Susan Wloszczyna

Rascals is as painful as a grade-school play without your kid in it. The end-credit outtakes at least indicate Spheeris suffered through it as well. [05 Aug 1994, p.4D]

Like a lava lamp turned on high, Joe Versus the Volcano glows with originality. Go bask in it. [9 Mar 1990, p.4D]

The ending stinks.

Despite Murphy's campaigning, Gentleman deserves a veto. [04 Dec 1992]

Parents may be pleased, children will cheer. But it's too bad the movie turtles have had to sacrifice their snap, victims of a box-office shell game. [22 Mar 1991, p.4D]

Although a surprising number of plot machinations from the original film remain fully intact, usually accounting for anything that seems remotely clever, what is missing is the type of hold-your-breath tension provided by good thrillers.

Except for a brief episode in which singer Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland make like an FBI Rocky and Bullwinkle, this is a morbidly joyless affair. You'll feel as drained as one of Cooper's mugs of joe watching homecoming queen Laura drown in a whirlpool of sex and drugs. [31 Aug 1992]

But once the updated story - now about an unwed mom who sacrifices all for her child rather than a divorcee who married above her class - starts clinging to the original's plot machinations, Stella turns into one helluva maudlin mess. [2 Feb 1990, p.4D]

This boomer-coddling comic fantasy, in which a callous adult on the brink of 40 has a chance encounter with his pudgy, lisping 8-year-old self, is an iffier what-if.

At least Necessary Roughness strays from the usual game plan, but it ends up strictly Bush league. [27 Sept 1991, p.2D]

This is a noisy, sadistic and just plain dull rendering of a too-often-told tale about a mysterious drifter who rides into a lawless outpost and pits rival gangs against each other. The plot, based on Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo, isn't so much dusted off by writer/director Walter Hill (Wild Bill) as propped up. [20 Sep 1996]

If this all sounds rather dull, that is because it is.

Making matters worse is the number of clips from old scary movies that pop up, including quintessential Dracula turns by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. They only serve to mock Landis' pale efforts. One thing's for sure - Innocent Blood won't become immortal. [25 Sept 1992, p.5D]

But those looking for enlightenment on this boring road trip better bring along a flashlight. The sex change merely allows Erika Eleniak, who won more respect from her critters as Elly May in The Beverly Hillbillies than she does from the male animals here, to doff her duds as often as she tries to escape. Running tampon gags are never a good sign. [26 Apr 1994, p.8D]

Warm, squishy and manipulative, like being slobbered on by a mongrel pup that's begging for more Snausages.[03 Jun 1994]

This movie-within-a-movie action-comedy spoof is a too long, too loud tease as it toys with the Schwarzen-dude's well-toned cinematic image. [18 Jun 1993, p.1D]

Instead of the inspired Brooks of Young Frankenstein, we get the middling Brooks of Spaceballs, in which you can see nearly every joke hovering like the Goodyear blimp. [28 July 1993, p.8D]

The Dancer clearly needed a better task master behind the camera. There are too many scenes of Fuller physically and mentally suffering for her art as she questions if what she does actually qualifies as dance.

Needless to say, the shapely Aniston pulls it off without a hitch — even if she never actually appears without a stitch. If this gutsy performance leads to better opportunities—a remake of Demi Moore's ill-conceived "Striptease," perhaps — I might sleep better at night.

The kid is the most mature person on screen. Otherwise, it is gripe, gripe, gripe and snipe, snipe, snipe, all served family style with a bare minimum of relatability.

Save for a few references of being abandoned by his birth parents and adopted later, the source of Jobs's jerky behavior never is revealed.

This movie is a cookie. A slightly stale generic-brand cookie.

If the filmmakers were after a kind of Terms of Endearment for men, they didn't get it. Instead, revel in ''golden-agers'' Lemmon and Dukakis, and have a good cry. And shed an extra tear for a golden film opportunity lost. [27 Oct 1989, p.4D]

Schneider, with his cherub curls and scrawny physique, adopts a pussycat persona that engenders goodwill.

The Angry Birds Movie isn’t a total turkey. The animation itself is OK and I did laugh out loud once.

A cheap and easy amusement, one that's gone a little stale and never quite rises to the occasion.

An admirable attempt at presenting a difficult subject that suffers from an eventual pileup of melodramatic happenstances.

One should approach Hocus Pocus as if it were one of those households that plunk toothbrushes instead of Snickers into your goody bag. Skip it.