Mick LaSalle

Leaves an impression, while its specifics fade almost immediately.

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.

Ferocious brutality is presented without commentary or judgment, yet with unmistakable moral understanding and vision. [21 September 1990, Daily Notebook p.E-1]

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]

Both curious from a cultural perspective and refreshing.

Either a go-for-broke action movie or a sick, sick movie for a sick, sick public.

The film is filled with unintentional laughs and with other moments that are simply jaw-droppingly absurd, either for the histrionic acting, the dated style of writing, the pseudo-science or just the spectacle of evil in pigtails. One could easily make the case that the movie is simply awful. Yet everything dated and peculiar about it is fascinating and does not detract -- it may even enhance -- the fun of the central premise. [05 Sep 2004, p.28]

An entertaining slice of American political and cultural history.

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.

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

This summer's comic gem.

A very funny French comedy of a variety that usually doesn't make its way here.

It tells a simple story - an almost archetypal story - but it does so with a lot of passion and technical sophistication.

A fairly wonderful movie about fathers and sons and the mystery of time.

An audacious film, set in contemporary Marseille.

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

A documentary with the emotional power of the very best in narrative film. It has characters impossible to forget, moments impossible to shake and an ending that leaves the audience both moved and rattled.

The movie is alive from beginning to end, and it's a pleasure to see at least one big-name director get out of the prison of his own reputation.

At times The Game is frustrating to watch, but that's just a measure of how well Fincher succeeds in putting us in his hero's shoes.

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

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

The movie consistently delivers in lots of little ways, but in a big way only once, in a spectacular sequence that begins with a series of earthquakes and culminates in an airline catastrophe.

Even when it's hard to follow, it looks good. The undersea action is visually convincing, and Ramius' submarine, with all its rooms and compartments, is always believable. The moonlit photography in the picture's final scene is stunning. [2 Mar 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

What audiences want when they go to a suspense thriller.

This is lesser Woody Allen -- nothing horrible, but nothing to recommend except to his particular fans. [25 Jan 1991, p.C1]

Funny throughout, but with a handful of really hilarious moments.

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.

Holes in the script, overwrought camera work, dialogue that's embarrassing, and a plot device that's obvious 10 minutes into the movie - all these are major problems.

The audience is made to wait a long time for an ending that's not worth waiting for.

Remains exciting, even as we laugh at the amateur-night antics of the women.

The sentimentality overtakes Wonder Boys when, in the last half hour, it tries to make nice with its characters and fashion a deep message from a trivial story.

A rich and elegant film, full of sly, devious characters with complicated motives.

Would be a completely routine horror movie, except that it has a superior director. Watch this film for five minutes, and it's clear that Victor Salva knows how to make movies.

Maybe there's a metaphor here, but figuring it out wouldn't make Trouble Every Day any better.

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

Ultimately lacks the narrative muscle that could have made it great. But it does have McDormand, who is great in this, her best showcase since "Fargo."

An action sci-fi blockbuster extravaganza that provides cartoon thrills for thinking people. It's the best movie of its kind since the second "Spider-Man" movie four years ago.

Two awful things about Push are at least interesting: The first is the way in which the story is confused. The second is that the story makes no sense.

The possibilities of Jenna's confusion are exploited for full comic effect. Garner, who turns out to be a charming, abandoned comedian, makes Jenna's incredulousness and innocence very funny and occasionally even touching.

An extraordinary and effective film.

(Washington) raises it to the level of importance with an acting job that's one unbroken chain of intense emotion.

A funny and appropriately skewed comedy.

An exceptionally good movie in its first hour and an exceptionally bad one in its second.

Visceral and strong.

Harry Brown has more to say, about aging, about old-school courtesy in collision with blind stupid violence, and about how sometimes pensioners on a fixed income get stuck in neighborhoods that turn dangerous.

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

Bergman has not gone soft, not emotionally, philosophically and certainly not artistically. This is as tough a film as he has ever made.

Too grotesque for children and just too silly for their parents.

A movie of intelligence and power, of beauty, universality and largeness of spirit.

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

One of the most original thrillers of the 1980s. It's a lurid, twisted film that brings you into its world and completely works you over.

Rarely does a movie come along that captures an aspect of everyday consciousness that has not yet made it onto film.

A smart and literate effort with a few weaknesses.

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

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

The film leaves us staggering with a strange, almost unbearable embrace of childish innocence and treacherous spite. It is powerfully depressing. [02 Mar 1990, p.E1]

An enchanting, beautiful and brilliantly imagined film.

Whenever Roberts is onscreen, Closer freezes and starts to atrophy. And when she's off, tender shoots of life begin to sprout.

At heart this is a thoughtful, well-made movie about something serious.

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.

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

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

The superhero part of the movie will leave audiences with a flat feeling, thanks to computery-looking special effects and a sagging story line.

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

Audiences watch Summer Hours and then, a week later, remember it as though they've lived it.

By tossing out all these voices and opinions, Lee and screenwriter Reggie Rock Blythewood have created both a time capsule and a movie audiences will talk about.

Has the three elements we've come to expect from Eastwood: the steady pace, the shadowy cinematography and, of course, the presence of the Big Guy.

There's just nothing artful about it, and it's Greengrass who deserves the credit. These nonactors don't act the way most people do when playing themselves. They act the way people do when they're being themselves.

The tribute to an aging parent is moving and gives this routine comedy an extra something.

This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans.

There are some nice things to be said about Hairspray, the John Waters movie which opened over the weekend, but not enough to explain all you've been hearing about it. It's a fairly run-of-the-mill teenage dance movie, set in Baltimore in the early '60s, with a certain oddball humor that only occasionally lifts it out of its class. [29 Feb 1988, p.F3]

The Lost Boys is a horror movie that's funny without making fun of itself and scary without trying to make you sick. [31 Jul 1987, p.86]

Routine, genial sports movie.

Has its moments, and Schwarzenegger is as buff and tough as ever. But there's a flat feeling about this effort that's unmistakable and inescapable.

Die Hard 2 is a huge movie done right. [3 July 1990, p.E1]

Elaine May (left), known for making comedies, wrote and directed this brilliant crime film, which easily ranks among the best movies of 1977. [09 Jan 2005]

[Streep] isa pleasure to watch -- and to marvel at -- every second she's onscreen.

Capable of astonishing even the already cynical.

Transamerica provides the frame and the occasion for one of the year's best performances, Felicity Huffman's as a woman trapped in a man's body who's passing for female while awaiting a sex-change operation.

Stone does everything he can to do justice to the real-life people he's depicting, and yet nothing he does can cover up the film's single but overarching weakness: The personal story he uses to portray the larger event is limited in scope and impact.

Despite the fact that both protagonists are equally appalling, the screenplay seems to have a soft spot for the woman. However, this doesn't take away from the fun of watching the two characters tear each other to pieces.

Aside from being vile and repellent, it's mainly dull - old-fashioned in its shock tactics and culminating in a ho-hum climax.

Though an estimable success overall, The Return of the King has several scenes too many and too great a concentration on battles.

All [Tarantino] has to do is trim a full hour out of "Vol. 1" and a half hour out of Vol. 2, combine what's left and he'll have something not just amusing and idiosyncratic, but outstanding.

From its first minutes, Mid-August Lunch establishes a special tone and quality that could only be Italian. It's a mixture of warmth and gentle farce, tender observation and absurdity.

Mildly caustic, sentimental and slow.

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

The subtle ironies of Austen's novel are rendered obvious, and the book's social satire gives way here to more straightforward romantic comedy.

If you went by the coming attractions and the advertisements, you might expect a predictable romance pitched on the level of a TV sitcom. But Untamed Heart is a movie of rare sweetness. [12 Feb 1993, p.D1]

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

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.

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.

That the movie succeeds as thoroughly as it does -- getting deeper and creepier as it goes along -- is evidence of a far-seeing creative imagination. Nolan is a compelling new talent.

The documentary shows the stranglehold that the teachers union has on politicians, particularly Democratic politicians. The arrogance and ignorance of some of these politicians is galling.

Payback has a completely different spirit from "L.A. Confidential'' -- more wild, more silly -- but it has the same attention to the fine points of plot and character.

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.

A warm comic story that's fairly engaging even when no one is singing.

Sirens is affectionate toward its characters without getting gushy or softheaded. [11 March 1994, p.C5]

It's a winning little movie about two people who get together, though they have no business getting together.

These guys are very normal off stage, making them easy to like and not very exciting to watch.

The across-the-board strong performances indicate a sure directorial hand. Everyone is made vivid, down to the smallest roles.

Ultimately, the con we witness in the movie is almost as beautiful as the con that is the movie -- believable in the moment, too irresistible to question upon reflection and executed with invigorating confidence.

Memphis Belle goes off in several different directions at once, and the result is a movie that's scattered and unfocused. [12 Oct 1990, E1]

Unfortunately, structural flaws and a built-in lack of suspense keep it from being nearly as moving as it was intended to be.

Greed is boring.

The Substitute is a guilty pleasure, but it's not garbage. Berenger brings to the role an appealing ruggedness and world-weariness, and Ernie Hudson, as the corrupt principal, is sleazy and elegant. The script isn't bad, either.

A sly comedy starring Henry Kendall and Joan Barry, about a newly rich couple who go a little crazy on an ocean liner. The witty script was co-written by Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife and lifelong collaborator. [18 Feb 2007, p.26]

What's impressive about Clooney in The Men Who Stare at Goats is how he marries his goofy, comic side with his dramatic side.

A good rule of thumb for Richard III is that if it's not fun, somebody's doing something wrong. Nothing's wrong here. Some of the unexpected visual touches are brilliant, others simply entertaining. But the picture never stops coming at you.

It should have been the poker equivalent of "The Hustler." But it suffers from iron-poor blood. No energy. It just lies there.

Has a vacant, inept, why-oh-why feeling from its opening minutes and only gets worse.

Instead of building in impact, the film feels smaller as the cast dwindles. You get the feeling that the most important actors are getting killed first, so that they can go off to act in better movies. [20 Apr 1994, p.E5]

Only partly successful.

At all times, the audience believes that it's watching something that really could happen.

Duller than first version.

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.

Even more nihilistic and confused than "Narc," and yet a lot better. It's better for some specific and interesting reasons.

Ladybugs isn't a very good movie; but it's a Rodney Dangerfield movie, and that's not bad. They used to call pictures like this ''star vehicles.'' Here the story, the plot, the other actors and everything else serve as nothing but a bland backdrop for Rodney Dangerfield's humor and appeal. [28 March 1992, p.C3]

Has no insights, no point, no urgency and no importance.

Even a mediocre David Mamet movie is still a David Mamet movie. That means there are lines to savor, partly because the lines are so good, partly because they are so Mamet.

Mamma Mia! is fun, the music's terrific and the cast is appealing.

What this film desperately needed was another element in the script, something besides love and sex. Maybe something about art, something that put the lovers on the same team and back into those appealing bohemian clubs. As it stands, love jones is a smart setting in search of a story.

Harrowing but compassionate.

The film, actually, is a little like Reeves himself: It starts promisingly and trails off into indistinctness and mystery.

There's not a single moment here in which Nixon is admirable, decisive or appealing. Nixon doesn't work as a drama, but with a little push it might have been a great comedy.

Almost all of its screen time is taken up with explosions, chases, shootouts, heads coming off, folks getting sliced in half -- and the odd thing about it is that after 40 minutes, it's not disturbing anymore. Just dull. [21 Nov 1990, p.E1]

It's long; it's expensive, and it was clearly created with the intention of being a great film. I've got nothing against bloated epics, just as I have nothing against blockbusters. But as bloated epics go, Bugsy is not particularly special. [20 Dec 1991, p.C1]

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]

The phrase "lesbian comedy" is not exactly an oxymoron, but April's Shower is still a rarity, an expansive, talky and often zany romantic farce, with lesbian characters at its center.

Epps is a leading man on the rise, and Cool J. is something to see.

The picture, which marks the debut of Mexican film maker Guillermo del Toro, is a dull hybrid - a ponderous art film crossed with a vampire story. [06 May 1994]

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

Dan in Real Life fires on so many circuits that at times it's actually shocking how good it is.

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

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.

Blue Gate Crossing is 85 minutes of wistful gloom.

Intends to inspire outrage, and to an extent it succeeds.

This is one light comedy whose seriousness, hours later, lingers in the mind.

It's a completely botched effort -- botched in its direction, its writing and editing.

A personal story with broad implications for the culture as a whole.

Things are a little off. The style is gritty 1970s-style crime thriller, but the morals are straight out of 2007, and the movie is set in 1988.

Some of the best bits of the original movie are replayed here but lose their punch the second time around - the horse manure bit, the skate board sequence. Maybe people who never saw the first movie will get a big kick out of them. [22 Nov 1989, p.E1]

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

Harris saw this brave new world more than a decade ago - and liked what he saw. To watch We Live in Public is to wonder if the world we live in is just a reflection of one man's neurosis - if Harris's mix of emotional distance and rabid self-promotion has simply gone viral.

Has some hilarious moments and still succeeds in dramatic terms.

In the most extreme moments, Thomas hits her career pinnacle.

Considering what the filmmakers had to work with, and the fact that it has all been done before, Freddy Vs. Jason isn't bad. And sometimes not bad is almost good.

It's a film of unquestioned visual artistry, and the filmmakers' empathy and human understanding are apparent moment to moment, scene by scene. But despite sensitive performances, it's an experiment that fizzles.

The young actresses are superb, and they make an appealing, believable group of friends.

It's a buoyant comedy with more warmth and generosity of spirit than anything else in theaters right now.

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

A very smart, very shrewd movie, and the smartest, shrewdest thing about it is the way it masquerades as just a fluffy comedy, a diversion, a trifle.

This is a solid, three-star movie, but its premise is brilliant and unforgettable. [21 May 2017, p.Q45]

110 minutes of Euro silliness mitigated only by the presence of Huppert and the striking ability of the actors to keep a straight face throughout this mess.

A masterpiece.

The picture, for all its slickness and style, is empty, empty-headed and emotionally false… [It] has no more depth than "Pretty Woman" and occupies the same moral landscape. [5 Apr 1991, Daily Datebook, p.E11]

Stomp the Yard, at nearly two hours, has a decent story, a good subject and a horrible plot.

The showcasing of Basinger's body becomes ludicrous. Twice she is shown taking a shower. In another scene she lounges in some very nice designer underwear -- white satin, very becoming. She ends up looking foolish, constantly having to undress in this feminist role. [11 Feb 1994, p.C1]

An inventive, black comedy.

You leave Cinema Paradiso with that feeling that's kind of like getting kicked in the stomach, but nice. It's one of those breathless, swept-away-by-a-movie experiences that you might have once a year, if you're lucky. [16 February 1990, Daily Notebook, p.E-1]

A powerful document of cruelty and sadism.

A repellent, stupid film.

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.

Clever and enjoyable.

Eventually the concept buckles under the heavy blockbuster treatment, becoming a monotonous, repetitive spectacle of endless shipboard sword fights and pirate ghosts in the moonlight.

While Wilde captures its subject's singular charm, it ultimately doesn't do justice to his complexity.

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

The story is on the weak side, and many of the jokes are just a bit flat. And yet there are enough cute bits and special-effects surprises that it will probably be worth people's while, especially if they intended to see the movie in the first place. [22 Nov 1991, p.C1]

It commits the only crime that can be committed against Shakespeare: It makes him boring.

So much love went into Hustle & Flow that it almost glows with it.

A lamebrained guts-and-glory fiction. [20 July 1990, p.E1]

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

Douglas does his best acting while watching and reacting to what he sees on screen. If this ends up being his cinematic swan song, it will not have been a bad way to go.

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.

With "Flynt," Love does what Madonna has been trying to do for 12 years -- create a performance filled with humor, intelligence and soul.

I like to think that sometimes when a film maker takes no shortcuts but does everything truthfully and sincerely, with an interest in nothing but the creation of something wonderful, he can be visited by a muse or a spirit that comes out of nowhere and, as a kind of reward, infuses his film with that extra element that can't be earned or whipped up from a recipe: magic. Much Ado About Nothing is a wonderful, beautiful film. It's not a perfect film -- it has Keanu Reeves in it. But it has that kind of magic. Very early on, from the first scene, really, it lifts up off the ground; and there it stays till the last shot, when the camera itself lifts off, and we in the audience look down on lots of happy people dancing in an elaborate Italian garden. [13 May 1993, p.E1]

Eventually arrives at a lovely place, but it arrives limping. Small but nagging problems drag it down, such as weird acting choices, bizarre casting and strange aging makeup.

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.

This is the kind of pure entertainment that, in its fullness and generosity, feels almost classic.

The film may be intended to launch the movie careers of Patrick Stewart and the gang from ''Star Trek: The Next Generation,'' but any vibrancy, any emotional power it has derives from William Shatner as Kirk. And it's not even his movie. [18 Nov. 1994, p.C1]

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.

It's an art-direction, Dolby-sound, special-effects extravaganza, a grand-scale effort that's more awe-inspiring than completely successful as entertainment.

There's a lot of bad hair and incoherent, drug-addled remarks, but inside a minute we get the joke, and it isn't much.

I loved the picture, without being blind to its faults. But you don't judge a movie with a scorecard but by what it gives you, and this one gives more than anything I've seen in months. [04 Oct 1991, p.D1]

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]

Another dreadful, not-funny Owen Wilson movie, in which Wilson is the best thing.

For all the movie's richness and dazzle, for all that money dripping off the screen, Batman Returns is a gorgeous failure -- flashy, intermittently appealing but, in the end, a big mess. Batman Returns lacks a coherent story. It lacks a point of view and a focus. And so everything suffers, even the art direction. [19 June 1992, p.D1]

Fallen is not perfect, and eventually it even becomes frustrating. Threads remain loose, and the movie doesn't fully exploit its premise. Still, it would be churlish not to appreciate the ride.

The Losers is boring. It's predictable. It's so, so active, and yet so, so dead.

In Mimic, director Guillermo Del Toro has created a dark, grotesque world that's hard to look at, and impossible to stop looking at.

It's so wonderfully silly, coarse and down-to-Earth that its radiance sneaks up only over time.

An exquisite and powerful documentary -- one whose elegance only heightens its devastating impact.

Qualifies as director Giuseppe Tornatore's second full-fledged masterpiece. His first: "Cinema Paradiso."

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.

Darkman is big, stupid and wonderful -- an absurd, grand-scale adventure and a vicious comedy rolled into one nasty, unpleasant, hard-to-resist mess. [24 Aug. 1990, p.E1]

For a thoroughly fascinating, true glimpse into the horrors that vanity and self-delusion can wreak, take some time to see The Baader Meinhof Complex.

One of the few big-fish horror films that still has the power to surprise.

People who go into Hot Shots! Part Deux knowing what to expect will not be disappointed, and people who stumble in unawares won't be too sorry. At its best, ''Part Deux'' is very funny, and at its worst, it's a complete waste of time -- with the balance about even between the strong and the weak sections. [21 May 1993, p.C1]

Dreamland has vitality and emotional truth underlying all its interactions. And the young women, Agnes Bruckner and Kelli Garner, are superb.

An irresistible movie about a guy who goes on a journey, the kind an audience can't wait to take with him.

A shrewd thriller that takes the time-honored plot about an innocent man wrongfully accused and gives it a film-noir twist.

One can almost feel the movie Away We Go might have been, if only we could believe that Verona loves Burt - or understand why Burt loves Verona.

A paranoid, prurient sexual nightmare.

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]

Inside 10 minutes, at most 15, Be Kind Rewind reveals itself as an awful mess, and it only gets worse.

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.

I don't see Edge of Darkness as a great movie, or a particularly exalted one, but I do see it as one made by people who know where the buttons are - and who know how to press them. Hard.

Brosnan has never been so opened up, so emotional and yet so precise in his work. It's a lovely performance in a film that only sometimes deserves him.

Compelling.

A faithful portrait of a period in American social history.

That gift doesn't desert him [Crowe] in Elizabethtown, but he clutters his movie with plot elements that confuse the focus, the central character and, ultimately, I suspect, Crowe himself.

They are naturals at acting, not because they're good at lying but because they can't be phony.

Even camp status eludes this tepid and misguided picture.

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.

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.

Cop Land isn't a perfect piece, but it's sober, wise and adult.

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.

The documentary is interesting as a human story. And anyone who loves the Kuchar brothers' films or underground cinema in general will take extra pleasure in it.

A thriller without thrills. It's also a thriller that cheats. The story is stretched to feature length only by having the film's incidents arranged in such a way as to reveal as little as possible.

An adventure in mediocrity that brings together some of the worst current techniques and trends.

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

Sniper is the Tom Berenger film that'll be forgotten by this time next week. [30 Jan 1993, p.C3]

The script is weak and unrelenting. The stunts are unspectacular. The special effects are nothing you haven't seen before. But worst of all, there's the spectacle of Schwarzenegger glorying in the wonder of Schwarzenegger. [18 Jun 1993, p.C1]

Patrik Age 1.5 has a single drawback that can't be overlooked, at least from the standpoint of an American viewer. It's predictable.

The result is a mishmash that is sometimes moving, sometimes absurd and most of the time just oddly off balance.

A spiritual successor to "The Pursuit of Happyness," but darker and more oblique.

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.

The movie is a total blast, and what a surprise.

It's not just that Pitt's performance is bad. It hurts.

The result is a winning comedy.

Powerful and outrageous.

This is a movie about power, and its spectacle is that of a woman losing all of it.

Yet the personalities of the actors are so appealing here and the direction by John Badham (''Stakeout,'' ''Saturday Night Fever'') so filled with inventive comic bits and details that Another Stakeout plays much better than you'd think. It's a consistently entertaining two- hours-or-so at the movies. [23 July 1993, p.C3]

Considering all the possible ways BackBeat could have been really ridiculous, it's all the more impressive that it should turn out to be an intelligent, sincere and entertaining piece of work. [22 Apr 1994, p.C3]

Its weaknesses are clumsy plotting and a less-than-satisfying ending.

A complete bust, but the ways in which it fails are interesting.

The movie has finesse, and the actors have charm, but there are no surprises.

Hornby's humane and humorous screenplay is true to the film's title: In short order, young Jenny finds out important truths about identity, glamour and how adults really think and live.

Begins like a penetrating exploration of love, grief and suffering and ends looking like a highbrow version of "Bride of Chucky."

Only occasionally does the film fall into the trap of making the prisoners cute, but it never falters in important ways.

The effect of the 2 1/2-hour film is deadening.

It has a life and style that other buddy action movies lack

The best of Jackie Chan's American movies, a pleasant little action comedy that makes one wonder how other filmmakers could ever get it wrong.

Superior animated film from Japan.

This is a story that should have been, at the absolute most, 20 minutes long.

What it's really about - and this sounds so boring, and so nothing, when in fact it's really rather wonderful - is people. Just regular people, a mother and daughter, whose lives are observed with economy and precision, and with an eye for the telling detail and the tense, revealing moment.

Along the way, this funny picture does exactly what a satire should: It irritates everybody. At least it runs that risk.

More accomplished, adventurous and original. Instead of Allen's usual investigation into the nature of existence, this new film looks at the way stories are created, particularly comedies.

An ideal introduction to Toback's output as well as a welcome elucidation for longtime fans. Apart from those worthy functions, The Outsider is also shrewdly made, illuminating its subject in a variety of settings and, at times, subtly assuming the style of Toback's films.

"Human Resources" was a good, straightforward tale, but Time Out is better. It's haunting. It's like a poem.

A gangster movie with the capacity to surprise. People do unexpected things and for reasons we wouldn't anticipate.

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.

Mercury Rising is a Bruce Willis action movie, which means that most of us know what it will be like going in, and the only question is whether it's a good one or a lousy one. Answer: This is a good one.

At times almost unbearably ugly, but by the time you walk out of the theater, you know you've seen something.

Sommers film just lies there, weighted down by a complete lack of wit, artfulness and internal logic. So it's a disaster -- a big, loud, boring wreck.

Scott removed the adventure aspect, and some of the movie's passion was lost, too, like a dolphin caught in a tuna net. Perhaps it's for that reason that a movie that starts out with the potential to be great somehow falls short, and what seems as if it's going to be a revelation ends up, instead, simply a worthwhile, reasonably interesting variation on an old theme.

Can't Hardly Wait has freshness, comic invention and an engaging romantic spirit.

A sympathetic look at what it's like to be a Brazilian transsexual prostitute working in Milan.

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]

Man of the Year remains an interesting proposition throughout, and a tale well told.

[Pedro Almodovar] gives it a nice try, but his approach turns out to be completely wrong for the material he's working with here. [25 May 1990]

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

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]

You could blast for it, and you still won't find 30 uninterrupted seconds of truth in Baby Mama. The characters are lies. Their emotional workings are lies. The jokes are based on lies about human behavior.

Australia shows all the signs of having been a labor of love for director Baz Luhrmann. One problem: It's his love, and the audience's labor.