Michael Wilmington

It's a real shame that most new boxing movies try to copy the crowd-pleasing, sentiment-choked tactics of "Rocky" rather than the stark drama of "Raging Bull" or the realistic grit of "On the Waterfront" and "The Harder They Fall." Against the Ropes is only the latest sorry example. The sad thing is that, with this real-life story and subject, it could have been a contender.

Cheerful but mind-numbing.

I can't think of much that might happen on a date evening that could be more annoying than this movie.

Falls flat on its face.

Technically clever but emotionally bankrupt...it's an almost laughably opportunistic movie.

It may entertain you if you don't mind senseless stories and screaming soundtracks.

Outrageously vapid and overdone movie.

Sluggish and preposterous, full of violence and cliches.

The movie suffers from a devastating flaw for a comedy: It isn't very funny.

What isn't scary--or exciting, amusing or fun--is XXX: State of the Union, a movie so preposterous, cliché-packed and over the top that it makes the original "XXX" seem as good as the original "State of the Union."

An odd little ghoul too cleaned up to survive, a bloodless vampire movie that's mostly lifeless as well.

One more movie comedy about how love can turn you into an idiot. And its major flaw, among many others, is that the idiocy takes over the movie.

The best thing about star and co-writer David Spade's Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star is the end-title sequence, a big, sassy sing-along in which dozens of old TV child stars spew out defiant jokes about their old careers and fame's fickle fingers.

It would be a lie to suggest that there aren't some crudely effective moments in Ghost and the Darkness. After all, this is a movie where two man-eating lions pop up every 10 minutes or so, growl and drag off another fresh corpse or two. But crude effectiveness is all the movie has to offer -- and even that is a mark it doesn't always hit.

It's like a class reunion in purgatory. All the familiar faces are there, but the air is sulfurous and murky, and hell is just an elevator ride away. [10 Dec 1993, p.A2]

Wedding Date is neither good art, good entertainment nor even good trash.

A flashy-looking low-budget indie about drugs, love and crime in small-town Iowa. But, speaking as an ex-small-town Midwesterner, I found it hard to buy.

Jingle All the Way has been well shot and imaginatively designed. But somehow that makes it worse. So does the fact that all the actors, Schwarzenegger included, are skilled enough to make you watch them. [22 Nov 1996, p.C]

Some movies should never have been made, and high on that list is the addled new remake of Rollerball.

A fitfully funny retread of "48 Hours," "Fled" and dozens of others.

A mind-numbing, bloody, ridiculous experience.

It's outrageously stereotypical and weirdly personal, so loonily exaggerated it keeps surprising you.

A comedy murder mystery gone seriously astray, boasts an immensely talented cast .

Just withers compared with many older, better movies about teen alienation and nihilism, from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "River's Edge."

A fast, slick, outlandish fiasco that starts out well and then seems to drop right off a cliff.

An unabashedly bad movie full of cliches, claptrap, fairly good rock 'n' roll and stomach-turning gross-out gags.

Some film premises are so outlandish, so thinly worked out and so deep-down ridiculous that they wind up sinking the show -- and White Chicks collapses under a real doozy.

Sweet-tempered but superficial.