Mick LaSalle

Really, The Expendables 3 has only one thing going for it, beyond the unremarkable novelty of seeing lots of celebrities in a lousy movie. It has Mel Gibson, who is at his grim, tormented and quirky best here, playing someone who has crossed a moral line and has no regrets.

One of the downsides of living in a free society is that every so often someone like Myles Berkowitz gets hold of a camera.

So any "Nightmare" movie has a built-in handicap going in, but the better ones find ways to compensate, by casting appealing young actors (they're always young), by having imaginative dream sequences and - most important of all - by keeping the dreams short. By that standard, this new "Nightmare" is a fairly decent effort.

Even if the idea of The Desperate Hour makes you uneasy, you will be engrossed by it.

In every kids' picture, there are going to be sections that only kids will enjoy. Fortunately, 102 Dalmatians has enough for the adults, too.

A dull film with unsympathetic characters brought together by a gimmicky premise that's handled with no imagination and a pristine fraudulence of emotion. Aside from that, it's great.

She's hopeless, he's hopeless, and this movie is just ghastly.

Take the worst things about independent movies - the wallowing in an unpleasantness, the narrative unsteadiness, the next-to-no story. Then combine those with a hefty dose of light comedy. The result: the big, fat tonal mess that is Happy Tears, a charmless film about two sisters who come together to care for their demented father.

This is a cute movie, a kid's movie, and a rather good one.

If the writing and direction carry Sphere most of the way, the actors manage to bring it home.

Applegate gets by without a false moment in a role that's more serious and has more angles than the airhead she plays on television. I want to see the movies she'll be making in about five years. [07 June 1991, p.E6]

It's a gallant battle against flawed material, and Hirschbiegel fights it to a draw.

Freejack is the kind of picture that you watch and scoff at, and then when it's over, you leave the theater having had a good time, only mildly aware that the good time had something to do with the quality of the movie. Freejack is convoluted, a meeting of bad writing and bad science fiction. And yet, taken as a whole, it's really not bad. [18 Jan 1982, p.C3]

In essence, everything good in Self/less was derived from “Seconds,” and everything bad the writers and the director came up with on their own.

It's funny, easily the funniest and least self-conscious movie that director Nora Ephron has made.

Neither funny nor exciting. It’s at best incongruous, the kind of incongruity that seems delightful on the page but not in practice.

As British comedy sometimes will, A Long Way Down has an occasional attack of the cutes, but the actors' commitment keeps the movie on the plus side.

For all it does right, there's something seriously wrong.

The only thing good to say for The Forest is that Dormer is interesting, that she creates a different vibe and essence for each sister, and that it would be nice to see her in a better movie.

Has some laughs - more than a few thanks to Michael Douglas as a dead swinger (the movie's Jacob Marley) - and some moments of tenderness, too.

It is a boilerplate action comedy.

The movie has some clumsy dialogue and awkward turns, but the picture is brisk and likable.

It's an entertaining movie, which is half the game, but it's not scary, which it should be. Neither is it something to be taken seriously, though it's intended to be.

What makes Aloft better than dismissible is that it’s a sincere failure, not a cynical one, and the cinematography is arresting. In fact, for scattered seconds throughout the movie, Aloft is beautiful to look at.

Actually, there is one other thing that’s unforgivable. After building up to the great climactic confrontation for two-thirds of the movie, it’s a letdown.

When the books are written, The War With Grandpa — the first family film to hit theaters since the pandemic — will have a special place in De Niro’s vast and varied cinematic legacy as the absolute worst movie he ever made.

The picture is more impressive as it goes along, revealing a symmetry of construction underneath the rudiments of a thriller.

A cynically made, painfully long comedy without a single laugh. It's a film to really make you wonder about Damon Wayans ' abilities as a comic actor.

For all the characters butting heads, all the street fights and all the explosions (there are plenty of those), Street Fighter may very well put you to sleep. [24 Dec 1994, p.E1]

It matches up two comic actors and instead of clashing or canceling each other out, they bring in the best possible result: A comedy with twice the laughs.

Ghosted is repellent without ever quite being obnoxious and worthless without ever being boring.

Black Sheep is a little comedy that succeeds in its modest aim to provide 87 minutes of harmless diversion. If you have nothing to do -- and I mean absolutely nothing -- Black Sheep, which opens today, is a must-see.

For the most part, this film has the disadvantages of Chinese action films, without the advantages. That is, it overdoes the action and it’s short on character, without attaining the manic, wild heights of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early ’90s. Still, it’s nice to see Chan once again in a Chinese environment.

The likability of Lydia and Emily helps, but writer-director Ben Falcone’s tendency to milk emotion that isn’t there drags down the movie and some of the comic bits feel obvious and pushed.

Year One has one joke, but it's a good one, played for many variations over the course of an often very funny comedy.

Instead of concealing it, I'll just come out and say that I find it difficult to be enthusiastic about this well-acted and gracefully directed movie, but for reasons that might be called philosophical.

If you see Alice Through the Looking Glass, prepare to lean forward in your seat just to stay awake.

As a 110-minute diversion, as a source of some laughs, as an opportunity for two funny guys to be funny — and to be funny with each other — what’s not to like? Just go in not expecting much.

The absurdity of seeing these two young actors impersonating garbage men, combined with a script that's so clumsy it's remarkable, makes the first 10 minutes or so of Men at Work perversely entertaining. But the fun of laughing at the movie fades quickly. [25 Aug 1990, p.C3]

Not a campy film, but it revels in extremes, and has the same sort of appeal.

The strange thing is that for all of Fonda's whining, Pullman's wary squinting and muttering, the bad dialogue, the cheesy effects, the severed toes, the severed heads, the severed bodies and the cliched directorial choices, Lake Placid adds up to a halfway enjoyable time at the movies.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is the best part of every movie he's in. Then again, when you consider the pictures he's been in, maybe that's not saying enough. [15 Sep 1990, p.C3]

What garbage. Seriously. What absolute, bereft, witless, unoriginal, unrewarding, soulless garbage that’s 40 years past scaring anybody. The only power this formula retains is the power to make you feel a little sad — at the ugliness, at the cynicism, and at the pathetic waste of your own mind as you watch it.

It's a gorefest, a borefest and a snorefest.

With most movies that fail, the fault can be ascribed to carelessness or lack or inspiration or cynicism. But Chelsea Walls, directed by actor Ethan Hawke, is clearly a labor of love.

Just not worth revisiting, unless one wants to tie one's brain into a knot for no discernible reward.

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.

Almost every moment has flashes and explosions and a pulsing, relentless soundtrack. It's like being trapped inside a video game.

Sometimes unapologetically stupid and joyously crass, it’s often brilliant in its absurdity, one of those rare comedies where the audience sits there dumbstruck, wondering what crazy thing will happen next. It takes really smart people to make a movie this silly.

There are lots of cameos, as well, too many to count. However, it is worth mentioning that singer Taylor Swift shows up in a couple of scenes, playing a vapid Valley girl, and she's very funny.

The strange case of a movie that clunks in every possible way but the ultimate way -- it entertains.

There's a case to be made for The Real Cancun as a document of the mating dance as well as an unintentionally poignant film about the brevity of youth.

The Crush is the latest in the growing ''from hell'' genre, about all the fun things that happen when a ferocious, precocious 14-year-old girl develops an intense crush on the nice-guy journalist who rents a guest house from the girl's parents. Things start innocent. Get worse. Get horrible. Get ridiculous. You know the formula. Working within that formula, The Crush isn't bad.

Another inert, soul-dead action drama that turns actors into zombies...It's garbage.

The Mummy is the rare Cruise film that doesn’t quite give audiences their money’s worth.

Vacation is consistently funny from beginning to end, a piling on of dumb but inventive jokes and excruciating, awkward situations.

In any case, Fatal Affair is one of those lucky efforts in which everything good about it is good and everything bad about it is fun. The cheesiness is part of the experience.

Think of The Bubble as part of a pattern we could have anticipated. Pandemic movies almost can’t be any good at this point. The pandemic won’t be funny, interesting or anything anybody wants to think about until we’re safely beyond it by a few years. So, filmmakers, set your watches for pandemic nostalgia to commence circa 2027, and between now and then, just put it out of your minds.

There's nothing particularly wrong with A Kid in King Arthur's Court and nothing right with it, either. Parents will take their kids to see it and suffer, but the pain is mild.

These are good moments, and there are a few others, that prevent Tomb Raider from being one of the worst films of the year. But they're not enough to make it worth seeing.

Super- violent, super-serious and super-stupid.

There's no satisfaction and no pleasure to be gained by sitting through it. The characters are ludicrous and, worse than that, boring. And this is despite all the lead actors doing the best they can.

Combines the usual dumb ideas with one good one. And not just good, but impressive, in that it makes sense of much of what went before.

While it's possible to have a great time with the movie without having any interest in Kiss, it should be noted that the band does make an appearance.

Though charming at times, just misses, due to a contrived story.

An intermittently pleasing children's film.

It's not bad. It's cute.

On Deadly Ground is in every way the equal of Seagal's Under Siege, his first mainstream hit from 1992, and in terms of scale it's even bigger. Everything blows up. Everybody blows up. [19 Feb 1994, p.E1]

Though Zack Snyder is known as an action director, he is a genuine artist and one of the most exciting and promising filmmakers to emerge in the past 10 years. His new movie, Sucker Punch - let's just say it - is a failure, but there's so much talent on that screen that the movie can't be dismissed as a waste of time.

It presents a compelling situation, genuinely touching moments and pockets of strong acting ... and dialogue that has people in the audience turning to each other and laughing because it’s so absurd.

Let It Ride has atmosphere, plus a good setting, appealing actors - and a bad script. [19 Aug 1989]

North is director Rob Reiner's first flat-out failure, a sincerely wrought, energetically made picture that all the same crashes on takeoff. It's strange and oddly distasteful, at its best managing to be bad in some original and unexpected ways.

RV is a horrible movie about horrible people, and just because they call it a comedy doesn't mean we have to play along.

The bottom line here is that Cyrus is ghastly in The Last Song, bad not just in one or two ways, but in all kinds of ways.

Despite moments of unintentional humor, “The Ritual” has an appealing gravity about it, which probably derives from its adherence to the historical record.

Mindhunters is as effective as a movie can be and yet still be 100 percent forgettable.

A strange good movie, bad in every way but its effect. And it’s an effective woman’s story, not exactly believable, but with another kind of truth, a truth of the heart. If that’s not enough, it’s close.

A very funny romantic comedy that nicely combines Adam Sandler's acerbic sweetness with Aniston's down-to-earth warmth.

Father-daughter relationship lacks impact.

Particularly impressive is the film's success at making an actor of average weight look emaciated. His cheekbones are built up so his cheeks appear to sink.

Jaden is not ready for his solo spotlight, and the film is the same action over and over. Another bad movie from Shyamalan.

The result is a film that's far superior to Neil LaBute's "Your Friends and Neighbors'' and more entertaining than Todd Solondz's "Happiness.''

Arrives in theaters today with a sheet over its head and a tag on its toe. So to speak. What we have here is a complete systemic failure, a comedy that's not funny, with action that's not thrilling.

In stiff competition for the lamest thing ever put on celluloid.

It has the curse of earnestness. It is so sincere ... it is so sincere it could put you into a coma.

Amusing and holds interest largely thanks to its re-creation of a glitzy, flamboyant era, not to mention its soundtrack of disco songs that sound a lot better today than 20 years ago.

Everything in the movie is suffused by a vision of life that is resoundingly and evidently false, but as this vision is not repulsive, but is intended to reassure, the lies don’t produce anger or frustration. No, they bring on the laughs.

It’s just cheap, it’s bad, and a completely out-of-left-field Pink Floyd reference — one of their employees is named Syd, the other Barrett — doesn’t help. It just feels like part of the general sloppiness.

Virtually every word and plot turn is insincere, manufactured, unfelt and dishonest, and its portrayal of people demonstrates either an ignorance of human behavior or a disdain for truth.

Fatal Instinct isn't funny, which in a comedy is a slight problem. The movie isn't funny for several reasons, but the most important reason is that the jokes aren't any good. [29 Oct 1993, p.C3]

Tony Scott's vigorous direction is sometimes too vigorous. Loud rock music underscores many scenes, and Scott's habit of shooting at odd angles begins to seem like a mannerism. But on the whole his ambitious attack helps make The Fan entertaining in the moment, even if it's forgettable immediately afterward.

A fairly mediocre film, not nearly as funny as it should be, nor as heartfelt. On the plus side, it's only 85 minutes long and isn't boring. On the downside, it has an intrusive pop soundtrack and a screenplay full of fake conflicts.

The Ex isn't painful, horrible or despicable, but it is an amazing mess.

Proves that it's possible to make a movie so tasteless and so crude that audiences don't laugh. This is worthwhile information. It means there's a limit.

Nothing but a showcase for the inherent comedic gifts of Cameron Diaz. The problem is she doesn't have any.

It’s a formula movie, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, except that it’s a sort of bad version of itself.

In UHF we get 90 minutes of Al Yankovic, and that's 85 minutes too much. The problem isn't that he's weird, but that he isn't weird at all. The premises for his gags are commonplace and predictable, and his follow-throughs lack imagination. He seems incapable of spinning more than one tired joke from each set-up. [21 Jul 1989, p.E1]

Either Shelton knows this world well, or he's such a great bluffer it doesn't matter.

The satire is unfocused, while the story goes nowhere. Too bad. The material is ripe for satire.

To be sure, Steve Jobs has its own integrity as the story of the young innovator, but it’s a little like making a movie about Thomas Edison and stopping somewhere between the phonograph and the lightbulb.

It's original and poetic, and if you see it you will probably remember scenes from it a year from now, because it's not really like anything else. It's very much its own thing.

A boxing movie that exists in that gray area between prototypical and typical, the quintessential and run-of-the-mill.

A cute and amusing little romance that has all the fiery impetuosity of an egg sandwich.

An overblown action monstrosity with no surprises, no exhilaration and no thrills.

It's a romantic comedy with insights into sex and relationships that are old and obvious.

Saint John of Las Vegas was a bad script that somehow got made into a bad movie with good people in it.

The film is fun and extreme, and though in the end rather pointless, there’s a certain audacity here — a delight in extremity — that’s appealing.

As plain awful as Untraceable is, possibly the worst thing about it is that it pretends to mean something.

Martin Lawrence finally gets to show what he can do as a screen comedian.

A disgrace to the talents of Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy, but it's not enough just to say that. It's also a disgrace to the talents of Rene Russo and whoever drove the coffee truck to the set every day.

The race is on for worst film of the year honors. Among the top contenders: Men Cry Bullets.

This is just a slightly better than mediocre film with a disconcerting grasp of the truth.

There's a good idea behind Repo Men, not a whole lot of thinking, but at least one whole idea.

With its flat story, numbed-out protagonist, and faux artistic lighting and set design - everything is dark or moody or darkishly moody or moodily dark - Max Payne seems a good half hour longer than its running time.

Delpy and Scott are able to put it over. She's French and deep and mysterious. He's a fresh-faced American, an open book. Liking them makes it possible to (kinda) like this otherwise routine horror movie.

The King’s Daughter has a script that reads like it was written in crayon, by someone using only their thumbs. But two good performances make the film watchable: Pierce Brosnan as King Louis XIV and William Hurt as his adviser and confessor, Pere Francois de La Chaise.

The most enjoyable way to watch Surveillance - "enjoyable," in the relative sense - is to take its awfulness for granted and pay attention to everything Bill Pullman does.

Fifty Shades Freed has something extra going for it, in that it depicts something that movies and pop songs and pop culture in general tend to avoid, which is the romance of familiarity.

The Lazarus Effect is not the usual mindless thriller, but it’s as flat as an open soda from last week, with dull characters and virtually every scene taking place in a single location. It looks as if it cost about 12 bucks to make — and somebody got robbed.

When Travolta plays, everybody has a good time.

A third-rate effort, with a weak script, cheap-looking effects and no genuine frights.

For Pérez Biscayart, it’s the sound equivalent of a masterful silent-film performance, and for Perelman, it’s the welcome return of an important filmmaker.

To see Perfect Stranger is to wish for a more sophisticated vehicle for a film actress this good, but actors -- and audiences -- take what they can get. This is better than most.

Perfectly acceptable, perfectly bland, competently acted but by no means a scary horror movie, in which "they" are coming to get people.

An ugly, misguided exercise.

It's monumentally coarse and vulgar, aimed at the mentality of a 14-year-old locked inside his father's liquor cabinet, and nothing about it is funny, least of all Adam Sandler.

The best glimpse yet of what it's like to be in Iraq.

Has a high-gloss, heightened style reminiscent of that of the film's executive producer, Joel Schumacher.

Taps into a fear hitherto unexplored by cinema: fear of Bill Gates.

The Road Within is never good. The presentation of Tourette’s syndrome may be authentic, but everything else about the movie — the emotions, the characters, the situations — rings false.

Death Wish is easily the second best “Death Wish” movie ever made, and not a distant second.

In between the scenes of folks being impaled, cut in half with swords and blasted with shotguns are moments of light comedy, but these moments don't succeed in lightening up the picture but rather make it seem as if it were made by Martians with only the vaguest notion of human sensibilities. [16 Mar 1990, p.E6]

The film is neither fish nor fowl nor some arresting new entity, but a lumpish coagulation of conflicting impulses and unrealized gestures.

A generational spectacle that's fun to witness.

The result is a worthy woman's film and Jolie's best showcase to date.

Unfortunately, the characters are so programmatic, the premise so ridiculous and the situations so far-fetched even if you accept that premise that no energy can be built, and the little that's there can't be sustained. Red Dawn is a vigorous but pointless exercise.

Badly made and poorly written, Blended is a rehash of Adam Sandler's 2011 comedy "Just Go With It," only without Jennifer Aniston and without laughs. It not only gets the big things wrong. It gets the small, easy things wrong.

A sour story with a repellent lead character, deadly comic schtick and tin-eared direction to produce 90 minutes of sheer, plodding mirthlessness.

So there’s nothing here to see, except maybe the white dress that Vergara wears in her first scene.

Represents his (Smith) first act of cinematic cynicism, his first crime against his own talent. With this action comedy, he has given us 110 worthless minutes, a bad formula movie like every other bad formula movie.

The resulting film has the integrity and the ugliness of the truth. It's not true because it's ugly; no, it's ugly because it's true.

As for Fraser, his clumsy humanity is endearing, but by now, assuming he has invested wisely, he should have enough money saved so as to not have to waste his talent anymore.

By the end, it reveals itself as too pat, too absurd and -- as a polemic against capital punishment -- philosophically self- defeating.

It is partly a failure, but mostly it succeeds, and the film's aspiration is so enormous that that's enough for a moving experience.

Jack is a warm, heartfelt disaster that shows that life is fleeting but movies can be very long indeed.

There are people who like movies like this, who like when a movie screen looks like their computer screen and who don’t mind when everything is fake, including the emotions. Artemis Fowl is a genre movie, and as such, it’s an OK version of the thing it is. I just can’t stand the thing it is.

The most shocking thing about Harry and Max isn't the subject matter. The most shocking thing is just how tepid it is.

There is one thing interesting about Alex Cross, and if you miss this, you've missed the whole movie. It's not the story - it's worse than mediocre. It's not the lead actor - nothing wrong with Tyler Perry, but as an action star he's no Vin Diesel. And it's not the dialogue, which has a clunker every other scene. It's the direction. Notice the direction. Alex Cross is a good example of what a seriously talented director can do with a heaping pile of garbage.

It's hard to tell if Cage's performance is a grand stab at all-out, no-holds-barred comic acting or one of the worst dramatic performances in a film this year. [2 June 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E8]

The big disappointment of The Babymakers is that it doesn't come close to being worthy of its two stars, Paul Schneider and Olivia Munn.

In this new Conjuring, every scene of demonic possession, every demonic hallucination, and every underworld visit and visitation land with unsettling impact. These are, in a sense, action scenes, and they’re creepy, chilling and very well done.

If the first "Hangover" movie were this awful, there never would have been a Part Two. This is a joyless, unfunny mix of comedy and drama, a complete waste of time, with exactly one good joke in the entire movie. It comes in the first minute. After that, you can leave.

Neither original nor presented in a convincing way.

It depicts the world of a century ago in a way that comments on the anxieties facing the world today, and it does so, at least for a while, with cleverness and a sense of fun.

It's a plodding, episodic film, reverent and sanctimonious, and its pro-Southern viewpoint -- a time-honored Hollywood tendency -- makes "Gone With the Wind" look like a Northern polemic.

Harmon proves that he can act stupid, and that's not enough to make the movie funny… You're supposed to like Freddy (Harmon), and you're supposed to like his brainless students… But you hate everybody. [24 July 1987]

There might be a lot of guts scattered around in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, but it's a completely gutless movie, without the wit to be a comedy or the nerve to stand on its own as a straight horror picture. It just floats around at its own dull pace, trying this out and that out, as it slowly sinks. [13 Jan 1990, p.C30]

It took the franchise four tries, but with Expend4bles, they’ve finally made a solid and consistently effective action movie.

A good movie that has been sitting in a film can for two years waiting for a miracle. The miracle came -- Suvari's sudden popularity.

As Hunt’s life unravels, so does the movie, though the story maintains a certain baseline of interest just by virtue of being sordid.

Bastian is a difficult kid to sit and watch for 90 minutes -- self- important and with a shrill voice. The story is all over the place, setting the audience up for things that never pan out and defying its own logic. [09 Feb 1991, p.C3]

More hokey than heartfelt.

In its own ridiculous way, The Butterfly Effect is an entertaining movie, despite mediocre acting, lackluster direction and a story that's sometimes frustrating. It has the integrity of camp, maintaining an odd earnestness in the face of its own absurdity.

A wretched comedy about middle-aged romance.

Just like a low-budget football comedy, only with money.

A movie that has two good ideas. It needed three.

As far as complete wastes of time go, Zookeeper is not especially offensive. Yet it is surprising that everything you might expect to be charming in it just isn't - namely all the bits involving animals.

About as awful as a film can be without being the ultimate awful, which is boring.

Unfortunately, the best jokes in Loaded Weapon were in the coming attractions. What's left amounts to just a lot of flailing around in search of a handful of half-hearted laughs. [5 Feb 1993, p.D5]

We all know how actors overact when they play Italians, and we all know how actors overact when they play brain-damaged characters, so just imagine Knight's performance as a brain-damaged Italian American.

A thriller that presses all the buttons: parental love, childhood terror, fear of Vince Vaughn.

Bleak.

A respectable and fairly decent movie.

Attempts to convey emotional dislocation and passion at the same time. All we get is distance.

It’s just bad. It’s boring, folks.

Take a wretched premise. Imagine the worst picture that could be made from it. Then imagine something even worse. That's Alien vs. Predator.

No more than a minute into this, and it becomes obvious that the next 98 are going to be trouble.

A romantic comedy and an adventure story, but in this case that just means it bombs in two distinct ways.

The picture gives us two protagonists and sets up a situation in which only one of them can have a decent life. Then, having devised this sour souffle, the screenwriters find no adjustment to make it palatable. The resolution is flip, at best.

It's the lightest of the Batman movies, the most cartoony, the dumbest and the least ambitious. But it holds the audience's attention, brings on a few laughs and never really gets boring.

Not about the justice or injustice of the legal system. Rather it's about the tragedy of Sam's predicament.

Hitman: Agent 47 takes an austere European aesthetic and combines it with Hollywood mindlessness, and the result is like a guilty pleasure, minus the pleasure.

Michael can't be killed, and so a ''Halloween'' picture can never really end. It can only stop. And since it can stop anywhere, it may as well stop sooner than later. This one stops later, and by the time it does it's hard to care. [17 Oct 1989, p.E4]

To its credit, no matter how self-important and dreary Infinite gets at times, it’s never dull, and there’s always a little sparkle to it and a reason to keep watching.

It has a weak story that provides no tension, feeling or interest. Its opening action sequence is just a long, drawn-out dud, filmed by director John Moore in the worst modern style of quick cuts and smeary, jittery photography.

Had a chance to be not just OK, not just fluff, but something special, and it's a shame that the people making it either didn't realize it or didn't have the guts to take this movie where it wanted to go.

As light entertainment goes, CHiPs is fairly accomplished, and Pena and Shepard make a good team. If someone wants to turn CHiPs into a franchise of some kind, worse things have happened.

Most of this huge-cast extravaganza is a botched farce. When that doesn't work, it turns sentimental. The presence of liked and familiar actors helps make it watchable, but there is no disguising that this is a weak, badly constructed comedy. At least it's short.

The kind of horror movie that's not a bit scary and quite a bit gross.

That was probably writer-director Roman Coppola's main responsibility in "Charles Swan," to give the audience a character worth watching. Get that right, and everything else falls into place. Get that wrong, and the audience finds out just how long 84 minutes can be. The answer: really long.

The story, a dystopian tale with heroes and villains and lots of triumphs and reversals, is so busy and so inherently interesting that the movie is entertaining until the finish - or the sort of finish. As only the first part of the story, Atlas Shrugged doesn't end, it stops.

Setting out to make a cult movie is almost as strange as setting out to make a camp movie. Or setting out to make a movie that's so bad it's good. If you know you're doing it, you're not really doing it.

With a novel idea at its center and some good jokes scattered throughout, Pixels is a relief from the self-serious action films that invade movie theaters at this time of year. For most of the way, it’s good enough to enjoy, and for the rest of the way, it’s good enough to root for. But ultimately, it’s not quite good enough ... to be good enough.

It's as close to nothing as anything could be while still being something.

Cage’s latest film, Jiu Jitsu must represent his career worst — and keep in mind, this is the man who made 1989’s “Vampire’s Kiss,” in which he ate a cockroach.

There's just the matter of facing it: that The Perfect Man is just something slapped together -- by people who don't care, for an audience they figure will care even less.

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

This is a movie in which the audience knows half the gags in advance, but thanks to director Dennis Dugan's timing and Farley's execution, the audience doesn't just laugh anyway, but laughs harder. Knowing in advance is part of the fun.

De Palma plays both sides against the middle, and eventually the thing collapses. Instead of simply pursuing what seems to be his vision of the story, about a flawed but decent man getting martyred to a corrupt system, he tries not to offend and ends up making empty and confusing gestures. When at the end of this remarkably cynical movie, Morgan Freeman, as a principled trial judge, stands up and makes a speech about decency -- ''Decency is what your grandmother taught you'' -- it's hard not to laugh out loud. [21 Dec 1990, p.E1]

As vile, unredeeming and thoroughly unpleasant experiences go, I Spit on Your Grave at least has one thing interesting about it. It's a document of the most paranoid fantasies that urban, Northern people have about a rural Southern people.

Four screenwriters are credited with this sloppy piece of work. Divide the embarrassment into quarters.

Twenty minutes in, the movie is already operating at a deficit, and it never recovers.

Sometimes it's unpleasant, sometimes it's insincere, and for long stretches it's boring.

Fascinating in its own strange way, not as entertainment but as a cultural document.

A childish, empty effort.

For Friday night this will do just fine. It's definitely a good matchup -- Stone's cynical bravado versus Berry's resilient spunkiness in a world-class cat fight.

Mary is a fictionalized and heavily dramatized account of the life of the Virgin Mary, but the movie’s great and only pleasure is in watching Anthony Hopkins play King Herod as a homicidal maniac.

It’s all about as exciting as watching two drawings fight each other on a computer monitor.

It's amazing how far a movie can go on nothing but speed and directness.

As a movie, it's not much. But it's the best showcase for his charm that Butler has ever had.

How one likes Taxi has everything to do with how one responds to the hapless cop character, played by Jimmy Fallon.

The overall premise, involving mental illness and suicide, isn't all that funny, at least not in practice, and the picture begins to seem labored and long.

If Eddie Murphy gets an Oscar for "Dreamgirls" later this month, the deciding factor with voters may be his performance in Norbit. It's much more impressive than anything he does in "Dreamgirls."

It's a movie, a goofy little movie. Not so bad, but as far as food and sensuality go, ``Like Water for Chocolate'' still has the edge.

An awkward comedy made surprisingly bearable, most of the way, by one actress' ability to turn on the charm and sparkle.

Not surprisingly, only Samuel L. Jackson seems fully to understand that he's in a bad movie, and he makes a virtue of it, using it as an excuse to hang loose, overact and ride the scenes for wherever they might go.

An entertaining film for kids and young teens. It's also a product of the era in which we're living, and weird times make for weird movies.

It's a dreadful exercise, tin-eared and sincere, bereft of any truth or inspiration.

The whole movie is like that: cute, dead and endless.

Still, for much of “Madame Web,” even when it turns bad, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson in this kind of movie.

Has to go down as a failed comedy. It's just not enough of a comedy.

Unfortunately these characters are stuck in a picture that is little more than a gory mess, heavy on the smoke machines and thunderous sound track, but with no suspense and not much interest. Split Second is just a series of killings that come, one after the other, until the movie hits feature length, and then it's the bad guy's turn. Since these killings all consist of a heart being yanked out of a human body, Split Second isn't pretty. I've long since lost my weak stomach, but this movie is definitely not for the squeamish. [2 May 1992, p.C3]

One could criticize A Night at the Roxbury for being a comedy that provides not a single laugh. That would be too easy.

Stevens, Fisher, Mann and Dench are all fine. All have good moments. The problem is the script, the script, the script.

You know how I realized I actually liked I Melt With You? I kept talking about it, and at one point, in the middle of mocking it, I accidentally referred to it as "a good picture." That's when I realized, yes, it really is good, albeit in ways that are different from other movies.

It's entertainment, but mild entertainment.

This is a pretty good action movie with the added kick of Liam Neeson in the lead role.

Late in the picture, Sobieski has some line-readings that are so emotionally full, strange and truthful that really nothing more need be said.

The film is intended to be light and whimsical, but with a core of sincere emotion. But it's as if the thing were made by Martian anthropologists who assume that human audiences are as twisted as the people onscreen.

There's bad, there's awful and there's horrible, and then somewhere beyond that, in its own Kingdom of Lousy -- where all the milk curdles and the jokes aren't funny -- is License to Wed, the latest ghastly exercise starring Robin Williams.

A funny comedy for about 90 seconds. Then Bette Midler goes off a cliff.

The best bits come in the first few minutes -- or maybe the jokes just seem fresher then.

What we have is the case of a movie with a straight man (Jason Lee) who really is funny, but with a comic (Tom Green) who sadly isn't.

Just awful. But uniquely awful -- awful in a way that might just attract a cult audience. [3 Sept 1993]

Meandering and inert. Yet as an etching of an emotion and a vehicle for Costner, the movie makes a case for itself.

What's completely baffling is that everyone in the film thinks Nomi is one heck of a dancer, even though her one move -- throwing her arms out stiffly -- is straight out of "Dr. Strangelove."

It's the most tension-producing movie out there right now -- in the best way, it's almost unbearable.

Gods of Egypt is an epic — an epic disaster.

It plays like a string of cliches linked together to form a movie with not a single moment of surprise or originality.

An old formula made fresh.

But Congo leads to nothing but a fierce battle with the gray gorillas, a kind of guns vs. fangs scene; and a convenient and incongruous volcano eruption that looks as artificial as a video game.

A stink bomb of a movie.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, is a stiff, guaranteed to disappoint just about everybody, except those rooting against him. [11 Jul 1990, p.E1]

It's so low it scrapes through the barrel and deep into the earth's core. It's the lowest piece of garbage to hit screens in months.

Has a shameless B-movie exuberance.

Original enough to come up with new ways to go wrong. For one, the film is a blatant showcase to promote O'Neal as a rap artist.

This may be hard to believe, but there's not a single moment of drama or tension in any of the action sequences. And the film is made up almost entirely of action.

In Godsend, we have the spectacle of three good actors tied to the mast of a sinking premise.

A disappointment, but it's not a disaster, and that's at least something.

Director David Kellogg tries to inject energy into the picture with speeded-up sequences and smash-bang cutting, and the art direction is bright and eye-catching. But it's just gourmet dressing on dead lettuce. The movie is unable to balance Ice's aspirations to genuine adult-level coolness in a story clearly designed to appeal to the sensibilities of pre-teenage girls, and the result is bland and often absurd. [22 Oct 1991, p.F1]

In the end it all seems a little too glib, too easy and not quite true.

Hooking Up is a pretty good movie. I enjoyed it and could even imagine watching it again. But it’s also the movie that shows that Brittany Snow doesn’t have to be relegated to pretty good movies. She’s ready for better.

The Snowman is ugly and nasty, but that’s not the worst of it. The worst is that it’s boring and makes no sense.

Though the Jill problem is too insurmountable to ignore, almost everything else in this comedy succeeds.

Falls apart immediately, then limps on for 45 minutes more.

The Condemned isn't post-modern junk, smirky junk, faux junk or clever junk. It's pure junk, with a certain integrity to it.

A big disappointment.

About as weak a movie as can be made without actively trying.

Innocuous and dull.

Vulgarity is fine when it’s pure and democratic. But when it’s mixed with sentiment, it feels false. That’s the problem with Buddy Games.

Standing Ovation is an innovative film in the sense that every minute or so it comes up with a different way of being annoying. Moreover, it often goes for a layered effect, in which it's annoying in two or three ways simultaneously.

It is possible to watch 90 minutes of this comedy without once cracking a smile. [12 Jan 1994]

In the same genre as the Farrellys' "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb and Dumber," only lousy.

If garbage could think, it would look down on 9 Dead Gay Guys as garbage.

The equivalent of a full-course meal with no calories. It is a mirage of a movie, 100 minutes of nothing.

For about half of its running time, Hellraiser: Bloodline is watchable. In fact -- let's throw around the superlatives -- it's mildly entertaining. [9 March 1996, p.B3]

While the plot is worthless and the battle scenes cheap-looking and unengrossing, Wing Commander has clearly defined characters and relationships. In other words, the film's young actors have nothing interesting to say, but they say it well.

Has an air of detachment and sadness, enhanced by the movie's being set a full quarter century ago.

A dull, boring, poorly acted, limply written and thoroughly unappealing fantasy, featuring bland characters locked in a struggle of no interest.

It's a dishonest satire that manages to be (disingenuously) contemptuous of white people and (unintentionally) condescending toward black people, without ever being funny.

Why, if Chase is such a funny guy, does he make such unfunny movies?

This is the weird thing, Old Dogs is not that bad.

Why was the sight of scrawny Woody Allen kissing pretty Diane Keaton never revolting, while scrawny David Spade kissing beautiful Sophie Marceau in Lost & Found is the creepiest cinematic sight of the year?

The temptation arises to say something nice about Grown Ups 2 just because it doesn't cause injury. But no, it's a bad movie, too, just old-school bad, the kind that's merely lousy and not an occasion for migraines or night sweats.

To call this effort misguided would be kind. The job this "prequel" does on the original Dumb and Dumber is the movie equivalent of surgery that removes all the vital organs and then gives the patient a prosthetic third arm. What's needed isn't there, and what's here we don't need.

Wild Orchid is a funny movie, an unintentional scream that sets itself up as a journey into the land of eroticism. [28 Apr 1990, p.C3]

Ill conceived and unworthy (and dull and ridiculous).

Movies don't get much worse.

Everything about it is manufactured -- the emotions are false, the sentiments are phony, and the story is a construction of mirthless silliness. It's a product, not a creative expression.

Valentine isn't scary, but it is unsettling; not ultimately satisfying, but arresting in the moment.

The most thoroughly joyless and inept film of the year, and one of the worst of the decade. We're talking about a disaster, and not of the fun "Showgirls" variety, either.

Even camp status eludes this tepid and misguided picture.

It's even less funny than it sounds. By the end, this soporific comedy makes 105 minutes feel more like a two-year hitch.

Perry isn't the only thing wrong with Serving Sara, but he's the thing that takes a pleasantly mediocre movie and turns it into an unpleasantly mediocre one.

The overall aura is kind of ... welcoming. It’s impossible to take seriously, but easy to take.

If you're like me and think that any Pacino movie is sort of worth seeing, so long as he never says, "Hoo-ha," then 88 Minutes won't be a total disappointment.

Just awful… There is probably not one interrupted 60-second stretch in which a line of dialogue doesn't clunk, an action doesn't ring false or an irritating plot turn doesn't present itself. [25 May 1991]

Part of the appeal is that it's so bad it's good: The story is ridiculous. At other times, it's just plain good: There are ski and snowboarding scenes, plenty of them, that are beautifully filmed and exhilarating to behold.

After a promising opening, with Jason on a rampage and a cold, peculiar bounty hunter (Steven Williams) on Jason's trail, Jason Goes to Hell switches focus midway to the young couple, and from there things go downhill. Still, the film has its moments. [14 Aug 1993, p.F1]

Is it a comedy if the audience laughs or is it a comedy if laughs were intended, irrespective of whether they're generated? Excuse Me for Living qualifies under the second definition.

Only a complete idiot could think Epic Movie is remotely funny.

A lot of talented people with the best of intentions got together and made The Last Face, and yet it’s an almost unwatchable flop.

Weekend at Bernie's II has the tell- tale signs of a bad film directed by its screenwriter. There's lots of goofy shtick, and the actors seem to have been directed to act silly. Instead of playing for truth, they mug and overdo it, particularly McCarthy, and the result is deadly. [10 July 1993, p.C3]

The film is a failure in just about every way, save for its acting, which is adequate.

Remarkably empty, remarkably noisy, remarkably pleasureless. It's unwatchable.

In the long history of bad movies about bad illnesses, A Little Bit of Heaven just might be the worst.

The audience has already checked out, long before the formulaic finish.

Will you find yourself wishing you were looking at someone else? Not really.