Peter Rainer

Has a terrific premise that shatters almost upon arrival; no bad-boy legend trashing a hotel room could have done a more complete job.

The movie often seems glib in the face of tragedy. And when, near the end, Shepard tries to pour on the hearts and flowers by showing us just what made Simon crack up on camera, the bathos is icky. The whole movie is icky.

Movie has been upstaged by the sum of our fears. The staunch heroics, frantic presidential huddles, and hairbreadth rescues all seem tinny and escapist, too Cold Warrior–ish, for what's really going on now.

Monumentally unromantic.

An impossibly, incomprehensibly overlong and cacophonous bore.

Mixed Nuts is a farcical whirligig that doesn't whirl. It's energetically unfunny, like "Radioland Murders," and, like that film, it boasts top-flight talent. Maybe the idea of making a comedy about a suicide prevention center just got to everyone-it's a bummed-out comedy about being bummed out. [21 Dec 1994, p.1]

There's a fundamental lack of human feeling in Beverly Hills Cop III that makes you want to avert your eyes from the people around you when the lights come up. Attending this movie makes you feel like an accomplice to the corruption. [25 May 1994, p.1]

The animation is of variable quality; the story is a garbled pastiche of "Oliver Twist" and "Little Miss Marker;" the songs, including four by Charles ("Annie") Strouse, are eminently unhummable. [17 Nov 1989]

In the end, the difference between "Funny Games" and Hollywood schlock horror may only be a matter of breeding. Funny Games is "Saw IV" with a PhD.

Dislikable movie characters don't always result in dislikable movies but that's certainly the case with Sam Levinson's Another Happy Day, a dysfunctional family meltdown movie about an impending wedding that only grows more aggravating as it unwinds.

John Herzfeld, the writer-director, attacks America's lust for voyeuristic sensationalism by aping the very tactics he decries.

As an actress, Madonna has to work on her vulnerability more.

What Happens in Vegas is not only annoying, it's also incompetent – a bad mix.

It’s forceful, to be sure, but in a lurid way that suggests a telenovela that’s been baking in the sun too long.

Sometimes, dear reader, there's no place like home, and that's just where you should be when this gorefest opens at a theater near you.

Even as an Eastwood vehicle -- an appropriate term for a movie about a cutthroat car-theft ring -- the film is a warmed-over compost. [07 Dec 1990, p.F10]

It just may be the most boring movie ever made – period.

Critics who come out against Kick-Ass are leaving themselves open to that worst of contemporary accusations: a failure to be cool. But pretending that Kick-Ass is just another good-time comic book blowout is the greater failure.

I was looking forward to something a tad more satirical than this Hallmark card of a movie, which plugs innocence and goodness like they’re going out of style.

David Mamet's Oleanna, adapted from his two-character play, is about sexual harassment, but it's the audience for this movie that gets harassed. Mamet must mean for this movie to be as enjoyable as fingernails scraping a blackboard. For both men and women, watching it is intended as an act of penance for all our sexist, elitist, feminist, patriarchal ills.

Its wasted cast includes Dyan Cannon, Sally Kellerman, Len Cariou, and Brenda Vaccaro, who miraculously manages to give a fine performance in this malarkey.

The latest, and, one fears, not the last episode in the kiss-kiss-bang-bang saga of L.A. police Detectives Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is even more of a comic strip than its immediate predecessor. [15 May 1992]

All I can say is, I certainly hope this dreary, bleary comedy doesn’t end up serving as a referendum on anything. That would be a disservice to women, not to mention movies.

Since this is a coming-of-age movie about a poor rural kid who grapples with the big city, it would be nice if its protagonist weren’t such a lummox.

The coarseness wouldn't be so bad if at least the steady stream of obscenities were funny.

An exuberantly garish French movie.

Why are Steve Carell and Tina Fey wasting their time, and ours, by appearing in the miserable comedy Date Night?

The end result, at best, is high-toned pulp.