Shawn Levy

This isn't the "Right Thing" in any sense.

I reckon that for everyone who's enthralled by the film there will be others who wish they'd heard about it rather than seen it.

fFat, dull drag.

It's possible to be dazzled by a movie and still not like it very much.

It more or less plays like a five-episode arc of the series, which is a strength and a weakness.

Banderas' direction is a bit of everything and a lot of not much.

Schumacher's depictions of street life are cartoonishly ludicrous and riddled with cliches -- a pair of garish hookers, for instance, can't be excused simply because one is played with engaging vigor by Paula Jai Parker.

The thrill, alas, is gone -- and Fellini seems to know it better than anyone. [11 Jun 1993, p.15]

The film is built as a series of (possibly tall) tales that don't add up to a plot, a theme or a purpose.

Acted with earnest commitment and scored and edited with jazzy, laconic grace, "Lights" tells us absolutely nothing we haven't heard before -- and often -- in sports films

While Stallone likely hopes to go out with a bang, this small, manipulative movie doesn't have any real punch to it.

A murky, turgid work that is no doubt exactly the film Malkovich wished to make but is so indirect and affected as to border on incoherent.

Here the homages/critiques of old craft and form are often laughably mangled, and nothing sexy, profound or illuminating results. For all its prettiness, it's the sort of picture that gives the arthouse a bad name.

You should come out of a film like Apres Vous with your heart as light and fluffy as a souffle. But this farce, credited to four chefs, er, writers, is as heavy and leaden as meatloaf.

For all its flaws, Hitch largely comes off as a light romp.

The Dardennes are talents, clearly. Watching Rosetta is like watching them flip you the bird.

Though it's handsomely made and peppered with seamlessly achieved visual glories, Narnia is ineptly acted, crudely staged and burdened with a score that only a masochist could love.

It isn't, finally, satisfying: It's too uneven, indulgent, fey.

Grim, sordid and, as it progresses, increasingly dunderheaded.

Phoenix makes an interesting case of Leonard's twitchiness and mooning, but neither Paltrow nor Shaw is particularly credible as a Brooklynite, and Rossellini and Moshonov seem like they've wandered in from another film altogether.

By and large it's formulaic and dull.

Lively, cheeky, dense and, ultimately, too flip, clever and torturously twisted to be fully engrossing.

The film's best sequences -- the troubles of the young woman -- are gems adrift in a sea of Jell-O.

McGregor is a real charmer, a young Malcolm McDowell with a Scottish lilt; Brain Tufano's photography manages to be both rich and stark at once; Hodge's script has some genuinely arch lines. [03 Mar 1995]

There's a lot of fascinating talk here and a genuine passion for ideas and words. But it's also a case where the messenger is so grating that we feel the perverse urge to kill the message that he carries just to spite him.

A dull, uninspiring film that combines pedestrian acting, lackluster special effects and deadly pace with a pseudo-religious theme.

There's no reason to actively dislike the film, but that's not enough, not at today's ticket prices. Just because you're not despicable, after all, doesn't mean you're the pick of the litter.

A draggy affair livened occasionally by bursts of color or raw emotion, but just as often convoluted and hackneyed. It's a case of a film taking on, admirably, more than it can chew.

It's a little depressing to see such a thrilling talent deployed in such an ordinary and sordid movie. Training Day isn't awful, but it's absolutely nothing special.

The best thing about the film is the acting of the guys.

The storytelling -- the script is co-written by Verhoeven's old collaborator Gerard Soeteman -- is messy, and the result never feels real or human or vital.

Begins with an eye on satire but dissolves quickly into grotesquerie -- and if the first tack was a bit narrow, the second is far too scattershot.

Despite a cast of solid actors and a director with one of the most exquisite visual sensibilities in the business, the film is too often flat when we want it to dazzle us.

An intermittently engaging and confused blend of biopic, chop-socky, dopey mysticism and, oddest of all, melodramatic weepie, is no ``JFK.''[7 May 1993, p.AE15]

Tepid, boilerplate production.

Mendes has extraordinary gifts, but he has leveled them at the Wheelers like a firing squad. Strangely, he evinced no particular moralizing agenda when making films about the mob or the military. But put ordinary people in his sights and he's venomous. It's unbecoming -- and it should be worked out in private, not in a movie theater.

A middling contender in this summer of gigantoid sequels.

Comes to be dominated by the acting, and this is an unfortunate fate.

It's ambitious, sharply observed and spectacularly well-acted like so much of Sayles' canon. But it's also overstuffed and underdeveloped.

Fair Game, a murky potboiler based on memoirs by both Plame and Wilson, makes a hash of these piquant ingredients.

Has its heart someplace worthy. But its head -- not so much.

At 118 minutes it's longer than "The Philadelphia Story" or "Annie Hall" or "When Harry Met Sally" or "500 Days of Summer" or, well, you get it. Working from a script by Dan Fogelman that wasn't overly bright or sharp to begin with, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa dawdle and stretch and repeat themselves, until what should have been light and brisk becomes leaden and overdone.

The film features some fine performances and explores an intriguing set of themes, but it fails to ever take life, causing its laudable message to fall on deadened ears. [12 Oct 1993, p.C1]

Capable but not transporting, never unraveling the mystery of its hero's genius or, worse, making us care enough to look deeper.

The film is nothing much to look at and has trouble swallowing its own clichs and implausibilities.

The Illusionist might trick some moviegoers into thinking it's clever, deft, old-fashioned fun. But I urge those folks to stay home with a real classic romantic thriller on DVD or cable to remember the difference. This film doesn't even manage to breathe old life into the forms it apes.

Isn't a bad movie so much as one that feels like an amateur version of material from more accomplished works -- a movie that not only isn't sure what it really is but doesn't seem terribly much to care.

One of those American independent films with two chief points to recommend it: the earnest good will of its creators and its determination to be unlike any studio film.

With so much potential, The Valet is disappointingly flat and wan, with few of the moments of cringe-and-laughter-inducing mortification that are Veber's stock in trade.

A movie that, like its title character, is meandering, unstructured and only dimly aware of what it’s doing.

Kung Fu 2 does almost NOTHING to advance the story, to deepen the characters, or to charm, amuse or entertain.

The script's contrivances and the director's lax handling aren't enough to hold you.

The art of Miranda July, the former Portlander and hyphenate extraordinaire, balances on the edge of the cunning and the precious, of depth and naivety, of the fetching and (sorry) the revolting.

Few films so thoroughly lose their way as The Edge. After developing an engrossing plot and mood, it goes frankly bonkers, and the intensity whistles out of it like air from a punctured tire. When it finally limps home -- at least 20 minutes too late -- you're left with a sour, treacly taste where once you had savored something almost exquisite. [26 Sep 1997, p.21]

The plot is tired, the energy sputtering, the jokes less manic. "Spy Kids" was a shot out of nowhere; Spy Kids 2 feels like a shot from someplace tiresomely familiar.

If you're one of those fussy filmgoers who demands that a movie engage somewhat higher body parts -- the heart, say, and the brain -- you'll find only intermittent comfort and joy in this high-concept, low-wattage film.

Absent the real sense of creepiness and highly honed film craft of De Palma, or the strong visual and emotional sensibility of Woo, M: I III feels like one of the more forgettable James Bond films -- saddled, moreover, with a star who's sliding into self-parody.

I Am Legend has one undeniably cool thing about it, namely the vision of Manhattan as a semi-feral wasteland.

In their hands [Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton or even Steven Spielberg], Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone might have made as terrific a movie as it is a book. When Columbus got the job, however, it was guaranteed only to be a commercial success.

It's exactly the film Jarmusch wanted to make, but it's also smug, excruciating, borderline pointless. You could call it a deliberate effort to invert the conventions of the thriller; you could also call it, more rightly, a self-deluded disaster.

A movie that tells -- or rather, circles -- the story of the band's formation and abortive career.

The liveliest thing here is the keen sense of regret you feel at seeing two TV icons reduced to supporting characters in a lame movie that trades on their good names.

It's the screenwriting equivalent of those fat substitutes used by snack food manufacturers: the finished product looks all right but the taste is off, and the aftereffects are embarrassing and uncomfortable.

A feature film has to be more than just an interesting theme; it needs something that constitutes drama -- conflict, journey, adventure, what have you. The Notorious Bettie Page is a perfect example of a film that has a subject but no story.

The bitterness of the film is a far cry from the peppy young Godard's embrace of life -- and a very far cry indeed from either praise or love.

It's certainly all Araki up there, and the film is handsome and swiftly paced. But it also feels terribly routine and even, strangely, for all the trangressiveness it strives for, retrograde.

There's no doubt that Tarsem's a visionary director. Now he needs to envision a worthwhile script for himself.

A nitwit script, full of pedestrian dialogue and building to a laughable climax, dooms the picture.

It's part action film, part buddy movie, part love story, part political tract and, in sum, much less: a meandering, preachy, condescending mess that only occasionally bursts into life and even then at such a tepid level that you can hardly call it living.

While the film has visual verve, its faux-Fellini finale only underscores how remote, repetitive, uninvolving and contrived the whole enterprise is.

Despite the stories' brief running times, they don't manage to generate much interest or make much sense.

Woo's camera is easily the star of the film -- poring over Van Damme's cheekbones and chest (and groovy new locks) in an effort to make an epic character of him, caressing shotgun barrels and split lips, expanding and contracting time like Silly Putty. [20 Aug 1993, p.AE17]

Washington makes it fun, which is about the best it could hope for.

Director Steven Shainberg makes something draggy out of something that wants to be light. It's got wit, but it's also earnest, and in proportion to those two traits it wins and loses you.

Even though it largely succeeds in putting a civil face on some unpalatable material, it lacks the heat and suppleness of the best Shakespeare on film.

Whereas "Liaisons" mixed cruelty, wit, sensuality and drama into a deliciously tart frappe, Cheri is pretty, tepid and dull.

Not much in the way of captivating magic, but all the expected notes are duly played. Hope springs eternal for the next film in the series, though: Columbus is handing the reins over to Alfonso Cuaron, an actual movie director.

Swell when it purrs, when the three top stars are in full form, but it spits and hisses and screeches too often to take full hold.

A sour, deflating and ultimately unlikable black comedy about how awful life can be.

Suffers by invoking better films about similar themes.

Dotted with real laughs and held together by some solid acting, but it's built of a fairly flaccid narrative and some really amateurish sequences.

The standout is Baldwin, utterly convincing as a gruff cuss whose life has been forever stained by the death of his wife.

For all its attempts at wrinkles and surprises and sleight-of-hand, Ocean's Thirteen is too direct and plain and pleased with itself to ever feel like a thriller.

Filled with skewed humor, inventive animation and earthy jokes.

Comedy means different things to different people, but I'm pretty sure that most everyone agrees that it's best when it's quick and funny. The Five-Year Engagement is neither.

Leaves you exhausted and even bored.

Watching it is like filling up on baklava: Later you may feel really guilty, but you don't exactly complain while it's going on.

An impressive work in many regards -- the acting, the photography, the pace -- but it would've been even more so had Egoyan gone with his gut and been less indulgent of his brain.

There's almost nothing to grab onto. It's like a gorgeous graphic novel with a protagonist and story that vanish utterly from the mind as soon as the last page is turned.

Almost nothing that's said or done here is convincing. And the energy is set at near-coma level.

For all the beauty it struggles to bring forth, Snow Falling on Cedars is painfully prosaic.

The single most impressive thing about the film, in fact, is the taste that this shotgun technique gives of the mass simultaneity of the race.

Fiercely acted but made with indifferent craft and no palpable feel for its subject matter, Trucker takes you on a ride from intrigue to indifference.

The result is a handsome but deeply fractured tale.

As in so many films directed by actors, there's a generosity shown to performance that results in many lifelike moments.

If you love the genre, you'll likely be engaged. But if not, there's not much point.

You find yourself wishing that Apatow had managed a script that was either really funny or about real people instead of this half-baked pseudo-memoir that's neither.

Starts with a flourish, staggers along for a bit and finally collapses -- even die-hard De Palma fans, will be left hungry.