Mike Clark

There's no real dazzle in Bedazzled.

Give Dozen a slight edge to the mournful "Yours, Mine & Ours" as a holiday season bottom-feeder, because Martin and Levy are better at slapstick than Dennis Quaid.

Irritates in the early going when many of the current-day interviews are so intentionally underlighted that we can't see what the group members look like.

His (Cameron) movie may not be perfect, but visually and viscerally, it pretty well is.

There may be no crying need for this movie, but we could use the laughs.

Mostly avoids being cloying but flirts with being precious. Yet Boyle is enough of a stylist to make it all passable. It's one of those films for which fans and detractors can see the others' viewpoint.

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]

Modest yet pleasing musical pastiches that typified post-war Disney. [05 Jun 1998, p.6E]

Viscerally juicy....The movie is effectively cast. [25 July 1997, p.D2]

As far as acting goes, neither Olsen is ready for Euripides' Medea, yet each projects well enough in their shared big scene.

What we get is a tweaked variation on the litany of men-disguised-as-women comedies: "Some Like It Hot" and "Tootsie," just for starters. Obviously, this sassy farce sounds recycled and certainly appears to be in the coming attraction. Yet it's also funnier than expected in ways you wouldn't expect.

Paradis is a most striking subject, but the movie is a winner as well, starting with a story full of black-comic possibilities exploited fully by the great French director Patrice Leconte.

A timeless story. [07 Oct 2005, p.8E]

There is enough mirthful good will generated to justify even another sequel. May we suggest: "License to Shag," "You Only Shag Twice" or "Thundershag."

The sad truth is that Cadillac is still another of the amiably lazy efforts that Eastwood and his band of production regulars have been mass-producing for too many years. (And by now, it's decades.) [26 May 1989, p.4D]

Superstars usually avoid movies this spiritless, and it's tough to believe anyone could read this script and fail to realize the movie wouldn't end up going anywhere.

Let's just say that if you loved Dana Carvey in Opportunity Knocks, you'll thrill to Taking Care of Business. [17 Aug 1990]

This smashingly filmed and performed one-shot is (uh, so to speak) the year's best romantic comedy. [8 Dec 1989]

But when material is this fragile, virtually every scene is obligated to click for the result to become something special. Ultimately, this walking and talking comes perilously close to becoming a gab-fest treadmill. [26 Jul 1996, Pg.04.D]

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]

When it isn't funny, it's embarrassingly obvious - and it's almost never funny. [24 Dec 1990, p.1D]

Great cinema - and also a whopping good time. [19 September 1990, Life, p.1D]

This is intelligent grown-up entertainment on both a political and a humanistic level.

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

Bout No. 2 is among the best closed-quarters screen fights ever, as good as (and longer than) Frank Sinatra vs. Henry Silva in The Manchurian Candidate. And Hannah does more for an eyepatch than anyone since the late Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan.

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]

A minimally tolerable excuse to splice one or two perfunctory scenes between song cues.

Spotty and uneven, Wedding shouldn't even have the embarrassed guffaws it has, and it probably wouldn't were it not for a robust cast.