Roger Ebert

Teachers has an interesting central idea, about shell-shocked teachers trying to remember their early idealism, but the movie junks it up with so many sitcom compromises that we can never quite believe the serious scenes.

Because it speaks to a terror that lurks deep within our memories, Parents has the potential to be a great horror film. But it never knows quite what to do with its inspiration. Is it a satire, a black comedy, or just plain horror? The right note is never found, and so the movie's scenes coexist uneasily with one another.

Never quite attains takeoff velocity.

Never comes alive.

That the movie is fun is undeniable. That it is bad is inarguable.

Strange, how good feardotcom is, and how bad. The screenplay is a mess, and yet the visuals are so creative this is one of the rare bad films you might actually want to see.

The movie's problem is that no one seemed to have any fun making it, and it's hard to have much fun watching it. It's a depressing experience.

A movie with a lot of funny one-liners, but no place to go with them.

There's a point at which the plot crosses an invisible line, becoming so preposterous that it's no longer moving and is just plain weird.

Love is blind, and movies about that blindness can be maddening.

Class is a prep-school retread of "The Graduate" that knows some of its scenes are funny and some are serious, but never figures out quite how they should go together. The result is an uncomfortable, inconsistent movie that doesn't really pay off -- a movie in which everything points to two absolutely key scenes that are, inexplicably, the two most awkward scenes in the film.

Too cluttered and busy, but as a glimpse into the affluent culture of a country with economic extremes, it's intriguing. Occasionally it's funny and moving, too.

All of this is intriguing material, but the movie doesn't do much with it.

Proves to be unsatisfactory because it establishes a well-defined group of characters and shows them disrupted by the careless behavior of a tiresome young woman and two adults who allow themselves to be motivated in one way or another by her infectious libido.

What they came out with is the most complete collection of cop-movie clichés since John Wayne played a Chicago cop in “McQ”.

In the real world, Elle Woods would be chewed up faster than one of little Bruiser's Milk-Bones.

The screenplay creates a sense of foreboding and afterboding, but no actual boding.

There is no entry portal in The Rules of Attraction, and I spent most of the movie feeling depressed by the shallow, selfish, greedy characters. I wanted to be at another party.

It's a long, shapeless, undisciplined mess, and every once in awhile it generates a big laugh.

A terrific opening. But, alas, the moment The Final Conflict turns to dialogue and a plot, it loses its inspiration.

Malice is one of the busiest movies I've ever seen, a film jampacked with characters and incidents and blind alleys and red herrings. Offhand, this is the only movie I can recall in which an entire subplot about a serial killer is thrown in simply for atmosphere.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a murky, unfocused, violent and depressing version of the classic story, with little of the lightheartedness and romance we expect from Robin Hood.

They had a great idea here. It's too bad they didn't follow it through on a human level, instead of making it feel made up and artificial and twice-removed, from the everyday experience it pretends to be about.

As an idea, the film is fascinating, but as an experience it grows tedious; the concerts lack closeups, the sex lacks context, and Antarctica could use a few penguins.

That the new Casanova lacks such wit is fatal. Heath Ledger is a good actor but Hallstrom's film is busy and unfocused, giving us the view of Casanova's ceaseless activity but not the excitement. It's a sitcom when what is wanted is comic opera.

One of the nice things about the movie is the way it provides chills and thrills and still tones down the violence.

This sort of stuff is magnificently silly, and Lee, to give him credit, never tried to rise above it. If a movie like this were directed seriously, it would be a disaster.

The modern sequences lack realism or credibility. The ancient sequences play like the equivalent of a devout Bible story. The result is a slow-moving and pointless exercise by Bertolucci, whose “The Last Emperor” was a much superior telling of a similar story about a child who is chosen for great things.