Rick Groen

This isn't a movie so much as a marketing strategy -- a moving poster loosely disguised as a motion picture.

Alec Baldwin, star of The Shadow, looks great in his tux, and maybe he can even act, but the script doesn't give him the chance. It can't decide whether it's in the humour department or the thrills business. [01 Jul 1994]

Both more and less of the same -- more of that hot-pink couture, a whole lot more of that diminutive doggie, less reason to laugh even if you're a tank-topped 16-year-old.

The result is infotainment dressed up as an art flick. Turkish society is fascinatingly complex and its East/West tensions give rise not to easy allegories but to hard ambiguities. To explore that truth, read any novel by Orhan Pamuk. To escape it, watch Bliss.

Should be a brilliant picture, one last testament to the intertwined sensibilities of two brave artists. Should be, but isn't.

As flicks go, She's All That ain't very much. But as high-school flicks go, this thing is a trite classic. [29 Jan 1999, p.C3]

Mainly bad, and a shockingly bland departure from a hitherto spunky guy.

Altman shakes the camera like a two-bit horror director, and it seems a different sort of signature - less masterful than weary, less signed than resigned. Zero-sum, indeed.

If you like your sentimentality sweet and sticky, then The Secret Life of Bees is definitely your jar of honey.

Okay, some of this is mildly diverting.

If you like your archetypes writ large and your sentiment over easy, then Unstrung Heroes is the flick for you. [15 Sep 1995]

Guess who sings tired old tune.

Cholodenko casts much better than she writes. Yet, alas, even a talented veteran like Moore can't sell a hoary line like, "Sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most." Maybe if she'd set it to music – nope, sorry, that's already been done.

With no previous acting experience, she's (Stilley) a natural between the sheets but a rank amateur between the vowels.

Where's 007 when you need him? Neither shaken nor stirred, The Good Shepherd is a flat draft of history that looks at the Central Intelligence Agency's early years through the horn-rimmed gaze of a fictional spook.

The mutations never stop. But that won't upset those 8-year-olds; changing so rapidly themselves, kids love tales of metamorphosis, the more the merrier. For them, caught in the commercial grip of the latest craze, it matters only that their cute little mutants have taken the giant step onto the big screen. That's probably all they need; that's definitely all they're given. [30 Mar 1990]

Biggs, in particular, seems positively frozen by his imitative efforts -- less Woody than wooden. Ricci is a bit looser, and has the added advantage of hiding behind those saucer-eyes.

Ocean's Twelve lacks the courage of its star-driven convictions. Next time, Steven and George and Brad and Matt should ditch the hypocrisy and just shoot themselves shooting the breeze, poking fun at each other from within the smug sanctuary of their precious celebrity.

Brooks knew how to engineer a well-crafted script. Yet on the evidence here – a stuttering two-hour outing bereft of any rhythm, a bunch of scenes in search of a movie – he's apparently forgotten.

As in so many essentially childish movies, it's an actual child who's always the smartest pants in the room.

[Walken's] every minute on screen is filled with that level of jittery invention, and, watching him at play, not even the flintiest temper could resist a wide grin. Envy can surely be a trial, but Saint Christopher is there to ease our troubled journey and see us smilingly home.

The movie itself seems more familiar than fascinating, more innocuous than inflammatory, and, at 2½ hours, more tedious than anything else.

[Cohen] can't quite decide whether to play the picture for high camp or pure adventure or just plain belly laughs. Predictably, he blasts away in all directions at once and hits precious little. [31 May 1996]

The original was shot in 3-D; this, by contrast, is 1-D all the way.

The film itself struggles to do justice to each victim. Turns out three stories are two too many. The Company Men should have been downsized.

If the facts of the story are essentially true, their presentation is as formulaic as ever.

For all its cinematic assets, Maverick seems a less charming vessel than the show I watched at my daddy's knee.

This is the kind of picture that is faux subtle when it should be bold, and really ham-handed when it should be delicate.

With no help from the dialogue, Kidman doesn't have a clue how to make clueless interesting. Not for lack of trying. Her efforts, which often consist of channelling Elizabeth Montgomery by way of Marilyn Monroe, are painful but insistent.

A layabout movie -- not risibly bad, just relentlessly sub-par.

No matter how you judge it -- as a strict morality play or simply a psychological thriller -- Apt Pupil just doesn't make the grade.

A Perfect World is perfect indeed - for the initial 15 minutes. After that, the fault-lines start to emerge, widening, widening, until the thing cracks open and falls apart. [24 Nov 1993]

Sometimes, a strong premise makes for a weak movie, which ends up drowning in its own clever conceit.

Under better circumstances, Cooper might be said to have stolen the picture outright. But as it is, and compelling as he is, there's just nothing here to steal.

The emotional geometry is familiar enough to be credible yet odd enough to be creepy.

Since "To pay or not to pay" is banal, the plot takes the popular path of excess to a brain-boggling twist (to be specific would be to ruin what fun there is), then spirals off in a series of ever more unlikely gyrations, until a heretofore decent picture has gone completely south into fantasy-land.

The Distinguished Gentleman isn't - distinguished, that is - but it's a notable cut above Eddie Murphy's recent ventures. [04 Dec 1992]

Even without a chronological point of reference, Outland has an intriguingly realistic look. Unfortunately, both the realism and the intrigue begin and end with the sets. [25 May 1981]

Wants keenly to be hip and modern, but really it's just an old-fashioned drawing-room comedy.

David Lynch's eye-popping imagery is buried under an avalanche of self-indulgence.

As an actor, Kirk Douglas still has more to give; too bad he didn't have more to work with.

Joe Pytka does display an occasional nice touch with mood and atmosphere - at its infrequent best, the humor here is almost wry. But his editing is as jumpy as a mare in heat. [19 Aug 1989]

A movie about con artists that turns out to be a con job, and guess who's getting played for a sucker?

Somewhere, back in the mists of time, co-writers Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber must have flapped their gums in the fond hope of crafting a script; today, that whisper of hot air has swollen into a feature flick that rains down upon us a veritable torrent of inane plot.

The climax, a 20-minute dramatization of the crucial contest, lacks both suspense and poetry -- essentially, we're left to watch a clumsy recreation of a game whose outcome we already know. That's a sort of resurrection, I suppose, but miraculous it assuredly ain't.

Never as spectacular as it promises, often funnier than it intends, Clash of the Titans is a harmless diversion - neither bad enough to annoy nor good enough to admire. [15 June 1981]

Things you will not find in State Of Grace: a script that makes a modicum of psychological sense; a performance that isn't either desperately overwrought or numbly underplayed; and anything resembling grace. [18 Sep 1990]

This is a film that dearly wants to be important, that wants to do for Holland what Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Française" does for France - examine the German occupation through a prism of painful honesty. Yet the lofty ambition comes dressed in cheap attire; Verhoeven can't seem to stop himself from shopping downmarket.

Those Hollywood tricksters have managed to shorten the story while slowing the pace -- all of a sudden, minutes are passing like hours.

In the Scotland of Young Adam, love is getting dragged through the mud.

As the title loudly hints, ultimate victory assumes the flawless shape of the star pitcher’s perfect game, a rarity anywhere yet especially at the Little League level. In getting to that climax, the recreated game action is a bit tepid and the child actors too precociously cute, but the true tale in the midst of the fabrication remains a guaranteed heart-warmer.

DELIGHTING the senses but leaving the emotions unscathed, a stylish thriller delivers exactly the same punch as a frantic roller-coaster ride - ambling up here, speeding down there, twisting, turning, big finish and off. The goal is nothing more (or less) than fun pure and simple. [16 Jan 1987]

Between the swash and the buckle, Reynolds comes up completely dry - the connecting scenes lack any rhythm or pace. And Costner looks every bit as uncomfortable as he sounds - the British actors, especially Rickman, blow him off the screen. [24 June 1991]

The whole picture plays like a pop-up book in a welfare agency.

Beneath the polished surface, Dead Poets Society is moribund at the core - too pat, too safe and too hypocritical, as conformist as the conformity it so easily decries.

Pretty routine, pretty forgettable. Don't know how else to say this, so best to be frank: I'm just not that into He's Just Not That Into You.

The result is nothing if not a curiosity piece.

We also know the last time Keanu and Sandra shared the screen together. That was yesterday and Speed. This is today and Snail. I'm not betting on a tomorrow.

This is a fairly well-made picture that's just been fairly well-made too many times before, a knock-off of a thousand other knock-offs.

Notorious isn't, not even remotely.

Only an actor of Moore's calibre could begin to add a bit of credible flesh to these hallowed bones.

Just a mediocre action franchise with a solid actor at the head and a travelogue in its heart.

In its defence, the movie means to incorporate Jet's conversion into its theme, serving up his new pacifism as a choice morsel of irony. But it doesn't taste ironic, just bland, and we aren't biting either.

Hard-working to a fault, this is a movie that's all effort and no direction, a movie completely lacking in what its hero eventually finds -- a sense of identity.

Your basic and basically predictable by-the-numbers picture.

Coming from a major director like Spike Lee, this is a colossal disappointment. And a surprising one.

An intermittently watchable movie. Not because the plot is any less silly, or the theme any more mature, but for the simple reason that, on the margins of this marginal picture, there are several wonderful faces -- sometimes belonging to actors who know how to use them, and sometimes attached to folks who merely inhabit them. In either case, however, the visual result is an incongruous slice of vintage Americana pared off the usual slab of Hollywood mediocrity. [9 Sept 1997]

For all its current political incorrectness, the original film at least attacked hypocrisy; this one practises it.

Certainty, then, is the watchword, and you can be certain of three things: There will be plenty of juvenile energy to power the vehicle; there will be a few mild chuckles en route; there will be no reason to remember the ride the instant it ends.

Stay is all dressed up with no place to go, an eye-popping exercise in lavish style unattached to any discernible content.

So, fans, gear up for rock-em-sock-em action, yet don’t be disappointed if much of the goonery seems a bit tepid and, dare I say, staged.

OH DEAR, what grade to assign The Rachel Papers? Hmmm, seems this is a British coming-of-age flick that turns out to be a whole lot like the U.S. coming-of-age flicks we've seen a whole lot of. Sure, better cast, earthier language, niftier accents, but the same paint-by-number formula punctuated by the same tacked-on "be true to yourself" moral. Heck, let's be generous: passing, barely passing. [12 May 1989]

Park is busy treating every frame like a runway model, dressing it up in self-conscious layers of cinematic haute couture. It’s gorgeous to gaze upon but otherwise dessicated – listless, juiceless and ultimately pointless. For all his exemplary camera work, there’s no motion, or emotion, in the picture.

Damned if this sugary confection doesn't come with a creepy crust. the odd sense that these aging boomers, ever eager to stall the march of time, are competing with their own daughter in the maternity sweepstakes - I'll see your child, and raise you one. [8 Dec 1995, p.C1]

The problem is not that the director is working but that his latest film is working too hard. Way too hard – this thing is melodrama running a marathon.

Washington's take on the seductress is so saucy, so unapologetic, such a brash blend of insouciant charm and raw sex appeal, that she swipes the picture from right under its nominal star. The only problem is that her theft inadvertently tips the balance of the moral dilemma, shifting it seismically all the way from "He'd be a fool to succumb" to "He'd be a coward not to."

A splatter of scenes that relocate the funny-bone in the lower anatomical regions -- sometimes hitting the mark, occasionally a glancing blow, often missing completely.

It ain't hell and it ain't heaven; it's just, more or less, another two-star movie. [4 March 1994]

It’s been not so much remade as restrained – tamed and dumbed-down and with any sharp political edges safely filed off.

What they've created is a movie that, lacking any resonance, is a soulless clone of a more vibrant original. [04 Feb 1994]

It definitely seems attractive on paper, what with a sterling cast to gaze upon, a script by none other than the late and legendary John Cassavetes, along with direction courtesy of the legend's son Nick. But up on the screen, under the glare of the lights, the film never really captures our eye or our interest. [29 Aug 1997, p.D3]

More than merely stale and dated, Hollywood Ending seems lazy and careless -- the structure is loose to the point of crumbling.

In its component parts, then, Love Liza is essentially a battle between opposing clichés.

If the title is half-familiar, the contents are wholly surprising. Happily, all of the bitterness is gone. Sadly, so has most of the humor. What remains is a conclusion startling but unmistakable - Woody Allen has grown bland. [16 July 1982]

If you're looking for a screwball comedy about bipolar disorder -- and who among us is not? -- then this picture fits the bill fine. However, if you're picky enough to want a good screwball comedy about bipolar disorder, well, I'm afraid the wait continues.

Director Rob Reiner is betting that their star power alone will blind us to the holes in this cheesecloth of a script. It proves a fool's bet – no star shines that brightly.

Conducting another symphony in action, Spielberg seems a bit bored – always competent but never inspired – and who can really blame him? He tries to fire his interest by swiping a few tropes from the fifties pop bin, not-so-sly allusions to teen-trash movies and those McCarthy-era horror flicks. After that, there's really nowhere to go but inwards, which is when Spielberg starts looting Spielberg.

In what's meant to be a French take on "The Big Chill" - comedy meets pathos as friends gather at a country house in the wake of a tragedy - writer-director Guillaume Canet has wrought a meandering script that exercises everything except restraint.

Speaking of funny things, director Todd Phillips has been down this path before in "Road Trip." There, toiling in the same lame genre, he actually showed a hint of comic ingenuity. Here, the hint has dwindled to a hoarse whisper.

Housebroken and prettified, this boxed version of White Fang comes ready for prime-time - safe enough for the living room, docile enough for the couch. But don't let your guard down: it just might gum you to sleep. [25 Jan 1991]

To her credit, Nadda is a solid actors’ director – the performances here are competent even when the writing isn’t. The exception is South Africa which, although a logistically necessary shooting location, ain’t much of a thespian.

This is a flick whose failures are at least as interesting as the successes.

Without warning, the picture falls hard into the very trap it had so studiously avoided, the one marked Expensive Gimmick... The same feature that begins like no film you've ever seen ends like every cartoon you've always avoided.

To wit, stick that camera down an aquatic cave, wrap a paper-thin plot around it, slap the whole thing up on an IMAX screen and call it a movie. More truth in advertising: Call it a lame movie.

Approximate time spent laughing: 30 seconds or fewer.

Like a tone-deaf singer at a benefit concert, John Q. is a bad movie appearing on behalf of a good cause.

Friedkin has huffed and puffed and blown up a single chase sequence into the whole damn movie. You got your hunted, you got your hunter, and away they go. And go and go.

The tale is about meeting Death and comes with this moral: When The End arrives, better to embrace it with love than to try to cheat it with avarice. Hey, if nothing else, Part 1 has got some nerve, so greedily refusing to practice what it earnestly preaches.