Rene Rodriguez

The Next Three Days might have fared a lot better if the screenwriters had stuck to "The Next Two Days."

Even though Lower City ultimately leads nowhere (the movie doesn't end so much as simply stop), you won't mind having taken the trip.

Grisham is an expert at hooking the audience, and he fills the edges with legal details that, realistic or not, are always fascinating. Runaway Jury is an adequate, unremarkable piece of work, but as they say in the book world, you won't be able to put it down.

The fragmented style is distracting and ultimately annoying, robbing the story of its suspense and drive while contributing nothing except self-conscious style.

A passable adaptation of Kinney's novel, but no replacement for the real thing. Read the book, then see the movie.

The fact that the entire film is in Spanish, and Ferrell plays a Mexican named Armando, are two of the tamest elements in the movie.

Despite a last-minute attempt to bring poignancy to the tale, you don't walk away from Overnight feeling sorry for Duffy as much as you are glad you never met him.

Doesn't break any new ground, but it doesn't leave you wishing you had stayed home, either. Considering the state of action movies today, that's something.

Just because the new The Day the Earth Stood Still is green, though, doesn't mean it's dull. If anything, there's a lot more mayhem and destruction this time around.

Veteran director Manuel Gomez-Pereira (Boca a Boca, Between Your Legs) falls short of the manic screwball farce he was aiming for.

To call Meek's Cutoff slow doesn't begin to describe its pace. There are stretches that are, frankly, boring. But the vivid details and intimacy you develop with these travelers sticks with you.

As much as I laughed throughout the movie, I cannot mount a cogent defense of the film as entertainment, or even performance art, although the movie does leave you marveling at these guys' superhuman capacity to withstand pain. Compared to these jackasses, Vin Diesel is a big, overpaid wuss.

We Bought a Zoo is the most formulaic movie Cameron Crowe has ever made: It is so generic, you could review it with a flow chart.

The best thing about this big, imaginatively detailed movie is its premise, which director Francis Lawrence, a music-video veteran, takes his time exploring.

A dreamy, ravishing ode to romantic longing, and it is bound to frustrate people who like their movies to get to the point, or at the very least have one.

The Frighteners never finds a satisfying groove -- comedy-horror hybrids are formidably challenging -- but moments in it reach giddy, frantic heights. [19 July 1996, p.5G]

May not be so deep or richly imagined as J.K. Rowling's universe of magic and Muggles, but the film is populated by likable characters, great special effects and a neat premise.

Mission: Impossible is full of red herrings and MacGuffins, but even if you can't keep track of who's doing what to whom, it's hugely enjoyable for its sheer kinetic power. It's a soulless trinket, and it never really grabs you the way good action films do. But it moves like a demon, and it's consistently dazzling. [22 May 1996, p.1D]

Suffers from dialogue that often sounds like convenient exposition as well as from a climax that feels too pat and prosaic. But the film is peppered with small, explosive scenes that have a refreshing complexity.

Leoni's presence adds a jolt of energy to a movie that, while not necessarily worth going out of your way for, turns out to be a lot more clever than it initially appears.

This is a slight and unessential picture, but its quirky, compassionate tone seems destined to attract a cult following, and members of high-school drama clubs everywhere will be riveted.

The Jungle Book won't replace memories of Disney's earlier version, but it's the perfect choice for action-hungry kids who won't sit still through Little Women. [23 Dec 1994, p.G3]

The movie is unwieldy and overstuffed with subplots - and, at 2 1/2 hours, probably too much misery and sorrow for most viewers.

Bullet in the Head is a throwback to the past with its eyes trained on the present, and it proves Hill has kept up with the times.

And although The Cooler doesn't do anything fresh with its Vegas milieu, the movie is refreshingly frank and astute when it comes to depicting sex.

A devilish little comedy whose urbane, satirical humor will probably sail right over the heads of audiences weaned on Scream.

The most charming bad movie ever spun off a hit TV show.

Lorna's Silence doesn't work, but it's a beautiful misfire.

The result is that rare breed of big-studio pictures: A remake that makes sense.

Closer in spirit and tone to the comic books that spawned it.

Wisely, Romper Stomper never preaches or moralizes: The subject matter does that well enough on its own. [03 Dec 1993, p.G4]

With this gorgeously melodramatic ode to cinema, the filmmaker comes dangerously close to losing himself inside his celluloid dreams -- and leaving the audience behind.

Linklater's Bears are even scrappier, fouler and worse-behaved than their 1976 counterparts.

Even at his worst - and Robert does some awful things - the actor almost makes you root for him, hoping he'll get away with it.

What The Four Feathers lacks is genuine sweep or feeling or even a character worth caring about.

Easily the slightest and most frenetic entry in the trilogy. But it might also turn out to be the fan favorite, because the movie is nothing but eye candy and visual sensation.

See How They Fall is at its best when coasting on the chemistry between scheming Max and childlike Johnny, whose odd- couple relationship arises out of necessity and ends up as something closer to father and son. First-time director Jacques Audiard toys with the story's timeline and wraps things up with a subtly cold-blooded ending that earns the film its noir status with a wink and a bitter smile. [10 Feb 1995, p.19G]

Gangs of New York is many things, but a masterpiece is not one of them. It is primarily, and somewhat surprisingly, a poky western, with a vengeful orphan.

Shakespeare purists may scoff and wonder what the point is, but Morrissette would probably shrug and say ``Why not?''

The heist in Flawless comes at the film's midpoint, but although Radford wrings some nice suspense from the sequence, the theft isn't his primary focus here. It's what happens next.

The movie is better when it’s poking sly fun at Cruise’s superheroic screen persona (look at the expression on his face when Ethan realizes just how big the guy he must fight is) than when it asks you to buy into its far-fetched antics.

Despite some admittedly intense sequences and a lean, spare script, The Hills Have Eyes hasn't aged all that well, particularly the business with the cannibals, who are more likely to inspire laughter from modern viewers than anything else. [31 Oct 2003, p.22G]

Decidedly minor Woody.

The movie is at its best when Spurlock dives deep into his subject, interviewing directors such as J.J. Abrams and Quentin Tarantino.

Like a lot of anime, the movie remains entertaining even when you have no idea what's going on.

My One and Only isn't exactly memorable, but this little, personable movie is a fine showcase for Zellweger's talents and a paean to the sort of mid-1950s America best remembered in Norman Rockwell paintings.

As funny as a lot of the film is, Dogma remains as frustratingly uneven as the rest of Smith's work.

Turns out to be something entirely different than it initially seemed, and while the conclusion brings everything to a logical close, it also renders the movie less interesting -- a stunt that didn't merit Bale's startling, and dangerous, transformation.

Avary suggests much more than he shows, but his style carries such urgency, you walk away convinced you saw every bullet hit its mark. On that level, Killing Zoe should get Avary noticed -- the long, disastrous and occasionally suspenseful heist is the best part of the movie -- but it's the stuff at the edges that shows this guy has genuine talent. [28 Oct 1994, p.G4]

Only devout Dylan fans will be able to derive much sense out of it. Dylan novices can only sit back and surrender to the ride Haynes offers: It's a strange, surreal trip.

Even after the plot has left you behind, you still watch The Brothers Bloom with a smile, because the actors are so engaging.

I Killed My Mother fares less well when Dolan gives in to some ill-conceived stylistic flourishes (understandable for a young, first-time filmmaker) or when his reach as a dramatist exceeds his grasp (an incident involving thugs who gay-bash Hubert, for example, feels superfluous). But the crux of the film is the furious, tempestuous bond between Hubert and Chantale, and through their volcanic fights, you can see Dolan's considerable talent at its least adorned. [23 Apr 2010, p.G7]

What Crush lacks in substance and originality, it makes up for with sheer likability.

Everyone in Hit and Run is clearly having a good time. It's the audience that gets left out of the fun.

The story falters only at the end, but it's the ride, not the destination, that you remember and savor the most.

The script by Ben Ripley doesn't come up with enough obstacles to throw in the hero's path, and his budding romance with the doomed Christina feels more like a studio mandate than an organic development.

Viewers who like their movies to adhere to some sort of reasonable logic, or to at least make sense, will not be pleased by Femme Fatale. For everyone else, it's playtime.

Dream Lover ends with a devious last-minute twist that will delight some and infuriate others into cries of "Is that all there is?" But the surprise ending fits the rest of Dream Lover perfectly, a movie that wholeheartedly embraces its genre's cliches -- yet still keeps you riveted. [20 May 1994, p.5]

300 is at its best when it settles for purely visceral thrills, such as Leonidas' battle against a hulking warrior twice the size of a normal man. The movie's broad strokes are all superlative: It's the details that keep 300 from being anything more than a striking curiosity.

In the House seems to be building toward a cathartic and unexpected finale. Instead, you get a baffling fizzle — an inexcusably limp and unimaginative conclusion that doesn’t bring a single plot strand to a satisfying end.

A lightweight, formulaic piece of fluff, but you wouldn't know that by Meryl Streep's performance.

Sweet and moving, and occasionally irritating, but it's never embarrassing.

An hour after seeing it, you may not remember what The International was about. But you'll certainly remember that shootout. That is something to behold.

It would have taken another director (the late David Lean, for instance) and a better script to make this movie into the serious, full-blooded epic it wants to be. But Power of One succeeds in entertaining and getting audiences to think about the tragedy of apartheid; flaws and all, it's still worth seeing. [31 March 1992, p.E6]

Gas, Food, Lodging should send plenty of movie offers in Balk's direction. She's a perceptive and subtle actress, comfortable at playing both adolescent giddiness and terror in the same unmannered style. It is her performance, and the touching character she creates, that ultimately makes this movie worth seeing. [9 Nov 1982, p.E3]

The Signal is too ambitious for its own good: The movie is built on shells of ideas and concepts that haven’t been fully thought out, and once it’s over, the movie collapses the more you think about it.

Suggests that Cruise the actor may have outgrown this kind of stuff.

Eventually, though, the monsters come out -- blind, snarling cave-dwellers, looking much like Gollum's bigger kin -- and The Descent becomes a simple exercise in guessing who, if anyone, will survive.

Yes, Aloha is a mess. But messes can be fascinating, and there’s a lot of tenderness and beauty and heartbreak here, too.

There are several stretches when the movie is actually hilarious.

Depending on your personal tastes, Intacto will either be an ambitious concoction of cerebral science-fiction or a towering pile of nonsense. The truth lies somewhere in between.

The movie shouldn’t be dismissed outright, either. It’s a creepy experiment that stays with you.

The solemn, morose tone of The Pledge also guarantees a quick box office death: This is essentially a movie about bad things happening to good people, and if you have any interest in seeing this beautifully made bummer, don't wait too long.

Always a joy to look at -- and even if the story isn't half as profound as the filmmakers think it is.

A brisk, undemanding adventure aimed squarely at the family market, Journey is completely passable in 2-D. But viewing it through 3-D glasses not only quadruples the movie's entertainment value, it also explains why characters are constantly thrusting things at the camera.

She's Out of My League essentially plays its central premise straight, although the film does find time to veer into gross-out humor.

The movie is slight and, at 75 minutes without end credits, barely qualifies as a feature-length film. But Tomlin is a wonder.

Considering the horrible buzz that had dogged the movie since its trailers first premiered, The Punisher turns out to be a likable underdog.

It's Depp's misfire that keeps the picture from becoming a genuinely sweet pleasure: As it stands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the equivalent of NutriSweet.

The volume is pitched high, perhaps so you won't notice how lackadaisically structured the picture is. Get Him to the Greek isn't really a story but a collection of comic set pieces.

The movie is more somber and less wondrous in tone than the first film, especially since the lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson), who would have been instrumental in leading the Narnians to victory, has disappeared.

A wobbly fantasy that relies on the actor's mischievous energy and rakish charisma for its laughs.

A hit-and-miss affair, but it's smart and good-natured enough to guarantee Stiller an open invitation to host VH1's annual Fashion Awards.

It's an odd little movie, one directed with such a sure hand, you can't help but go along on its bumpy, mesmerizing ride. [29 Apr 1994, p.G4]

Never seen a murder mystery you couldn't outwit? Here is your movie.

Sweet and tart in just the right doses, but there's also something underwhelming about it.

Josh Brolin and Robert Rusler star in this 1980s-era guilty pleasure that reimagines Romeo & Juliet as a war between rival skateboard gangs (yes, there used to be such a thing).

The movie could have used a few more scenes focusing on Child at work in the kitchen -- a few more scenes with Child doing anything, really.

Spacey, whose precise command of enunciation and diction, along with his wicked, reptilian charm, are strong enough to carry the show.

There's a frothy, almost whimsical undercurrent quietly bubbling beneath the dead-serious story, and it finally bursts to the forefront in the ridiculously happy finale, which argues without the slightest bit of shame that crime sometimes does pay - really, really well.

Egregiously vulgar satire on terrorism, global politics and Hollywood action movies gets an immeasurable boost from its wonderfully designed, old-school string puppets.

Saring, often funny comedy.

Much like the first film, Nymphomaniac Vol.2 isn’t remotely erotic or a turn-on — it’s a curiously intellectual experience that doesn’t move you below the neck, including the heart.

For about an hour or so, 1408 has you thinking you're watching The Next Great Horror Movie: That's how good the first half of this adaptation of Stephen King's short story about a haunted hotel room is.

It's just exhausting. For all of the movie's sumptuous, eyepopping craft, you'll feel more than a little relief when Mathilde finally reaches the end of her quest.

Leary's presence quickly grows tiresome, and The Secret Lives of Dentists would have been a better movie without him. But Scott and Davis keep you interested in the Hursts' dilemma

It's Leigh's rawest, most self-indulgent film to date. At times the movie seems to go on and on, noisily spinning its wheels. There's no dramatic arc to speak of, and the scenes in his girlfriend's flat are much less involving than Johnny's street experiences... Whenever the movie lets Johnny loose to wreak his own brand of hellish emotional havoc, however, Naked seethes with primal fury. [25 Feb. 1994, p.G5]

Ultimately too slight for its own good: It's a genial little doodle, light on plot and heavy on quotable, pithy observations.

A welcome antidote to the depressing, feel-bad sadism of recent horror hits like Hostel and Saw II, Final Destination 3 puts the fun back in watching stupid people die Rube Goldberg-elaborate, ridiculously gory deaths.

None of this is all that engaging. But the art design of the movie makes up for the slack story.

Once the guns come out, and the car crashes begin, Date Night loses the funny.

Sin City is always moving on to the next thing, and despite surprisingly good work from its large cast (especially Rourke and Owen, who are both outstanding), the picture feels synthetic and artificial.

This is Eastwood's "Brokeback Mountain," chased by a healthy serving of "J.F.K."- style paranoia and conspiracies (Oliver Stone is going to love this movie.) But because so much of what the film says about Hoover remains speculative and unproven, J. Edgar can't fully cross all its Ts.

Scott embraces the lightness of the material instead of trying to give it unnecessary weight, and even if he's far from the ideal filmmaker to choreograph bits of slapstick, A Good Year is never less than visually ravishing.

It's a very busy movie, designed to appeal to short attention spans, and it leaves you feeling full, but not satisfied, because it's missing the most important ingredient of all: genuine magic.

The plot in Angels in the Outfield plods some, enough to make younger kids fidget. Once the premise is established, the movie relies on a noisome reporter threatening to expose the celestial help to add suspense. The humor is aimed squarely at kiddies and is of the nerdy-guy-sits-on-a-tray-of-nachos variety. [15 July 1994, p.G4]

The film's earnestness makes up for its high corn factor.

Forget all that accuracy business and just enjoy the movie for what it is: a large-scale, passably engrossing tale of valiant knights doing valiant deeds.

An ambitious, powerful, somber picture, but it never quite moves you the way it should.

The movie is "Twister" on the high seas, a spectacular-looking, spectacularly hollow tale about foolhardy men vs. imperious nature.

The first half of Oleanna, David Mamet's film of his own award-winning play about sexual harassment, is carefully calculated to annoy the hell out of you -- which it does. But after a tedious beginning, Oleanna begins to turn the screws. By the end, you find yourself taking pleasure from a brutal beating, and it leaves you rattled, downright disturbed. [11 Nov 1994, p.G4]

A mess, but a fascinating one.

When it was first shown at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival just days before Sept. 11, this movie seemed darkly, grimly comic. Today, though, it often just seems grim.

Allen's most amiable, breeziest comedy in years.

Just isn't very scary.

Does serve up an inspired gag every once in a while.

The liveliest and most engaging time killer to come out of Hollywood in a long while. It's junk, to be sure, but it is superbly made junk.

The movie is simply too long for its own good.

Too bad, then, that after two hours of such relentless tension, Prisoners starts revealing its secrets to progressively hokier effect.

Undeniably charming, and kids will certainly enjoy it.

Clearly, this unabashedly silly movie, written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, is the work of people with a grasp of the stream-of-consciousness creativity that a few bong hits can impart.

The movie tries its hardest to celebrate the impetuousness of its hero and the exhilaration of his accomplishments. Mostly, though, it just reminds you of the severity of his mistakes.

What’s missing in The Force Awakens – and this is a major, critical flaw – is a fresh story template, a plot that doesn’t build toward a climax you’ve already seen, played out in practically the exact same way. That’s the kind of failing that a lot of fans will overlook while they bask in the undeniable bliss-out the movie delivers. But in hindsight, as you play the film back in your mind, the huge lack of imagination and freshness become more problematic.

It's blunt, to the point, aggressively manipulative and, at 86 minutes, not a minute longer than it needs to be.

Not since Brian De Palma's "Carrie" has a horror movie so effectively exploited the genre as a metaphor for adolescent angst, female sexuality and the strange, sometimes corrosive bonds between girls who claim to be best friends.

Like Carol, Safe is a little too internalized for its own good: When it's over, you wish you would run into Haynes in the theater lobby so you could ask him more than a few questions. [22 Sep 1995, p.6G]

It's a glossy, somewhat condescending comedy, with all the substance of a cone of soft vanilla ice cream.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a kid playing with his toys and smashing action figures together, except del Toro does it with more grace and imagination than most. There are long sequences in this movie that merit that most overused of terms, “awesome.”

What's lacking is the simplicity that made the original.

If you can overlook the lack of logic inherent in its central conceit, In Time makes for a fun, stylish piece of speculative sci-fi.

A crowd-pleasing comedy that makes up for its formulaic, sitcom-ready premise with likable performances and an inviting sense of humor.

The tug of war for Caterina's political soul is left open-ended, and her relationship with her difficult father is resolved with a plot twist that feels completely out of character. Caterina deserved better.

The movie - which caused walkouts and an uproar at Sundance - rewards your endurance with an utterly insane 30-minute climax of violence, audacious gore and all-around bad behavior (how this picture got an R rating is baffling).

The latest Christmas-tree movie from director Wes Anderson, who makes pictures so carefully appointed and decorated, they sometimes feel like they're made to be looked at instead of watched.

The result is initially exhilarating, ultimately exhausting.

A mess, but an energetic, convivial mess.

Tender and sentimental, a little schmaltzy, and ultimately too slight.

Even though The Business of Strangers loses its nerve in the third act -- you'll wish Stettner had dared to push things further.

Despite its all-around good performances (Pomeranc in particular is a marvel), Searching for Bobby Fischer can't quite shake its overly familiar feel. We've seen this all before, many times. It's a diverting, undemanding piece of work though, and you don't have to know a single thing about chess to enjoy it. [11 Aug 1993, p.E3]

Despite its astronomical body count, John Dies at the End never takes itself seriously, and neither should you.

By film's end, you realize you've sat through an effective rip-off of "Meet the Parents."

Proves there are some things cartoons can't do better than live action after all.

Even when sketched in broad terms, Rogowski's downward spiral makes for compelling viewing, and to her credit, director Stickler never romanticizes her subject.

It's a generic, clunky title. The movie isn't quite as disposable, but it's not exactly memorable, either.

Coulter wants to explore the act of mourning as a theme, and how death sometimes reminds us that every minute of life should be savored. On that level, Remember Me certainly succeeds.

A funny thing happened to The History Boys on the way to the screen. The players are the same, the dialogue is pretty much identical, but the vibrancy of the play -- its exhilarating immediacy -- has been muted.

The movie's faults aside, this is the kind of show where half the fun is watching it in the company of a large group of people.

You have to overlook a whole lot of guff in order to enjoy the slight but pleasurable entertainment of The Switch.

Part chopsocky action, part romance, part hokey fantasy, Dragon will please anyone open to a well-made, if superficial, Hollywood biography, a "biopic-lite." [8 May 1993, p.G5]

Pfeiffer is the antithesis of the girl next door: You just have to look at her to know that she was born to be bad.

Kline salvages the picture with his dynamic, utterly unpredictable performance -- the work of a highly skilled comedian thrilled by the opportunity to go nuts once again.

Vaughn and Favreau are a dynamite pair, and there's enough give-and-take between them to satisfy any diehard "Swingers" fan.

Part 1 does something that no other previous Twilight movie had achieved: This one draws you close and keeps you there.

Excels at bringing on the high-power pyrotechnics.

As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation.

The message in Spanglish is thoughtful and astute; it's the delivery that could use some work.

Year One is not really THAT bad and not ENTIRELY without laughs.

It's a perfect role for Jolie, whose seductive looks always seem to be concealing something dangerous, even predatory, and she brings out a looseness in Pitt, who fares much better in comedic roles than when playing things straight and stoic (i.e. Troy).

When Ephron gives Ferrell and Kidman a musical number that's supposed to be sweet and uplifting, the movie feels downright creepy.

The movie is sloppy and scattershot, and proud of it. It wears its slipshod, anything-for-a-laugh structure like a badge of honor: Smith is nothing if not self-deprecating.

Six years after its release, "City of God" is still electrifying and fresh: It hasn't aged a bit. City of Men, though, already feels strangely stale.

It's much easier to linger on his youthful idealism than on how that idealism eventually manifested itself. It certainly makes for a much prettier picture. But when your subject is Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara, it is disingenuous.

A psychological thriller in serious need of both psychology and thrills, Cassandra's Dream is a wan, exceedingly minor drama by Woody Allen, who has started to recycle himself in London the way he had long been recycling his New York City pictures.

It's an exploitation B-flick with a grade-A cast. [17 Mar 1995, p.5G]

Turns resoundingly dumb in its last 40 minutes.

Suffers from a fatal lack of purpose. This sleek, visually inventive but frustratingly flat movie is made up entirely of throwaway bits -- occasionally amusing, even ingenious bits. But still, they're just bits.

Certainly pleasant, and occasionally endearing, but it's also strangely empty and unsatisfying, like hearing about someone else's wild dream: You can appreciate the details, but you don't really care how it turns out.

Great actors can do more than carry a movie on the strength of their performances: They can also elevate it to a height it does not necessarily merit, and for much of In the Valley of Elah, Tommy Lee Jones does exactly that.

Like binging on a bottomless box of truffles: Tastes good and sweet at first, but after a while, you start feeling a little green.

Emotes mightily but says precious little.

Aside from the thin characterizations, The Eagle never manages to convey the importance of the heroes' quest.

Bottle Shock often feels out of place on the big screen, but it would probably play a lot better as a weekly half-hour TV show.

The Brothers Grimm gives you plenty to look at, but it's not much to see.

A continuous parade of slaughter.

The movie is an exceedingly slight tale whose entire second half consists primarily of special effects and wonderful set designs.

There's terrific, spontaneous chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary. Watching them bounce lines off each other is one of the biggest pleasures of Two If By Sea, a helter-skelter concoction that's part romantic comedy, part heist film and part New England travelogue...But Two If By Sea (which Leary also co-wrote) is a mess in the story department, with so many different elements competing for screen time, its stars' considerable charm ends up too diluted. [15 Jan 1996, p.5C]

An artsy bore.

Although the picture is nominally the story of a man with a murderous temper, it is less a thriller than a metaphor for the plight of illegal immigrants.

This laborious, talky, fleetingly engaging, ultimately silly picture is about as good a movie as anyone was ever going to wring from Dan Brown's inescapable bestseller.

Dragonheart is a silly, foolhardy epic, a movie so thoroughly misconceived it's as if its creators set out to make a big, expensive film few people would want to see -- and one that would frustrate those who did. [31 May 1996, p.5G]

You can only string an audience along for so long with scary masks and sudden appearances at the window, and after a while, the suspense starts seeping out of The Strangers, because you realize that's all there's going to be to the movie.

Evans – always a reliably dynamic and vivacious screen presence – can't do much to bring the character to life. As far as superheroes go, Cap remains a bit of a stiff.

While We’re Young starts off as an empathetic, funny look at middle age and winds up as profound and schematic as a Neil Simon play — or, for the younger set, an episode of "The New Girl."

The Fountain is probably too muddled and half-baked to even attain cult status -- but you can still see what writer-director Darren Aronofsky was striving for, and even if his reach exceeded his grasp, his intentions were both admirable and worthy of respect.

By the halfway mark, even the most devoted Gibson and Foster fans will start wondering when the movie will do something beyond superficially showing off its stars. It's not until the end that you realize that's all Maverick has to offer -- and it's not enough. [20 May 1994, p.G4]

Where the book was preciously and carefully crafted, the movie just feels precious.

After a funny, highly promising start, Don't Come Knocking starts to fall apart, displaying all of Wenders' weaknesses, too.

The movie is pleasant overall and occasionally comes up with a big laugh. When the movie's over, though, it evaporates from memory, just like a one-night stand that didn't go nearly as well as you'd hoped.

The Good Shepherd, for all its noble intentions, manages to make even espionage boring.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough of Brando and Kilmer: Too much screen time is eaten up by the monsters, plotting their perfunctory uprising against their creator. Worse, the confusing climax never comes close to fulfilling the promise of the opening credits sequence (the best of any movie this the summer). But The Island of Dr. Moreau has sublimely weird moments in it that are hard to shake, and for starved horror fans, nowadays you take what you can get. [23 Aug 1996, p.5G]

James Franco looks more bored and distracted in Rise of the Planet of the Apes than he did when he was hosting the Oscars: Watching the movie, I kept waiting for him to pull out his iPhone, aim it at the camera and take a snapshot while mugging sheepishly. Has there ever been a film with a less engaged protagonist?

The movie wants to be an exploration of family ties and the various ways in which the people we love respond in times of crisis, but the drama is unconvincing, the characters are ill-defined, and Fischer, so good on The Office, seems a bit incomplete without Jim at her side.

Fascinating in concept but a disaster in execution.

Stone isn't the straightforward thriller it appears to be, but the alternative turns out to be dull and lifeless. At least the title is apt: Like a rock, Stone has no pulse.

A pastiche so derivative and pointless, it leaves you wishing Allen had not bothered.

Starts out feeling formidable in scope and theme but ends up awfully small and precious.

The movie takes an excessively long time to cover short narrative ground, and the plot is muddled enough to confuse the target audience. [24 Mar 1993, p.E5]

The last 40 minutes test your patience -- and intelligence -- in a way the rest of this big, dumb, crazy movie never does:

The movie is intentionally elusive, like a memory you can’t quite fully recall, but the result has all the depth and weight of a greeting card.

Suffers from an episodic script and an overly long running time plagued by too many dull, laugh-free patches.

The screenplay by W.D. Richter (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) turns Needful Things into a pitch-black comedy -- a rather lifeless one, unfortunately. There are more laughs than scares, though the movie still carries a creepy undercurrent of nastiness that pops up periodically, to great effect. [27 Aug 1993, p.G5]

Here, finally, is a superhero movie your AP English teacher can enjoy.

There's a fine little western lurking inside Open Range: Too bad it gets drowned out by director Kevin Costner's pretentiousness. Almost everything in the movie feels inflated, overblown, drawn out.

Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are supposed to pass for a married couple, but they have all the chemistry of two actors who just met and shook hands moments before the cameras rolled. They don't even seem to like each other much.

The Avengers has a knockout final 30 minutes, all gee-whiz crash and bang and eye candy that makes grand use of 3D and IMAX and all the other toys. But the Transformers movies did that, too.

If nothing else, the movie proves even the rich and famous make boring home videos.

The result is earnest, admirable and more than a little dull -- a pedestrian movie about a remarkable subject.

A facile treatment of a complicated subject.

It's not that Fear of a Black Hat isn't funny: It is, on occasion. It's just that much of this rap music spoof, done in the style of a mock Spinal Tap documentary, feels woefully out of date. Two years ago, it might have been a hip, must-see comedy: Today, it plays like a warmed-over rerun. [24 Jun 1994, p.G6]

Most of Wells' details are there, and so is the basic premise, but the soul of the thing -- the point -- is missing.

As a director, Talkington has a good sense of pacing: The movie rarely stands still. But too much of Love and a .45 is simply poorly executed rehash. [18 Nov 1994, p.G19]

John Wick reminds you this actor deserves better. Reeves makes the movie entertaining in a background-noise way, but he can’t give it any gravity, even when the filmmakers pull the cheapest trick in the book to get the audience to root for the hero and hiss at the Eurotrash villains. Someone get this man some good work, quick.

The only thing the movie lacks is a pulse.

Notorious excels at showcasing Wallace's music and his magnetism as a performer: It fares less well at giving that music a proper context.

Nowhere near as insightful as Boyz N the Hood, nor as uncompromisingly truthful as Colors, South Central still has some worthy things to say. But the film continually resorts to stock situations to express them. [22 Oct 1992, p.F8]

Oh, what a hollow experience Dark of the Moon is! Bay is so afraid of boring his audience, he pitches every scene at the same high volume right from the first shot, and the effect is exhausting.

A relentless descent into a psychedelic hell, a rambunctious feel-bad epic.

This might have been OK for cable, but as a night out at the movies, it feels like a bit of a cheat.

The Runaways ultimately feels too lethargic and conventional for the wild story it tells.

Jarmusch has never seemed quite this baffling -- or quite this dull.

Too much of this well-acted but dangerously slow thriller feels like a preamble to a bigger, more complicated story, one that never materializes.

Someone apparently forgot to tell Harrison Ford he was starring in a comedy when he was cast in Morning Glory.

Like a lot of the elder Cassavetes' work, She's So Lovely contains moments of truly fine acting, its characters are all sharply drawn, and its story never seems to go anywhere. [29 Aug 1997, p.5G]

The Golden Compass comes close, and its originality cannot be denied, but it never quite crosses over into your heart. It stops at your eyes.

Has a made-for-TV smallness (it will probably be a big hit on cable), and it never quite vanquishes the nagging suspicion that you could be spending your time better elsewhere.

May be the grandest looking film ever made on the subject, but it lacks the most essential element of all: passion.

Not even Sherlock Holmes could make much sense out of the overplotted, murky mess that is "Sherlock Holmes," although Arthur Conan Doyle's legendarily brainy detective would probably never buy a ticket to a movie as elephant-footed as this one.

Never feels like anything more than a Saturday morning cartoon pumped up to big-screen dimensions.

Planet of the Apes is never quite boring -- the movie is constantly giving you something new to look at -- but it's still a disappointingly dull and underplotted ride.

Ted is more of an idea than a movie, a string of jokes and homages starring a cartoon and some game actors whose performances are destined to be enjoyed in chunks, rarely from start to finish, during momentary breaks of channel surfing on late-night TV.

The movie is quick and breezy for its first half-hour, then seems to grind down to a deadened pace: The actors' routines lose their freshness, and the nonexistent story line becomes apparent. The jokes get worse, too. Fortunately, at 80 minutes, the film is too brief to drag. [21 April 1992, p.E7]

Does the movie bear any relation to the video game? Not much. Do the dinosaur effects steal Jurassic Park's thunder? Keep dreaming. Will kids want to see it? Depends on how big Nintendo fans they are. Super Mario Bros. is like watching somebody else play a video game: It's flashy, colorful and wholly uninvolving. [29 May 1993, p.5]

The more hellish the story gets, the sillier and less involving the movie becomes.

You never really get the sense Zhang is taking the movie seriously, so you can't either. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop proves that American filmmakers aren't the only ones who can bungle remakes of foreign movies.

Mother and Child is good when it takes a harsh, unsparing look at lament and the burdens we carry throughout our lives. Then it goes for your tear ducts, and we're suddenly stranded in Lifetime TV territory.

At heart, The Ghost and the Darkness is essentially Jaws with paws -- at one point, you can see the lions' silhouettes circling under a sea of roiling dry grass. It has all the requisite elements for a sweeping, old-fashioned jungle adventure -- except the adventure. [11 Oct 1996, p.6G]

Depp and Burton are two gifted, like-minded artists whose affinity for oddball characters and humor makes them natural creative partners. But they also enable each other's laziest, most indulgent habits: Too often, they seem to be making movies to entertain themselves instead of the audience.

The third -- and thinnest and weakest and least funny -- installment in Ice Cube's popular Friday series.

Feels like a cobbled collection of ideas and conceits rather than a stand-alone story.

Jingle All the Way is at its best when piling on the slapstick, which director Brian Levant ( The Flintstones ) wisely does often. [22 Nov 1996, p.6G]

The acting is better than Ivy deserves. Barrymore is surprisingly good, bringing the right amount of sexuality and mischief to her performance without coming across as ridiculous. It's tough for someone known mostly as a child actor to break into more adult roles, but she pulls it off. [04 Jun 1992, p.F3]

Set almost entirely in one location and shot in widescreen to accommodate its ensemble cast, The Invitation seems tailor-made for a talented filmmaker who wants to show off skills within the constraints of a small budget. But the script, by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (who somehow still find work after having written The Tuxedo, R.I.P.D., and Clash of the Titans), is flimsy and nonsensical in the manner of cheap, straight-to-video-not-even-VOD horror pictures, and Kusama’s direction is clumsy and uninspired. She also telegraphs too many of the plot’s twists.

A severe bout of sequelitis afflicts this eagerly awaited but only sporadically amusing follow-up.

If anyone other than Gus Van Sant had directed Restless, the film could have well been impossible to sit through.

Plays like a colorful but inert timekiller that you might tolerate while dozing off in front of the TV, but only because you are too sleepy to reach for the remote control.

It's the kind of movie for which the phrase ''you've never seen anything like it before'' was invented. The question is whether anyone would want to.

So superficial and formulaic that even Garner's mega-watt grin can't completely save it.

In The Monuments Men, director George Clooney takes a wild, stranger-than-fiction true story and turns it into a dull, prestigious slog.

The coming-of-age tale The Way, Way Back is sweet, heartfelt and utterly trite and predictable from beginning to end.

Even if you're willing to overlook the preposterous plot holes in its premise, Accepted pushes its luck in its final half-hour.

Lives or dies by your ability to buy the sight of Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman snuggling in bed and enjoying hot, torrid sex. This may seem like a superficial approach to such a lofty, serious movie, but it is an insurmountable problem.

Beautifully crafted, intricately plotted and obviously a labor of love. It is also a mess.

Lacks the one element that the filmmakers were most desperately aiming for: A genuine sense of fun.

Jam-packed with plot and characters, Thunderheart nonetheless drags along from scene to scene, never building any momentum or cumulative dramatic effect. It's a dull, muddled whodunit, an exploration of the relationship between Native Americans and white Americans and a tale of soul-searching by an uninteresting character. And none of it works. [3 Apr 1992, p.G13]

It's beautiful to look at, but there's little there to savor.

It's Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, as a rival brother-sister skating team who are a little too intimate for comfort, who seem to be giving it their all. If only the movie had been about them.

Best of all, though, is Seann William Scott as the profoundly annoying, profoundly vulgar Stifler.

Stories about scientists doubting what they know to be true — "Contact," for example — can be provocative and engaging, on an intellectual and emotional level. But I Origins challenges too little and ties up things too neatly for it to register as anything more than well-made, well-intentioned hogwash.

It's all very "Cuckoo's Nest," but in a glib, facile way, and it leaves K-PAX adrift in its fuzzy, New-Agey orbit.

Enemy at the Gates will pique your interest in the Battle of Stalingrad, but it leaves that interest sadly unsated.