Mick LaSalle

But let’s be fair: If this were the first cop movie ever made, we’d be grateful for it. It holds interest. It’s never quite boring. And there are worse things you can do with your time than watch Boseman, Miller and Simmons for an hour and a half. Just know that 21 Bridges is the kind of movie you’ll forget five minutes after seeing it.

Even if a quarter of what Boreman claimed was true, she had a lot more coming to her than a sympathetic hearing and much prettier actress playing her onscreen. She practically deserved an apology from the male sex, and that, in a way, is what this movie is.

Marry Me is entirely Lopez’s movie, and she’s terrific, right there emotionally in some difficult scenes. But it’s too much Lopez’s movie — too many (lousy) songs, too many dance numbers. A half hour in, there’s no mistaking it: Lopez was one of the producers.

The chief virtues of Parkland are journalistic in the best sense.

The opening to John Carter is a dud, a battle between airships made of woven bamboo, bursting into computer-generated flame over a sandy terrain. There's nothing to see, nothing to think about, nothing to care about, and nothing to feel, just emptiness. The emptiness is never filled over the course of 132 long, barren minutes.

I won't tell you Taken is great, but it's great fun.

Has a gutsy premise, but no guts.

An average action film, made slightly better by Cruise, and more bizarre by Herzog, and more watchable by Pike, but still within the average range, a silk purse that still says oink.

Romeo Is Bleeding -- not the best title -- takes chances, and although not all of them work, the film manages the difficult trick of swinging wild while holding together. Part of the credit has to go to the consistently well-pitched acting, by Oldman and Olin and also by the actors in smaller roles, including Annabella Sciorra's quiet but edgy turn as Jack's hard-to-read wife. [4 Feb 1994, p.C3]

Behind Enemy Lines has a wretched script and a director (first-timer John Moore) who either has no taste or doesn't know what he's doing.

The banter, often Smith’s strong suit, is witless and tiresome, mostly obsessive conversations about minor characters in “Star Wars” and other aspects of pop culture. It’s probably not Smith’s intention, but we end up feeling sorry for the characters, that they inhabit such a tiny mental landscape.

Ryan's comic timing continues to delight, while Kline is touchingly heartfelt as a man doing what is evidently all too easy to do -- fall in love with Meg Ryan.

The truth is, Studio 666 really is just one joke, and so McDonnell had only one play that he could make here — to take that joke, to hit it hard and keep hitting it, and then get out fast, while the audience is still laughing. He doesn’t quite do that. At 106 minutes, Studio 666 overstays its welcome.

What makes this film special and memorable is the character of Danny Green, who is not the usual neighborhood hoodlum you see in movies.

It's so bleak that it would play like a contrived neo-noir if it weren't so consistent, committed and obviously sincere.

We are aware going in that Varsity Blues' cannot be a landmark of world cinema. Yet working within the tired formula, the picture turns out to be not so bad.

Hoodlum is an overlong gangster movie, a bloated and often laughable attempt at an epic.

The real problem with True Story is contained in its title. The story isn’t too good to be true, but rather too true to be good.

This is the world of Maze Runner: The Death Cure, the third installment in the “Maze Runner” trilogy, a kind of destitute man’s impoverished cousin’s answer to the “Divergent” series.

Though Carolla and co-filmmaker Kevin Hench devise some funny situations — particularly, the one in which a newly divorced woman insists on coming back to his room — the overall feeling that comes across is one of sadness, and that seems intentional.

The movie's bereftness of invention can be measured by how no story element builds on another. Instead, Happy Feet Two is plotted so that a bunch of disparate things happen, until it's time to end the movie.

Most of Last Christmas consists of watching this young woman stumble and fumble through life, and thanks to Clarke’s effortless ability to engage a viewer’s sympathy, that’s almost enough.

The Shadow is more than just the product of the trend to make high- tech features out of '30s superheroes. It's adventurous film-making, genuinely enthusiastic and genuinely inspired. [01 Jul 1994, p.C1]

Crowe is not messing around here, not trying to dream up opportunities to throw himself another close-up. He’s a genuine director.

Final Destination 5 is irresistible, and the reason it's irresistible is that it speaks to us in the language we all understand, which is fear.

Thankfully, the movie clocks in at a mere 105 minutes. The Marvels doesn’t have much to say, but at least it says it quickly.

The movie is just good enough to make us want more and to understand what's missing.

Young Guns is really a modern action movie in the revenge mode, disguised as a western. But with all its faults, it more or less works. Palance is a great heavy, Estevez makes an off-the-wall hero, and there's usually enough happening on screen to keep you interested. [12 Aug 1988, p.E3]

In addition to Bana and Hall, Jim Broadbent is outstanding in a couple of scenes, as a government official, watching from the sidelines and offering warnings and advice. Broadbent is somehow menacing, pathetic and persuasive all at the same time.

That's a lot of talent and star power at play here, made all the more conspicuous in that they don't really get much to work with. Not only is the movie just so-so, but the parts themselves aren't much.

The effect is like watching an opera without music. Or a musical drama in which no one sings. These departures from a realistic convention never feel like static set pieces - that's the great success of the film and of the poems themselves.

Freeheld is formulaic, but some formulas are good if you do them right, and it helps knowing that it all really happened, or most of it.

It is 140 minutes long and repetitious beyond belief. Yet for all its weaknesses - unconscious contradictions, travelogue simplicity and mix-and-match spirituality - Eat Pray Love is, like its central character, on a genuine quest.

Shaft has everything --smart writing, shrewd direction and a handful of performances that are first-rate by any standard.

The movie isn't hellish, because there's always hope of leaving it. It's more like purgatory, two whole hours of it.

A work of art such as A Good Person cannot be the product of some casual connection. It’s the product of a soul connection, and I hope Braff and Pugh get another chance to work together.

At some point or another, you will be offended by The Hunt. But see it anyway, confident in the certainty that other people — people you don’t agree with, people you don’t like — will be offended, too.

Little White Lies is never boring, always watchable, always reasonably rewarding. It's just that, when it's over, 2 1/2 hours seems too big an investment for just pretty good.

It takes a winning recipe and adds some distinctly Hollywood flavors...The result is a botched job.

Too bad. The trappings of The Equalizer 2 are first-rate — the star, the director, the central character, the concept — and they make for a movie that’s watchable and intermittently pleasing. But not enough time was spent getting the substance right.

A smart, nicely paced crime drama, with colorful characters, compelling situations and an assured style. [17 Apr 1993, p.C3]

Neither a masterpiece nor a remake of one, but its wistfulness is infectious, and its melancholy mood lingers for days.

Passenger 57 is silly but fun -- an action movie accidentally saved by its glorious stupidity. It will make people shake their heads, roll their eyes and laugh at the screen, but it will keep their attention, because the movie has a crazy kind of life. [06 Nov 1992, p.C1]

Two good characters and two good performances go into the old poubelle — or, as we say in English, the garbage bin.

There are laughs throughout, but Guilt Trip isn't joke-happy. The humor is light and well observed, as when Mom keeps playing the audiobook of "Middlesex," and the son gets uncomfortable hearing about anything sexual in front of his mother.

To their credit, by the time the movie ends, Blunt and Johnson have made the sale. I believed them and liked seeing them together. They don’t make Jungle Cruise worth seeing or even worth tolerating. But for scattered minutes across this wasteland, they make it less painful.

Painless and predictable, with an amusing if overwrought featured performance by Woody Harrelson.

A near miss, a respectable but uninspired thriller that's intelligent and considered in its details, but ultimately weak in its impact.

There's nothing about this thriller to prevent it from soon becoming enmeshed in the memory with others in which Michael Douglas wears a starched collar and grits his teeth.

Has no narrative throughline, no emotional spine. It's a mess.

Boundaries is a slog, a succession of weak and uninteresting incidents, leading to a conclusion that seems foreordained.

There’s a Danish film called “After the Wedding” which was released here in 2007 and nominated for the foreign film Oscar. It didn’t win — it had the bad luck to be nominated against “The Lives of Others,” which was even better. But it’s a great film. The new After the Wedding is the American remake, and it’s fascinating. That is, it’s fascinating in that it’s not even close to great, despite using the same scenario. Indeed, it would be a real lesson in filmmaking to watch both movies back to back, just to see how to do things and how not to do things. And, just to clarify, the new After the Wedding would be in the “how not to do things” category.

Therapy for a Vampire has nothing to say. It just has stuff happening, none of it repulsive and all of it performed by competent actors, but that’s just not enough.

Harrelson and Olson make a good pair. He’s genial and bewildered and expects the best, while she’s guarded and clear-eyed and expects the worst. They deserve a better movie, but they make Champions more than bearable.

It's just a simple thriller whose goal is little more than to keep moving.

Anyway, thanks to Lourd, Clooney and Roberts — who radiates an appealing groundedness and sanity, despite having been suffocatingly famous since her early 20s — “Ticket to Paradise” is a lot more enjoyable than it deserves to be.

Though the storytelling is a bit lopsided, the slapdash quality is charming overall, and the movie benefits from colorful characters and a couple of hilarious scenes.

The movie is more about how many things Michael Bay can smash up -- lots. That might not be a talent most people respect, but it gets through to people anyway, and here Bay does it exceptionally well.

The truth is, “You People” is too confused to be offensive — too inconsequential to merit that level of engagement. But it’s certainly disappointing, virtually from its opening minutes.

There are many things to admire about this movie, but the main one is that it doesn't compromise.

One of the pleasures of Deterrence is that it does not tell the audience what to think.

It has verve, color and energy, but there's something fundamentally bogus about it.

Exciting and nerve-racking in the moment, but empty.

An enjoyable movie with an entertaining angle on a hard-to-resist period of history.

Elles has about half of a story stretched to feature length, and it manages to end just as a good story might have been kicking in. But that is often the way with foreign cinema: The Europeans know how to do sex, but we know how to do stories.

Take a cowboy movie, add space aliens. That's a gimmick that could easily have exhausted itself after 20 minutes, but director Favreau, a team of screenwriters and some well-cast actors keep it alive, and the result is a crowd-pleasing summer movie with more wit than most.

Going into The Violent Heart, you must understand that the ending is insanely ridiculous. This is not to say that it’s not entertaining — in a way, it’s even more entertaining for being insanely ridiculous. But by the end, you will in no way be able to regard The Violent Heart as anything resembling a serious movie.

Ana de Armas is inspired and flawless as Marilyn Monroe, and yet “Blonde” is a total bomb. Intuitively, that would seem impossible, for someone to be that good in a failed picture. Here’s something else that would seem impossible: “Blonde” has seriousness of purpose and a strong director, Andrew Dominik, who clearly made the movie he wanted to make. It’s still bad.

A sour misfire.

Its virtues can't outweigh the disappointment of a movie that might have been a rousing old-fashioned epic, or better yet a provocative reworking of an old epic, and instead became a muddle.

Does not end well. But there's a lot of pleasure in getting there.

Where Caine was like an arsonist in his relationships, Law's Alfie is more like a kid playing with matches -- innocent and genuinely surprised when things start blowing up around him. Law makes Alfie's befuddlement a surprisingly poignant thing to witness.

Mighty Macs further distinguishes itself by, for once, giving a fair shake to nuns, who are treated with respect both in the performance of Ellen Burstyn, as the mother superior, and of Marley Shelton, who plays the assistant coach. It's about time.

In thematic terms, Cassandra's Dream could be looked at as a rebuttal to "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

The success of Chloe is largely due to the contribution of screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson.

So chalk Escape Plan up as a pretty good action movie given an extra edge by the intelligent use of its two main actors.

A lot of frivolous but genuine laughs.

As the man who made the monster and now has to live with it, Pacino's a blast.

Depictions of an aide talking about her hospital vigil and her words of comfort to a distraught Laura Bush are creepy and exploitative -- and borderline disgusting.

The result is that most of the picture plays out as a series of scenes in which our hero sits there, gets angry and loses all his money.

Something kicks in about two thirds in, and Far and Away becomes exhilarating. [22 May 1992]

The results are comical and unexpected -- and just a bit eerie.

Blanchett's performance is Soderbergh's biggest mistake. He either encourages or permits her to play Lena as a Greta Garbo caricature, which is mildly amusing if you're interested in Garbo, but if you're interested in Lena and The Good German, you're out of luck.

A better- than-average children's film, dolled up with some high-priced art direction and extraordinary special effects.

Could hardly be called a success -- it's rather a likable disaster.

Henry's Crime has three charismatic actors - Reeves, Vera Farmiga and James Caan - in search of a decent script, and what they find, instead, are a handful of good scenes and lots of room to build their respective characters.

There's something to be said for a formula picture done almost to perfection. In 2012, Emmerich gives you everything you expect, but gives it to you bigger.

Don’t Look Up might be the funniest movie of 2021. It’s the most depressing too, and that odd combination makes for a one-of-a-kind experience. Writer-director Adam McKay gives you over two hours of laughs while convincing you that the world is coming to an end.

A documentary in search of a story.

Though it's only 72 minutes, by the time it's over, you'll be ready for it to end. Still, as a glimpse of the Arab world right before the Arab Spring, this documentary may be of some lasting interest.

Burns has a hard time finding a central idea, some overall point that isn't borrowed or trite. Or both.

It's sober, never flashy or exciting but always engrossing.

Not entirely successful or appealing - not exactly a delightful evening in the company of scintillating characters - but interesting all the same.

Clocking in at two hours and 20 minutes, it seems intended to have been a crime epic in the vein of Michael Mann’s “Heat,” about two men of talent and spirit who happen to be on opposite sides of the law. And it’s sort of like that, if you can imagine a Michael Mann picture that has been set on fire and dropped from an airplane.

My Fellow Americans is one adjustment away from being a great movie. As it stands it's a pleasing but mediocre film, with a great cast, a great story and a misguided script.

I got tired of Coneheads early on, but I never really got tired of looking at those heads.

At its best, it captures the last-days-of-Pompei feeling that was in the air at the time — a mix of frenetic celebration, paranoia and despair. But alas, the documentary soon derails into bogus history, specious arguments and a self-blinding variety of political bias.

In the end, it’s hard to know whether to see the Iran of Desert Dancer in optimistic or pessimistic terms. Young people, especially, want to be free, but the other side has all the power. Having YouTube on your side certainly helps, but an army and some tanks can come in handy, too.

A well-constructed and genuinely tense thriller.

Your Place or Mine has a feeling of old and new about it. It’s an old-fashioned romantic comedy in that it depends almost entirely on the charm of its principal actors, Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, yet it comes up with a new way of telling its story.

The Gray Man gets better as it goes along, and it contains a couple of action sequences that are as imaginative and well-crafted as any that you’ll see all year. So don’t dismiss it. Netflix it.

An example of good, clean, incredibly brutal fun. [09 Oct 1990, p.E1]

It's never boring, but it lacks a cumulative impact.

The Miracle Club won’t rock your world, but it’s a nice movie. There’s always a place for nice movies.

A promising idea turns into nothing, and we're left with a painfully dull kids' picture.

When Christian Bale allowed himself to play Bruce Wayne in "Batman Begins," he was slumming - and to good effect. But with Terminator Salvation, this ostensibly serious actor takes up residence in the action ghetto, and it's not a good fit.

Bohemian Rhapsody is probably what Freddie Mercury was aiming for all along, a big, splashy, half-true biopic in the Hollywood style. It’s a bit corny, but grand; a bit obvious, but entertaining, and inspiring almost in spite of itself.

More intelligent than most summer blockbusters and features at its center a thought-out and committed performance by Will Smith. But in the end it's merely ALMOST good.

From a narrative feature, we want drama and illumination, the truths that go beyond the plain facts. That’s where Mary Shelley comes up a bit short. It’s never less than competent and intelligent, and here and there it’s better than that.

The movie is rich with music and more than a few moments of painful exaltation.

For 70 minutes, Antichrist is a rare exploration of pain, featuring two actors collaborating with each other in agonizing and intimate ways. It also contains some of the best work Gainsbourg has ever done on screen. And then - if I put it more gently I wouldn't really be saying it - director Lars von Trier loses his mind.

It’s not like bad Tarantino. That would be too kind. It’s like an imitation of a bad imitation of Tarantino — violent, unfelt and witless, and straining to be funny.

Original enough to keep an audience guessing most of the way. It has a strong plot that takes surprising and satisfying turns, and there's never really a dull moment. This is the kind of movie that, once you start watching, you have to finish just to see how it turns out. [08 Oct 1991, p.E1]

Mars Needs Moms floats about 45 minutes' worth of story in an 88-minute ocean.

Curiously, the film seems to have no discernible point, and yet -- this is practically unique -- the absence of a point becomes, in itself, a form of narrative interest.

Cmera work can't do anything about the barrenness of the screenplay, nor the sense of fundamental insincerity at the core of the film. [03 Sep 1993]

Downhill is not a funny movie and wasn’t intended to be. It has moments of humor, but of the more uncomfortable variety, not the kind that provoke laughter, but cringing.

Adams sparkles with quick-mindedness and verbal agility. This is a worthy and underused talent.

Audiences will walk away thinking, "What was that?" But they will walk away thinking.

The new Vanishing fails on its own terms -- it gradually adopts the conventions of a silly monster movie and loses the emotional impact of a psychological thriller in the process. But what makes this failed effort perplexing is the existence of the earlier film and its successful design. [05 Feb 1993, p.D4]

Is Little lousy? No. It goes along pleasantly, unimportantly, predictably. Here and there, a mild chuckle might escape your lips. Ten minutes later, a half-hearted titter, or perhaps a knowing chortle. Just don’t expect to guffaw or cachinnate, and forget all about busting a gut. It’s not that kind of comedy.

Has that title going for it, which might annoy or provoke you. It makes me suspicious. It's the kind of flashy, meaningless title that's usually given to drab, pointless films.

Everything connected with the lovers, who are the point of the movie, is either ordinary or unwittingly funny, and the laughs come early.

Like “It Ends with Us,” which was also based on a Colleen Hoover novel, “Reminders of Him” is a movie whose willingness to be deeply unpleasant saves it from becoming a soap opera.

Despite the title, Ismailos' documentary is not a study of what constitutes great direction. Rather it's a nicely arranged film in which a variety of filmmakers Ismailos likes discuss their inspirations and influences.

Retains the earlier film's ability to delight the viewer with surprise effects and flights of fancy, only now the effects are better.

Coraci has given us a film that is not only amusing, but well-acted, and not only well-acted, but gorgeous. Micha Klein's animated transitions alone, which are used to signal each change in location, are wondrous and lovely to behold.

The world of The Black Dahlia is beyond bleak, beyond film noir.

If Species sounds ridiculous, it is -- though as ridiculous science fiction films go, this one has its moments. As usual, these moments come early.

Watched today, in light of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump administration, it has an extra intensity, as a possible preview of coming attractions.

A perfectly OK drama, with a good cast and many good scenes, but it suffers from the usual maladies that films get when they've been out on the ranch too long: all-too-obvious symbolism and a serious case of the longueurs.

An innocuous, fluffy little nothing of an almost-pleasant movie.

After a devastating opening, the movie gets sluggish here and there, but it remains interesting throughout, not just culturally, but as a piece of drama.

Lister is quite funny and engaging. It's just too bad that some of that screenwriting wit couldn't have been shared with the movie's protagonist.

The Promise is hardly grotesque; and it has good things in it, but by the end, it just feels like a failed manipulation.

CB4 has a good time parodying the rap world, and the mock songs and fake videos featured here are funny and dead-on. But more and more as it goes along CB4 gets bogged down in details. The inspiration goes out of the picture, and the last half hour is just a matter of going through the motions. [12 Mar 1993, p.C1]

Despite some weaknesses, a sense gradually emerges in this film- not just an idea, but a strong feeling mixed with an idea - about the dance of good and evil over time.

Look Both Ways has a couple of things going for it, namely a compelling premise and the charm of Lili Reinhart (“Riverdale”) in the lead role. But the whole movie is a lie, and once you figure that out, the realization cuts into a lot of the pleasure.

In The Chaperone, Brooks is something of a fixed entity, a fully-formed force of nature already heading toward her peculiar form of glory. She has stuff to do all day — studying by day and partying by night, while Elizabeth McGovern as Norma has time to look inside.

John Lennon once said, "There's a great woman behind every idiot." This time, I'm counting seven of them.

30 Minutes or Less is a strange case. Either it goes for a particular tone and doesn't achieve it. Or it does achieve a tone that's not really worth striving for.

To say Venom: Let There Be Carnage is not worth seeing is not enough. It’s not worth admitting into your life, even as an option. You’ve read a review of it. That’s enough. Now, never think of it again for the rest of your life.

Needless to say, Soul Men has a lot to overcome in its effort to be funny.

Silent House feels relentless, suffocatingly tense and almost unbearable. And that's a very good thing.

Yet all this work, all this skill, serve as little more than an elaborate setting for a rhinestone. At its core there is no passion, no sincerity of conception, nothing that might have made The Quick and the Dead into anything more than moment-to-moment stimulation. You get lots of clothes here, but no emperor. Or rather, no empress.

The movie also benefits from the presence of Anne Heche as Ellis’ wife. Heche doesn’t say much, but she conveys a lot.

A substantial examination of character, morality and destiny.

A whimsical modern fairy tale.

To the extent that it's original, The Mechanic is insane, bordering on gloriously insane.

There’s really nothing else to say about Gold, beyond one general point: It is illustrative of what’s particularly fun about being a critic in January. For most of the year, bad movies have the same general ailments. But in January, they have exotic diseases. They have things wrong with them that you’ve never seen before.

Movies go bad in all kinds of ways, but in 7 Days in Entebbe the filmmakers found a brand-new way for their movie to commit suicide.

Killing Zoe is another jolly bloodbath about disaffected young people having trouble getting in touch with their feelings, so they go on a spree, killing people, killing everything, tra-la- la-la-la.

It doesn’t help matters that the movie seems to end three times before it ends, and none of those ends are satisfying.

Oldboy is an immersion into pure twistedness. The purity of its twistedness is its saving grace.

It's not just for people who like rap or the rap atmosphere. It's a well-paced, light comedy that can appeal to anybody. [05 Jun 1992, p.D1]

It's about what you'd expect _ a collection of gags, some good, some bad, with the bare suggestion of a story to hang it all on. Chevy Chase, as usual, is a lot better than he has to be and lifts the picture to the point that it's intermittently fun and fairly painless. [1 Dec 1989, p.E1]

Seemingly intended as a celebration of the power of books, it's an occasionally incoherent, sleep-inducing picture that reduces narrative to mere mechanics.

What makes Aniston, of all actresses, especially right for Cake is that her comedy has always had a certain ruefulness underlying it, an understanding of life’s limits, a kind of glum acceptance. So the transition into sadness and desolation is a natural step for her.

The Instigators is unremarkable but consistently amusing, and makes you feel like everyone showed up at the set expecting a party.

The overall experience of the movie is of something fresh.

It's really, really funny.

It’s long, downright dispiriting, enjoyable only sometimes, and yet there’s a feeling of authenticity. It’s neither bad nor good, but interesting. It might improve with age.

Beethoven once went five years without composing. Until now, Downey has gone five years without making anything close to a serious movie. The bigger waste of time was Beethoven’s, but talent wasted is talent wasted. This is the type of film Downey should be making.

Jennifer 8 is an empty-headed thriller, uninspired, by the numbers, the kind of movie that gets made not because anybody wants to make it but because of a perceived market out there for this kind of picture. People do like thrillers, but they don't like long, boring, vapid thrillers, and Jennifer 8, which opens today, is definitely in the latter category. [6 Nov 1992, p.C1]

What The Banger Sisters offers in place of an eloquent statement is the charm of two actresses at the top of their game in flashy roles and a smart script that's decidedly more coarse than sentimental.

Cate Blanchett has the title role, and she does wonders with it, bringing a degree of passion but also suggesting something essentially unevolved in Charlotte's character.

Clearly, this is something rare: a movie that insulates itself against its own rottenness by being lousy by design.

Earns its emotional moments, and it takes the audience along.

There's nothing here but wreckage. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is so ineptly made that the story is advanced solely through announcements.

It's up to Ellen Barkin to carry the movie, and she manages until the thing just becomes a dead weight. [10 May 1991, p.E1]

Maggie Q has been in good movies before, but The Protégé is the first movie that’s good because she’s in it.

The desire to go back in time to change things -- or just to visit -- is so central to the experience of being alive and stuck in time that Timecop has a built-in power. It's a power the film, a satisfying science-fiction thriller, takes full advantage of.

A sharp, engaging look at what it's like to be hungry and not-so-young in New York.

This is a shrewd and effective film from a director who understands how to create and sustain a mood.

Writer-director Seth MacFarlane is like some weird combination of a stupid, dirty-minded teenager and a brilliant comic master. His impulses are sophomoric, but he knows where to find the punch line, and he hits it, again and again.

This may be hard to believe, but Bride of Chucky is a smart little horror movie. The fourth installment in the "Child's Play" series has a sense of its own silliness -- and a tight plot that provides a clothesline for a string of funny, macabre murders.

This society makes no sense except as a metaphor. The social layout of Divergent was supposedly devised so as to maintain peace, but putting people into airtight factions guarantees conflict.

There’s idiotic, and there’s magnificent, but The Greatest Showman is that special thing that happens sometimes. It’s magnificently idiotic. It’s an awful mess, but it’s flashy. The temptation is to cover your face and watch it through your fingers, because it’s so earnest and embarrassing and misguided — and yet it’s well-made.

Last Vegas is an entertaining movie with a lot of integrity, and it gives all of its actors - all heavyweights and Oscar winners - real moments to dig in and play something.

If there's a revelation to be gleaned from these youthful entries, it's that much of what made Hitchcock great was there from the beginning. [18 Feb 2007, p.26]

Pleasing but routine British comedy.

A mildly pleasing romantic comedy, a trifle held together by Drew Barrymore's charm and a decent high-concept gimmick.

What pushes it above mediocrity is that it ends better than it begins.

Even camp status eludes this tepid and misguided picture.

It's possible there has never been anything like it. It contains memorable dialogue, vivid characters and several superb scenes, and yet it still manages to be wrong, a complete miscalculation.

How many doubts can Lee possibly cram into one motion picture? Red Hook Summer has almost too many to count: moments that go clunk, followed by others that go clang; actors who talk as if reading their lines off cue cards or rehearsing them for the first time; and set pieces that lie there.

A poorly acted, colossal bore of a film that strikes wrong notes from beginning to end.

It’s hard to know what Maiwenn was trying to accomplish here, besides giving herself a juicy and an entirely sympathetic historically-based role. She achieves that, and she’s good in the film — Maiwenn always is — but the “what’s the point of all this” question takes “Jeanne du Barry” down just a notch.

Eubanks takes someone else’s screenplay, one that’s full of incident, and infuses it with his own sensibility. Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t a writer, either. Being a good director with a real point of view — that’s plenty.

The film is like watching a very bad play as presented by a very bad director.

The musical numbers are the only real drag on this otherwise odd and appealing picture.

Escape Room is an amusement park ride. It has no reason for being beyond that base-level kick, and it doesn’t, as they say, transcend the genre. But there’s something to be said for amusement park rides. People like them for good reason.

In the end, probably the best way to watch Emperor is to pretend that the Supreme Command of Allied Forces in Japan after World War II was Tommy Lee Jones. If you do that, the movie works surprisingly well.

Story problems tank the new Tomb Raider — small, essential things like lack of motivation, lack of reasons for people to do the things they do, and lack of any reason for the audience to keep watching.

A movie with an irresistible premise that ultimately collapses around the whole issue of motivation. Until it does, this is a thoroughly entertaining picture.

Unfortunately, Sucka falls apart after the first half-hour. The action sequences are confusing and senseless. The setups for the action scenes are long and pointless. You know where the movie is heading, and there are no surprises along the way. It's one joke, over and over. [17 Feb 1989, p.E7]

Gran Turismo is just the same cars, going around and around and around.

It's a straight-ahead adventure with the usual number of thrills, but with the added virtue of being smarter and more sober than one might expect.

An almost successful comedy.

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez had their fun with From Dusk Till Dawn, and now they need to stay away from each other. For their own good. Forever.

"300" was an innovative and imaginative action film, but the follow-up, 300: Rise of an Empire, is nothing but a disappointment.

Most of the time Lockout is pleasant enough, not something to recommend to a friend, but enjoyable in the moment. Guy Pearce has a lot to do with that, as the most impervious action star imaginable.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is one of Chevy Chase's best movies. Though more or less a comedy, the picture gives Chase a chance to do much more than smirk and be a wise guy, while providing a good showcase for his dry style of humor. [28 Feb 1992, p.D1]

Sleeping With the Enemy is bound to be a crowd pleaser, with its cool, crazed villain and with Julia Roberts in the lead, as a woman who fakes her death in order to escape her husband. But everything surprising and gripping about the movie happens in the first 20 minutes, and after that it follows a predictable course. [08 Feb 1991, p.C1]

A good action movie, whose title expresses what is, more or less, a recurring motif. It also gives a sense of the film's general attitude toward life. It's a film with no ambition but to get viewers' pulses moving. It does that, and with a fair degree of wit and style.

Despite a few shortcuts and some small but nagging inconsistencies -- not to mention weak performances in a couple of key roles -- Just Cause delivers.

The most exciting contribution to The Girl on the Train is that of Wilson. It’s exciting because it shows that it’s possible, despite the odds, for a distinctive screenwriter to express herself consistently and dominate a film. And it’s exciting because this is a unique voice, and very much a woman’s voice, that our cinema needs.

Has some faults, but it manages to keep its audience either angry or jumpy from start to finish.

Ultimately, Fortress is a formula picture, an action film that has to resolve itself in a conventional way. Still, until its last five minutes or so, when it takes a slightly silly turn, Fortress is nicely realized and holds your attention. [4 Sept 1993, p.E1]

No classic, but neither was the original starring Burt Reynolds. Instead, it's an odd mix of amusing nonsense and nastiness that chugs along, hit and miss, until the last section, which is the best part of the movie and its real reason for being: the game.

One Day is a beautiful movie, but beautiful in a way that life often is, not movies. Nothing is sudden or easy, either for the characters or for the audience, and there are no thunderbolts from the blue.

There is a kind of historical British movie — Tolkien is one of them — that almost feels as if the subject were incidental.

Everybody in Admission is funny - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn - but they're not funny in Admission.

Germain and Brown open up the stage play with flashbacks, which are not nearly as effective as the two guys talking. But as long as they’re talking, and they talk enough, “Freud’s Last Session” is very much worth seeing.

Divine cast keeps 'Ya-Ya Sisterhood' from falling flat

“Ant-Man: Quantumania” is a glum, tiresome exercise that follows the pattern of every run-of-the-mill superhero movie ever made.

Prisoner’s Daughter is, in a way, a simple movie. It’s also a cleverly (perhaps unconsciously) disguised version of John Wayne’s swan song, “The Shootist.” It’s one of those movies that you’ll enjoy as it goes along, only to realize, a day or two later, that it was even better than you thought.

Murder at 1600 has velocity and excitement, and that takes it a long way. It stars Wesley Snipes, which takes it a bit farther. And it's also lightweight, cliched and borderline ridiculous, which takes it back a few pegs.

Seducing Charlie Barker is a movie made by people who haven't been making movies, but should be. As in, often. As in, from now on.

Think of The FP as the occasion for a party. You need to find a room full of people who get the joke and see this movie there, because audiences will be laughing so hard they'll be screaming.

It's off in many directions - false in its details, false in its relationships, false in its emotions - but probably the first and worst thing that needs to be said about it is that it's also overlong and dull.

This whole concept is a rich vein for gags, especially with a comic as at-home with herself as Schumer. But there’s something sweet and wise about it, too.

The pace is quick, very quick by American standards. The script blasts through reams of plot with lightning dialogue, and even if you have a fast eye for subtitles you may come to the end of the movie with no clear idea what happened.

The movie has a certain integrity and creates an interesting atmosphere, largely thanks to the soundtrack, of all things, which gives most moments a dreamy undertone.

Ultimately, The Mountain Between Us tries to pull the audience’s interest in a relationship direction. It’s a difficult task, despite two charismatic leads.

There are chase scenes and car pileups. This wasn't fresh in 1980. It hasn't gotten any fresher.

Black Nativity is a just-OK feature film that, as an hour-long television special, could have had the makings of a classic.

Often silly but it's an honest, unselfconscious exploration of the conflict between a man's physical and psychological age.

Gradually, FX2 ties itself into a knot it can't undo even with the most desperate of measures. Everything is left hanging, and by the end the plotting is so clumsy it's embarrassing. [10 May 1991, p.E3]

Kemper is good throughout. Her radiant likability gives her the power to sell weak material, which means she will often be offered weak material. But there’s enough in Happiness for Beginners to make me glad that she did it.

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer is lightweight and fun -- not great fun, but it has its moments. The high school satire angle is both authentic and good-natured. [31 Jul 1992, p.D1]

What little pleasures the movie offers are small and intermittent. Kyle Chandler gets to unleash his inner Shatner by acting intense every moment that he’s on screen.

Suffers from the bloat common to sequels.

In terms of adrenaline, XXX is one of the most satisfying entries this summer.

By avoiding the usual animation cliches, by keeping the story moving, the pictures pretty and the characters consistently amusing, director and co- writer Rob Letterman cobbles together an entertaining 90 minutes.

Jeremy Irvine is the sympathetic focus, but it’s Noah Wyle who holds the movie together, as a former teacher who lost his job through a malicious student’s prank. Smart, self-possessed and capable, this fellow nonetheless carries himself with an awareness of some underlying guilt.

Here's the tricky thing about The Strangers. Sure, it uses cinema to ends that are objectionable and vile ... but it does it well, with more than usual skill.

Haunted Mansion shouldn’t have been rebooted, but if made, it should have clocked in at a modest 90 minutes.

The movie is equal parts interesting, awful and lovely.

The new film's social message comes through loud and clear, but something in the comedy seems constrained -- effortful, yet muffled. It might be a matter of the right tone never having been found.

Has no truth, wisdom or honesty, and it's barely entertaining.

The result is a film that will probably please people already fascinated by Behan but leave everyone else yawning with admiration.

No film biography can capture or explain or add to the magic of Chaplin at his best, because these screen moments are perfect in themselves. But Chaplin, with dignity and some vitality, does what it can -- it holds up a light and points the way. [08 Jan 1993, p.D1]

The mixed report on La Mission is that writer-director Peter Bratt doesn't really know how to make pictures, but he does know the central character in his movie.

If In the Cut falls short of the masterpiece Campion intended, it's unquestionably the most ambitious and important film to come along in months.

There are all kinds of dull movies. There’s check-your-watch (or phone) dull. There’s run-into-the-bathroom-to-splash-water-on-your-face dull. And then there’s Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which is standing-up dull.

About halfway through Red 2, in the midst of all the laughs and action, suddenly Anthony Hopkins shows up, and he doesn't care one bit that nobody is going to notice his acting in a movie like this. He's going for the Oscar anyway.

Call it a victory of conviction over substance, but when Argento is onscreen, you look at her - not because she's good, but because she's there in a way nobody else is.

"The Family Stone" did nothing for Parker, but Failure to Launch makes a strong case for life after "Sex and the City."

Aspires to the breezy esprit of a Richard Lester comedy from the '60s, but it's a deadly, leaden affair.

An exceptionally well-written script, full of unexpected turns and clever reversals, and a trio of deft actors in the principal roles.

Never soars, but it never flags. It remains brisk, engaging and pleasant throughout, and face it: If a movie this well made had Spanish or French subtitles, we'd all be talking about it as a searing examination of sexual politics.

To his credit, writer-director Jonathan Kasdan is sensitive and observant...But he doesn't know what he's talking about, not really, and though he structures the film around his areas of ignorance, that only works partially.

With In the Heart of the Sea, director Ron Howard has given us a painstakingly crafted bore, a lovingly rendered snooze, and a very expensive means by which audiences can experience restless leg syndrome before being carted off to the land of happy slumber.

This is responsive, engaged filmmaking, the kind of movie they say Americans don't make.

In slightly less than 1,000 years, the competition for worst film of the third millennium will be fierce. Yet the smart money may well be on the Korean art film Lies.

Takes the financially successful formula of "Legally Blonde," the Reese Witherspoon hit from two years ago, and does something unexpected. It fiddles with it, changes it and actually fixes it.

Plays like a war movie made in a time of war: too careful, too programmatic.

It's big, perfectly cast and entertaining in every way, but more than that it feels like a generous public event.

This is a superior and assured action movie, a quality product that makes the case for a franchise.

Takes viewers into a unique world. It's not just about air traffic controllers. It's about controllers in a specific place and from a specific social background.

The mix of comedy and drama is winning; Costner couldn't be better, and the little girl is a find.

The only thing to take from the wreckage of “Lisa Frankenstein” is the performance of Soberano, in her Hollywood debut. She finds comedy in a weak script and radiates goodness without being boring. Let’s hope she has better movies in her future.

Eddie Murphy's latest picture, Coming to America, is a harmless, fairly amusing comedy that will delight Eddie Murphy fans and keep everyone else mildly entertained. [30 Jun 1988, p.E1]

The film takes a bold, intelligent approach to the explorer's story, providing scenes and images that are not to be forgotten. Then, midway into its journey, the movie sails right off the edge of the universe. [09 Oct 1992, p.C1]

Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.

Seizes on a primal fear and flogs it for two hours.

From the beginning, Midway has awkward dialogue and an atmosphere that seems a bit too 2019, but for a time, the movie’s high stakes make up for that.

Unfortunately Young Guns II is a small blaze and no glory. [01 Aug 1990, p.E1]

The story may be scattered and sagging and the picture may have little emotional impact -- certainly nothing to justify the epic running time -- but Garcia at least succeeds in making Havana in the 1950s seem like a vibrant, special place. He doesn't exactly make the audience care, but he does make the audience understand why he cares, and that's something.

Surely, there’s the potential here for a kind of Country and Western “Amadeus.” Instead we get I Saw the Light, which will do until something better comes along.

Senior Year is a just-OK movie, but it’s a very good Rebel Wilson movie, in that she has been funny in supporting roles, but this is the first time she has excelled as the name above the title.

Salma Hayek stands out in a comic role as the hitman’s impossibly vulgar, assertive wife. It’s also worth noting that there are lots of car chases here, and they actually aren’t boring. That qualifies as a rare achievement.

The spectacle, which is colossal and at times staggering to behold, begins within two minutes of the fade-in and keeps coming until the finish. I thought I'd seen it all. I hadn't.

A poignant, quirky and effective alternative to the usual soulless, computer-generated summer fare.

Yet, it's watchable -- not remotely enjoyable, but watchable.

It gets worse and worse as it goes along and finally ends just as it's becoming unbearable.

There’s no apparent human feeling on display here, just scene after scene of protracted martial arts combat that goes on and on, while providing no rooting interest.

Masterminds delivers for the most part. Kate McKinnon, as David’s wife, does her usual frozen-face, crazy-eyed weird thing, but this time she’s funny.

Shock and Awe is no “All the President’s Men,” but it does present a nice balance to the earlier film’s ultimately rosy picture.

It would really help to get into the right frame of mind before seeing The Time Traveler's Wife, because viewed from some angles - maybe most angles - the movie is ridiculous.

Big as it is, Blade' is meticulous and subtle, not just in its camera technique but in the way it works its themes and creates a mood.

Excess Baggage falls down as a showcase for Silverstone, who made a big splash in "Clueless" and whose production company is releasing this film. She comes across as unappealing and unseasoned in ways that go beyond the role.

It's all swell, though after two hours of nonstop yin energy, one does begin to wish that someone like Bruce Willis might show up in a sweaty T-shirt, scratching himself.

Toback presents specific characters dealing with specific problems and, through their stories, somehow manages to take the temperature of the times.

But probably the best thing about The Prince & Me is the way the story doesn't end in the obvious place but keeps going, showing the characters continuing to develop.

Whenever the movie's point of view turns omniscient, and we're seeing events from the director's vantage point, Man on Fire becomes a blurry, shaky mess.

The acting is fine. The ensemble is strong. The story moves along. Yet a coating of sleaze clings to the film, like bread dipped in batter.

Just in the last few months, we've seen "Snowpiercer" and "Divergent," which also deal with what happens after a civil collapse. The Giver, the latest in this weird trend, approaches a now-familiar topic from a new angle, and, of the three, it's the most visually arresting.

In retrospect, Levinson might secretly wonder if the bizarre casting was the right move after all. But at least he got strong performances from his lead actor, and he took a good script by Pileggi (“Goodfellas”) and made a good movie out of it. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Knowing nothing about "X-Files" is no impediment to appreciating this for the well-acted, adult piece of work that it is.

Appealing movie, one of the summer's pleasant surprises.

Like all Shelton's movies, Hollywood Homicide rambles and shambles, and like most of them, it ultimately settles into its own appealing rhythm.

Going after one innocent man was bad enough. Going after another constitutes a pattern. This marshal isn't a hero. He's a menace.

It seems naive, almost delusional.

The laughs do come, but not as readily, not as heartily and not as joyfully as you might expect.