Rick Groen

Today's Total Recall does nothing to tarnish the image of yesterday's – 22 years from now, I expect it to be hailed as a classic.

Dial your expectations to moderate, burrow in for the duration, and you won't be disappointed - it ain't exactly springtime, but there are worse things than an amiable outing on a winter's night.

On one side, Sugar Hill is an admirable picture with strong performances. On the other, it's a victim of narrative cliches. [25 Mar 1994]

Don't think for a second that Hollywood has cornered the market on formula flicks. Ever since the prototypical success of "The Full Monty," those crafty Brits have been running their own mimeograph machine.

Semi-decent, somewhat okay, not-half-bad.

Tremors is never earth-shattering, but always competent. Modest in intention, fine in execution, it just wants to make a body smile, to stick a happy face on the monster movie. There are worse faults. [20 Jan 1990]

No doubt, these twin saviours are a likeable tandem, and they bear their cross lightly. Still, End of Watch suffers from no end of sanctimony. Sainthood is all well and fine but it ain't drama and, on screen at least, the question cries out: Where's a corrupt cop when you need him?

Dragnet is twice blessed and once cursed. It boasts a nifty comic premise and a terrific lead performance, two virtues that might well have combined to make a great sketch on a good television show - SCTV comes quickly to mind. Yet, as a feature-length movie, the thing slowly degenerates into a one-note joke. A neatly produced and nicely sustained note, to be sure, but monotonous nonetheless. [27 June 1987]

With its tasteful palette and twee charm, Miss Potter is the china plate of movies, a Peter Rabbit collectible entirely suitable for mounting on the nursery wall.

So the promise of a proud director comes to nothing, and all my rooting goes for naught. Maybe, sadly, the metaphoric night that falls on Manhattan has finally begun to descend on Lumet -- and he's going gentle into it.

Consequently, your reaction to the film will pretty much hinge on your opinion of the play. Ho-hum is my humble verdict.

You don't mess with a sure thing. So Smokey and the Bandit II is carefully designed to cash in on the same box office bonanza as its namesake. The plot - about transporting an elephant to the Republican Convention - is obviously just an excuse to get this cartoon show on the road, where the cast can ham it up unashamedly.

The result is a road movie with a lofty message that too frequently gets lost in its own thematic barrens.

Once again, Candy does his slob-with-a-heart-of-gold number. He's good at it. He can be a funny fellow. He can even carry a mediocre picture all by his lonesome, squeezing a lot out of a little. What he can't do is squeeze that much out of this little. [16 Aug 1989]

Ultimately, Little Voice comes to us from an indeterminate place that is no longer the theatre but not quite the movies. Let's call it music videoland -- best just to sit back and enjoy golden-oldie tunes belted out by a quicksilver mimic.

There's almost a perverse pleasure in watching occasionally weak performers mar an essentially sound screenplay. That's the saving grace of Saving Face -- Wu gets the hard part right.

This is amusing, and even poignant in the final moments.

Whereas the psychology is surreal and wonderfully fluid, the action is too real and surprisingly listless, displaying little of the kinetic zip, or the sheer lyricism, that Lee brought with such memorable effect to "Crouching Tiger."

Who would have guessed that, among all the cutesy curves in Around the Bend, the guy walking the straightest line is Christopher Walken?

The Unbelievable Truth is just that - epistemology served up with pop panache and a comic twist. [27 Jul 1990]

Always well-meaning, not always well-executed, In This World ends by suffocating us in its good intentions.

EXistenZ, unlike existence, just lacks that certain mystique.

This movie is captivating until it gets uplifting – Flight soars when it crashes and crashes when it soars.

Never as good as you'd hoped or as bad as you'd feared, The Matador is one of those of up-and-down experiences -- here a sharp pica of wit, there a welcome veronica of absurdity, but, now and then, just a bit too much bull in the ring.

A movie of its kind and of its time -- functional, professional, slickly manufactured and slouching toward consciousness -- I, Robot is a perfect slave to mechanical convention.

Into the West has its admirable side - it tries oh-so-hard to be a healthy treat for the whole family, and never plies us with cheap sentimentality. [01 Oct 1993]

Although it always moves and rarely labours, the film truly comes alive only in those fleeting moments when it departs from the safe formula -- that is, only when Murphy draws on his personal talents to kick this baby into something resembling a higher gear. The rest of the time, well, here's the key to your Metro -- a renter with some mileage on it.

Apatow rescued big-screen comedy from its lengthy wallow in the trough of dumb-and-dumber – we have good reason to thank the guy. Until now. In This Is 40, his fingerprints are still identifiable, but not nearly as crisp. They're starting to look smudged.

A sputtering marathon of a movie. It starts, it stops, it sprints, it stumbles, occasionally following a straight narrative line, frequently darting off on colourful if pointless tangents, often commanding our attention yet never sparking our imagination.

Patterns itself after the Greek model -- that is, more ethnic humour with a contemporary twist.

Eastwood keeps retracing the same pattern, intercutting from the battlefield to the bond circuit, from the appalling chaos where no one feels heroic to the catered dinners where heroism is the dessert that sweetens the mood and opens the chequebooks. By now, though, the twinned structure seems fragmented, and neither half gets a chance to gather any emotional momentum or to further develop the theme.

What's missing, in the direction no less than the script, is any real sense of dramatic urgency.

The laughter does build. But there's precious little risk in the comedy -- even the rough edges seem calculated. These guys are preaching to the converted, and their careful sermons keep the faith. Skilled they are, but original or kingly they definitely are not -- just solid knights working the round table.

Inevitably, all this seems just too diffuse, and a set of uniformly adept performances (even Harrelson puts a leash on his usual histrionics) tends to be wasted in an only intermittently engaging movie.

Speaking as one of the mourners, did I mention how pleasant it is to revisit footage of John Lennon? And to listen to his music which, in this case, comes either in taped performances or laid onto the soundtrack, no fewer than 40 songs drawn almost exclusively from the post-Beatle, pro-Ono phase of his career.

Harsh Times opens with a deadly nightmare and ends with a vast bloodbath -- in between, things get a little gruesome.

What began as discomfiting satire soon devolves into silly farce. By the time Friends star Jennifer Aniston pops up as a waitress-cum-love-interest (quite a stretch for her), it's a sure sign we're back within the smug confines of the Tinseltown formula flick.

This is a movie guaranteed to turn you into a vacillating commitment-phobe, embracing it passionately one moment and then backing off cautiously the next.

A mix of credible sociology and tired melodrama, along with a palpable sense of déjà vu. Because the plight of boyz 'n' the hood is a global tragedy, its depiction on the screen has become a global commonplace with its own attendant danger – the tragedy is starting to feel trite.

Once in a long while, it even comes tantalizingly close to that rarest of modern film commodities -- ribald wit.

A film that appeared exceptional turns mundane.

Windtalkers is to movies what Paris is to weather -- if you don't like the show you're watching, just wait a minute and an entirely different picture will blow into view.

The concept is high but everything else is merely fair to middling, one more or less watchable B-movie in megabucks clothing.

Restoration is a middling thing, indifferent good, albeit much enlivened by Robert Downey Jr., who did act Merivel with the full vigour of his profession. [31 Jan 1996]

On the plus side, bloated narratives make for a busy action star, and Bruce is quite the workaholic on this outing, clearly eager to rekindle memories of his "Die Hard" glory days.

An exuberant mess of a movie. You despair at the mess, at the narrative and structural chaos; and yet you delight in the director's sheer infectious energy.

The film version, competently directed by Clint Eastwood and beautifully acted by Meryl Streep, isn't about to mess with a popular formula - this is a straight-up adaptation as faithful as a fawning spouse.

If the cinematography lacks the up-close-and-personal drama of "Blue Crush," it's still adequate to the occasion -- after all, like any star worth her salt, the ocean has yet to meet a camera she doesn't like.

CQ has a modicum of IQ and a dash of style -- the jury's still out on the extent of the inheritance, but the kid clearly learned something at his pater'sknee.

Silent House is a bundle of horror-flick tropes yoked together like a package deal.

Right up until the final climactic scene, Lisa is a taut little suspense yarn. Right up until the final climactic scene, Lisa is an engaging blend of character deftly revealed and plot-twists nicely unravelled. Right up until the final climactic scene, Lisa succeeds. And then . . . [14 May 1990]

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.

The Good Girl isn't really the title of this movie at all. Instead, it's now widely known as The Movie That Proves Jennifer Can Act.

What a big cheat of a movie. Wanting to be everything to everybody – a tough gambling picture, a revenge-of-the-nerds fantasy, a Vegas caper flick, a sweet little romance, a simple morality tale – 21 is just a bet-hedger dealing from multiple decks, designed to leave you with an occasional tidbit to like but nothing at all to love.

Credit Madagascar with negotiating a hopeful truce in the ongoing battle between the computer and the animation. Judged merely by appearances, its look is a lovely compromise. Too bad everything else has been compromised right out of existence.

Although possessed of a laudable desire not to be yet another run-of-the-mill, wacky-impediment, I'm-nobody-and-you're-the-Prez's-daughter romance comedy, damned if the picture can figure out how to be an anti-romance comedy.

It's refreshing to have a movie assume that its viewers are also readers, yet this one takes that assumption to testing lengths. To those fearful of flunking the test, my advice is simple: Bring along the book as your cheat-sheet.

It's odd, how these high-concept films, knowing that the central gimmick has a way of wearing out its welcome, are all so short – a mere 84 minutes in this case. Why odd? Because short always ends up feeling so damn long. This is no exception. Quick to start and painfully slow to finish, Chronicle is the same old chronicle.

Alas, the news is mixed: Thor ain't much of a movie but it's a great career move. Both movie and move belong to director Kenneth Branagh.

The only surprise here is the real star of the show, who turns out to be not Halle Berry, not even Bruce Willis, but a flat computer screen in all its hard-driven glory.

Alas, in the third instalment of the C.S. Lewis odyssey, the devolution continues with the inexorability of a fairy tale thrust in reverse – the sublime first film morphed into the routine second and now this wispy banality.

From that title on down, White Irish Drinkers is a compendium of clichés struggling to upgrade its status and become a respectable archetype.

Nothing more or less than an outright bodice-ripper -- it should have ditched the artsy pretensions and revelled in the entertaining shallows.

The pocketing of tired bills headed for the shredder, the producing of tired movies headed for the theatre -- it's all just recycling.

Pearce pumps a surprising amount of levity into his one-liners – sure, it's still hot air, but at least the banter comes fully inflated.

No one can dismiss 16 Blocks as a mere formula flick -- it's a mere two or three formula flicks all fighting for top billing.

Here's one thing about Marie Antoinette: It sure is easy to watch. And here's another: It's even easier to forget.

Although director Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female, Reversal of Fortune, Barfly) does a workmanlike job of stirring in the grimy New York atmosphere, the picture only surges to life when Cage strides on camera. [21 Apr 1995]

It's better than 2, but not nearly as good as 1. On the slippery slope of sequel-land, that's an okay average. [15 May 1992]

If you have an appetite for well-made treacle, then Bella should go down a treat.

All costume and scant drama, the result is a curiously flat spectacle, neither offensive nor compelling.

The ensemble is unwieldy and the attendant yarn much too cluttered.

Film noir is a style, but self-conscious film noir is just a stylistic tic, less a genre than an ailment. And The Black Dahlia has got a really bad case -- this thing is so mannered it convulses.

The fiction that follows can be safely regarded as much more than a war movie -- hell, this is a pro-war movie. Were it a politician, it would be Donald Rumsfeld.

Trading in his thinker's cap for a craftsman's apron, Lee is content to carve a little something out of nothing much - the result is as dismissible as it is diverting. [Apr 12, 1996. pg. C.2]

These characters don't seem illuminating at all – just damned annoying and, ultimately, dead boring.

A recruitment poster loosely disguised as a movie.

What might have been delicious trash lacks the courage of its trashy convictions, and the result is high-born melodrama with the juice boiled out, so much dry cabbage on fine-china plate.

Done up strictly for laughs, this might have been fine. But the picture actually starts taking itself seriously, and that spells instant yawns. [16 Dec 1989]

The dogs and the snow and the flag-waving and the choo-choos are all reduced to TV-sized portions. Just as well, I suppose - think of it as audio-visual aerobics, forced training for next month's big bout in our living-rooms. [14 Jan 1994]

Lives down to its title -- what an odd and gauzy reverie this is, a strangely muted picture that unfolds at a distinct remove from the reality around it.

When it comes to retelling the tale of Tristan and Isolde, give us a movie that makes love. Or even a movie that makes war. Anything, just anything, but a movie that makes nice.

More Than a Game is less than a movie.

This movie wants to be a horse but, even measured in box-office millions, it's just another nag.

This thing can take pride of place in a long tradition of Hollywood howlers.

Although the subject, school bullying, is as fresh as today's headlines, the treatment isn't. Despite the efforts of an impressive cast, the film starts out stale and then just gets tedious.

Tropic Thunder is an assault in the guise of a comedy – watching it is like getting mugged by a clown.

Director Walter Salles, who knows a thing or two about picaresque journeys – in "The MotorcycleDiaries," even in "Central Station" – does make an honest effort here.

Sorry, this one doesn't really work at all, but don't blame the workers.

Reign Over Me drizzles down on us for two full hours, persistently determined to prove that, if it hangs around long enough, a coherent movie will turn up. No such luck.

Not much flair to this vehicle. [26 May 1989]

Saddled with this hollow script, Stone pads with elaborate set pieces.

At his best, Clint directed as he acted -- sparely, laconically, but concisely, with a clean precision. There are flashes of that trademark style early on, but it soon degenerates badly.

Skin Deep, the latest and 36th off the line, could sum up his whole checkered career - it's that good and that bad, by turns terrifically funny and terribly flawed. [3 March 1989]

Nothing in this explicit display is remotely engaging. That's because the sex is a metaphor here. In fact, most everything is a metaphor here. Or a symbol -- the picture is a veritable cacophony of jangling symbols.

Next semester, the stars should drop Speech 217 and enroll in Chemistry 101 – they dearly need some.

The movie blows, me hearties, but don't you dare miss it...Why? Johnny Depp, that's why...This has gotta rank among the weirdest performances in the zany annals of the silver screen.

It marks the first time in a decade that Sidney Poitier has worked in front of the camera. Well, after such an extended absence, maybe he wanted to limber up slowly, just a little light stretching to iron out the kinks in his actor's reflex. If so, the guy made the perfect choice. As flicks go, this is definitely a low-impact workout. [12 Feb 1988]

Arthur and the Invisibles may be a tale for children, but it's got the bad habits of a profligate adult -- the thing borrows shamelessly from its betters and then pretends to be self-sustaining.

Although the entire film is beautifully framed and shot, especially the surreal sequences, precious little coheres into anything resembling a compelling narrative.

Soul Surfer is a true story that plays like bad fiction.

On the byways of any bustling metropolis, here is what the combination of bicycles + cars + pedestrians is certain to produce: (1) nasty accidents and (2) ferocious debates. More surprisingly, on the silver screen in Premium Rush, here is what the same combination fails to produce: a good action movie.

For a film meant to float on a gossamer veil of mystery, The Illusionist falls -- make that flops -- with quite the heavy thud. It's an intended piece of magic that plays like a ponderous slab of melodrama, sleight of hand gone ham-handed.

Jack Goes Boating barely stays afloat – it's a deep disappointment.

Bursting with potential that never gets realized.

Isn't unequivocally bad. Rather, this is what's known in the boxing world as an "opponent" -- shows up on the weekend just to fill out the card, to do battle with its betters, earn a little cash and be completely forgotten come Monday morning.

Doomed to be cool, but not very deep. Some of this movie is grossly amusing while some of it is just plain gross. [24 Nov 1995]

By happy coincidence, their names – Bitey, Loudy, Stinky, Lovey and Nimrod – pretty much double as a plot summary.

It's a slacker flick, it's a relationship pic, it's a road movie all under the same hood.

Winnie begins as hagiography and ends in hellish confusion.

In pairing the two icons, Righteous Kill is definitely an event. What it isn't is much of a movie. Such a waste.

A Mexican feature from writer/director Guillermo Del Toro, it's a modern vampire tale that occasionally rises to the level of competence but never inches any higher. [20 May 1994]

In every way but one, this is just another genre pic on another mundane outing.

Deserves - to be "watched" with steam on the windshield and passion in the air. When the monster in a monster flick packs all the fearsome wallop of an overripe avocado, one needs some diversion.[8 June 1982]

The whole project labours towards an importance it never earns. In Beautiful Boy, the themes are vast but the picture is small, and the ensuing emptiness is what the characters are meant to feel – not us.

The result is a minor picture with a major identity crisis -- it's sort of true and it's sort of bogus and it's ho-hum all the way through.

The Hoax is a fraud, and not a very good one at that. Stay with me here because we're about to spiral down the rabbit hole: The movie is a fictionalized account of writer Clifford Irving's fictionalized account of his own fictionalized account of wacky billionaire Howard Hughes.

Dogs of War takes its title from Julius Caesar but its cue from Julia Child. Based on Frederick Forsyth's novel, the film is meant to be an intimate study of soldiers of fortune. But it ends only as a shallow, pseudo-elliptical lesson in how to whip up a frothy coup when time is pressing and the guests are about to arrive. [17 Feb 1981]

Let's just say that, when the parody looks indistinguishable from the parodied, something's gone awry.

If you're a five-year-old, or the mental equivalent thereof, and love Saturday morning cartoons, the more violent the better, then Mouse Hunt may just be the movie for you.

Fur does what an Arbus photograph never would -- it leaves no room to imagine and removes any reason for doubt.

Out of Time is severely out of whack, and the problem isn't hard to locate: It's all that flab in the thriller. It's a suspense flick so pillowy soft that the star gets bumped from the centre of the frame and the comic relief sneaks in to swipe the picture.

As cinematic flops go, nothing falls quite as hard as a failed black comedy.

The stark direction, the brittle performances, the impoverished setting, the scatological dialogue, everything about the film screams out "Gritty social realism." Everything, that is, except the plot, which shouts "Eye-rolling melodrama."

The proverbial seems awfully pale here. Fans of Q.T. will find it patently derivative. Fans of Elmore will find it, well, El-less.

An exercise in competence guaranteed neither to offend the initiated nor to charm anyone else.

Falls into the category of heart-warming sports yarns, and, if television still made movies-of-the-week, it would enjoy a rightful home.

Watching this is a feature-length exercise in frustration - comedy that promises to be amusingly black stays uniformly grey; sentiment that looks to be credibly bittersweet winds up badly soured. We're constantly tantalized and perpetually disappointed, but don't despair - there's one terrific bonus...Toni Collette.

It can be accurately described as a loud soundtrack occasionally punctuated by the faint vestige of a plot. Or as a lush travelogue that sometimes gives way to sporadic bursts of chirping dialogue.

Clearly, the screenplay is looking for some black comedy here, but Foster's direction is too earnest to locate it.

Sorry, but this level of insight is readily available from daily news reports.

With your sharper minds, you'll probably figure it out. I hope so. Hope you'll like the movie too. But here's a bit of advice: Don't bet your allowance on it. Make Daddy pay.

It's always rather sad to watch gifted performers stranded in a tepid thriller. You can see them, as professional pretenders, trying to believe that they're creating a character, but the lie is transparent -- all they're really doing is advancing a retarded plot.

In the shock department, the ante has been upped, way up, and a mere kitchen knife through a shower curtain just doesn't cut it any more.

If this is meant to look fresh while still being sensitive, it doesn't and it isn't.

Seeking both conventional action and quirky atmosphere, it achieves a little of each and not enough of either. [15 Feb 1994]

Somewhere inside Hero, there's a good movie trying awfully hard to get out, and not making it. Not even close. [03 Oct 1992]

Remember the final page of Gatsby, a real American tragedy, when the green light beckons us into an ever-receding future? Now that was a mystery. This is, well, Pittsburgh.

Funnier than any movie called Hot Tub Time Machine has a right to be. And how funny is that? Not very, but a little, occasionally – just enough.

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]

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.

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.

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]

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

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.

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.

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 this were funny, The Heat would add up to your average buddy-cop comedy. Except that it’s not funny, at least not very and not often.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

The irony is worth noting: Back when it was really 1949, Hollywood made noir with teeth; this is nougat with pretensions.

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

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.

Really, Casa de mi Padre is a skit blown up to a feature flick, amusing for a while until its welcome wears out.