Rick Groen

The countdown begins with the first negative integer — an amped-up score that overpowers the proceedings like a bad band at a high-school dance.

From the base-model script to the assembly-line thrills, everything about Hide and Seek is generic except its star.

Bolstered by a solid premise, this film starts out impressively enough - it looks to be a worthy character study. But it soon stops dead, wheels spinning badly, and then, hungry for momentum, lurches off in a completely cockeyed direction. [16 Oct 1992]

There's as much to draw us in, but far less to put us off. [13 Jun 1997]

More humdrum than horrible. It isn't futuristic film noir; it's just everyday film beige.

Being risibly bad, The Happening is at least worth a laugh. Exactly one laugh, by my reckoning, and completely unintended but no less full-throated for that.

If nothing else (and there isn't much else), Part III rises above the wholesale clutter of its immediate predecessor, then contents itself with settling into an easy commercial groove. What remains is amiable kid's stuff, as sweetly forgettable as an orange Popsicle on a summer's day. [25 May 1990, p.C4]

Let's start with this certainty: No one but Quentin Tarantino could possibly have made Inglourious Basterds . Now add another: No one but his most ardent fans will be entirely glad that Quentin Tarantino did make Inglourious Basterds .

Despite its trappings, despite its style, Birth is just a tall tale with a short reach.

A 0-star Comedy that is nonetheless guaranteed to rake in multimillions.

In the end, like any satire worth the name, In the Company of Men spins around to fire its biggest salvo at its ultimate target -- the audience.

It's not a bomb at all. A dud is more like it - Last Action Hero isn't interesting enough to be explosively bad. For all the inflated pyrotechnics on the screen, the picture seems consistently grey and almost pitiably small. [18 Jun 1993, p.D1]

God forgive me, but I worship the Bad Dialogue Fairy -- he gets me through these endless nights.

Although there are definite lags here, those "glittering" set-pieces are funny enough (at least one is hilarious) to stave off any prolonged yawns.

The laughs in Working Girl are the laughs of near-recognition - just good enough to make us wish they were much better.

A cinematic homage as flawed as its subject. Flawed, yet with a peculiar fascination of its own -- what we have is a genuine artist paying sincere tribute to an unapologetic mediocrity, and stooping awkwardly to the task.

Everyone is back for Another Stakeout but, without the laughs-and-thrills mix of the original, this sequel just doesn't work. [24 July 1993]

Alas, Schumacher doesn't ride on the momentum; worse, he's not an action director, and the film grinds to a dead stop every time it tries to speed up.

This is a war film with an anti-epic feel, best when it forgoes the forced march of plot to hunker down in the trenches of our flawed humanity.

Poetic Justice is like that - so much worse than it should have been, and yet, for brief shining moments, so much better than any other 2-star film in sight. [23 July 1993]

The wonder is that the cast -- a terrific ensemble with talents honed on such hallowed stages as the Abbey Theatre -- brings it off with far more verve than the slight tale deserves.

Most British actors are awfully good at underplaying the overwritten, and this group, headed by Matthew Macfadyen, Rupert Graves and Daisy Donovan, is no exception -- where others would mug, they demitasse.

This sappy thing is a two-hour cheat that never plays fair for a nanosecond.

In every way but one, A Knight's Tale is a bouncy pop song of a movie, the snappy/happy kind that puts a grin on your face and a tap to your toe, shifting the heart into high and the mind into neutral. [11 May 2001]

The score (a nifty collection of vintage but never clichéd period tunes) complements the mood perfectly, and the ensemble cast members hit their own notes to perfection.

That's the allure of the genre. Succeed, and you're artful, thoughtful, and popular all at the same time. But fail, and you're the King of New York. As failures go, this is typical enough, smugly dividing the world into good gangsters and bad ones. [9 Nov 1990]

This is an adaptation that must have been hard to screw up, yet screwed up it has been. If the movie is far from dreadful, it's even further from the searing experience it could have been.

It comes eerily close to duplicating the experience of reading while, at the same time, remaining very much a motion picture. That's a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, achievement.

First a bit about the movie, which really isn't one -- more like a 48-minute press release promoting the glories of NASCAR.

Ultimately, even Lee appears to lose interest, flashing none of his usual visual panache and, at the end, content to forego any considered conclusion for a hunk of lumpy irony.

The ads give this a Lamborghini label, but under the hood, it's just a clunker that putzes along like a suburban sedan. [26 Aug 1989]

For his part, Allen spends much of his time falling -- out of hammocks, off of logs, down from balconies, a geometric progression of comic ingenuity guaranteed to delight the child in all of us. Occasionally, he's joined by fellow tumbler Martin Short, who appears to be making a lucrative career of playing in the very movies he once so wickedly parodied. [07 Mar 1997, p.D6]

If you like your sports movies, especially your football movies, larded with more clichés than a politician's stump speech, Gridiron Gang begs to be seen.

Turns out a movie about an infatuated bunch of Star Wars nerds can really set your teeth on edge.

I'm not saying that a date with this picture is all pleasure; but it's not all guilt either.

These days, when presidential bouquets are named Gennifer Flowers, and when we all know what Jack Kennedy did beneath the White House covers, this sort of Capra-corn, even in the guise of light comedy, just doesn't have the same taste. More salt, please, and hold the butter.

Always perceptive and curiously light in tone if not in content -- such a remarkably delicate look at an absolutely devastating subject.

A few early laughs scattered around a plot as thin as it is repetitious. There's talent in this picture, both before and behind the camera, but virtually none of it gets on the screen.

A mundane sitcom with feature pretensions, the kind where the comic "situation" is simply a coat-rack for hanging a rag-tag assortment of inflated sight gags and telegraphed punch lines.

The book floats sublimely above its dark theme; the movie sinks into the ridiculous.

Damned if those dual spoilsports, the gladiatorial director Ridley Scott reteamed with his portly star Russell Crowe, haven't drained every drop of merriment right out of the myth.

If your idea of a bargain is two bad movies for the price of one, then shell out for Man on Fire. And don't fret about that incendiary title because this thing is all fuse.

Mainly, though, it's the exquisite restraint - both of Cornish's performance and Campion's direction - that gives the film its power.

For all its merits - a lush canvas, a first-rate cast, a thoughtful director examining a theme directly relevant to his own checkered career - Vincent & Theo doesn't quite measure up. [16 Nov 1990]

This is an exhilarating picture, the kind that strips away smug complacencies and exposes raw nerves to a bright light. [14 Sep 1990, p.C4]

Made of Honor should come with a bar code and a Wal-Mart display - this isn't a movie, it's a commodity. The generic brand is the romantic comedy, and the manufacturer's material of choice is recycled plastic, smoothly glued together to assure the consumer that the purchase is risk-free and thoroughly predictable.

There's a head-pounding, gob-smacking literalness to this flick, extending from the title right through to the recurring imagery.

Runaway is a Dinky Toy of a film: tiny, shiny, and about half as well-made. [15 Dec 1984]

Despite a superb cast and a fabulous look, the picture collapses under the weight of its lofty pretensions, especially in the black hole of the last act, where it topples into near-absurdity.

The cast is proficient, with Balk especially adroit at giving her demonic gifts a gleeful twist. And director Andrew Fleming keeps the special effects on a low boil, effective yet not ostentatious, while taking allusive advantage of the competing (and sometimes complementing) tension between the school's Catholic imagery and the girl's pagan icons. But as our heroines lose their grip, so does he. [03 May 1996]

The result is a rarity on any screen: intelligent fun.

The weak plot means that the picture is governed totally by its gadgetry, the equivalent of those James Bond sequels that limp awkwardly from one showoff sequence to the next. [10 May 1991]

Even at the abbreviated length of 70 minutes (less feature than featurette), material so maniacal wears very thin very fast. [5 Feb 1993]

Strip away the transparent moral shading, erase the buddy-picture twist, and True Colors is nothing more than a watered-down mix of Wall Street and The Candidate, a sentimental variation on a sentimental model. [15 Mar 1991]

Turns a blind eye to the very history it pretends to teach.

Pulp Fiction is at least three movies rolled into one, and they're all scintillating.

A good film prevented from being a great film by an act of well-intentioned but misguided casting.

Hollywood's big-screen answer to France's 1983 charming film Les Comperes is a wacky star vehicle wildly out of control. [9 May 1997, p.D1]

Fabulous idea/faulty execution is the review.

Based on an allegedly true story, this is a dark comedy that begins with a charmingly light touch.... Alas, it's when the tale stays murderous, amateur night dragging into amateur day, that the picture loses both its energy and its edge. [09 Apr 1990]

It does the job just fine. That job, as director George Lucas freely admits, is quite simply to thrill the beating hearts and the inquiring minds of 12-year-old boys.

Love it, hate it, but be sure to watch it, because this odd and disturbing picture is as different as the war it reflects, and that difference is vast enough to seem profound.

I think that the perfect name for the chick in a chick flick is Rebecca Bloomwood. I know that if Charles Dickens had possessed the good sense to write chick flicks, he could not have done better than Rebecca Bloomwood.

The strength of this documentary lies in its balance, or at least the careful appearance of balance.

Characters already too wicked to be credible start doing stuff simply too stupid to be believed, with no help from a cast way too overmatched to be useful.

Seen from any chronological vantage, this isn't a superior flick - think of it more as great radio with average pictures. [16 Nov 1990]

Jane Campion makes a beeline for the repressed sexuality, and loses the nuance. [17 Jan 1997]

Very few movies end so much better than they begin. For that reason, and only that reason, this is an exceptional picture.

Obviously a great respecter of rules, John Badham directs with a metronome, here some glossy action, there some witless banter, dispensing the two like different colored Smarties popped from the box. The bird in Bird On A Wire is a turkey. [19 May 1990]

If the kids give the movie its momentum, its fascination comes from a more static source -- the father.

The result is the kind of feel-bad/feel-good movie that brazenly manipulates our response and leaves us grateful for it -- so relentlessly dark is the premise that, by the end, we just need to believe in the prospect of light.

A grownup departure from the teen-romance norm -- it speaks nothing about passion and volumes about trust.

From the first stylized shot to the final comic resolution, Moonstruck is completely sui generis - hard to describe but easy to love.

A feel-good flick that doesn't make you feel too bad -- in this genre, that almost qualifies as a ringing endorsement.

About as gripping as its title.

Yet the performances are just sturdy boats against the narrative current - the plot is altogether too calculated and wholly without surprises, either pleasant or unpleasant... The painting is just fine; too bad the numbers show through.

Quitting begins to seem intriguing in concept. Now comes the best news: It's just as compelling in execution.

It transforms that bottom line into a saccharine border, framing the picture with enough faux inspiration to keep Hallmark in cards for a month of Mother's Days. [03 Jun 1994]

The wonder here is that Bateman and the child actor spark off each other quite delightfully. For a few precious scenes, when father and son are alone, the movie is actually amusing, even touching.

In an era when the words "President" and "penis" can occupy the same sentence and prompt nothing but yawns, this picture actually manages to surprise, to startle, yes, to administer a series of small but genuine shocks.

With the performers given zilch to perform, the result is a picture that's all chassis and no engine, or, in the parlance of the genre, a bunch of pointy hats in search of a transporting broomstick.

It's not Smith's fault that the movie can't quite pry apart the man from the myth from the metaphor. The three may well be inseparable by now and, at this point in his history and ours, that's surely the way we prefer it.

The target is way too easy and the tone far too smug. This time, they're shooting fish in a barrel with a bazooka and congratulating themselves on their marksmanship.

Using a kidnapping plot to call up some old-fashioned suspense, it doesn't even get a dial tone.

Understandably, a script so obsessed with the dark doings of plot has little time left over for the study of character, and, thus, we never really get to know these people.

It's intriguing, appalling, savvy, nasty, grossly unsettling -- you may not like what you see, but you'll definitely be affected by the sight.

Ultimately, Shine a Light is illuminating indeed, even fascinating, but not in the way Scorsese intended. What he has created, inadvertently, is an invaluable documentation of semi-fossilized Stones – musicologists may like it, sociologists should love it and, some distant day, anthropologists will treasure it.

Any one of these narrative components might have made for a worthy picture. But that would have taken a more imaginative writer than Charles Leavitt and a more sensitive director than Gary Fleder.

As an esthetic work, the movie is dismissable. As a social artifact, however, it's intriguing. Textually and sub-textually, intentionally or inadvertently, just what is being said here? [14 Aug 1992]

Before it turns into a thriller, and goes badly awry, Red Lights paints a devastating little portrait of a marriage on the rocks.

Laugh? Well, once.

For some (okay, me), The Holiday, like the holidays, will require some girding up, and is best met halfway with a self-immunizing smile. Otherwise, the good cheer may ring false; worse, it might even seem to sell love cheap, and lovers short.

After years of inadvertently making us laugh, Sylvester Stallone actually does a picture designed to be funny. It isn't, not very, but, yo, give the man credit for going with the flow. [01 May 1991]

Empire is just too intent on living up to its imperial name -- colonizing other defenceless movies, plundering their rich natural resources, and leaving us all to feel rather cruelly violated. A postscript: Somebody here -- I'm not saying who -- dies. And still keeps on talking.

The sounds are fine and, thanks to technology's ever-progressive march, the sights are even better. But that third S -- the story -- remains the sticking point, and ain't it always the way.

Offers you the ostensible bargain of two movies in one -- a character study at the outset and the crime caper that follows. The first picture is intriguing, the second stinks.

All this is as fascinating as it is humbling, even when Herzog ventures a little too far down eccentricity's back alley.

Hey, it’s all good clean fun.

In lieu of a movie, we get a series of car chases rudely interrupted by the occasional smattering of dialogue.

Despite his flair for trenchant dialogue, nicely complemented by Mark Isham's bluesy jazz score, Rudolph whets our appetite but then fails to deliver. The picture limps to its ending and leaves us with nothing to hold onto.

What do you get when you cross King Kong with E.T.? Harry And The Hendersons is what, and it's a delightful enough offspring - often funny, occasionally charming and always mighty eager to please. Too eager at times, but that's a forgivable flaw in an otherwise engaging hybrid. [5 June 1987]

This is well-crafted retro horror, too familiar to be really scary but smart enough to be fun. And funny too, with the kind of pure laughs that grow organically from the script, untainted by the chemical spray of irony.

Writer/director Gus Van Sant, who's built his reputation on the romantic decadence of "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho," completely misses the poetry and the irony of the book. [20 May 1994]

The only thing majestic about Shrek the Third is the title.

Not quite a comedy, not really a drama, Mad Dog and Glory throws your equilibrium but keeps your interest high. [5 Mar 1993, p.C3]

At least The Infidel is an equal-opportunity blasphemer, and God bless it for that. Otherwise, this thing plays like a cheeky Brit-com blown up to feature length, with a thin coat rack of plot to hang the ethnic humour on, and a wish to offend without being offensive.

Smith and Lawrence enjoyed some amusing chemistry in the '95 original, but their molecules sure aren't jibing here. It's a full hour into this behemoth before there's anything resembling a belly laugh.

This is a rare adaptation where the script (by McGrath himself) heads straight for the novel's horrible essence, reproducing it non-verbally and in an even more concentrated form.

The problem is director Joe Carnahan, who’s way too manic even when the formula calls for calm – he can’t stay still long enough to drive home the punch-lines.

Children of Men is a nativity story for the ages, this or any other.

The setting is unique, the cast is terrific, the dialogue crackles and, if only there were a plot worth believing, In Bruges might have been a fine film.

Shakespeare would have delighted in the chapter, especially in the antagonist, but not at the expense of the longer and darker and still-unfinished book.

The movie pretty much blows.

Beverly Hills Cop II puts its mega-star through a medieval trial, an ordeal by dullness. Survive these surroundings, Eddie Murphy, and you must truly be one very funny guy. Well, Eddie survives, barely, and taking our cue straight from him, so do we, almost. [22 May 1987]

A crashing bore.

One of those crime flicks besotted with its own plot.

Ready To Wear is certainly a disappointment, if not an outright flop. [27 Dec 1994]

It's a downbeat flick forged by an upbeat talent - despite the angst in the frames, you can feel the joy of the framer. [23 June 1995]

There's a missing element whose absence, forgive me, I can't help but lament. This is a movie about magic that ultimately lacks the magic of movies."

The Coen brothers adaptation is impeccable, a perfect mirror of McCarthy's prose – sparse, suspenseful, probing and profoundly disturbing.

With its intricate design, sly humour and timely theme, Travellers and Magicians is a lot more than just a travelogue.

Well acted and crisply directed, this latest version can at least make a claim to competence.

For once, the gimmick is a perfect reflection of the characters.

Great title, and the whiff of existential loneliness that it conjures up – brothers locked not in solidarity but in solitude – permeates the entire movie.

Although there are some fluid moments, De Palma's weary direction of a once-feared mobster trying to go straight against all odds seems pistol-whipped. [15 Nov 1993]

Odd but engaging film.

Blind Date is a screwball comedy bereft of both a brain and a heart. Instead, it's all muscle and reflex, the conditioned kind good only for simple movements made in slapstick fashion, over and over and over and out. [27 Mar 1987]

By stripping the genre down to its essentials, long on the serial disasters but thankfully light on the stupid dialogue, [Petersen] not only maintains an acceptable modicum of suspense but -- here's the major bonus -- also manages to set a blissful speed record in the process, bringing his pricey blockbuster home to port in under 100 minutes.

Above The Law is beneath contempt, a movie whose esthetic politics stand somewhere to the right of tyrannosaurus rex. You know the type. Take your standard-issue Vietnam vet, martial-arts-mastering, renegade cop and turn him loose on the mean streets of any photogenic city (Chicago and its El, in this neon-and-sleaze case). [26 Apr 1988]

The delight of this film isn't so much in the tale as the telling.

Meant to be a nodding aside to the film buff, with plenty of in-jokes for the cognoscenti, Crimewave ends up as a random list in dire need of a good file-clerk. [3 July 1987]

Single-handedly, Bridges gives the film what it otherwise lacks -- energy and emotion invested in this damaged man, naked beneath his ballooning caftan, at once sadly ridiculous and ridiculously sad.

Stockwell takes an especially leaden screenplay, floats the dull thing up from the depths of mediocrity, and makes it cinematically buoyant. Within limits, that is.

Water's kinky view of the world has simply been overtaken (hell, swallowed up) by the sheer warp of reality. [13 Apr 1994]

Bouncing about from one flawed movie to another, Steven Spielberg has lost his way of late, and Munich finds him more disoriented than ever.

V for very, very ordinary.

Minghella is a smart guy with splendid intentions but, ultimately, he's a victim here of his own liberal contrivances.

It's all meant, I suppose, to conjure up cold visions of Terminators and Robocops past, or, in this post-9/11 world, of bin Ladens and Bushes present. If so, conjure at will.

A contrived little comedy, Dummy definitely lives down to its name -- you can see the lips moving on this wooden thing.

Embracing such depths, Bukowski somehow made his art. Simulating them, Factotum just makes us queasy.

Come to think of it, Ferrell is to the sports comedy what the Toronto Maple Leafs are to the hockey biz: Hard-core fans are sure to show up and find reasons to be amused. The rest of us can only hope for better days.

Call it "Alexander the Grate," because, over the marathon of its three-hour running time, this wonky epic really does get on your nerves.

The whole caper loses its rhythm and its direction around the two-thirds mark. By the finish, the punch has left the lines, and the once-purposeful energy goes mindlessly manic - gone are both the point and the parody.

It's a treat because, making no apologies for the source material, director Guillermo del Toro lets his picture gorge on power bars of pop energy, sugared with sprinkles of playful humour, and, at least twice, laced with a visual style so piercingly keen that horror morphs into beauty. Not bad for a pulpy outing.

On the flimsy wings of this familiar fairy tale, Linklater tries to fly himself a movie, dressing up the quartet (and the strapping he-men cast to portray them) in the audience-friendly vestments of picaresque charm.

As box-office packages go, My Girl may well become a big hit. The wrapping is colourful, even charming in spots, and that circle of black ribbon is a gravely clever touch. Get closer, though, and it's like those Christmas presents stacked around the department store tree - apparently real but really empty. [28 Nov 1991]

Black comedies don't get much darker than this.

Definitely erratic, this thing -- all in all, it's the sort of commercial vehicle you might want to stay well back of.

A swashbuckler that plays like an over-dressed serial on a slow Saturday afternoon. [22 Dec 1995]

Candy and Moranis are real talents, but they're completely wasted, like everyone else here, sacrificed to the grade-school inanities of that self-indulgent script. [26 Jun 1987, p.D6]

This much is inarguable: In the more than two flamboyant hours of Across the Universe, Julie Taymor doesn't cheat us for a single second.

A picture with pop's delicious energy yet none of its attendant risk, a flick that no one will love but everyone will like.

This is wish-fulfilment fantasy, where the laughs lie in sorting out an embarrassment of riches.

While computer games can boast an abundance of nifty graphics and odious villains and plucky protagonists on long journeys, they're invariably a tad wanting in the cinematic essentials -- you know, stuff like plot and characterization and theme.

Some films, like some people, wear their artsy pretensions on their sleeve, and there really isn't much going on beneath – it's just a posturing armband wrapped around a plain arm. Welcome, then, to the emptiness of Mister Lonely, a movie that goes to extraordinary lengths to say ordinary things.

Yes, the delight of this movie lies in these devilish details, and it's clear that writer-director Greg Mottola knows them well.

No filmmaker, in any cinematic culture, has a better eye or ear for the working class than director Mike Leigh.

There's obviously a huge appetite for humour this broad, and I wish I shared it. Instead, like a picky vegetarian at a Texas barbecue, I felt out of place, hungry, and a little sad. Not altogether different, perhaps, from a certain British actor on a seedy Sunset Strip. [14 July 1995]

The cheery result is enough to renew one's faith in Uncle Walt and the boys - a family picture that transcends the cliche, a light-bright romp where the sentiment isn't cheap and where the action isn't childish. Now there's a novelty item for you. [27 June 1989]

In Youth in Revolt , Cera bellies up to the same table once too often. His fresh-faced act is starting to look really stale.

Solitary Man makes too good on its title – it’s a fascinating character study isolated within a mediocre film.

Actor-turned-director Tony Goldwyn elicits solid performances from the cast, then undercuts them by resorting to a trite montage or a clunky set-piece, inevitably scored with an obtrusive rock tune telling us what to feel and when to feel it.

It wants to make an important political statement, which might have been dandy if it had anything remotely cogent to say.

For a stylish thriller that hinges on the titillating theme of voyeurism, this movie is surprisingly innocuos. [22 May 1993]

On his own, Dangerfield is still a buoyant presence. But the cliche tells us that movie-making is a collaborative exercise, and the price for Easy Money must be paid. Ultimately, Captain Rodney goes down with his film and sinks without a trace. [20 Aug 1983]

To his credit, Beatty has designed Bulworth along the classic lines of Shakespeare's Fool -- the antic truth-speaker who has the ear of the court.

Frankly, about 20 minutes into this dud, I was rooting for the alien beasties -- their diagnosis seemed dead-on.

Krull is only half bad, which makes it half good, which puts it a broadsword ahead of most films set in the land of the mightily mythic. [30 July 1983]

Seidelman isn't that exclusive - any cliche will do, the cruder the better. [8 Dec 1989]

While the initial sequence is glorious, the last is a shambles.

No matter how strange it gets, or how distorted for political gain or refined for religious purposes, its essence is hard to pin down, even after a 2 1/2 -hour search.

You'll be rewarded with a terrific finale. The twists here are the rare sort that seem both narratively surprising and emotionally engaging.

As a motion picture, Fever Pitch is merely competent.

Pardon my pulling anthropological rank, but Instinct -- a movie about an ape-man savant -- seems a quart low on common sense.

What we have here is a pretty good TV show huffed and puffed into a rather mediocre film.

Those who lived through the Vietnam War era, and paid attention, will find this documentary short on revelation but long on poignant reminders.

EDtv is precisely the kind of brisk, straightforward, amiable and accessible material that shows Howard’s skills to advantage.

Ultimately, Benigni's comic refinery merely transforms the banality of evil into a lesser sin -- the evil of banality.

Generally makes good on its promise. There are shivers to be felt, especially in the early stages, and there's fun to be had, including the post-movie pleasure of detecting the soft spots in the plot. The result is an always-watchable picture from a director capable of more.

Perhaps for Zwigoff, directing someone else's script, this was just a job of work. If not, the talent who made "Crumb" and "Ghost World "has now made his first movie mistake.

With little dialogue to assist her -- just the strains of that wonderfully organic music -- she still manages to suggest the internal struggle, and to slowly reveal a fierce toughness that flies in the face of conventional morality.

It's like an elevated form of sitcom acting, which may be inevitable because this movie, and all its quirky/heartfelt kin, are an elevated version of the sitcom itself.

[Law] talks straight to the camera like the young Michael Caine, but this time our hunk has got zilch to say. That's because a bastard's candour is off-limits in today's politically correct market — it just wouldn't be polite.

A deceptively light and impeccably structured comedy that owes a clear cinematic debt to others -- Ernst Lubitsch, Woody Allen and Whit Stillman among them -- yet still manages to speak with a fresh and distinctive voice. [21 Aug. 1998, p.D4]

In a virtuoso turn, Tommy Lee Jones delivers an over-the-top performance, but it works for the obvious reason that everything about Cobb is oversized. Except for one commodity - there's not an ounce of sentimentality on the guy (nor in this film - it too is unlikely to please the crowd). [23 Dec 1994]

Admittedly, near the end, the picture loses some of its energy and compelling ambiguity (about a half-star's worth, I'd say). Still, by then, the big gains have been made. At its best, The Nightmare Before Christmas occupies the imaginative ground held by the likes of White and Dahl and Seuss - that lovely place where, for shining moments, parents and children can travel on the same passport and smile for the same reasons. [22 Oct 1993]

Pretty much what you'd expect -- just another haunted house that happens to float.

First things first: As one of my wise editors noted, no person who can flash as many teeth as Julia Roberts should ever star in a movie called Mona Lisa Smile.

The plot is bare-bones stuff, weak in story line and bereft of motivation.

A feature that suffers from the rarity of its wit yet benefits from the briskness of its pace.

Good ain't the half of it in this case - it's funny, it's endearing, it's strangely touching. [19 Aug 1994]

Marshall treats everything, from the feminist themes to a soundtrack that features period chestnuts redone by contemporary singers, with a unique mix of the furiousand the subdued - a broad knee-slapper one moment, a delicate caress the next. No wonder we root for it. With the count full and our hopes wavering, A League Of Their Own smacks a stand-up triple and dares us not to cheer. Go ahead - give in and be a fan. [3 July 1992]

Watching this, we should feel an immense amount, but don't, and somehow, decades after this horrible event, that void only seems to compound the tragedy.

In keeping with that home-team tradition, The Promise lives up to the title --it really delivers the eye-popping goods.

It has a schlocky title and a rocky start, but then something happens - The Man Without a Face finds its rhythm and its grip, seizing the audience and propelling us straight through to the dewy climax. [25 Aug 1993, p.C2]

When it gets right down to the climactic business at hand and arm, even the imposing skills of a Golan are put to a rigorous test. For, despite its obvious delights, armwrestling just can't compare to 10 bloody rounds from a pair of vigorous maulers or a brace of chattering machine-guns. [17 Feb 1987]

But Keaton is a mistake. He's an actor with an innate sense of irony firmly grounded in the here and now. Even as Batman, skepticism was his forte; true belief falls way outside his range.

A sustained if wildly uncoordinated assault on our senses, complementing those feverish jump cuts with a cliché of equally stunning proportions

By then, the lofty ambitions can't disguise the sad reality - it's long, it's cluttered, and it's trite.

De Bont knows how to edit a pulse-pounding sequence, he knows how to keep the screen white-hot, and he sure knows how to blow things up real good. What he doesn't know is how to slow down - this premise is perfect for him.

What benefits the picture early on, giving it a casual air, becomes cloying in the later going, making it feel like a smug exercise in mutual admiration.

The reality measures up to the rep.

There's plenty of humour in Comedian but not a lot of happiness -- apparently, the sad clown is a cliché for good reason.

Simultaneously a spectacular act of movie-making and a slight movie. Or is that impossible: When the means are so gloriously abundant, can the end ever be merely trivial?

Vanity: the surest road to mediocrity.

What we have here is a romp, a funny romp at times, with a clear satiric intent and the expected quota of outrageous style - likable enough, yes, but a rather flimsy thing, a zany fest with its mind on cruise control. [17 June 1994]

Lethal Weapon sinks an unexpectedly sharp hook at a delightfully unique angle, and never once lets up. A purposefully off- kilter flick, it fakes one way and moves another, thwarting our conditioned responses and fuelling our happy surprise. [6 Mar 1987, p.D1]

Nevertheless, in mid-reverie, there's no denying the pleasure in falling under its little spell -- till human voices wake us, and we frown.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make heads or tails of this Byzantine thing. [22 May 1996]

The well chosen cast helps -- no one strikes a false note.

It's a comedy, it's a romance, it's a gangster flick. The Cooler is all of that and much, much less. This is a movie without a compass, switching pace and direction as haphazardly as a caffeinated SUV driver on a cellphone.

Upbeat it ain't, but when the light fades from the final frame, there remains something unusual in the Dardennes canon – the possibility of an escape from futility's clutches, and a reason for hope that might, just might, be more than an illusion.

The Notebook is meant to be a romantic weepy, and you will shed tears - but only from the consistent and exhausting effort of trying to control your gag reflex. Even a body that welcomes a sugar fix will repel a sugar invasion.

Life is Sweet is sweet indeed - and comic and quirky and, on those occasions when the tone deftly shifts, just a little sad... Leigh's work, and the quotidian life it depicts, is sometimes slim but never insubstantial, occasionally sweet but never a sugary confection. And always worth celebrating. [24 Jan. 1992]

If this is satire, it's the smug and self-congratulatory kind that lets the audience completely off the hook. Effective satire, the Swiftian brand, seduces us first and then implicates us in the seduction -- we become a target too. But this stuff never gets past the initial step -- it's toothless, as innocuous as the puffery it pretends to skewer.

THERE'S NO excuse for Her Alibi. A hyphenated hybrid like this - romance- comedy-thriller - demands a lot of stirring; if nothing else (and there rarely is much else), it must at least be smooth, colorful and easy on the palate. Instead, the stuff here goes down like lumpy porridge on a grey morning.[3 Feb 1989]

Was it worth slogging through the nearly two hours of damned muddle to get to those last affecting moments? Not often in movies is the destination so much better than the journey.

Identity opens with its mind nicely intact, suffers a major crisis about 30 minutes in, then bad turns to worse.

The whole film occupies pretty much the same continuuum -- glimmers of intelligence followed by moments of outright hysteria punctuated by bouts of sheer haplessness.

Of course, bad writing can undo the best actor. If you doubt that, check out De Niro's soliloquy at the film's climax. He's acting the heck out of the words, but they're still dragging him down with them.

Although director Taylor Hackford ("An Officer and a Gentleman") handles the usually cumbersome flashbacks with impressive delicacy, he can't stop the narrative from sinking under its own melodramatic weight.

There's a continuing delicacy to [Singer's] direction that gives the audience room to breathe and reason to linger. This may not be a grownup movie but -- unlike the Star Wars franchise or the Batman sequels -- it is a movie that grownups can watch minus the requisite bottle of Excedrin.

Blowing up bad guys, swearing, and lots of cliches makes the The Last Boy Scout a must to miss. [16 Dec 1991]

The result is a rare treat, a revival of a period piece that doesn't descend into mere quaintness or prettiness, and that manages to capture the spirit of an earlier time without sacrificing the perspective of our own.

The older John Kerry, today's candidate, is conspicuous both by his absence (he's not interviewed here) and by the contrast between then and now, between the hero he was and the politician he's become. That contrast gives the film a nostalgic yet palpable sadness.

Here, one begins to suspect that the major impediment is the sensibility of the filmmakers themselves. They don't believe in this stuff, in its unavoidable sentimentality, and that attitude filters down to a perplexed cast.

Because the society in Menace II Society is boxed in sociologically, the picture (for all its strengths) is boxed in esthetically. Already, this genre is beginning to seem as much a victim as the victims it portrays.

Most movies have music, some movies are musicals, but very few movies combine the two with the grace and pure eloquence of Once.

Fun, fun, fun. Take the title at its word, because this movie is nothing less than a flat-out, lung-pumping, 76-minute sprint.

Delightfully inventive, consistently funny, clever but not slick, brisk yet never antic, Quick Change is the perfect cinematic date - a summer film for all seasons, the kind of sharp-edged picture that gives lightweight a good name. [14 Jul 1990, p.C3]

Yet, for all that's wrong here, one thing is wonderfully, blissfully right, and his name is Tom Hanks.

An amiable action-comedy, amiable enough that the laughs come in a steady drizzle if not a torrent, and that the action is something blissfully less than the usual full-out assault on our battered senses.

Is Funny Games an unqualified success? No, and for this reason: In order to analyze the devolution of violence into entertainment, the premise obliges the film to superimpose a complicated game atop the genre's simple one – in other words, it makes a game out of the game it condemns.

The film manages the extraordinary feat of forcing us to empathize simultaneously with both the potential victim and the potential villain.

A contrived and tepid thriller that insists on wanting to interest us in its main plot -- the usual nefarious plan to assassinate the leader of the free world.

Amelia is the Mack truck of flight. Heavy and lumbering, it delivers the goods, but there's not an ounce of magic in the thing.

All dull thunder without a spark of illumination.

In keeping with the purloining spirit of sequeldom, Woo plunders his own past. [24 May 2000, p.R1]

A tormented and tormenting man uses violence to break the historic chain of violence, then bequeaths to his loved ones the most precious gift he can give -- his total silence and perpetual absence.

If plots were people, this obese thing would be cuing up for liposuction. Mr. Brooks may well boast the greediest yarn in the annals of filmdom. One serial killer just doesn't cut it – no fewer than four, actual and potential, pack these frames.

One Hour Photo is two-thirds of a movie -- the last act is a bit of a shambles.

The result isn't meant to be an historical document transmuted into fiction; instead, it's fiction turned into a fable, a dark fable.

Holy Man sure isn't raucous; instead, in the main, it's just quietly unamusing.

Mainly, it's a clever gimmick, cleverly wrought, offering further evidence that you can dress up the student body in all manner of garb for all types of genres.

When Veber is on form there's no one better. And when he's not, well, give The Valet a look anyway -- there's still much to admire.

Loses its momentum just when you'd expect the suspense to mount -- at the competition itself.

An hallucinatory mix of the imagined and the real, all revolving around the mystery at the cold heart of the tale.

It isn't an exciting work of art so much as a contemplative reverie on the nature of art -- and what's wrong with a smart essay that unfolds like a sweet dream?

The net result is a few shaky laughs and one unwavering sensation -- that The Terminal is interminable.

The refined taste insists on risibly bad, on hysterically bad, on poke-your-seatmate-in-the-ribs bad, and this falls well short of that hallowed mark -- it's just routinely bad.

The result is a political thriller refreshingly long on grown-up dialogue yet lamentably shy on, well, thrills. This chatty thing does go on.

Even the neatness here is borrowed. A Kiss Before Dying isn't a remake; it's a rehash. [27 Apr 1991]

Festival in Cannes is definitely Jaglomesque, but can't get that tricky balance right -- the result is a picture as charmingly insubstantial as the world it invokes.

Popped in the oven and marked with a predictable P, The Family Stone is the Christmas cookie of Christmas movies -- this thing is so pat it should come with the recipe attached.

Both smart and shrewd -- it wraps that same comforting message in a thoroughly entertaining package.

Persepolis is as modern as tomorrow's headlines and as classic as an ancient myth.

So we're back on "The Road ," but this time Eli's coming – better hide your heart and, while you're at it, put your brain on hold, the easier to enjoy the action-filled sermon to come.

This picture will linger, stuck in those corners of the mind you may not care to visit, where the stranger you meet lies in the bed beside you, or stares back from the mirror before you, and where the comfort offered is nothing but cold. [14 June 1991]

Trying to be off-the-wall, Amos & Andrew never gets off the ground. It ends up as politically correct as its title, and that ain't funny. [05 Mar 1993]

What Happens in Vegas should damn well have stayed in Vegas.

How's this for frightening: The casting of the lightweight Ben Affleck as a CIA agent who holds the fate of the entire world in his pretty-boy hands. Can't deny it, that got my heart pumping like a bunny.

School for Scoundrels suffers from an old-fashioned identity crisis. The poor thing is awfully confused, and so are we. Is it a black comedy that isn't dark enough? Or a dumb comedy that isn't stupid enough, or a gross-out comedy that isn't yucky enough? Or is it really just a romance comedy that isn't sweet enough? Don't have a clue, but this much is certain: It's definitely a failed comedy that isn't funny enough.

Nominally set in some rural American backwater, The Neon Bible is a hellishly muddled reprint of Davies' personal canon - muddled enough to turn all his past virtues into present transgressions. [19 Apr 1996]

Petersen seems to be holding back, telling us about the liberating power of the imagination but never really showing us. Of course, to show us would be to spoon feed the audience, thereby blunting the message and defeating the point. [20 Jul 1984, p.E9]

The result, Elegy, isn't a great film but it is a good one, and better for Coixet's perspective, her ability to interpret Roth's world from the other side of the gender fence.

With the release of Stop-Loss, a precedent of sorts has definitely been set. If we've yet to see a brilliant Iraq movie, the wait is over for a bad one – this is it.

All this is engrossing. Stylistically and visually, Villeneuve flashes his talent to draw us in. However, narratively and thematically, he seems to be cheating. [18 Dec 1998, p.D10]

Speaking of that deadly finale, it's easily the best part of the picture. Beautifully edited, shot in fluid slow-motion, scored to a traditional Irish ballad crooned in a child's tremulous voice, the violence of the climax is anthemic. The whole sequence is undeniably moving.

As an examination of social psychosis, the subject is skinhead but the treatment is skin deep. [03 Dec 1993]