlivened the likes of "Outbreak" and "Moll Flanders." But so what? Acting with dignity in mediocre pictures turns you into Vincent Price. [2 Aug 1996, p.4E]

The extraordinary canine performances in Shaggy Dog and "Eight Below" lead me to wonder whether Disney could dispense with two-legged creatures altogether, until further notice.

Delivers more of what the original promised, with the crudity index up one notch and the humor index down quite a few.

DiCaprio is up to all but the heaviest emotional lifting; when he enters a maniacal phase, you wish for Martin Sheen, who did the "back to the jungle" thing better in "Apocalypse Now."

I rarely pinpoint the exact moment when a promising action movie turns into a pulpy, asinine mess, but I can do that with Total Recall.

Isn't a bad movie, until John Woo remembers that he's John Woo and we remember that Ben Affleck is Ben Affleck.

It's theoretically possible to make a fascinating film about a thieving, self-indulgent, freebasing, treacherous scumbag who pimps his girlfriend to a gangster and contributes nothing to society. Wonderland isn't that film.

The film doesn't lose its way emotionally; it's full of great monologues about loss and responsibility.

This isn't really a narrative: It's a collection of mostly unrelated scenes, about half of which pay off.

OK, so no plot, really.

By the self-contradictory and ludicrous end, I had the mixed satisfaction of being proved right in my disappointment. (Di Pego wrote the equally silly "Instinct" and "Angel Eyes," so I can't say I was surprised.)

"Man" is like a sour, half-formed version of a TV sitcom full of dislikable, disconnected characters.

Journalists have a saying for someone who neglects or downplays the most important part of a news story: He buried the lead. That's what Paul Haggis does with "In the Valley of Elah," which submerges two important storylines beneath a pointless, unsatisfying whodunit.

As lame as a three-legged mule.

It's a thoughtful, multi-layered film that falls a bit short of its goals on all fronts. Fans of intellectually challenging science fiction and/or Robin Williams will make up most of its market.

As a movie, it's a mixed bag with a huge amount of heart.

Ronan, however, transcends the script. She's innocent yet wise, gentle yet forceful. She's the one thing in this picture that shows how great a movie The Lovely Bones might have been, had the people who made it believed in the book with all their hearts.

The last 40 minutes descend further and further into nonsense, until we're in an underground grotto where Jeremy Irons plays a furry, cannibalistic albino with psychic powers and super-strength.

A holiday fable that's not destined for immortality but goes down more easily than most of the pap Hollywood tries to feed us every Christmas.

For all the story's bland familiarity, it has winning moments. Allen's no actor, but he projects a likeable personality.

Though it begins as a praiseworthy depiction of a unique man, it turns into a formulaic disappointment long before the overly violent end... Comic-book adaptations must remain open to sequels, but this kind of coy cowardice is despicable.

Ron Howard, who’s tied to this franchise like a man trapped in a decaying house by a huge mortgage, tries without success to blow life into David Koepp’s script.

Molly Shannon's peachy-keen attitude and spunky patience win us over to the side of Mary Katherine Gallagher.

Just a great, empty wind machine.

May wrestle with big ideas, but it does so through a succession of small emotional moments.

A Frankenstein's monster of a movie: clumsy, patched together from parts that don't align properly, desperate to be loved, destined to be chased by mobs with pitchforks - those will be the critics - until it stumbles into its grave.

The leads, who were born six weeks apart in 1937, have remarkable hare-and-tortoise chemistry.

However much Underworld recycles elements from other films, it carries us into a well-constructed, convincingly scary world worth visiting.

It's blah. Worse than blah, actually, because it's so stupid.

All of Barnyard is odd. Oddly funny much of the way, oddly serious when it makes room for the early death of a beloved character or the hushed birth of another, oddly musical with its melange of hip-hop and reggae and hard rock and bluegrass.

The special effects look like a high school science project: The giants are clearly rear projections behind the real actors, and that snake is as rubbery as a garden hose.

Reviewers sometimes insult actors by saying they don't vary their expressions across an entire movie. But until Knowing, I never thought that could literally be true. Nicolas Cage does widen his eyes with about 15 minutes left in the film.

Performances are rather beside the point in a movie where dogs carry the acting burden, but Perabo is especially bland.

Inside this film, a poignant and personal story is struggling to get out. But it's couched in such awkward sentiments that it can't emerge.

Everyone in the cast treads water, acting-wise -- there's nothing else to do -- except for Latifah, who brings passion to her work.

It took four years to come up with this? Someone needed that long to assemble this patchy, recycled collection of gags about stinky butts, superfreaks, finger-wide blunts and racial cliches?

This film might have been daringly funny 10 years ago, even with its broadest elements intact. Now it's comfortable as old slippers and unthreatening as a sleeping kitten.

The movie has entertaining cameos, too, especially one by Holly Robinson Peete. At 23, she played Officer Judy Hoffs on the TV show. At 48, she plays … Officer Judy Hoffs, the oldest undercover cop on Jump Street. Absurd? Of course. But pretty funny, too.

So here I am, trying to like The Purge because I’m drawn to its simple and horrific premise, and it’s treating me (and you) as if we have the IQs of lawn ornaments.

A pleasant, snappy, by-the-numbers buddy comedy.

Atmosphere goes only so far in a story where the major characters fade from memory.

Gosling's been better elsewhere but delivers an adequate performance. McGregor and Watts seem baffled most of the time, as well they might be. Forster keeps us from drifting off with inventive camerawork; in this case, that's like saying a hideous suit has well-stitched lapels.

The script by Kristofor Brown and Seth Rogen and the direction by Steven Brill have a careless, never-gave-a-damn feel that's as insulting to viewers as the film is dull.

The movie, first preposterously entertaining and then just preposterous, makes James Bond films look as logical as Euclidean geometry.

The final failure comes in a climax that defies science, good taste and common sense.

On a simplistic level, the movie works as a revenge fantasy...Yet anybody who thought about the movie for two minutes would have to conclude it couldn't happen.

Director Michael Bay surrounds them with action scenes cut as rapidly and irritatingly as a Gap commercial. At points, we can't tell one darting car from another, a drug triggerman from a cop. [7 April 1995, p.1F]

Vaughn delivers every line with his usual deadpan glibness, which suits the part. But I smiled as I watched the big-bellied, multi-chinned actor connecting with the porcelain, model-thin Witherspoon.

The film's filled with inconsequential scenes and supporting characters who add useless atmosphere or by-the-book diversity.

Weak, obligatory stabs at humor make it more generic than it might've been.

Few modern thrillers aspire to look this striking.

It begins as energetic, clichéd nonsense and ends as irritating, clichéd nonsense.

Three-fourths of a terrific thriller, which in this dreary run of winter movies seemed like clear spring water to this parched traveler. The setup is so riveting, the suspense so carefully prolonged, that I didn't mind when it unraveled into lunacy near the end.

Director Ivan Reitman used to know how to tell a silly story, back around the time of "Stripes" and "Ghostbusters."

If you liked "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," you're on safe ground here -- Next time, I'd like to see Gedeck serve up a hearty meal instead of a tasty but unfilling appetizer.

Fear not. It’s as silly as the first, a shade faster and nastier (though also sloppier) and features a new psycho more dangerous than anyone in the original.

Most painfully, the semi-alert Owen and the leaden Aniston go together like sausages and syrup.

“The Dirty Dozen,” one of my favorite war movies, will no doubt get a 50th-anniversary boxed set next year. Those of us who wait for it can mark time with Suicide Squad, which borrows the same concept and executes it with more lunacy and far less flair.

If you've been seduced by Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage version of "The Phantom of the Opera," you'll fall in love with the gorgeous, splendidly cast film.

Emotionally stultifying and brain-dead.

This movie is an act of hubris so huge that, in Alexander's time, it would draw lightning bolts from contemptuous gods. Today it will get sniggers from stunned critics and a collective yawn from a public unlikely to share Stone's egomania.

The film whirls by in a satisfying torrent of chases, escapes and discoveries.

The most frustrating thing about the movie (as with “Cloud Atlas”) is that it could’ve been memorable, had the Wachowskis turned their vision over to more talented storytellers.

I can't explain the film's main problem without giving plot points away; suffice to say that, after decades of watching Earth, Klaatu's team of observers has missed a crucial event you and I witness every day. I can tell you about the secondary problem, though: too much money.

Hints heavily at its One Big Secret from the get-go, then waits for you to figure it out miles ahead of the not-too-bright characters.

The plot of "Nights" will occupy only 10 or 12 brain cells.

The movie hasn’t one character or sequence more memorable than the next. It’s as violent, humorless and brutally efficient as a Stalinist purge, a juggernaut of slaughter and smashing that stuns the senses and leaves nothing behind in the memory.

This is one of the increasingly rare Hollywood films that treat people in middle age as though their feelings were just as intense and their needs just as valid as those of people half their age.

Lee sleepwalks through his part, even in romantic scenes with equally bland Cameron Richardson.

Writer-director Barry Levinson leaned on Robin Williams the way a one-ring circus relies on its lone acrobat. So they're jointly responsible for the film's utter failure.

Predictable but agreeable time-waster.

A fairy tale full of fascist, Bible-thumping straights, self-deluded and pathetic gay people who deny their impulses, and two honest lesbians who triumph.

Except for a surreal moment when Fat Albert meets the real Bill Cosby, who tells his cartoon creation he must go back into the television, nothing inventive occurs.

The film delivers the goods, reptile-wise. Though the computer-generated villains look a bit clumsy at ground level, they're superb in the air.

Elementary school-age boys may well be delighted, but it offers not a scintilla of stimulation for anyone else.

A marginally above average crime caper with one big plot twist that's pretty tough to believe but mildly interesting to consider.

I don't know if Nispel and Scott Kosar, who make their feature film debuts here, are the worst director and writer in the world, though they might well represent the United States if anyone holds a competition. I do know they deliver a total of zero laughs, scares or surprises in this remake of the infamously creepy 1974 picture.

By the pseudo-shocking end, we're half-entertained by the dedicated cast and half-lulled to sleep by the dull, overfamiliar sounds they make.

Like so many sequels, The Chronicles of Riddick demonstrates Hollywood's law of diminishing returns: Its quality is inversely proportional to its budget.

Ye shall know Entourage by its acronyms: A lot of carelessly amusing R&R, copious T&A, a fair amount of BS and a consistently low-to-medium IQ.

Schwarzenegger, weathered and ironic, strides through the film with old-fashioned authority. Except for Clarke, who walks an ambiguous line between heroism and sinister monomania, only Big Arnie leaves the slightest impression after the credits roll.

The only interesting character is the dragon, who grows from an adorably dependent baby to a protective, intelligent adult voiced by Rachel Weisz.

The most catastrophic misfire in a dreadful movie season.

The fact that I didn't understand a film, that its ending can be interpreted at least two ways and maybe three – all likely to be "true" – usually sends me growling in disgust from the theater. But The Life Before Her Eyes has grown on me in memory.

What could have been an all-occasion Hallmark card turns out to be an emotionally genuine love letter to a young man who transformed the town of Anderson, S.C., in the 1970s.

Does David Arquette have a career? If so, what's he doing in this unintentionally hilarious gangster movie?

The actors do well, with Brosnan playing a kind of James Bond who has fallen into seediness and shady dealings. Bell carries her weight in the emotional scenes and the battles, and Wilson proves (as he occasionally has) that he can do more than be a laid-back comic foil.

The rest of the film couldn’t convince a sixth-grader it might happen. CIA agents search a home for evidence but leave the front door unlocked and unguarded, so Devereaux sneaks in and knocks them out.

He (Murphy) can't make chicken a la king from the chicken manure supplied by the writers.

This frantic scrambling to create a credible fantasy is typical of the script by Aline Brosh McKenna and Robert Harling, which whips the "opposites attract" recipe into a souffl? that never rises.

You'll have to swallow this gooey confection whole or spit it out after the first couple of bites.

Without a plausible script, crisp dialogue or rounded characters, the majority of the picture will sag gracelessly.

It's the cheapest looking, least exciting, least funny Chan project I've ever seen.

It's an uncoordinated, flailing hodgepodge of music videos, chases, crashes and moronic plot twists.

A miler trying to run a marathon, a fair middleweight idea trying to deliver heavyweight thrills.

Martin, who plays Clouseau and wrote the script with Len Blum, has completely mishandled the character.

(Ford and Thomas) give Random Hearts muscle when the story turns flabby, spine where it sags, wings where it threatens to stay earthbound.

Bad actors, bad music and bad plot make it a hellish bummer.

Gothika was supposed to provide proof that she (Berry) could carry a film as a leading lady, but it doesn't. That's not entirely her fault, since nobody can fetch a drink of water in a sieve.

The story's so sloppy that it contradicts itself constantly.

Affleck simply wasn't meant to play action heroes or tough guys. He's about as tough as tapioca pudding.

Since there can be no suspense, the point is to enjoy the hewing of limbs and the severing of necks, to delight in chopped-off fingers and gouged-out eyes. The title characters are embodiments of utter evil, right?

Recycling is a good idea in principle, but certain products should be sent directly to a landfill without re-use. Be Cool, the feeble film follow-up to "Get Shorty," is one of them.

The Critic's Code of Honor forbids me from explaining in detail why the storytelling is so inept, because I'd have to spoil the silly surprises. So I'll say only this: You can interpret the climax two ways, and both will probably infuriate you.

The truly appalling thing, though, is the stupidity of the screenplay by Richard Kelly.

The special effects excite at first but wear out their welcome.

What do you get? A reboot of "The Lone Ranger” that metaphorically drags this noble story – and literally drags its title character – through a steaming heap of horse droppings.

Wanda Sykes and John Michael Higgins have energy as Evan's aides, and Jonah Hill (hot off "Knocked Up") gets laughs as a sycophantic researcher, but Graham has no chance to show what she can do.

Director Vondie Curtis-Hall has managed to top (or should I say "bottom"?) his last theatrical release, Mariah Carey's "Glitter," with a movie that offers not one praiseworthy moment: not a scene, not a performance, not a technical achievement, not even a line of dialogue.

The picture lasts 111 minutes, partly because of numerous false endings. Now, that constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Chaotic, sometimes funny.

Plays like some uninformed seventh-grader's view of gay men.

Yet even the language, finally, becomes as inauthentic as the accents.

A better-than-average thriller. That's a tribute to director Harold Becker and stars Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin, who stretch the script's one idea almost to its breaking point. [3 Apr 1998, p.8E]

The outtakes prove Analyze That could have been even worse.

The story's sweet, however stale, and many performers have energy. But screenwriters Alonzo Brown and Kim Watson drain the reality out of it.

Folks wanting to hear the usual New Testament message will be pleased; others may feel that the tension dissolves in homilies and wish the main character weren't led around by a blonde-haired little angel in a white dress.

The biggest irony of this project is that it was made by a company that calls itself Original Film but has produced perhaps the least original movie of the year so far.

Kingsley gets the film's one big emotional scene and makes it count.

You can get all of this free on television any week, so why pay for it?

Andie MacDowell bursts out of her good-girl cocoon in Crush to become a bright, bad butterfly: drinking, smoking, flirting with Ecstasy, having moaning sex on a tombstone just minutes after the funeral of a friend.

Speed Racer is chaotic as a six-ring circus, gaudy as a transvestites convention and soullessly cute as a robot puppy.

Gripping but gap-filled Seven Pounds will have half your brain asking "How could this be?" and the other half saying, "Shut up and go along for the ride!" Listen to the latter voice.

Puts more miles on plot that was worn out long ago.

Epps emerges mostly unscathed, and Dutton gives an excellent performance; he's as able before the camera as he is inept behind it.

Proves two things irrefutably. First, Fishburne doesn't get enough work that tests his acting abilities… Second, Luke's breakout performance in "Fisher" was no fluke.

The worst horror sequel of this or many another summer.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, move over: Your dramatic replacement has arrived.

It's hard to fault a script that keeps finding new dilemmas for characters and rewards attentive viewers with in-jokes.

What starts as a cute premise crashes faster than a skateboard with an oak branch shoved between its wheels.

Diary rather sloppily blends melodrama and spiritual uplift with crass comedy, sometimes in the same scene.

Writer Simon Fuchs begins with a reasonable idea – we’re all likely to be curious about the origins of Peter Pan – and does unreasonable things ever after.

I also wondered how the movie got the title Cradle 2 the Grave. Nobody used the phrase; it didn't apply to any characters; it didn't even turn up in a song. Maybe the filmmakers were saving "Rotten 2 the Core" for the sequel.

This isn't nitpicking. Every bit of the tale is as full of holes as a wool sweater at a moth convention, and Shyamalan telegraphs each potential surprise.

The yarn itself is a winning one.

Partly a travelogue for the Greek islands, partly a simplistic love story, and generally a rehash of the Oscar-winning "Mediterraneo," as if we needed even the first one.

Formulaic, yes. Settled with as many reconciliations and promises of happiness as “A Christmas Carol,” absolutely. But a familiar pleasure, nonetheless.

Williamson deals mostly in cliches, as if high schoolers weren't smart enough to appreciate anything subtler.

This giddy summer extravaganza does deliver aerial thrills with eye-dazzling visuals and ear-smacking (though beautifully designed) sound.

When George Lucas last pulled off an original idea for a feature film, Bill Clinton was still thought of by many voters as overweight and chaste.

Director Doug Liman and a trio of writers eventually forget the rules they set up and hurl combatants to places they could never have seen or even known about: Who'd willingly project himself into the middle of a Chechnyan war zone?

Far be it from me to spoil the secret, but I will say this: The last reel should've been sent straight to the city dump.

Interesting and idiotic elements almost exactly balance each other.

Self-respecting filmgoers will find this a "Walk" to dismember.

Universal Studios has unloaded its entire monster catalog in this movie, which is aimed at people with the attention span of a kindergartner. Shreds of coherence and character have been sacrificed to fangs and fisticuffs at every chance.

It starts as enjoyable B-movie pulp, degenerates to camp, then turns into laughable lunacy.

Kids might get a charge out of the mayhem. I got the vapors.

The dialogue in Craig Mazin’s script crackles at its best, and the supporting characters (led by Robert Patrick as a grizzled skip chaser) have bizarrely funny moments.

It falls back on straightforward horror tactics, executed competently but without flair. It takes liberties with the second half of the book, including one big change that will leave fans of the novel growling with disbelief and disapproval.

Writer-director Reverge Anselmo has created a movie of ineptness so perfect and unified as to boggle the mind.

If we can’t believe these characters could really be friends, we can live for 101 minutes in a world where they do.

Errors in logic will delight the attentive.

Trying to make sense of this shaggy dog story is like climbing a mountain with glass-smooth sides and quarter-inch toeholds.

Puts a fun, frothy spin on the 1960s TV show before sinking back into the mundane.

Beach blends all the performing styles smoothly: LL's blithe coolness, Blalock's sultry ambiguity, Liotta's slow-boiling intensity, Ejiofor's dapper amiability, Phifer's brooding intensity.

Bullock good, but King reigns in movie sequel.

It's neither dull nor stimulating, neither off-putting nor engaging.

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

The story introduces a mystery halfway through to keep the plot from running out of steam, but neither its set-up nor its resolution provide much drama.

We don't need a discussion of plot in a review of a movie made from a video game, do we? Nor do we care whether the characters are complicated (no), the acting is sophisticated (no), the direction is competent (no) or the camerawork is clever (no).

Could pass for any serial killer movie except for some pertinent philosophizing about the nature of evil and the operations of the soul.

I do have one overpowering Y2K fear: that Hollywood will keep belching out movies as excruciatingly dull, brutal, mindless and overlong as End of Days.

When the film stumbles to its last and silliest conclusion, you realize much of the plot line was unnecessary -- or couldn't have happened at all!

Offers an amusing break to the undemanding.

Watching this is like sitting by a pinsetter at a bowling alley. That's too bad, because the picture had potential.

A mind-numbing carnival of violence.

I realize fantasy-based action movies aren't supposed to be as complex as William Gibson's novels. But do they have to be this simple-minded?

It's not only an ultraviolent, ludicrously inconsistent rip-off of Bradbury's idea, but it poisons the well for future efforts.

It's a smooth journey across familiar territory to a safe emotional harbor, always professional and occasionally delightful.

Harden and Tierney waste performances of moderate complexity, Baranski adds her usual brand of silky sarcasm and Rip Torn provides a welcome presence as Cole's jolly campaign manager.

If you're the kind of person who goes to the movies primarily to watch faces melt to pulp, you won't be disappointed.

Unimaginative.

How bad, really, could it be? I couldn't have guessed.

As in most cheap futuristic movies, everything is dark or illuminated by a drab bluish glow. The buildings look grubbily similar to each other, so every location has to be identified onscreen. Of course, that saves the audience the trouble of paying attention.

In its design, at least, Mindhunters"surpasses all other Christie knockoffs.

M. Night Shyamalan has directed movies that are surprising, hokey, suspenseful, sentimental, clever, touching or cheesy. But until After Earth, he hadn’t made any that are dull from end to end.

Lawrence plus latex equals laughs.

Writers Pamela Falk and Michael Ellis aim for the soufflé-style comedy audiences ate up greedily 40 years ago, but the film falls flat.

There's nothing wrong with Simpson's performance that a head transplant wouldn't cure, and the grinning Reynolds looks Botoxed into immobility.

Directed by William "When's the next chase scene?" Friedkin, acted by comatose David Caruso and monotonous Linda Fiorentino and Chazz Palminteri, Jade is more like "Jaded." [13 Oct 1995, p.11F]

Like the star's acting, the movie is bland, full of good intentions and generally as stiff as a fireplace poker.

Messing may simply be one of those actresses who's the right size for TV and the wrong size for the big screen.

A punch-drunk lightweight. Inside the ring, it lands some forceful punches. Outside the ring, it stumbles around, swinging wildly at nothing, until it collapses.

About 45 minutes into Swordfish, the picture degenerates permanently from drivel to sleaze (only a short drop).

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

Someone Like You is from Hollywood's bottomless box of cliches.

It relies on short bursts of Lawrence's zaniness, punctuated by an occasional joke about stinking feet or vile breath. For his admirers, that will be plenty.

By refusing to take anything seriously (including himself), Shatner lifts the movie to a truly funny level of absurdity. Soon, though, it goes back to being the type of buddy picture Hollywood stamps out like stale cookies.

The best way to sit through Max Payne is by using minimal brain.

It honors the tone of that wonderful comedy while setting it in present-day New York City.

Better than you might expect, if you didn't expect it to be any good.

The movie briefly suggests Viola is an incestuous psychotic.

It's cheerful nonsense from blithe beginning to obvious end.

Has any movie this millennium had less reason to exist than First Daughter?

Creature is refreshingly and intentionally silly, in an era when horror has devolved mostly into torture porn and high-tech, computer-generated assaults on our senses.

Much of the movie’s charm comes from seeing middle-aged women in roles that usually go to middle-aged men. (Vergara is 42; Witherspoon will be 40 next March.) Hot Pursuit isn’t funnier than most male outings in the cop-witness genre – the 1988 “Midnight Run” remains the best of those – but its casting makes it fresher than many.

I'm afraid it just stinks.

Randolph and Parker play fair with us, setting up a motive early and clearly. Yet whether you buy the motive or find it far-fetched, it almost immediately tells you who's responsible for the death.

That’s the problem with Winter’s Tale, which tries to cram too many conflicting stories into one space and ends up defying us to believe any. Call it magic unrealism, a well-intentioned but clunky genre.

Though the film sat in drydock for a year, partly so technicians could convert it to 3-D, it looks as dull as it sounds.

The writers supply character traits that seem to point toward a pay-off but never reach one. People all end up as tight-lipped, indistinguishable automatons who plummet 50 feet down jagged rocks with scarcely a scratch.

Director Rob Cohen shoots believable action sequences, too. Nobody jumps the gap between skyscrapers or falls 40 feet, then gets up and runs away.

What a riveting movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen might have been! And what a rickety mess it turned out to be when the people responsible lost faith in the origin of the material!

As dry as a high school history book, solemn as a funeral service, humorless as a Politburo meeting, bloated as a waterlogged corpse and unbalanced as a bout between a debutante and a sumo wrestler.

Abbott, Petroni and director Michael Rymer do exploit the visual and aural cliches of vampire movies from the last 20 years: The creatures wear tattoos, shave their heads, listen to blistering rock and dress in black leather. For a band of societal outsiders, they're pathetically conformist.

It's yet another warm, fuzzy, New-Age tale that cozies us into believing the grave doesn't mean oblivion.

Maybe this is a case of too many cooks spoiling a simple broth: The movie had four producers, five executive producers, three writers (credited ones, anyhow) and three editors.

The film works best as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode.

Totally underwhelming.

Sometimes seems longer than a rainy Super Bowl.

You won't see a single joke here you haven't encountered before, all in funnier forms.

Director Richard Donner finds a few startling images for bloody battle scenes, but awful dialogue prevents the actors from giving performances of any depth.

Whenever the tires stop screeching and the fenders slamming, the story lands in a brutal pile-up of cliches.

Designed to appeal to people who thought "She's All That" was too mentally demanding.

The Observer won't let me get stoned before a review, so I'll never know what How High would be like after a big fat blunt. Without one, it's sloppy, broadly funny in spots and chaotic.

Babbit clumsily underlines emotional moods.

Of COURSE it's bad. It was always going to be. But it's worse than necessary.

Cuba Gooding Jr. lands on his behind more often than a one-legged figure skater, and the preschooler next to me giggled every time.

The cancer of dishonesty begins to grow half an hour into the film, and it riddles the picture by the end.

Repeated lapses in continuity and common sense.

Ghost Ship, which can best be described by altering one consonant in the second word, sustains the stylishness of its opening for exactly three minutes.

No characterization. A plot you could write on a single sheet of toilet paper. Sadistic violence we’re meant to cheer. A surprise that wouldn’t fool anyone who left the theater after the opening credits and came back for the last 10 minutes.

Dragonheart is all dragon, no heart. [31 May 1996, p.3E]

The script by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling gets relaxed, throwaway laughs, even if it doesn’t always hold together.

There's one thing to be said for The Perfect Man: It confirms my belief that I'll never need to see another Hilary Duff movie until (1) she turns 30 or (2) she plays a crackhead in "Requiem for a Dream II."

The filmmakers find "laughs" in sadistic violence.

[Zoe Saldana] acts with the right fire and sings beautifully and evocatively.

Adults will wish the movie were less simplistic, obvious, clumsily plotted and shallowly characterized. But what are adults doing in the theater at all?

Darabont and Sloane stumble consistently and fall into the abyss.

Pitof can be blamed for the 89-cent digitized sets, the jerky or rubbery special effects, some clunky performances and more continuity errors than I could count.

Should appeal to anyone who likes films as mushy and unsurprising as baby food.

It's among the most inventive, screwily funny and consistently surprising movies I've seen in years.

I think this camp classic is an accident along the lines of "Showgirls": howlingly funny, filled with gratingly earnest performances, riddled with dialogue that will be quoted at parties.

No one associated with the film tries very hard, from cinematographer Peter Deming -- San Francisco has never looked so drab -- to composer Mark Isham, whose watery jazz score is meant to summon melancholy but merely relieves insomnia.

As close to perfectly unwatchable as it can be.

Technically, the film can stand with most releases. The cast includes veterans Hal Linden, Paul Rodriguez and Jennifer O'Neill, all of whom do good work.

This script by the husband-and-wife team of Leora Barish and Henry Bean is hopelessly contrived and takes forever to get to the point. (I warn you: The film does not absolutely identify the killer.)

Hector Elizondo, who has appeared in all 15 of Marshall's features, turns up as a Basque rancher and adds a bit of sparkle. I just wish Marshall's good luck charm was not a 70-year-old actor but a fresh, honest screenplay.

Director Ken Kwapis uses those monster infants perfectly, down to a funny final outtake.

The best work comes from Timothy Dalton as the grizzled, Scots-accented head of the Pinkertons.

Characters behave arbitrarily and incredibly, and a clumsy resolution brings the film to a thudding halt.

Eventually, though, the movie turns into a "Touched By An Angel" knockoff that dares us not to reach for a hankie while we succumb to its comforting message.

We can all share frustration with a process that frees the Doobs of the world, but this heavy-handed movie won't provide catharsis. The filmmakers treat subtlety as a sin - unless Schlesinger thinks he's being subtle by showing us O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark for only a couple of seconds on a TV screen. [12 Jan 1996, p.4E]

Delivers the kind of vengeance fantasy women unhappy with their husbands may want: Vicarious satisfaction, however clumsily delivered, is better than no satisfaction at all. Just be sure to stop by the lobotomy clinic en route to the theater.

Even if we leave aside the obvious time travel paradoxes, we can have a good horse laugh at the rest of the plot's inanities.

The supporting cast is almost uniformly good, from Conchata Ferrell as a sympathetic waitress to Erick Avari as a corporate type with a surprisingly big heart and a hidden silly streak. Turturro relishes his quiet overplaying and steals the bulk of his scenes.

Excruciatingly flat comedy.

De Niro wears a shamefaced look most of the time, as if doubly embarrassed: He agreed to a movie he knew was worthless, yet he's too lazy or indifferent to give us his best.

A painful bore.

Many critics will complain about emotional manipulation, but I share Roger Ebert’s view: “Some people like to be emotionally manipulated. I do, when it’s done well.” I think “Beauty” does it well.

Passed as slowly as if I'd been sitting naked on an igloo, Formula 51 sank from quirky to jerky to utter turkey.

Isn't satisfying or surprising. It doesn't even make sense from scene to scene.

Just when the story reaches its idiotic nadir, Neil (Diamond) shows up to save the day with a song and a smile.

Gomez is a nonstarter as an actor, alternating dully between petulance and indifference. Hawke compensates with a vivid, ferocious performance that doesn’t go over the top.

M. Emmet Walsh and Elizabeth Franz enliven the film as a couple across the street...These wonderful old actors briefly raise the level of the picture to the kind of warm but honest drama it ought to have been.

It's well-shot and well-edited by Hollywood standards, though special effects don't reach the top Hollywood level. The stars have their hearts in their work: Cameron and Johnson don't have great depth but give their all. Currie makes a subtle villain.