Rene Rodriguez

The hands-down funniest elements in Dinner for Schmucks turn out to be the mice dioramas, which become increasingly clever - even touching - as the film unfolds, then laugh-out-loud hilarious over the end credits. But you know you're in trouble when the best thing in your movie is a bunch of dead rodents.

A TV skit is a TV skit, and Wayne's World 2 is evidence of a neat idea stretched well beyond its means. [10 Dec 1993, p.G5]

Chow Yun-Fat is the only reason to see Anna and the King -- the only thing you'll remember from this lavish, tastefully dull movie.

The best stuff comes early in Ruby Sparks, which was written by Kazan (granddaughter of Elia) and directed by the husband and wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine).

Aside from satisfying some kind of ghoulish curiosity about how such an incident could possibly happen, there's precious little in Death of a President to justify the extremity of its central conceit.

As far as production values go, this Peter Pan is a work of art. So why, then, does the movie feel so crushingly dull?

McGrath makes literal what the other movie only hinted at -- that Perry falls in love with Capote -- turning the relationship between author and subject into something far less complicated and more mundane.

For all its peripatetic energy, Limitless still winds up with the same-old blazing guns and wanton destruction of property. No matter how smart you may be, Hollywood will figure out a way to dumb you down.

The film feels more like an extended epilogue than a stand-alone adventure, which may be because it is the shortest (105 minutes) entry in the series.

Wild Bill is handsomely mounted and nicely acted, but it's also strangely irrelevant, a big ho-hum of a movie. [01 Dec 1995, p.5G]

Bad Milo! directly envokes a number of earlier pictures Vaughan clearly adores, including "Basket Case," "It’s Alive" and even the workplace satire "Office Space." But the movie fails to ground its promising (if preposterous) scenario in any kind of recognizable reality.

Think of The Beyond as a Rorschach inkblot of a horror film: It's by turns impressionistic, repulsive, ridiculous and baffling. In the right frame of mind, it can also be a hoot. [17 Jul 1998, p.7G]

The whole enterprise sags and wheezes like the tired, we're-in-this-strictly-for-the-money sequel it really is.

It's a testament to the personalities of the actors, as well as the foundation laid by the original film, that we retain an emotional connection to the main players in Revolutions.

For all its respectable airs, The Accountant mostly induces shrugs. Sometimes, B-movies fare better when they settle for being their lowbrow selves.

The main problem with The Hulk, really, is that there isn't enough Hulk in it.

It's all pretty hoary stuff, but you'll be willing to overlook most of it because the premise is so compellingly delivered, with flashy sturm und drang, by director Wolfgang Petersen. [10 Mar 1995, P.5G]

The shrill musical score alone will keep you awake, but for a film filled with romance, zombies, mad scientists and existential quests, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is surprisingly dull. [04 Nov 1994, p.G4]

Isn't so much bad as it is puny: a sporadically amusing, occasionally funny, but ultimately bland and pointless time killer.

Disappointingly straightforward remake.

Ichaso demonstrates he's ready for the big leagues: His movie is noble and slick, technically accomplished. But it never touches the heart. [26 Feb 1994, p.G3]

Doesn't make much sense on a story level, and it has a cheap, slapdash look that indicates no one behind the camera was interested in anything other than another fat payday.

Director Fred Dekker does a serviceable job with what looks like a tight budget, and the movie will satisfy undemanding Robofans, but as a whole, Robocop 3 has the feel of a movie made to squeeze an extra few bucks out of a tired franchise. [08 Nov 1993, p.F2]

You start out fearing Don’t Breathe, but by the end you’re laughing at it — and the humor is not intentional.

The good news about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first in a planned series of stand-alone movies set in the “Star Wars” universe, is that the last half-hour of the film is a sustained stretch of rousing action, indelible images and cliffhanger thrills. It’s pop sci-fi bliss...The bad news about Rogue One is that getting to the good stuff is a slog — and the movie is pretty long.

Exactly the formulaic, by-the-numbers movie it appears to be. These Tigers deserved better.

The talented cast fails to gel into a dynamic ensemble.

Self-indulgent and needlessly complicated for what it ultimately delivers.

The Kite Runner is earnest and sentimental and formulaic and obvious. Watching it, I could understand the fuss over Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel, but the film didn't make me want to read it. That's not a slam against the book, but a way of illustrating just how literal and bland the film adaptation turned out.

Diary of the Dead is at its best when Romero is just goofing off, like when he shows us home video footage of a children's birthday party.

Remains naggingly hollow, a cerebral exercise in whimsy that isn't nearly clever or funny enough to seem like more than grand self-indulgence.

Unstoppable is the slowest, talkiest movie you'll ever see about a runaway freight train loaded with toxic chemicals.

It's hard to knock The Cutting Edge without feeling like a grouch. It aims to be nothing more than an old-fashioned love story with plenty of banter between its two leads and a straightforward plot about Olympic ice skating. The actors work hard...But the script rings false from the get-go; the dialogue is straight from the school of clever quips and snappy comebacks, and the romantic plotline has been done so many times before, it's beyond cliched. It's too flimsy to carry a whole movie. [27 March 1992, p.G13]

There’s nothing more to this movie than the set-up. Even though Cypher is slowly bleeding to death, and Kitai is running out of oxygen capsules that allow him to breathe in the toxic air, there’s no sense of urgency, either. At least Shyamalan, sensing the thinness of the material, doesn’t stretch things out.

The payback in Law Abiding Citizen doesn't have a cathartic kick, because the revenge is so extreme it's horrifying.

Geronimo: An American Legend is noble but hopelessly bland. [10 Dec 1993, p.G4]

Even if you can get past the acting -- and in the case of the beautiful, blank Alba, that's asking a lot -- the film just sits there, not exactly torturous, but never very exciting, either.

Often feels choppy, as if chunks of connecting narrative had been lopped off in the editing room.

The Muppet Christmas Carol never approaches the freewheeling atmosphere of earlier Muppet movies. While all the familiar Muppet characters appear, they often seem stilted; watching Kermit and Miss Piggy acting as Bob and Emily Cratchit is nowhere near as much fun as watching them play themselves. With too few exceptions, the movie doesn't allow the Muppets to inject their own personalities into their characters. [14 Dec 1992, p.C6]

Director Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa) re-creates 19th-Century Paris beautifully, and poetry scholars might find the movie worthwhile strictly for its subject matter, but Total Eclipse comes off as a big downer that confuses dreariness with substance. [03 Nov 1995, p.6G]

From a purely cinematic standpoint, The Underneath is Soderbergh's most daring work yet, full of elliptical flashbacks and fast-forwards; ominous camera angles and cinematic tricks. But Soderbergh's movies (sex, lies and videotape, Kafka, King of the Hill) have always been cunningly smart, and The Underneath is not. [28 April 1995, p.5G]

Micmacs is a wan fizzle of a fantasy, a spirited, imaginative spectacle that never quite takes flight.

There’s a rollicking Wild West adventure buried deep inside The Lone Ranger, a bloated, mega-budget revival of the story of the iconic gunslinger and his Native American sidekick Tonto.

Double Dragon is not a great accomplishment, but it never stands still long enough to get dull, its sense of humor grows on you, and its lack of pretentiousness is refreshing. [07 Nov 1994, p.C2]

The picture is perfectly watchable but rarely compelling, because the filmmakers are too timid to take any chances.

Jackson has become too distracted by his digital toys to give his characters the same weight and importance he used in the Rings trilogy.

The themes of A Home at the End of the World are all of the greeting-card variety -- home is where the heart is, family is what we make it, etc. -- and while they've been presented with great warmth and sincerity, they still come off as more than a little banal.

The Master has become a contest between two gifted actors trying to shout each other down. The commitment to their roles is impressive, but it's tethered to a weightless, airless movie, a film so enamored of itself, the audience gets shut out.

Crossing Over is a result of the sledgehammer approach writer-director Wayne Kramer (Running Scared, The Cooler) takes to his subject matter -- the same heavy-handed tactics that earned "Crash" three Oscars.

The actors are fine: It's their long, arduous trek that lets the movie down.

It's pretty stupid, although it's never exactly boring.

Hilarious, but it isn't much of a movie.

Jade is the latest offering from sleazemeister screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct, Sliver, Showgirls), and just as you'd expect, this movie has lots of sex, lots of violence, and little plausibility or wit. [13 Oct 1995, p.4G]

You don't walk into Fortress expecting much, and the fact that it entertains as well as it does comes as a surprise. There's plenty of violence and gore here -- Gordon hasn't forgotten his Re-Animator roots -- and the plot offers enough curves and twists to make you overlook the movie's limitations. [7 Sept 1993, p.D6]

It lacks the simplicity and resonance of classic fairy tales: It's so muddled and belabored, it's hard to imagine the tykes ever staying awake long enough to hear how it all turned out.

It is almost completely devoid of any trace of humor. It radiates a luxurious, all-encompassing mopeyness.

For its first hour or so, Oblivion is a visually mesmerizing, intriguing picture that doesn’t feel like the same-old: It engages your eyes and piques your curiosity. Then, gradually, the novelty wears off, the clichés start to pile up and we’re back to Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia 101.

Explosively funny in spots -- this is easily Vaughn's best work since "Swingers" -- but it comes wrapped in a package so sweet and sugary, so tediously moral and conventional, it sabotages the laughs.

Unlike Omri's plastic toys, The Indian in the Cupboard never comes to life. [14 July 1995, p.5G]

But we must admit, if a bit shamefully, that we laughed heartily during big chunks of Tommy Boy, thanks primarily to Farley. The charismatic oaf is at his best on SNL when playing eager-to-please dolts blissfully unaware of their utter incompetence and stupidity, and that's what Farley is here. And he runs with it. [31 Mar 1995, p.4G]

The thoroughly unconvincing drama Resurrecting the Champ might be based on a true story, but that doesn't mean you're going to believe a single frame of it.

This slick, sick remake of the 1977 Wes Craven cult shocker is more of a glum bummer than a horror show.

What's missing, really, is a point. Like "Snow Falling on Cedars," Hicks composes every shot in Hearts in Atlantis as if it were his last.

City Hall is a labyrinth of a drama about big-city government that goes through many intricate plot machinations to reach its stunning conclusion: Politics is a very dirty business...It's not much of a revelation, and City Hall is not much of a movie. Sure, its backroom maneuverings and power ploys feel authentic (one of the screenwriters, Ken Lipper, was Ed Koch's deputy mayor), and there's undeniable momentum as the movie reveals, layer by layer, the depth of the corruption at the center of its mystery. But you can see City Hall's big "twist" coming a mile away, and the movie ends limply, without much payoff for patiently sticking with its convoluted storyline. [16 Feb 1996, p.5G]

Although (Untitled) makes a spirited effort to mine comedy from its outre characters and the orbits they inhabit, the picture feels thin and wan, like a joke you've heard 100 times too many.

Eventually, though, Seeking Justice devolves into the usual business of chases and elaborate double-crosses that leave behind all vestiges of realism for the sake of popcorn thrills.

The entire point of Carnage is to poke fun at the fragile civility of the upper-middle class - they're all animals inside! - but how much more fun would this material have been if the story hadn't been about polite white people?

It's fun to wonder what Romero's realistic, no-frills cinematic style and jolting shocks would have brought to good King novels like Pet Sematary or The Stand. With The Dark Half, he tries hard -- it's his best directorial work in years -- but his reverence for the mediocre novel produces merely a serviceable thriller. [23 Apr 1993, p.G5]

All the right elements for a rollicking farce, except one: The movie isn't funny.

A flamboyant but hollow exercise in glitz and pizzazz.

Although it deals with some monumental themes, Mademoiselle Chambon also feels wispy and inconsequential.

The script is riddled with so many clichés, you count on the battle scenes to wake you from your stupor.

Hollow and pointless.

It's whenever the music stops that the movie runs into trouble.

What The Long Day Closes lacks is a narrative thread, however slim, to match the perfectly realized setting and wonderful visuals Davies has crafted. The whole thing feels like a chapter of a much larger work, one that, if finished, would doubtless prove more intriguing than what we get here. [7 Aug 1993, p.G5]

Freddy simply isn't as scary as he used to be, even though Jackie Earle Haley, taking over from Robert Englund in the role, plays Krueger essentially straight, keeping the one-liners to a minimum.

Too much of this lame comedy feels like it was written to satisfy a contract, with gags (like the business with the perpetually horny dog or the toddler who knows sign language) that are way beneath the talents of this cast.

The movie tends to lapse into soapy melodrama and heavy-handed preaching whenever possible, and the feel-good ending that appears out of nowhere essentially negates a lot of what has preceded it, adding one more moral to a movie already weighed down by life lessons.

Although a happy ending is preordained, at least Joe Forte's script takes the less-obvious route there.

As the character grows soft and sentimental, so does La Soga, and the film's edge is terminally dulled by an avalanche of cliches and schmaltz.

A shrill and gaudy comedy about the quest for celebrity.

In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, the night grows long while your eyelids grow heavy.

A lazy, self-satisfied piece of work -- a comedy made by people who think so highly of themselves, they assume they'll get a laugh just by showing up in front of the camera.

This Carrie becomes less involving as it goes along, ceding its emotional power to special effects and unconvincing gore, and culminating with a closing shot so lame and uninspired, it’s as if the filmmakers just gave up and called it a day.

A $100 million production of a 10-cent script, is so clunkily written, so bereft of any engaging ideas or emotions, you'd think De Palma would have sneered at it on first reading and passed

A compendium of missed opportunities, uninspired action and clichés so tired, you wish the screenwriters had called 911, too.

The whole thing feels at least three summers too stale.

Neither as good nor as bad as you'd hoped it would be: It's just a mediocre exploitation picture with an inspired premise (succinctly spelled out by its title), loads of gratuitous gore, a dash of equally gratuitous nudity and enough inanities to make you wonder if Ed Wood rose from the grave to serve as a creative consultant on the project.

The movie is all moist grime and seedy atmosphere, and it's certainly something to look at: It's beautifully lurid. But it's an empty, unengaging movie, and by the end, it has become ridiculous, too.

There are three or four big laughs scattered throughout The Pink Panther 2, along with a smattering of decent chuckles. But all those moments combined account for maybe five minutes of screen time, which leaves you with another hour and a half of movie to sit through.

Misses out on just about everything that made the original work, most notably Falk and Arkin, whose odd-couple pairing was the foundation on which the entire movie rested.

You know this supposedly risqué comedy is in trouble when the funniest gag involves a foot cramp during sex.

Demolition is so busy trying to be profound, the film doesn’t have much use for humor.

The film is so gleefully ridiculous that you start to suspect the filmmakers were in on the joke and forgot to tell the actors.

There's nothing here that hasn't been done before, and better, in any given "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" sequel.

In the end, they are only moments, and even at a merciful 86 minutes, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights feels formidably long.

This is a gleefully repulsive movie. Spun is bound to be described as bold and cutting-edge by those who confuse shock value with achievement. Most people, however, will just long for a shower after it's over.

Certainly a grand-looking picture. For a film that's filled with CGI effects, there wasn't a single shot that looked artificial, and the production design is tremendous. But it's a hollow, boring spectacle.

Homefront is done in by uninspired action scenes in which Statham’s athletic prowess is rendered unwatchable by hyper-editing, a shameful reliance on child-in-peril cliches to move the story forward, and so many loose ends that you wonder if 20 minutes were accidentally cut out from the movie.

The result is almost suffocating: a movie that has been tinkered and fussed with until there is no spontaneity left -- no warmth or life or messiness.

Has all the depth of an episode of "Joey."

This new, presumably improved Chainsaw is just as humorless as the original, but it's also slicker, glossier and resoundingly artificial.

The fact that Swept Away got made at all implies there simply is no dissuading Madonna from her movie-star aspirations. Her tenacity is admirable, but it's also block-headed.

It's a redundant comedy, like hearing the same tired joke for the 100th time.

No matter how much good will the actors generate, Showtime eventually folds under its own thinness.

For the story of a man who made his mark on pop culture by being a likable buffoon, the irritatingly arch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind takes itself way too seriously.

Despite the actors' admirable efforts, everyone in The Door in the Floor is too affected, too fancifully written, to come off as anything other than conceits.

The latest collaboration between Cohen and director Larry Charles proves the formula they created with "Borat" and then started to milk dry with "Brüno" has finally run out of juice. Time to move on, guys.

More toy commercial than movie.

An overly convoluted, tiresome mystery that exists primarily to antagonize the audience, Basic consists almost entirely of dense exposition, then concludes by laughing at anyone who tried to pay attention.

The Warcraft hardcore can rejoice. Everyone else can move along. There’s not much to see here.

Singleton's sloppiest, laziest movie to date, springing to life in fits and starts, risibly mawkish and occasionally gripping, and often feeling like it was made up on the set.

Even though Taking Lives is not very good, it does contain a) a cool car chase and b) a sex scene in which Jolie goes topless. For some, this will be enough entertainment.

An insufferably artsy, pretentious work, the sort of picture that gives art films a bad name.

A forced and wholly unnecessary sequel.

Death to Smoochy? Yes, please.

There are frothy romantic comedies and then there is Jet Lag, a movie so thin it borders on nonexistence.

Feels static and constricted, its intensity dulled by overreliance on dialogue.

There is absolutely nothing in this prequel/remake that improves on the first film or negates it in any way. If you've never seen The Thing - and you really should - stick with the genuine 1982 article and skip this elaborate act of mimicry.

Art School Confidential, the first disappointment from director Terry Zwigoff, is all glum, dour cynicism.

In Snow White and the Huntsman, this talented but woefully miscast actress (Stewart) is expected to rally an entire army of soldiers, even though she usually looks like she forgot the combination to her locker.

The unrelentingly dull Where the Money Is tests his (Newman's) legendary charisma in a way no actor could overcome.

Jason Statham gives the best performance. Dolph Lundgren gets the best character arc. Terry Crews gets the best gun. Jet Li gets the best kill (you'll know it when you see it).Arnold Schwarzenegger gets the best cameo. And Sylvester Stallone? He gets the blame.

A fairly tedious, stupid picture.

Director Maren doesn’t trust Shannon to convey this inner monologue via his performance — just one example of the film’s plodding lack of wit or sophistication.

Jurassic World gives you exactly what Howard’s character promises at the beginning — More! Bigger! Faster! — but you know there’s something deeply wrong with a film that expects you to shed tears over digitally created prehistoric creatures and rubber brontosaurus heads instead of rooting for, you know, people.

There's a startling moment 10 or 15 minutes into The Adjustment Bureau - the only time, really, when the film achieves any level of surprise. The dispiriting dullness of this dreary misfire hasn't had time to settle in and thicken: The movie hasn't yet revealed its utter and thorough ineptitude.

The best stuff in Jumper comes early, while the movie is still busy explaining its scenario. It's only when all the pieces are in place and the story actually kicks in that things start to fall apart, and quickly.

Take away the art direction, and Johnny Mnemonic is nothing more than a clunky chase flick, done with little skill or subtlety. [27 May 1995, p.6G]

Most certainly a personal work -- so personal, in fact, that I can't imagine anyone but Coppola being able to sit through it.

Glitter, the kind of movie only 11-year-old girls who dot their i's with hearts would find bearable.

A soulless, witless, landfill contraption that Smith once would have mocked mercilessly.

Never achieves takeoff.

Men in Black 3 is so dull and empty, it's the first movie that has ever made me think "Thank God this is in 3D."

The things that stay with you are the dull, boilerplate love story, the laziest performance of Liam Neeson’s career as a murderous gunslinger and the distracting amount of makeup Seth MacFarlane sports in the film.

Even the most forgiving moviegoer will recognize this movie as the blatant cash-grab that it is.

Shyamalan takes the beloved Nickelodeon anime series -- the full title was Avatar: The Last Airbender -- and turns it into 103 minutes of overproduced, stilted nonsense.

Fantastic Four is so bereft of all the things we expect from a superhero movie — humor, excitement, adventure, awe — that it plays like a drawn-out pilot episode for an upcoming TV series no one would ever watch again.

There's something innately distasteful about The Crush. Here's a movie that casts a hopelessly lovestruck -- and mentally disturbed -- teenager as a villain. The camera ogles Silverstone's body every chance it gets, then invites you to hiss at her as she goes about her evil deeds. What's more, the movie -- which is nothing more than the latest take on the increasingly routine female-from-hell genre -- takes itself very seriously, giving the proceedings a realism that only serves to heighten the unsavoriness of the thing. [8 Apr 1993, p.F3]

The movie, however, is the sort of picture in which people run around doing everything except the most logical thing to do, because that’s the only way to keep the nonsensical plot spinning.

Jack and Jill contains long stretches of squirm-inducing tedium in which Sandler riffs and ad-libs far longer than he should.

If Annapolis is not the worst movie to date of this still-young year, it is certainly the most hackneyed, as well as the most depressing.

Looks exquisite, but don't bother digging deeper.

Sitting through Little Fockers is a soul-sucking, dispiriting experience.

There isn’t a moment of spontaneous fun or humor in this long, turgid movie, the latest let-down for rabid DC Comics fans who’ve been waiting for someone to pick up the baton Christopher Nolan left behind and do this universe justice. With “Suicide Squad,” the long wait continues.

Who writes this stuff, anyway? Does this not sound like utter gibberish? Surely, this film did not actually get made, did it? Yes, it did. I have seen it. But you, oh, fortunate one, don't have to. Consider yourself lucky.

Every summer movie season usually has at least one spectacular, disastrous flame-out, and although the dog days of August still loom, I doubt there will come a big-budget blockbuster worse than Cowboys and Aliens.

The problem with Revolver is that it is Ritchie's first attempt at a ''serious'' look at the underworld, but the result is so pretentious and muddled it's almost a little embarrassing.

So needlessly convoluted, so crammed with subplots within subplots, it simply forgets about its gangland "Romeo & Juliet" premise.

Lands with a thud right from its painfully unfunny prologue and maintains its plodding, exasperating course straight through to its car-chase-and-shootout finale.

The more Shrink tries to get you invested in the emotional turmoil of its characters, the more you want to reach into the screen and shake them and tell them to get over themselves.

After a while, hearing Martin say ''Zee area eez zecure!'' doesn't cut it any longer, and that's pretty much all The Pink Panther has to offer.

On Deadly Ground has all the thrills and suspense of a rerun of Barney and Friends. [22 Feb 1994, p.D5]

For a B-movie, Split Second contains a surprising amount of talk -- dull talk. The film could use more action sequences; even those it does have are badly handled and unexciting. [7 May 1992, p.F8]

Few expected Basic Instinct 2 to be very good, but no one expected it to be this boring.

A failure on every conceivable level -- from its trite, pedestrian dialogue to its static, torturous pacing.

An unsatisfying, overly restrained bore, capped off by an ending so strange and inconclusive, it feels like something you'd find on the ''deleted scenes'' portion of a DVD.

So thunderously unfunny...There is no reason for an 82-minute movie to feel so very, very long.

A horror/sci-fi/action mishmash that aims to be the kind of brainless timekiller once used to round out the bottom of a double bill at the drive-in.

You'd be hard pressed to find a more routine, more shamelessly by-the- numbers flick than this one. Predictability? In the case of Nowhere to Run, everything feels recycled -- even the title. [21 Jan 1993, p.F5]

It's not every movie that makes you wish Vin Diesel would run in and start blowing up stuff.

Freejack is among the most incoherent sci-fi action films we've seen in a while, despite the credentials of producer- screenwriter Ronald Shusett, who brought us Total Recall and Alien. [24 Jan 1992, p.G5]

A handsome, sincere, well-meaning bore.

The times have caught up with Almodóvar, who is now 63: He thinks he’s still pushing the envelope, but he comes off as old-fashioned and outdated.

Lee remains a superb entertainer -- like Oliver Stone, he's incapable of ever being boring -- but in She Hate Me, he comes dangerously close to seeming trivial, a crank-for-crank's-sake.

Formidably stupid.

That's My Boy more than lives up to its R-rating - including one gross-out gag repulsive enough to make you put down your popcorn.

Hard Target is pretty much a bust from every conceivable aspect, except the visual -- it looks terrific, and one sequence, a shoot-out on the streets of New Orleans between Van Damme and a progressively larger number of bad guys, comes close to capturing the trademark frenzied, exhilarating feel of Woo's previous work. [20 Aug 1993, p.5]

Terrifyingly dull movie.

Once the premise has been established, the film goes absolutely nowhere.

So I Married an Axe Murderer is a clumsy mishmash of Saturday Night Live sketches and a rambling comic-thriller plot that wastes the promise of twisted laughs presented by its '50s B-movie title. [30 July 1993, p.G7]

The best thing you can say about Just a Kiss is that it isn't every romantic comedy that throws in suicide, bondage and a plane crash in between all the bed hopping.

Mr. Jones is an even bigger disappointment when you consider it's directed by Mike Figgis (Internal Affairs, Liebestraum), who has shown talent for off-kilter thrillers. Saddled with a routine and unimaginative script here, he indulges in well-worn cliches, including setting his big scene between Gere and Olin against a thunderstorm (which inadvertently drowns out part of Olin's dialogue). [9 Oct 1993, p.G4]

Enormous in its scope and colossal in its stupidity.

Even a supporting turn by Vincent Cassell as Otto Gross, a fellow psychiatrist, cocaine addict and unapologetic adulterer, fails to enliven the movie: A Dangerous Method makes even a cokehead hedonist boring.

The tone is all over the place, which makes the movie difficult to take neither seriously nor as popcorn fluff.

Momoa, a familiar face from "Game of Thrones" to "Baywatch," has the muscles but not the imposing persona and barbaric presence that Conan requires.

Where "Seven" seemed to radiate diabolical evil, Saw just radiates idiocy.

Another joyless, brain-numbing adventure through lackluster Indiana Jones territory.

In its early moments, the movie evokes everything from "The Social Network" to "Casino." By the end, the film has become as exciting as a game of Old Maid. R-rated thrillers are hardly ever this dull and listless, but this movie manages to eradicate all of Timberlake’s charisma and makes you flash back to Affleck’s "Paycheck"/"Gigli" era. How does this even happen?

Emits a fishy odor, like a recruitment film for an obscure cult you'd rather stay away from.

Everything about this excruciatingly dull, talky film screams made-for-network-TV: The I'm-only-here-for-a-paycheck performances by famous actors; the Crate and Barrel catalog mise-en-scene; the syrupy, heartwarming score that lays the pathos on so thickly you gag on it.

Sarandon blends into the background, having practically nothing to do except stand around and wring her hands as the two men in her life battle it out in a passive-aggressive war. It's enough to make her want to run off with Thelma.

The dumbest, most risible retelling ever made of the exploits of legendary bank robber Jesse James.

Gas -- the hot air variety -- is exactly what Driven is made of.

The scattershot nature of the script, which feels as if it had been made up on the spot, leaves the actors looking like they're enjoying some private joke not shared with the audience. Self-indulgent does not even begin to describe it.

A curiously inert and talky action picture about good-looking mutants on the run from bad (but equally good-looking) ones, Push wastes a decent idea and stylish direction on a script that's much more Ingmar Bergman than Stan Lee.

It's just as boring and dumb as it sounds. This is the kind of movie that uses a shot of a bare butt as a punch line, and thinks having Encino Man's Brendan Fraser do a walk-on re- enaction of that movie's frog-eating scene is a clever cameo. As if. And Shore needs to freshen up his act: You can only act like a buffoon for so long before people start thinking of you as one. Remember Andrew Dice Clay? [2 July 1993, p.G5]

Georgia Rule is so artificial, it feels like more of a flow chart than a slice of life.

The film suffers from a severe lack of urgency and emotional engagement. You can't get involved in a movie in which the characters all seem to be harboring double identities.

The action, which bookends the movie, is atrocious, defying all laws of gravity and physics and machine gun-edited into incomprehensible lunacy.

If Ghost in the Machine isn't the stupidest thriller of the year, it certainly holds the pole position in the race for that honor. The film combines computer hacking, virtual reality and serial murder into a plot so preposterous, so incredibly ridiculous, you keep watching just to see what the filmmakers will dare to do next. [31 Dec 1993, p.G5]

This is easily one of the silliest, most preposterous thrillers ever made, and the only reason it didn't go straight to video has to be that it stars Pacino.

This is a disastrously clumsy, heavy-handed movie, one so desperate and exploitative that it resorts to putting a live grenade in the hands of a baby in order to get its message across.

You don't go into a movie called Ninja Assassin expecting a hell of a lot, but this shockingly disjointed and relentlessly dull picture can't even deliver the martial-arts kick its title so plainly promises.

Even a film as shabby and humdrum as Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which never musters up the wit and beauty of a single frame of "Lady and the Tramp," is not without its pleasures.

The movie has an undeniable visceral power. It is also a loud, grating wallow in dime-store despair, a cheap and hollow button-puncher.

The biggest problem with Surviving the Game is that, after a rather lengthy and uninteresting buildup, the movie never delivers the action it promises. [19 Apr 1994, p.E2]

War is hell, and so are bad movies about war.

A wan gloss on a horrific nightmare.

Hellraiser III manages to make even the fearsome Pinhead himself seem like. . .well, a pinhead. Clive, it's time to give these characters a rest. [19 Sep 1992, p.E5]

This is ultimately a movie about highly intelligent people in pursuit of trivial nonsense: At least Mulder and Scully caught a real monster every once in a while.

Winds up suffocating you with its aura of bogus, store-bought nostalgia.

It's more interested in enlightening than entertaining, and Kidron seems to go out of her way to sap the life out of every scene. It's a horribly directed movie. [08 Sep 1995, p.5G]

The Getaway is more of a carbon copy than a new take on the same story. This new version is a bit bloodier, considerably sexier -- there's one particularly steamy love scene here -- and just as dull and irrelevant as the original. [11 Feb 1994, p.G5]

The Purge isn’t just stupid; it’s also pretentious and often makes no sense.

A thriller boasting Mel Gibson's first starring role in eight years, elicits a gigantic wow -- as in ``Wow, does this movie suck!''

Gigli's awfulness is of a rarer, more precious variety. It's the sort of bizarre, ill-conceived picture you can't believe exists, but are secretly glad it does.

For the first time in the film series, Harris wrote the screenplay himself, which means the movie is practically identical to the book. In other words, they both stink.

A hostage drama without any tension. It is a love story without any heat. It is as curiously empty a movie as we've seen all year.

Cox's morose performance could not be less interesting, Harrison's visual stylings all feel borrowed from David Fincher movies and nine inch nails music videos, and the film's elliptical mysteries, which twist onto themselves a la Mulholland Drive, aren't interesting enough to ponder.

The lack of effort, right down to the unimaginative title, is dispiriting.

Neeson is always compelling, even in a movie as ridiculous as The Grey.

A grand, eye-popping film, a beautifully photographed epic with the depth of a Bugs Bunny Cartoon.

Bad enough to make even James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara seem dull.

The Conspirator hits a new nadir for Redford: Sitting through this stage-bound, talky, stiffly-acted movie reminded me of having to endure the Hall of Presidents attraction at Walt Disney World (one of the few existing bits of proof that Disney had a dark and evil side).

If you're going to direct a piece of crass, nonsensical junk, at least have the decency to release it straight to video, where it belongs.

Shrill and sloppy film.

If watching people having their faces cut off, getting their legs amputated and having their throats tenderly slit is your idea of a horrific good time, you'll certainly get your money's worth here.

Most of this is tedious instead of unintentionally amusing.

Time to give the shoot-’em-up thing a rest, guys: It’s tired and played out, and so are you.

There isn't a moment in the entire picture in which you will recognize an element of your own life.

You’re Next is built on such an enormous pile of guff, it’s practically insulting.

The entire movie bears the whiff of a vanity project — a modestly budgeted bone Universal Pictures threw at Diesel so he would keep starring in Fast and Furious pictures. Those movies are bank; Riddick is rank.

Hitchcock spends too much time off the set of Psycho, where the real story was, and focuses instead on incidental matters that feel like outtakes. Mother would not have been pleased.

The film will probably play a lot better in dorm rooms with plenty of beer kegs and bongs on hand, but in the confines of a movie theater, it's deadly - the sort of bad comedy Mel Brooks made late in his career, until he finally smartened up and quit.

It takes a concerted effort to make a movie as relentlessly stupid and grating as 15 Minutes.

This tale of teenage witches run amok is silly, juvenile stuff, and it doesn't even have the decency to stick to its own ridiculous logic. [03 May 1996, p.6G]

There isn't a single scene in this story about a traveler from another planet (Jim Caviezel) who crash-lands on Earth during the Iron Age that doesn't remind you of another, better movie.

No atmosphere, no tension -- nothing but Costner, flailing away. It's a buggy drag.

There is so much that is wrong with The Alamo that it is easier to begin with what the movie gets right: Davy Crockett. As played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Witless, unoriginal mishmash of gangsta-drama clichés.

Getaway makes the Transformers movies seem like they were shot in slow motion. You see all these vehicles smashing into each other, but the movie is never thrilling.

The performances are shaky, rendering Latter Days as a movie that you've seen before, and done better, too.

For all its derring-do, Cutthroat Island is sluggish, flat, tiresome. Watching it is like being stuck on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride for an endless two hours. [22 Dec 1995, p.4G]

Does anyone openly admit to enjoying these things? Small kids may find Ernest's slapstick antics mildly amusing, but even the most fervent Ernest fan (if there is such a thing) will grow tired and annoyed very quickly here. [12 Nov 1993, p.E4]

The vilest film of the season.

Chasing Papi leaves you wishing Hollywood would just forget about Latinos altogether. If this is how they really see us, I'd rather not know.

Does King's tale play a part in the film at all? Kind of; half of it is there, but they've left out the really scary images from the story. The only thing The Lawnmower Man accomplishes is to remind you how boring it is to watch someone else play a video game. If they ever start marketing this virtual reality stuff, however, someone's going to get very rich. [9 Mar 1992, p.C4]

A fluffy, feel-bad drama, with some serious things to say about the viability of homosexual men as fathers and role models.

No, it's the movie itself -- an unimaginative, generic affair memorable only for its incessant and flagrant plugging of Apple computers and iPods -- that should put a stake through the franchise for good.

Despite the movie's bouncy ebullience (courtesy of a terrific period soundtrack) and dashes of fantasy, the film quickly becomes an endurance test.

There is also a last-minute "Sixth Sense" twist, although it definitely won't make you sit through the movie again to see if the filmmakers cheated.

Played by Adrian Sparks in a style better suited for dinner theater or a Key West tourist attraction, Hemingway comes across as a complete cypher. Everyone in the film keeps talking about his genius, but other than a scene in which he writes a short story on the back of a napkin, the movie doesn’t try to humanize or explore his talent.

Chuck Norris is also in this movie, although you should know that he gets roughly five minutes of screen time, half of those devoted to his telling of a Chuck Norris joke. That is as funny as the movie's self-aware humor gets.

Battleship is a board game for children, so it stands to reason a film adaptation would also be aimed at kids. But did they have to gear it to really dumb kids?

At the very least, Corman would have remembered to make the movie fun.

For the most part, Tombstone is inept. Some of the performances are wincingly bad: Dana Delany, playing a touring actress with the hots for Wyatt, is particularly embarrassing. Director George P. Cosmatos (Leviathan) firmly cements his hack status: He takes nearly an hour to get things rolling, then fails to build any sort of momentum. [25 Dec 1993, p.F1]

The movie's attempts at zaniness are flat, almost embarrassing.

An excruciating and melodramatic comedy.

If this is magic, I'll take "Gigli."

This excruciatingly dumb, formulaic picture, which somehow required the work of four screenwriters but contains not even one single, fleeting moment of wit or humor.

Four Christmases is sour to the point of curdling, a satirical look at the holidays a la "Bad Santa" that does exactly what that film avoided: come off as both off-puttingly misanthropic and gloppily sentimental.

Even Ben Stiller looks bored out of his mind in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and he got paid several million dollars to star in it.

Never before has Egoyan made a picture this egregiously, relentlessly bad.

Why does The Big Year's trailer intentionally hide what the film is really about? Here's why: Because bird-watching - or birding, as practitioners prefer to call it - makes for a stupefyingly boring movie.

You expect more from King. The man obviously knows a thing or two about terror, yet Sleepwalkers is a pastiche of old B- movies. Bad B-movies. [16 Apr 1992, p.F3]

This movie demands that the viewer -- and even its own characters -- turn into thumb-sucking 3-year-olds with no need for plausibility or logic, as long as there are lots of flashing lights and whooshing noises emanating from the screen.

But there's nothing in this amateurish movie that the opening credits of last year's "Go" didn't do better.

You need lots of gifted people chasing after the same bad idea to make a movie as colossally misguided as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

The talented actors are game, but they are done in by the shallow nature of their characters, none of whom behaves in a manner remotely resembling real life (they don't really seem to be related, either).

Even if you do believe the story, Fire in the Sky will bore you silly. [17 Mar 1993, p.E2]