Rick Groen

Because it's a well-crafted and superbly acted sweet little tearjerker, we're content too -- it's a mild pleasure to watch.

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.

Daughters of the Dust is hypnotic, flowing with the trance-like rhythms of a poem that is beautifully written yet deliberately arcane. It's the cinematic equivalent of the voices you hear in the fiction of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker, but without the connecting narrative thread that most novels possess and most movies imitate. The result is a difficult work, yet a haunting one. [29 May 1992]

You will die at the hands of Zed's unborn son. Shucks, those wicked witches sure had a way of taking the fun out of life. Luckily for scheming kings, sadly for blameless movie-goers, such party-pooping prophecies are now mainly confined to formulaic flicks like The Beastmaster. [23 Aug 1982]

Catch a Fire paints the period with a double-sided brush that gives yesterday its due and puts today on notice.

Just when you think it's going to rollick, this lazy movie rolls over and plays dead When Honeymoon's ends, it's not a moment too soon. [28 Aug 1992]

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]

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

This remarkable analysis of a decade when American society lost its moral compass is both brutally honest and lyrically compassionate.

Pitched Squarely to the teeny set, Can't Buy Me Love tacks a grade-school moral onto a high-school tale: be yourself, kiddies; don't follow the trendy crowd; popularity ain't what it's cracked up to be. Of course, it says all this while trying desperately to be the most popular flick since box met office. [14 Aug 1987]

When the plot isn't lagging, it displays holes sufficiently gaping to accommodate a whole squadron of Firefoxes. [19 June 1982]

Yes, from "Blonde" to "Bunny," it's abundantly evident that the two scribes have mastered, truly mastered, the serious art of self-plagiarism.

It's clear that Burn After Reading is a wannabe cult favourite -- some viewers may embrace it; many more will just want to burn after watching.

Happily, the climax races to our rescue... Beyond the grasp of most directors, this is tour de force stuff -- definitely meriting the price of admission and almost worth the three-year wait.

No one is likely to mistake Excess Baggage for a great movie, but it is an intriguing piece of pop sociology.

Director James Cameron always works on a mega- canvas, yet he's brought off something unique here.

Very well crafted and superbly acted. Whatever you may think of the idea, its execution is admirable.

Herbie without the herb has never been my cup of tea.

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.

All that's missing are the laughs. In their place, we get wall-to-wall predictability. [13 Aug 1983]

The result is a curious mix - a picture that simultaneously seems meanderingly loose, affording the cast plenty of performing space, and suffocatingly tight, choking off the audience from any interpretive engagement.

Some performances carry a picture, this one bench-presses it. Sean Penn's work here is so mesmerizing, so intense, so guaranteed to put him front and centre when Oscar reads out the nominees, as to almost obscure the multiple failings of the misguided movie around it.

Some books just aren't meant to be movies -- what once was confidently distinguished now seems merely average and a tiny bit desperate.

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

That level of acting-without-words demands the likes of a Bruno Ganz or a Klaus Maria Brandauer, not a Clooney. Even when flashing his bare derrière in a sex scene, he isn't revealing nearly enough -- his work is just skin deep.