Mike Clark

Even the nasty zingers here seem tiresomely windy. [16May1997 Pg 02.D]

By any reckoning, director Paul McGuigan and writer Mark Mills seem mighty ground down trying to buck these medieval odds.

Didn't work this time, David. Maybe next season.

But Game really isn't a performer's movie. And the climactic contest (in which the Americans amazingly eked out a 1-0 win against England, considered by many to be the world's finest team at the time) is only serviceably staged.

As this year's literary adaptations go, Horses comes a lot closer to being a truly bad movie than "The Perfect Storm" did, yet it would be hard to argue that the two are not the year's most disappointing in terms of trampled hopes.

Isn't much, it's just lively enough to placate its limited audience to make it an easy choice over "Scooby-Doo's" stale Alpo.

There's no creepiness here - only creeping ennui, as the movie slips away. [24 Mar 1994, p.4D]

As spent screen series go, Star Trek: Nemesis is even more suggestive of a 65th class reunion mixer where only eight surviving members show up -- and there's nothing to drink.

2-1/4 hours of MTV-produced tough love, with a dance break and pool party to relieve -- momentarily -- a series of motivational rants from lead Samuel L. Jackson.

A little of this will go a long way.

One hesitates to call David Cronenberg's movie of David Henry Hwang's Tony-winning play conventional or tame, but certainly it is zestless given a filmmaker whose last three outings have been "The Fly," "Dead Ringers" and "Naked Lunch." [01 Oct 1993]

Rob Reiner's self-congratulatory Ghosts of Mississippi portrays Medgar Evers' slaying from the viewpoint of a white guy and can't even do a capable job of that. [20 Dec 1996]

Put to the sequel litmus test, queasily spectacular Vengeance would only rate a footnote without a strong original to exploit - or a protracted telephone-terrorist subplot to steal from Dirty Harry 1. [19May1995 Pg.01.D]

It isn't really dull (only dulled), and the leads are remarkable; one could, in fact, lavish a lot more praise if this labor of love weren't burdened by the year's dopiest movie wrap-up. [23 Nov 1990]

Peter Pan is the boy who wouldn't grow up, and Hook is the movie that grows unbearable once a grown-up Peter arrives in Neverland with a merciless 90 minutes to go. [11 Dec. 1991, p.1D]

Even at its best, the movie plays like a clip reel.

Though the picture falls apart whenever the two leads aren't on screen together, you can argue that That isn't that inferior to its predecessor.

It's just too soon after those silly talking dinosaurs to put up with any movie about a talking horse.

Transforms Charles Dickens into a Chuck. Ground Chuck, unfortunately. [30 January 1998, p. 7D]

It's all fast and furious up to its draggy finale, and yes, it could spark a sequel. Prepare yourself for coming dread in 18 months: "A Man Together."

Jenny Wingfield's script is ripe enough to include icky man-in-the-moon allusions; mom Tess Harper's pregnancy seems tacked-on; and the climax is pat melodramatic sap. But Sam Waterston (as dad) has his moments. [04 Oct 1991, p.6D]

The movie, which has a rusty photographic veneer, is monotonous and drags toward the end.

The civilized running time and breezy editing between scattershot plot threads keep the attention in a superficial way, and it would be misstating the case to deny that the movie has some chuckles (the kind that don't linger).

Movies of this genre don't often engage fresh concepts, but you have to give Wong major points for dreaming up "tan-line flambé."

Only the Lonely comes close enough to being halfway watchable that some may call it a Candy triumph. [24 May 1991, p.7D]

Overproduced and essentially charmless.

Hopkins' Hannibal is no longer mysterious, Clarice is no longer vulnerable, and the overextended Florence scenes dash any hopes of early momentum, even if Giancarlo Giannini is perfect as the cop.

This is 90 minutes of gags of the lowest order, yet Poirier occasionally injects them with more energy than anything in "Heartbreakers."

Destined to be on DVD by the time 2004 reaches the 50-yard line, Ten is more stale than it is ungodly.

A blanket indictment like this has to be either satirically trenchant or a roundhouse punch to the gut. Tom Matthews' script takes a mushy middle ground, and the result seems less mad than just a bit addled or hacked off. [07Nov1997 Pg08.D]

If you're going because you want to see an entertaining horror movie, good luck.

Both leads and young Harris make Crooklyn an exasperating might-have-been, especially given the movie's surprisingly affecting wrap-up. There's no dearth of human feeling here, but a dearth of craft. [13 May 1994, p.8D]

Do yourself a favor and resist The Italian Job, a lazy and in-name-only remake of 1969's G-rated Michael Caine heist pic.

Eventually evolves into a murder mystery that isn't very compelling.

An authentic-looking Jeff Bridges goes for the grit in an incoherently arty rendering (full of fuzzy-focus black-and-white flashbacks) filmed by action veteran Walter Hill. [01 Dec 1995, p.13D]

Every performer puts vigor into an otherwise limp exercise, as if word were out that this would be the last comedy ever made about late-adolescent concerns.

Rodman is more fun to watch here than either co-star, given his array of earrings and nose rings, plus hair that changes color more frequently than the first lady changes her do.

There is cinematic art, and there's a good evening out; this is the latter. [15 Mar 1991]

We never get the scenes we really want to see, like the teacher-initiated slander trial or their snotty accuser's comeuppance. Instead, we get too many strained conversations. [21 Dec 1990, p.3D]

Secret isn't the usual romp, but it's Almodovar's most committed work in years. [7 Mar 1996]

Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia labors ambitiously on two socially conscious fronts - relating the story of an AIDS-afflicted lawyer while exploring a much broader issue. Unlike almost any other Demme movie - it's a film where you feel the gears struggling to mesh. [22 Dec 1993, p.1D]

Pleasant but not more than recycled jock piffle.

A John Hughes movie is 15 minutes of material stretched into a 90-minute feature by a rec-room rack from the Karloff estate; the only question is whether the 15 have their comic compensations. Uncle Buck has a few, though they're typically compromised by the cut-and-paste nature of the rest. [16 Aug 1989, p.4D]

Tepidly tolerable to under-8s. [15 July 1994, p.5D]

Knoxville is functional only when the movie needs a bravura comic performance, but The Ringer is easy enough to take.

The longer the movie drones on, the queasier it gets. [6 June 1997, Life, p.3D]

A sentimental comedy about mental illness (complete with a sitcom family), wobbly Bob offers further evidence that Disney itself may be afflicted with encroaching schizophrenia. [17 May 1991]

Though there's something mildly disarming about a movie this unpretentious, a few more like it might end up turning The Rock into a TV actor.

Snipes seems lost. A key player in the novel by virtue of his first-person narration, Snipes' character - now third-person - is all but a non-person. Mostly, he reacts Watson-style to Connery's Sherlock Holmes musings; an attempt to incorporate Snipes' street buddies into a car chase is the film's weakest scene. [30 July 1993, p.1D]

The movie itself IS dull, however. The characters never engage our interest, and the relentless violence grows monotonous.

Another 48 HRS. doesn't offer a whole lot beyond Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, and Walter Hill's action-scene flair, but are you telling me the first 48 HRS. did? Bottom line: Eddie-Nick enthusiasts and Paramount accountants won't cry 96 tears. [8 Jun 1990, p.1D]

Hanks is a standout again, in a film that otherwise doesn't work. [24 March 1989, p.3D]

The character played by lead Paul Giamatti is a dead-on Shyamalan protagonist: emotionally distanced and something of a train wreck.

White Palace, ultimately conventional, doesn't play like any spring chicken, either. [19 Oct 1990, p.4D]

What do you call a filmmaker who thinks imitating a screen benchmark can make up for emotions that are evading her actors -- Clueless.

There has been a need for a big-screen feature about firefighter heroics since Sept. 11, but as drama, Ladder 49 falls short of even the second rung.

Buried under an avalanche of action. (1996 June 7, pg. D1)

Some will lazily compare West to the ever-magnificent The Black Stallion, but just for starters, it hasn't the same exquisite outdoor photography. Instead, it's been shot in varying degrees of rust, with varying masses of grain floating around the image. [17 Sep 1993, p.4D]

Until its dopey coda, the film never all-out stumbles, but always exudes Pakula's trademark chilliness. [17 Dec 1993 Pg. 01.D]

It's likely to be overrated by some and underrated by others, and both contingents will be wrong. One can't, however, overrate the performances, with auntie ruling the roost in more ways than one. [29 Mar 1996, p.4D]

This family entertainment hard sell lags far behind even "Dr. Dolittle 2."

The movie gets a mild boost when her escape briefly takes it from just another crummy supernatural thriller into an OK escape melodrama, albeit one dependent on a whopper of an unlikely occurrence.

The result isn't pretentious, but is the tongue-in-cheeking ever slight. The murders are treated as jokes, there's a horror-motif rock video, and Harry dodges enough bullets with Patricia Clarkson to arm Sands of Iwo Jima. [13 Jul 1988, p.1D]

Nothing but set pieces, snoozes between its scenes of carnage.

A notably undynamic treatment of Protestant Elizabeth I's ascension to the British throne.

So much luck is pressed with an absurdly overblown finale that 60 seconds will likely be Swordfish's shelf life after a couple of noisy opening weekends.

A rote variation on Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper that is marginally salvaged by those spunky Olsen twins from ABC's Full House. [17 Nov 1995]

Newsies' drag is its predictable script.... It's not a bad hook, but the treatment is uninspired, despite a fairly engaging turn by Bale. [08 Apr 1992]

What it isn't ... is a particularly compelling contribution to the impressive and by now enormous collection of Holocaust movies.

Drollness on screen can sometimes be had cheaply, but a perfect cast is tougher to bankroll. Hal Hartley's new comedy has both - enough to defuse the smugness that seems to linger in its soul. [15 Aug 1991]

The problem here isn't grimness but a failure to make grimness wrench the heart. [18 Oct 1996]

Anything goes, though director Ronny Yu keeps the idiocy on a fast pace.

There's a fine line between darkness and glumness, one that "Spider-Man" bounced off buildings to avoid. The Hulk lumbers across it.

It's no crime the movie has one or two endings too many, given that many thrillers of the past quarter-century have had the same. But Judd's latest is too harmless to be anything but a misdemeanor.

But for an epic set up to trace two life stories, there's a lack of dramatic focus, and the leads fail to evince any particular chemistry as friends who come to have a deeper emotional connection. [31Dec1997 Pg.02.D]

There is no tension here. Actually, The Minus Man is minus a lot - intensity, a point of view, maybe even a point - and that equals an unsatisfying film.

Moviegoers of rarefied sensibilities will easily identify this anti-captain-of-industry as a "typical Eric Stoltz role," just as moviegoers of extremely rarefied sensibilities will pick up on Kicking's "typical Chris Eigeman role." [23 Oct 1995, Pg.06.D]

The result is passably speedy on the level of other TV retreads that seem miscast on the big screen.

John Mellencamp's screen debut showcases his acting and directing, then limits his singing to off-camera filler. [05 Mar 1992, p.6D]

This is the kind of movie in which even the sex scenes are soulless.

The focus is limited to Young's longtime Crazy Horse colleagues -- in other words, forget Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- but even on this level, there's a lot of rambling and disinclination to answer questions. A substantial number of viewers will likely be ground down, and certainly there's nothing here to make Young's 1979 concert film, Rust Never Sleeps, an obsolete view. [07 Oct 1997, p.3D]

Bites may have a bit more on its mind, but it never equals even the weakest scene in Cameron Crowe's "Singles". [18 Feb 1994, p.5D]

Hollywood's oddest movie in a while, which means that however insignificant this primer in flight-attendant training is, causing boredom isn't one of its transgressions.

Regrettably, it's the movie version of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a book still thumping its chest on the hardback best-seller list after more than three years.

Never enough goodies to keep the two-hour running time from seeming like three.

Freeman (no directing natural) gets acting help, and his film earns points for being told from the black perspective, but isn't even up to the modest standards of A Dry White Season, Cry Freedom or A World Apart. [24 Sept 1993, p10D]

There are seven 13-year-old sitters in all, and Melanie Mayron (directing her first theatrical feature) doesn't always flub it when any two interact. But the film's nature and even its title peg it as an ensemble work, and Mayron's group footage looks like crude camcording of a ninth-grade picnic. [18 Aug 1995, p.11D]

You can have a better time title-scanning "Johnny" pics in an alphabetical video guide than you can enduring the latest Blade Runner knockoff. [26 May 1995, p.3D]

Long, lumbering, pretentious and for some a possible laff riot. [23 Dec 1994]

Broken Toys is beyond repair [18 Dec 1992, p.6D]

Whether we're talking this go-round, the original or the second sequel the finale seems to promise, I'd rather try standing drunk on a see-saw (though maybe not over dirty syringes) than see Saw.

This movie is a howler as well -- possibly even intentionally -- but if it is a black comedy, the joke is overextended by far too many arms and legs. [19 March 1999, Life, p. 13E]

Almost everyone in this has done better, and those who haven't, like young Ms. Panettiere, have plenty of time to do so.

The movie's opening half-hour is merely dull, but the final hour is brain-damaging. [11 Dec 1998]

Don't put yourself through this hell.

Ten minutes into the picture, you're searching the screen for life-support machines.

This unearthed cheapie and fast-forwarder's delight is redeemed by the dubbed- in cathedral tones (they're vintage gladiator pic) coming from our hero's larnyx. [20 Dec 1991, p.3D]

Except for a nifty climactic biker attack on the Mississippi statehouse, you've seen the rest. You won't however, see Boz on screen for long. A Stone face, yes - but not a great one. [21 May 1991, p.4D]

The worst of '88's major Christmas pics has scientist Dan Aykroyd inadvertently beaming Kim Basinger to Earth in a bum experiment; the result is as tired as its title, though Basinger gives another smooth comic performance. [09 Jun 1989, p.3D]

All you get here for paid admission is a long and terrific avalanche scene -- state of the art, no question. Then it's over and ready to melt away, much like memories of this movie.

A mongrel of a movie.

'Burbs is a messy mix of Gremlins, Neighbors, Rear Window and Arsenic and Old Lace. [17 Feb 1989, p.6D]

Holmes, of Dawson's Creek, will be up the creek if she can't avoid movies like this. And so will you if you see it.

The movie tries to juggle motherly love sentiment with wanna-be snappy ripostes with a violent streak that extends to threatening a grade-schooler with blinding and busted kneecaps. [11 Oct 1996, Pg.03.D]

Michelle Pfeiffer has made a lot of memorable movies, including many that undeservedly failed to connect with the public. Never, until Dangerous Minds, has she had to flail her way through a movie beyond all redemption, including even the prehistoric "Grease 2". [11 Aug 1995, Pg.04.D]

Rambo III is hardly the first Stallone-y baloney to climax with a commie wipeout; it is the first to palm off its star as the product of a Buddhist monastery. Like, whew. Rambo in a monastery is almost as stomach-turning as E.T. in a brothel. [25 May 1988, p.1D]

Goo oozes without mercy in A Walk to Remember.

Prince blows it here by alternately reaching beyond his abilities and sabotaging what he does well. [06 Nov 1990, p.5D]

Burdened with so many poky scenes that it approaches the level of the distributor's "Drowning Mona" and "Whipped," both candidates for the year's worst.

A movie that only a father could love -- father being the late John Cassavetes, credited with Lovely's script. [29 Aug 1997]

The movie goes wrong from the start.

I don't mind that Nights is a potty-mouth benchmark; crude verbiage is appropriate to the leads, as well as the film's subject matter. This is, however, an amazingly mean two hours. Even the funniest gag involves Murphy's fatal shooting of three men. [17 Nov 1989, p.6D]

Waterlogged trip to nowhere. [13 February 1998, p. 3D]

Thunderheart, which concerns tragic in-fighting between factions of the Oglala Sioux, lands with a sound that duplicates the name of the Indian chief who harassed Howdy Doody in less ethnically sensitive times. Thunderthud. The movie is so dramatically stillborn that it may be unfair to single out Val Kilmer, but that is Kilmer's name atop an acting lineup that includes Sam Shepard, Fred Ward and Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves). [3 Apr 1992, p.8D]

You can't accuse this film of bogging down in cheap psychology, yet you come out dissatisfied and without a clue about what made this person tick.

Whatever reason Denzel Washington may have had for deigning to grace a melodrama as scummy as Virtuosity, the actor has wound up with something that is even worse than 1991's Ricochet in his otherwise creditable filmography. [4 Aug 1995, p.4D]

The young Pigeon turks who no doubt think they've made a hip black comedy should be forced to see it in a theater of non-sycophants, where only an occasional exasperated exhale signifies the audience isn't dead yet. [25 Sept 1998]

Can't stars attract better scripts than this?

Kevin Smith shows up briefly as a lab technician in the miserable Daredevil, and that's a pity. This is a movie that desperately needs the presence of Smith's trademark sidekicks Jay and Silent Bob, with Smith as Bob, ragging worse than ever on his old pal Ben Affleck.

Close your eyes during this miserable romantic comedy.

Clumsy, miscast thriller.

Underdrawn and overheated, Cool World will leave you cold. [13 Jul 1992]

Becomes exceedingly disgusting when it wallows in the psychological torture of a child, a no-no under any circumstances.

Feels like an especially grisly Twilight Zone stretched to five times its length, features Das Boot's Jurgen Prochnow as missing author Sutter Cane and such screen-schlock reliables as David Warner, John Glover and Bernie Casey. None remotely remedies Mouth's bad breath. [03 Feb 1995, p.4D]

Coy to a fault, the movie collapses under its own weight with 90 minutes to go, despite Robby Muller's impressive black-and-white photography, which puts the film on a higher artistic plane than other equally unbearable movies. [16 May 1996, Pg.06.D]

If you can't find a more scintillating brand of dirty to enjoy during your own nights (Helena or Hoboken), you're not trying very hard.

Ultimately, it's just too long and redundant, too violent and unpleasant, too stupid and full of itself. But otherwise, lordy. [19 May 1989, p.4D]

Blue Steel is unpleasant and wearily predictable, a near-unbearable 103 minutes even for fanciers of urban cop films. Its one distinction, lead Jamie Lee Curtis aside, is its backhanded bone-toss to feminists: Now we know that women, too, can direct serial-killer crumminess. [16 Mar 1990, p.4D]

If Gooding can't get another "Boyz N the Hood" or "Jerry Maguire" soon, his career will need its own cork.

On paper, this sounded like a winner. In reality? We have met the Enemy at the multiplex, and he's silly. [08 Feb 1991, p.4D]

Is this a comedy, action pic or sensitive Belushi-Harris romance? Director Rod Daniel never establishes a definitive tone, though he comes close in the scene where James Brown's I Feel Good hits the sound track after some canine fornication. You don't need a dog to smell this. [28 Apr 1989, p.4D]

Inventing the Abbotts would be a lot more fun were it a trashy Troy Donahue-Diane McBain vehicle ground out by Warner Bros. in 1960, the year this hormonally motivated high school-college romance mercifully concludes. [4 April 1997, p. 4D]

One of those movies that goes for a jarringly new emotion every 30 seconds or so while the story's foundation is collapsing.

Usually, I'm as slow as the pacing of a movie in figuring out who's done it. If you can't solve this mystery with an hour to go (as I did), better call for a transfusion so a better type of blood will start flowing to your brain.

Life is a crock -- or something like it.

Yet another Alan Alda unoriginal original. [22 Jun 1990, p.2D]

Begins sinking in the shallow end almost at once.

Hollywood must still have some wheezy hacks capable of gleaning a few chuckles out of the hoary Convicts-Disguised-as-Priests movie premise. But to paraphrase Groucho Marx, Someone, please, get us a hack; David Mamet's We're No Angels script can't find them. [15 Dec 1989, p.6D]

There's not a cliché that isn't nailed.

This is by far Kaufman's worst outing since becoming a major filmmaker more than a quarter-century ago, and the fact that his only other stinker from this period is 1993's "Rising Sun" means that maybe he ought to stay away from cop melodramas.

Navy SEALS no doubt fancies itself as being taken from today's headlines, but ''taken from the pages of a Chuck Norris script'' is more like it. [23 July 1990, p.2D]

There's sad news to report about The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D: Put on the cardboard glasses, and you can still see the movie.

Each actor does his own thing for his own audience demographic.

The Package could be the most forgettable movie title since Michael Caine and Richard Gere did Beyond the Limit; with luck, audiences will even forget the film itself was made. And why was it? Possibly to prove that Gene Hackman, at 58, can still survive as many lousy movies as Caine. [25 Aug 1989, p.4D]

I cry for I Spy— or I would if this latest and laziest imaginable of all vintage-TV spinoffs were capable of engendering an emotional response of any kind. Comas are physical, not emotional.

The movie is what it is, a deadeningly literal look at ozone spiritualists and s-&-m purveyors (possibly one and the same) who toss some very spirited pool parties. A better title than the current marquee anonymity might be Naked Brunch. [16 Sept 1994, p.5D]

The only thing a movie this unrefined needs is a vaudevillian in baggy pants and someone hawking peanuts in the aisle.

This one's aimed at those airheads who, like George, have been swinging on a grapevine and slamming into too many trees. [16 July 1997, p. 3D]

For all his talent, Martin Short has been consistently snakebitten in his choice of movies, a streak now extended by Disney's Jungle2 Jungle. Worse, this laugh-numbing venom has been transfused to co-star Tim Allen, until now a consistently successful big bwana in movies and bookstores and on TV. [07 Mar 1997, p.4D]

In Roy Orbison terms, enduring this movie is like working for The Man.

When the most notable thing a film offers is the sight of Dennis Farina in drag, you can't expect much.

Don't buy a ticket for this one, even if the theater is having a fire sale on Raisinets.

Despite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, a deserving flop about modern-day cattle hucksters; at times here (call the rest home), I think Newman sounds like Wally Cox. [01 Mar 1991, p.3D]

May be a spectacularly awful movie, but it's also spectacularly drenched in color, décor and other visual oh-la-la.

Nothing works in this over-elaborate let's-kidnap-a-kid melodrama. [24 Aug 1990]

A movie that has neither dramatic focus nor a single memorable performance, aside from one or two that are memorable for the wrong reasons?

To be charitable, the film's point of view is consistent, and there's a clever bit (very late) involving construction equipment. There isn't however, even a fourth-cousin to a laugh in this very strange public suicide. [29 July 1991, p.4D]

When movies have degraded to the point that Tyson is acting more than Quentin Tarantino is directing, maybe it is time for an industry shutdown, strike-induced or otherwise.

OK, Time Warner, a joke is a joke, but the time of tolerance has passed. Get your creatures out of our faces unless you're willing to regale us by afflicting them with Mad Pokémon Disease.

Actor John Corbett, so clean-cut in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Raising Helen," goes surprisingly scruffy here as someone who apparently studied music under Grizzly Adams.

Myopic Whitey, continually passed over for a lifetime achievement athletic award, bears a passing resemblance to Columbia's all-time No. 1 animated star, the nearsighted Mr. Magoo. It's nice to think that if he ever went to this movie, he wouldn't be able to see it.

Appallingly mean-spirited.

Clumsy urban thriller.

Costner, allegedly smitten with his client, had more chemistry with the Warren Commission in JFK. [25 Nov 1992, p.1D]

Earth to Earth's young director, Mark Piznarksi : It's tough turning straw into gold, isn't it?

There's no substitute for bad taste. And this one has it double-barreled, both in the timing of its release and as a movie, one said to be loosely based on fact.

The movie runs just 80 minutes, but it's enough time for doldrums to set in when nifty special effects and funny verbal exchanges are out grabbing a smoke. [19 Feb 1993, Life, p.5D]

Kris Kristofferson, as a scaled-down old gray mentor to Blade, still looks like the visual equivalent of your five worst college hangovers.

There's so little action or suspense that this Cell isn't too likely to multiply itself into a sequel.

Sometimes laughably incoherent.

Mortal Thoughts is a mystery that any halfway-OK hack might turn into a halfway-OK movie by bagging all pretense to art and simply telling a story. But that isn't the style of Alan Rudolph, whose last space shot was Love at Large; the result is a quirky boo-boo I suspect is already halfway out of theaters. [19 Apr 1991, p.2D]

Couldn't be murkier or less emotionally involving if it were "The Matrix 8," a natural observation because Keanu Reeves stars in both.

It's a mess with sporadic flashes of creativity. Someone should have gone back to the drawing board. [19 July 1996, p.13D]

Frequent Disney scripter Tom Schulman won an Oscar for Dead Poets Society. His latest, Medicine Man, ought to be in the Dead Movies Society. [07 Feb 1992, p.5D]

The director is Rowdy Herrington , whose penchant for the silly in Patrick Swayze's Road House will serve as able cross-reference. Among the capable actors wasted are Dennehy, Robert Loggia, Ossie Davis and Cuba Gooding Jr. from Boyz N the Hood. Soft-spoken Heard is supposedly an ace traveling salesman, but won't be doing Music Man revivals soon. [6 March 1992, p.4D]

Unless it becomes a camp classic, Cain will soon go the way of Abel. [07 Aug 1992, p.2D]

Given its complete lack of suspense, eroticism, ensemble acting, and other mere tangibles, Paul Schrader's The Comfort of Strangers (with a Harold Pinter script) is destined to wind up lacking even a modest theatrical run. [29 Mar 1991, p.5D]

The desperately titled Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man takes place in 1996, an apparent ploy to sugarcoat a script that would be unswallowable set today. Of course, even if it were set in 3996, this film still would be one helluva tight cram down the old esophagus. [23 Aug 1991, p.4D]

There's no buildup (hence, no suspense) and no combustion between the leads. Dillon and Young are both better than their reps, and Dearden orchestrated the sizzle between Michael Douglas and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Something must have gone terribly awry here. [26 Apr 1991, p.4D]

A Disney Thanksgiving movie that plays like a Halloween holdover is odd enough. Even so, it wouldn't be that bad if you stuck your hand into the trick-or-treat bag and found a hefty, succulently dressed and edible turkey instead of the other kind.

There are only so many times you can see a slow-motion kickboxing scene or a figure sail off a skyscraper before you want to spend a nice, cozy evening with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Put an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of word processors, and one of them may indeed write War and Peace, as the old theory goes. But more likely, they'll come up with something like David Mickey Evans' screenplay for Ed. [15 Mar 1996, p.5D]

A potential howler done in by a tendency to wear too much body tissue on its sleeve.

The movie is so uninvolving that it inspires renewed respect for Broken Arrow, which was equally stupid but excitingly filmed. Though its sound effects will shake up your marrow, you can experience the same effect by plunking $ 100 worth of change into a rumbling bed at the nearest seedy motel. [2 Aug 1996]

Steven Seagal's acting style is so minimal that we can almost believe a script that tells us that his character's near-death experience left him flatlined for 22 minutes.

If Costner's clout gets this 124-minute snooze even three weeks of business, dust off the Tom Cruise Cocktail award. [16 Feb 1990, p.4D]

Don't say you weren't warned. There are instant clues that this ill-timed Michael Douglas vehicle is a dually unfortunate viewing experience.

Leaves a bad taste, not only because of its bad-luck timing, but also the staleness of its script.

One of the most violent opening scenes in screen history…Yet given such a visually adept exercise, the rest seems transparently off-the-cuff. There are obese trailer-camp porn stars, heavenly visions, a climactic rendition of Love Me Tender and no-point references to The Wizard of Oz - all of which top this two-hour farrago like a soggy tarp. [17 Aug 1990, Life, 4D]

Desperately conceived by even the most insipid standards of contemporary teen-queen cinema, A Cinderella Story operates under a rotting pumpkin of a supposition.

This come-down of a series capper is so arch and pompous amid its clanks and collisions that you can only snicker at the verbal wind that obscures the din of marauding machinery.

All this dreary movie has is a terrible whodunit payoff.

So unwatchably creaky that it's hard to believe director Mitchell Leisen filmed Murder at the Vanities (with its wildly demented Sweet Marijuana production number) the same year. [04 Dec 1998]

A bottom-rung Bette Midler vehicle disguised as a biopic of novelist Jacqueline Susann, the movie is a wannabe satire shackled by misplaced reverence.

Hip-hoppish Honey is in the harmlessly junky "let's put on a show" tradition of "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," minus electricity but with a budget for supporting-cast navel rings that 1984's break-dance sequel certainly didn't have.

Bogdanovich, again adapting Larry McMurtry, can't find the tone to replace Show's wistful nostalgia; given our lack of nostalgia for 1984's Texas-oil bust, he opts for gallows-humor that's beyond him. [28 Sep 1990, p.9D]

Timecop's conversation piece is the scene in which Van Damme springs into the air amid hand-to-hand combat, finessing a perfect split atop his kitchen counter. Though definitely ooo-and-aaah stuff, it falls short of landing Timecop the 3-star review earned here by Van Damme's Hard Target. [16 Sep 1994, p.5D]

It sounds like fun, but this quasi-continuation of the Nightmare on Elm Street series is a half-hour too long, running 112 minutes when less than 90 would suffice. [14 Oct 1994, p.4D]

The filmmakers, who include the hitherto ace action director Jan De Bont ("Speed", "Twister"), have neither hearts nor minds in gear. [13Jun1997 Pg.04.D]

A contrived, unpleasant and very drawn-out affair.

Vincente Minnelli and Pat Boone didn't work together every day, which is only one of the factors here to titillate fanciers of oddball cinema. There's also a dreadful but thoroughly offbeat script (from George Axelrod's play) about a male screenwriter who's shot by a jealous husband, only to be reincarnated as a woman. [07 May 1999]

Just about any golden age Hollywood hack could have made a zestier drama about one of the greatest rescue missions in U.S. military history.

Neither the actors nor their characters engender much affection.

Live dies around the time Carpenter allows 10 minutes of gratuitous Piper-David eye-gouging, an apparent bone to wrestling fans. Forget the amusing premise; a full crate of magic glasses couldn't make this a bearable movie. [7 Nov 1988]

Even the special effects alone aren't worth the price of admission.

The skiing scenes are lively enough, and one avalanche scene is even better - but cliches, overlength and jarring lapses in continuity mean that Barbra Streisand needn't spearhead a boycott of this Aspen. It can clear theaters all by itself. [25 Jan 1993, p.2D]

Don't blame an aptly chosen cast headed by cute newcomer Mason Gamble, but this film isn't for viewers old enough to fantasize about chaining Barney the dinosaur to a freeway U-Haul. Its mental-age cutoff point is maybe Pampers-plus-5; grown-ups are cautioned to bring along alternate entertainment - even a Walkman tape of old Dennis Day ballads. [25 June 1993, p.2D]

Spaced Invaders (grave emphasis on the first ''d'') is the kind of kids' piffle Touchstone/ Disney turns out in its sleep once or twice a year. This time, slumber segues into a heavy coma, halfway into 102 criminally overlong minutes. [01 May 1990, p.4D]

Double the Van Damme equals double the dopiness in the August dog-days exploitation pic Double Impact. And though it falls somewhat short of being double the pleasure/double the fun, the film is made for one of those round-the-clock theaters with Doublemint gum stuck to the floor. [09 Aug 1991, p.5D]

Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, with a script by playwright David Rabe, is the most overwrought (and likely to be overrated) Vietnam movie since The Deer Hunter. Or maybe since Robert Altman's film of Rabe's Streamers. Or maybe (why split hairs?) ever. [18 Aug 1989, p.4D]

Anyone who sees this movie is going to be 20 minutes ahead of it, though there won't be that many after Weekend 1. With domestic disturbances, someone calls the cops. With this DOA, someone had better call the coroner.

Even if this movie wasn't based on a computer game, Starship Troopers' reputation would still have just shot up another 50 notches. [19 March 1999, Life, p.11E]

Jade recalls Sliver (even before its fizzled finale) by reuniting Eszterhas with producer Robert Evans, the faded genius and ill-pegged comeback producer who fared better with last year's lively autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture. Judging from his last two movies, the aging kid stays on the D-list, too.

The murkiest-looking movie since Ben Affleck's “Daredevil” and about as lacking in charm.

You don't envy the three soldiers who get shot for desertion, but you do identify with their desire to flee.

When the cast starts wondering where the roadkill is, someone says, "Follow the smell." Good tip: That's how you'll know where Wax is playing.

Suspense takes a vacation in sequel. [13 November 1998, p. 6E]

It's one bad apple.

It'll be 30 years this Thanksgiving since Elvis starred in Blue Hawaii. Polynesian kissy-face has been going downhill on screens ever since. [02 Aug 1991, p.5D]

Even by King-movie standards (and there are none lower), the misanthropy, grotesque humor, and all-out ugliness is itself in maximum overdrive. [27 Aug 1993, p.3D]

A pitiful update that saddles poor Cedric the Entertainer with the unenviable task of taking over Jackie Gleason's premier creation, Ralph Kramden.

Gere has never seemed more squirrelly.

Dead-carcass spinoff of Jay Ward's animated TV favorite.

Bulletproof is both offensive and depressing, from its sociopathic mix of graphic violence and slapstick to its severe career blighting of the once-formidable Ernest Dickerson. [6 Sept 1996, p.3D]

That sound you hear is from jet engines gassing up, about to zoom Underclassman to DVD-ville.

The word on Rollerball is "troubled," though troubled is what you call a high school junior with 50 snakes under his bed. Catastrophe is more like it.

Vanilla Ice was fairly amusing striking terror into Debbie Gibson when they were perversely cast as co-presenters on the last Grammy telecast. On the big screen, though, he all but exudes irreversible brain damage, as if he's taken too many noggin spills off a motorcycle. [25 Oct 1991, p.4D]

You keep waiting for there to be more, but there never is -- other than the fact that it all gets gorier and uglier as the dyspeptic look on Jones' face progresses from a four- to a six-a-day scotch-and-peppermint schnapps hangover.

MTV addicts may want to check out Shore, whose sound effects (akin to electrical interference) amuse for maybe five minutes. Otherwise, Encino Man is even worse than Medicine Man, which came from the same studio. In a just society, both of them would go the way of Atlantis Man. [22 May 1992, p.12D]

A race-car drama full of flashy but empty images and a soundtrack that makes you feel as if you're being shaken on a motel rumblebed.

This unbearable cross-generational fantasy, with Coreys Haim and Feldman, has one bit that sums up its overall ineptitude. It's a romantic interlude featuring the great Sinatra standard Young at Heart; instead of the 1954 hit version on Capitol, the filmmakers use the 1962 Reprise remake - photographed on a revolving turntable (and with the wrong label) as a 78! A 78 in the era of Gene Pitney? - what preschool did the filmmakers graduate from, anyway? [8 Sept 1989, p.3D]

To crystallize its fundamental flaw, here's a movie about Manhattan that takes 75 minutes just to get to Manhattan - followed by another 15 that could just as easily have been shot (and possibly were) in some East Topeka alley. [31 July 1989, p.4D]

A baseball nostalgia piece all weirded-out by flashes of supernatural horror, this early-'60s remembrance is like sitting through a double bill of Field of Dreams and The Goonies. [7 Apr 1993, p.8D]

As an artsy but minimally bohemian type, Russo maintains her dignity, an extraordinary accomplishment.

Sniper offers slow-motion close-ups of bullet trajectories for action, plodding for nearly two hours. Berenger may wonder if Zane has the stuff to pull his trigger, but I prayed for someone to pull the plug. [29 Jan 1993, p.4D]

Fire Birds may actually be duller than Clint Eastwood's Firefox. It's doing a full-tilt boogie to 3 a.m. cable right now. [25 May 1990, p.4D]

Poor Rutger Hauer - the new decade apparently isn't his. This hearty trouper's latest, Blind Fury, is nobody's swell time at the multiplex. [30 Mar 1990, p.5D]

Wow, dudes. Pu-trid. (1989 February 20, p.4D)

Except for some climactic gunplay in a zoo that looks suspiciously like a set, every plot thread is a retread - 500 layers deep. [18 May 1990, p.4D]

Imagine a movie so broadly conceived that it was written, directed and all parts were played by Charo — billed in her '70s heyday of Love Boat gigs as the "Cuchi-Cuchi Girl." That's what you get here.

Fred is DOA, but he and the Diceman will kick up a storm at December's 10- worst time. [24 May 1991, p.7D]

Sarah Jessica Parker contributes next to nothing as a work/sack partner who ends up imperiled by a sadist fixated on Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs. The director/co-writer is Rowdy Herrington, who has now surpassed what was his most ludicrous claim to fame: Putting Brian Dennehy into a boxing ring with teen James Marshall in Gladiator. [17 Sept 1993, p.4D]

And as nice as it is to see dishy Jennifer Connelly roller-skate down the store's aisles, the scene is just one more instance of obvious padding to push the running time to (just) past 80 minutes. [2 Apr 1991, p.6D]

Only the makers of "Freddy Got Fingered" might crack a smile because it now has competition for worst movie of the year.

No comedy this vile should be brazenly foolish enough to give itself this title. [25 November 1998, p. 3D]

This is a movie in which you rarely know where you are or who's doing what to the next person.

A plot-twist whodunit that even Forrest Gump might crack, it's also a Hall of Fame howler from long-inactive Richard Rush, whose direction of 1967's Hell's Angels on Wheels now seems comparably placid. [19 Aug 1994, p.10D]

Drawn out and dishonest in equal measure, Sam fights it out with "The Majestic" for the title of worst "important" movie of the year.

Clean up the language, and this little roach of a movie could play the bottom half of a double bill with Rowan and Martin's “The Maltese Bippy.” [26 March 1999, Life, p.9E]

Hollywood, never one to let a retro idea die, has entrusted the premise to Carlo Carlei, a young Italian filmmaker whose stylistical flourishes in 1992's Flight of the Innocent seem doubly grotesque when employed toward such flea-laden material. [02 Jun 1995, p.2D]

Here's a late-August dog-days atrocity from the "aren't farts funny?" school of filmmaking.

The movie is an insult to the intelligence of the entire human race.

Murky, pretentious and torturously inert.

A little soon for any movie this millennium to reunite overacting Matthew Lillard, underacting Freddie Prinze Jr., feigning mousy Linda Cardellini and the more obviously lip-glossy Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Icky and incompetent (special effects aside) in equal parts, this groaner makes 1994's "The Mask" look like something you'd study in a film graduate course at NYU.

Why would a distributor suddenly yank an animated family film from its intended wide December opening until mid-January? Could it be that the advance word of mouth wasn't very good-winked?

Desperate Hours is a monumentally awful take on The Desperate Hours, a '50s best-seller/stage hit, later Humphrey Bogart's movie-gangster swan song. [05 Oct 1990, p.4D]

The only good thing about Impostor is the appropriateness of its title for a film posing as the first 2002 release.

The trouble with indulging Taking Lives is that it's taking your time.

There's nothing sleazier than sleaze that fails to titillate, and this drab blight on a hot cast is as sleazy as a preordained hit ever gets. [07 Apr 1993 Pg. 08.D]

This would be a lot more amusing if at least one street in town ran uphill; maybe it's generational, but does even Corey Feldman know what the title means? [11 Aug 1989, p.3D]

We've known for years there is a hillbilly heaven because Tex Ritter used to sing of one. Now, thanks to Next of Kin, we know there's a hillbilly hell. [24 Oct 1989, p.4D]

This Paramount release doubles the insult because it rips off the title of one of the studio's best-remembered Jerry Lewis comedies.

None of this is erotic, but it is pretty silly. Silly enough to make this the low point of the movie year so far. [30 Apr 1990, p.1D]

Structured loosely enough to work in all the excrement and incest jokes necessary to seem hip these days.

You do get conscientious Hanks' miscast floundering (it's not pretty); Bruce Willis' lazy performance (it's beyond miscasting) as a hack journalist; showoff camera pyrotechnics; the thudding of dialogue that was hysterically funny in the book; an appallingly wrongheaded ending (even to non-readers); and the most numbingly needless and stupid off-screen narration yet. [21 Dec 1990, p.1D]

Geared to 16-year-olds who can't name the governor of their state, this movie ought to be closed down by the health department.

Remarkably, the plot has much in common with "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," yet that bundle of fun has enough vision to make even its Barry Manilow interlude seem appropriate.

The movie's biggest drawback is a failure to deliver what's promised.

Kid's tone is off 100% of the time. The young actors are irredeemably bland, and two of the adults (Michael Des Barres' bank president, James LeGros' Storm Trooper-like security guard) are hammy enough to make James Brown seem controlled.

George A. Romero, less Living Dead here than dying artistically, adapts Stephen King in a movie without a good half. [23 Apr 1993, p.4D]

An air of self-congratulation hangs over the empty tank of gas called Jawbreaker, as if writer-director Darren Stein just can't wait to dazzle us with the gaudy visuals he's soldered onto a standard-issue black-comedy script.

Hopped-up Falling Down is a technically proficient grabber that exploits white-male angst while adeptly juggling two stories filmed in contrasting styles. Slick, maybe facile, and with a nasty streak, it is nonetheless 1993's first consistently engrossing movie. [26 Feb 1993, p.1D]