William Arnold

But the movie's vital signs improve remarkably in the second half, and especially in the last act. The proceedings suddenly pick up some screwball charm, the writing improves (with several truly inspired one-liners tossed in here and there) and the secondary characters begin to click.

A mostly fascinating, often frustrating, boldly uncommercial Hollywood version of a boldly uncommercial art film. It's very atypical of the previous work of both director and star, and it's as personal a film, I suspect, as Cruise will ever make.

It works as a fascinating and often very funny character study/satire of a famous author, though it loses interest the harder it tries to be profound and falls apart completely toward the end.

There's much to admire in this ambitious indie: top-notch production values, a gallery of evocative period detail (with location work on Scotland's famed St. Andrews' course) and solid performances from a cast .

It never quite takes off.

It's just one more competent but routine, midlevel ($70 million) late-summer action movie filled with the usual explosions, shootouts and male bonding.

By the time the film plummets to its rock bottom, we find ourselves in a flag-waving no-brainer of the first order, and one of the most thoroughly confused morality tales in recent memory.

Thornton has made so many bad movies and become so notorious as a talk-show eccentric that it's easy to forget what a good film actor he can be.

A pathetic sports comedy that aspires to be a college-football version of "Major League" and doesn't even get close. [27 Sept 1991]

Legends of the Fall is one of those movies that is so sloppy and so poorly written and so clumsily directed that every dramatic scene seems to either insult your intelligence or come off as being unintentionally hilarious. [13 Jan 1995]

Progressively sabotaged by poor technical quality, terrible plotting, a glaring lack of directorial skill and finesse, scenes that have no credibility and/or motivation and an astounding sloppiness to its historical detail.

As directed and produced by Steve Miner, the film is gory (eyes gouged out, a tongue bitten out, children murdered), but it also features better than usual actors (including Richard E. Grant as a 17th-century warlock-hunter who also jumps into the future) and has such a giddy sense of humor that it's hard to ever get too indignant about its splatter violence. [12 Jan 1991]

There is action galore (the deaths, by my rough count, may run somewhere in the triple digits). It's very cartoonish and not upsettingly explicit. But it's all so predictable and pointless that it quickly becomes monotonous, lulling the viewer into numbness, apathy, and perhaps even a peaceful sleep. [20 Sep 1996]

The real problem here is that director Krueger has no flair as a writer or a director for inspired screwball comedy.

Exotic Ninth Gate breaks down into clichés.

The cast is engaging, the overall visual effects are tremendous and I found myself fairly swept away for most of the fast-moving, three-hour running time.

Ends badly, with a clumsy, nihilistic coda that leaves one uncertain how to feel about the story, confused as to what point has been made and not at all convinced that the new South Africa will be that much different from the old one.

This may sound like a satiric comedy, and its intriguing setup carries a faintly comedic tone, but the movie becomes more straight-faced as it moves along and ends up being a fairly serious examination on the nature of, and necessity for, faith.

It still celebrates the vigilante spirit and justice delivered with a biblical swiftness, but it has been cleansed of much of its gratuitous violence and more offensive red-neck sensibilities. Mercifully, it's also a full 40 minutes shorter than the original.

A kind of homage to that more simple and elegant time.

Director John McTiernan is normally a competent director but he's simply not at his best here. He shows little flair for comedy, his performances are one-dimensional, and his action sequences are predictable and sometimes amazingly sloppy. [18 Jun 1993, p.5]

Much of this movie is very funny, it has some genuinely endearing moments.

Numbingly predictable and repetitive non-stop action.

The film works up to a totally conventional ending: It's never much of a comedy or an exploration of the phone-sex phenomenon, and it often seems to be just an excuse for Madonna, John Turturro, Quentin Tarantino and other Lee pals to make cameo appearances and mug for the camera. [22 Mar 1996, p.24]

It's a complete by-the-numbers daddy-day-care movie that doesn't have a genuinely enchanting moment or shred of inspiration in its overlong running time.

Mary Reilly has the distinction of being the most pretentious, the most ponderous, the most utterly suspenseless. [23 Feb 1996]

The film is a dud in the tradition of such weak horror sequels as "Exorcist II" and "Dracula's Dog."

Unknown seems fairly stale and unoriginal, mainly because it's yet another movie with the short-term memory loss premise ("Memento," "Fifty First Dates," etc.), and it comes so late in the cycle that it feels like a dying gasp.

Absurdly over the top and not especially funny.

Directed with a Scorsese-ish flair by actor John Shea (who also plays a small part), the film is loaded with gritty atmosphere and touches of authenticity. [12 Jun 1998]

Despite Sheen's earnestness - and despite the movie's obvious good intentions - the script is confused and unfocused, and clumsily borrows elements of movies like From Here to Eternity and Bridge Over the River Kwai without any of those classics' higher meaning. [18 Jan 1991]

Despite its title, the movie could hardly be less erotic. Indeed, promiscuity has never looked more totally unappealing, and its final scenes of Wilmot's advanced venereal disease are enough to make you take a vow of celibacy. A great date movie, this is not.

As good as it is in many ways, the film is not as emotionally gripping as it should be, and comes off as a rather predictable liberal statement.

Though an uneven, often confused, mixed bag -- the movie gradually comes together to be a fairly hilarious inside-Hollywood farce.

The movie is so engrossing as an intellectual puzzle and such a solid thriller in every other department that it's probably actor-proof.

While Madison is earnest and inoffensive, it offers no surprises, few fascinating characters and a hackneyed script.

New director John Moore just doesn't have original director Richard Donner's filmmaking flair, so the same scenes done the same way on phony-looking Prague locations without the benefit of Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-winning score just seem terminally slow and flat.

Together, the two of them (Pitt, Roberts) are cute as a bug.

The movie is just this side of terrible. It misses all the charm and fun of the original. Allen's mugging is incorrigibly unfunny.

It has moments of effectiveness, some of the performances -- especially Whitaker and Robert Ri'chard -- are moving.

It's so irrelevant, unambitious and lazy it almost seems to be thumbing its nose at the daring filmmaker Woody once was.

It doesn't really come off, but it's an admirably ambitious, and mostly very engaging, coming-of-age adventure that apes the spirit of Joseph Conrad.

No movie that stars Sean Connery can be completely worthless but Medicine Man comes about as close to it as anything the actor has done in a long time - probably since Meteor in 1979. [07 Feb 1992]

Like Lurie's previous two films, it's also simplistic and somewhat muddled.

The bogus Seattle setting creates an additional problem for local moviegoers. Because we know Seattle doesn't have a subway, giant FBI building or newspapers called Telegraph or Tribune, we're jarred out of the story so regularly that it leaves us slightly punch-drunk.

Hocus Pocus also offers a slightly different kind of movie role for the Divine Miss M, which she carries off fearlessly. In fact, with her campy makeup and wildly extravagant gestures, she is probably closer here to her cabaret roots than she has been on film before - and her oldest, purest fans are sure to love her for it. [16 July 1993]

The story is so sure-fire that it surmounts these obstacles to be passable entertainment, getting frequent infusions of excitement from the performances of Charlie Sheen, who is likably ironic and deadpan as Aramis; Kiefer Sutherland, who is splendidly charismatic and appealing as the world-weary Athos; and Oliver Platt, who confidently steals the movie as the comic Porthos. [12 Nov 1993]

Like most Price movies, it's challenging, engaging and free of the usual thriller cliches.

There's no real wit or cleverness to the script.

More mediocre than magical.

Goes down like a cool glass of lemonade on a hot day.

The film is not very convincing as sociology, but it is mildly amusing as comedy, has an unpolished charm to its visuals and performances, and showcases so many rock songs on its soundtrack that it qualifies as a musical. [19 Apr 1991]

This new version has absolutely none of the distinctive tongue-in-cheek black humor that was the keynote of its model and the trademark of its original director, Paul Bartel.

It's well-acted by a likable cast and is well-intended, but it misses: It doesn't come off as the powerful socio-environmental statement it wants to be.

It struck me as the most exciting and original Hollywood thriller, occult or otherwise, since "The Sixth Sense."

The cast tries hard and a sprinkling of laughs results, but the project is defeated by a concept that is not very novel, a script that is not especially witty, direction that is neither sharp nor insightful and one-note characters that are simply not very interesting.

Unlike "Crying Game" (which, despite the gender confusion, definitely works as a love story for a general audience), the only emotion this movie evokes for its star-crossed lovers is an unpleasant sense of incredulity. [08 Oct 1993]

The movie is all action. But there's no pacing, no suspense and no vulnerability for the protagonist so it all soon gets numbingly tiresome.

One of the year's few sci-fi films that actually takes itself seriously, and a movie that goes a long way on the strength of its unique premise, steady performances and impressive visual style.

For the most part, it's imaginatively staged and consistently entertaining.

It's routine, TV sitcom fodder, but the supporting cast is better than average.

Its overall effect is distinctly underwhelming.

Though it's ostensibly a thriller, Trade constantly works against the conventions of its genre in a rather audacious way -- finding, for instance, surprising moments of humanity in even the most monstrous of its villains.

A mildly amusing but forgettable and way-too-scatological black farce.

It's a violent, R-rated action piece, but well directed, rather lavishly produced, filled with imaginative stunts, and it doesn't have a dull moment in it. [17 May 1991]

Grant's timing is flawless, his delivery is perfection, and he once again demonstrates himself to be the movies' unrivaled master of sophisticated verbal comedy.

Definitely still beating a dead dinosaur here, but the film is leaner, more exciting and superior in every way to the last outing.

A straightforward, no-nonsense, agreeably old-fashioned historical action movie.

Finally becomes a somber, sentimental and rather profound romantic fantasy that is more true to the spirit of the Golden Age of science-fiction writing than possibly any other movie of the '90s.

The affair of the necklace itself is so complex and many-sided that it would take a Sidney Lumet to do justice to it on film.

The film's creepier moments are pathetically weak, and its thematic update fails to attain the minimal credibility that even a wild farce needs to sustain itself.

It's Shakespearean in its political machinations and closer to "Saving Private Ryan" and "Starship Troopers" than to "Dracula" or "The Howling."

The movie undeniably comes alive and brings down the house every time it goes into one of its many outlandish, Mad Magazine-style spoofs of television commercials. [11 Apr 1990]

It's a superior film in every way to its predecessor "Kiss the Girls."

As a thriller, Next goes a certain distance on Cage's sad-sack charm and sense of humor, but it does nothing with its intriguing premise, and it's mostly just one more tedious and progressively dumb collection of Hollywood action clichés.

Not only does it steadfastly refuse to condescend to its young viewers (it may actually be too scary for very young children), Carlei carries us along with his strong story sense, and pulls an unusually satisfying plot twist in his final act that elevates the movie, and cleverly turns it into an unexpected moral lesson. [02 Jun 1995]

The film's deliberate pace, its constantly confusing structure, its thematic vagueness and its clumsy and often embarrassingly amateurish Garden of Eden sequences combine to make The Loss of Sexual Innocence at best, a tough sit; at worst, a self-consciously arty parable of a self-indulgent filmmaker. [30 Jun 1999]

It's very slick and small children will enjoy it, but it has little of its model's special magic.

The results are moderately entertaining, but the humor is broad and shallow; the film has none of the irony, bite or wit of its predecessor; and the script (by Glenn Gers) seems so calculated to appeal to every conceivable female demographic that it always feels contrived.

Producer Barker (who is only credited with the story idea for the original), director Bill Condon (filling in for the original's Bernard Rose) and his writers have crammed this movie so full of killings and razzle-dazzle MTV imagery that it has very little of what made the first Candyman so effective: genuine suspense. [17 Mar 1995]

It's mostly forced and predictable, too much of the physical comedy falls very flat.

Rivets our interest for its entire lengthy running time. And it does this without any of the usual war movie clichés, false heroics, barracks-humor nonsense or grandstanding absurdities.

Certainly, it's mediocre, but no more so than half the comedies that are wildly promoted by their studios these days.

As a goofy little fantasy, however, this film has loads of charm.

Many regular moviegoers will be appalled by its gleeful crudity and saddened by the spectacle of three icon stars mugging through a farce that's not that many notches above "Jackass: The Movie."

The casting is so strong and the overall filmmaking flair of the movie is so captivating that it basically works.

Falls disastrously flat.

The cumulative effect of the movie is repulsive and depressing.

Loaded down with credibility problems.

This emoting doesn't mix well with the comedy and action, of course, and the best that can be said of the film is that it's marginally entertaining, and (for Murphy) reasonably inoffensive. But he's competent enough to make us suspect he might be surprisingly good if he ever did get a real Denzel Washington part. [17 Jan 1997]

Williams' self-conscious and rather bland performance never comes close to bringing his character to life.

Diaz is quite believable in the part, and gets solid support from Brewster, who is even more appealing as the adoring, wounded and somewhat vacuous younger sister.

Flat-out one of the more exciting and original gut-busters that Hollywood has produced in many a month. It's virtually all action, but the action is never mindless and it is full of marvelous surprises every step of the way.

There are a handful of funny moments, and the top end of the cast comes off rather well. Duchovny has some of that same easygoing likability that made Glenn Ford one of the biggest stars of the '50s.

The best thing about The Power of One is that it works as a history lesson. Avildsen and his writer, Robert Mark Kamen, have managed to simplify and sort out the players and their points of view in a way no other film about South Africa has done. It makes painfully clear just how deep the problems run, and how their solution will invariably require an almost evolutionary change in everyone. [27 March 1992]

Every swing of its plot is preposterous, it stumbles to a trick climax that any regular moviegoer will figure out in the first 10 minutes, and the ending is so absurdly unmotivated that it plays like a slap in the face.

Piñero never comes close to convincing us that this guy is worth a movie at all.

The biggest failing of the film is that it's the lamest possible excuse for a whodunit. [17 Apr 1998]

It's a parade of insanity, murder, suicide, arson and crimes of passion; delivered in a style as sardonic and tongue-in-cheek as a Vincent Price monologue; complemented by deadpan narration that keeps injecting inappropriate bits of civic boosterism.

The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.

The film is stylish, the compromising elements that usually junk up a Hollywood "date movie" are nowhere to be seen, the ensemble of supporting actors is strong and, despite a certain woodenness, Hartnett is appealing and mostly very believable.

It's done with an agreeable confidence and flair, the actors all fit comfortably in their roles and the effects are fun.

It's boldly acted, absorbing and satisfying as a history lesson and chock-full of extravagantly brutal battle sequences.

Too dumb and improbable to even go into.

An exceedingly dull retro-weepie.

Another gutsy, big-budget movie that dares to say something new and optimistic about our messed-up times. And it almost, but not quite, brings it off.

It's a strange and strangely unaffecting little drama -- but played very flat, with no particular emotional impact sought or achieved.

For all its improbable characters, wretched dialogue and stock situations, the movie has an earnest dumbness that sneaks up on you to be surprisingly entertaining.

The movie's problem is that it's a cartoon, offering no emotional involvement with its characters and no dramatic imperative.

Surprise! The remake is not a heresy. It's a decent enough stab at being what the old movie was to its time, following the same basic plot, full of respectful references to its model, updated with a gallery of fairly imaginative special effects.

The big downside of the film is that it always feels slightly contrived.

Visually impressive but exceedingly unpleasant little nail-biter.

Cult-favorite director Victor Salva ("Jeepers Creepers" I & II) is a competent visual storyteller and the film believes in itself so strongly (and with such a straight face) that it's hard not to halfway enjoy it.

But the movie is mostly just bad, and probably the nadir of Pakula's otherwise distinguished career. As played by Kline and Mastrantonio, victim and wife here are just too dumb to be even remotely sympathetic; and the script is so predictable and yet so utterly preposterous every step of the way that it insults the intelligence of even the most undiscerning moviegoer. [16 Oct 1992]

First-time director Fisher Stevens has a flair for dialogue comedy, the film operates nicely off the element of surprise, and the large cast is solid -- especially Marisa Tomei, who in an extended cameo as a merry dominatrix rarely has been more convincing.

A slow-moving, unashamedly weepy, middle-age love story of the kind big-studio Hollywood doesn't often make anymore.

The movie offers several moments in which Williams comes alive, but they're few and far between.

It is a foul-mouthed British underworld comedy so they may be hoping it will attract the hip audience of films like "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

It's a by-the-numbers action affair, and one that is considerably more mean-spirited and humorless than the norm. [4 Aug 1995, p.29]

It's a formula job all the way, filled with pratfalls, flying food, much male incompetence in the face of child-rearing realities, and a cast of violence-prone children on sugar highs who somehow turn into angels by the film's last sappy moments.

The whole enterprise is a colossal waste of everyone's time.

It's an expensive star vehicle that also happens to be a teary, unabashedly sappy, romantic comedy with every element as purely calculated to appeal to a heterosexual woman's romantic fantasies as an episode of "All My Children."

The movie is a misfire.

It is shockingly devoid of any shred of originality and imagination. [10 Dec 1993]

Efforts to expand the envelope of grotesquery make the film repulsive and suspenseless, and it sorely misses original director Tobe Hooper's grisly, wily sense of humor.

By the time we get to the unsurprising surprise ending, what seemed innovative and challenging in Taking Lives has lost its juice and reverted to formula form, and we leave the theater with that same old let-down feeling of having endured a ritual one more time.

The holiday movie season's only epic fantasy adventure, certainly gets no points for originality. It's such a clone of "The Lord of the Rings," it probably could lose a plagiarism suit. There's also a heavy dash of "Harry Potter." All bases are covered.

Universal Pictures has a lot of gall to pick up a movie as thoroughly awful as Empire and -- with a straight face and a $20 million or so ad campaign -- thrust it on the holiday movie market as if it were a significant piece of filmmaking.

Mystery Men must have seemed magically goofy on storyboards, but has somehow turned into unappealing mush by the time it made it to the screen.

Not as funny as the original, not nearly as funny.

It's really Harris' movie, and he brings to it just the right blend of engaging affability, gruff strength of character and transcendent nobility of spirit to make it a genuinely enriching experience.

The script is tight and well-constructed, director Ernest Dickerson has a feel for film-noir aesthetics, DMX exudes a certain brutish charisma and the movie is as morbidly compelling as a good train wreck.

Murphy is remarkably convincing -- even endearing -- as each of the characters.

Within the limitations of the script, both stars shine. Moore displays a wonderful flair for self-deprecating farce, and Brosnan is cumulatively endearing as her unflappable nemesis.

A slick and entertaining package.

Tells a light-hearted fictional story and creates a maze of imaginative animation and special effects to illustrate how the heavier thoughts of the science apply to the everyday world.

In the end, this could be the year's most sharply defined love-it-or-hate-it movie.

Unlike original director Rob Cohen, Singleton has no gift for giddy action and his movie is a crashing bore.

So full of limp slapstick silliness and stock characters that it's hard to stay awake through it.

Somehow the elements do not add up to by anything especially memorable.

DeVito definitely has a gift for absurd black humor that kicks in here and there, but Adam Resnick's script is slavishly mean-spirited.

The movie is just grindingly by-the-numbers: an uninspired brew of all the clichés of the kidnap-thriller genre, liberally seasoned with brutality, stirred at adrenaline-rush speed by a director with a heavy hand and very little imagination.

Martin, who hasn't really clicked in a movie in years, hits the target this time with an Inspector Clouseau who is even more relentlessly annoying (and strangely endearing) than Sellers managed to be in his last several outings.

The humor is very broad, the occasional attempts at suspense are uniformly unsuccessful, and the script is a by-the-numbers collection of sci-fi movie cliches, right down to the - groan - lonely child who adopts a lovable and misunderstood alien. [27 Apr 1990]

Cage is more endearing than usual in his usual philosophical slob routine and Jackson is likeably long-suffering as the Spike Lee of the Theater. They click as a cinematic odd couple. [05 Mar 1993]

A series of Grand Guignol skits played for mean-spirited laughs.

Dempsey also needs some fashion advice. As always, he sports his trademark five o'clock shadow in every scene (which in itself is excessive). But with Dempsey at age 42, it's beginning to make his face look more sinister than sexy, less Dr. McDreamy, more Richard Nixon.

He's (Affleck) vaguely likable, but he's outshone by his co-stars and never particularly believable in his role.

Doesn't have any of the creepy suspense that graced the first "Friday" movies, and very little of the Daliesque dream imagery of the early "Nightmares." It's just a slam-bang succession of gross-out mutilations, played for giggles.

Refreshingly old-fashioned.

Staggeringly awful.

Has to be one of the most absurd of all big-budget action movies, and that's saying something. It's just a blink away from over-the-top self-parody, and I'm pretty sure it's not trying to be.

By most of the ways movies are usually judged, pretty much of a mess. The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along.

The film was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Joel Schumacher, and reflects the worst of their shallow styles: wildly overproduced, inadequately motivated every step of the way and demographically targeted to please every one (and no one).

The finished film, while competently acted and staged, has missed the high mark Spacey set for it. It's self-important, tedious and ultimately pointless, with absolutely none of the sardonic wit that remains the most memorable feature of "American Beauty."

The new production is handsome and offers a few riveting moments, but it's basically a botched job that misses all the impact of both the original movie and the 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren that inspired it.

Feels forced every step of the way. Ultimately it's the kind of under-inspired, overblown enterprise that gives Hollywood sequels a bad name.

Most of the publicity for Cold Creek Manor seems to imply that it's an occult thriller, specifically a Stephen King-ish haunted house movie. But no. This is a severe case of mistaken identity: In fact, there's not a supernatural bone in the movie's body.

When, in its eventful final act, Merhige finally reveals what this thing is REALLY all about, it comes not with any blissful storytelling satisfaction but a grinding sense that this strange movie is a structural mess.

This "Moreau" is also a pretty creepy affair - at least through its first two acts. Director John Frankenheimer, who is responsible for some of the most chilling thrillers in American film history ("The Manchurian Candidate," "Seconds") certainly knows a thing or two about building a menacing, suspenseful situation. [23 Aug 1996]

This one is a kiddie show all the way, with characters as broad and one-dimensional as a billboard, a vision of good and evil as simple as a bumper sticker and a tiresome chimpanzee mugging through every other scene like something from a bad Tarzan movie.

A movie that plays better if you know nothing about it going in.

It's often surprisingly clever, dripping with respect for its model, and done with considerable wit and style.

Unashamedly positive look at the rise of the '60s counterculture.

It's an abysmal movie.

The futuristic thriller is overly familiar and never especially gripping -- and too somber and cerebral for the young action crowd -- but it looks terrific and is in no way an embarrassment.

The script (by Cheryl Edwards, who wrote "Save the Last Dance") is shallow and dumb, the conflict (success goes to Jackie's head) is especially unconvincing, and director Charles S. Dutton shamelessly allows his own small part (as Jackie's mentor) to hog the camera.

There's a huge subplot that makes absolutely no sense at all and, in the end, the only thing the movie has going for it is Diesel's Neanderthal charm.

Director Jonathan Frakes keeps the tone just this side of tongue-in-cheek.

It comes off as tedious, pretentious, self-indulgent, talky and so garbled it might have been improvised by the actors.

Ultimately, it's a surprisingly empty experience.

Overly familiar, poorly cast and often annoyingly crude New York comedy that never finds its groove.

Imparts its fair share of laughs but bogs down after a solid start and never makes anything special out of its premise.

In Arcand's skilled hands, this sassy assembly comes together to be a comedy, a satire and a character study that's somehow not a bit condescending.

For genre fans, the horde-of-locust sequence may alone be worth the price of admission.

It's never hugely engaging and it's instantly forgettable, but it has a certain goofy charm.

Not surprisingly, the best thing on the screen is Mirren.

Makes a serviceable summer shoot-'em-up, but it's surprisingly trashy and rather stupid, and its efforts toward being a gripping military drama in the Tom Clancy tradition are fairly pathetic.

The best thing -- maybe the only good thing -- about the expensive sci-fi movie, Jumper, is its high-concept premise, which gives its hero the power of teleporting himself anywhere on the globe in the blink of an eye: from the Coliseum of Rome to the North Pole.

T. M. Griffin's script is imaginative and clever.

The film's technological selling point -- having a computer-animated Scooby in a mostly live-action world -- is strangely unimpressive. In fact, it's virtually unnoticeable: a testament perhaps to the audience's increasing knowledge that in today's CG-driven Hollywood, all movies are cartoons.

A rather dull movie.

This retread has been bloated far beyond its B-movie origins, beefed up with more characters and an all-star cast, stripped of any real suspense and loaded down with music cuts and one-liners aimed at pleasing a crowd of rowdy male teenagers.

A monstrous disappointment.

A redundancy, and a bore. The characters are harrowingly unsympathetic, the action sequences are by-the-numbers, and Carpenter's usual saving grace -- his sense of humor -- is nowhere in evidence.

An uneasy mix that's too long, too confusing and too undramatically paced to be consistently gripping, and so blatantly panders to teenagers.

If, like me, you haven't read this book, the movie makes little sense, and has zero inspirational kick. It's just a depressing parable about a fellow who sinks lower and lower in life until he figures out a nebulous new way to sell God to the masses.

The movie's one saving grace is Olyphant ("Live Free and Die Hard," HBO's "Deadwood"), whose sociopathic elegance is gradually winning, and whose dry, monotonic, Eastwood-like delivery of one-liners is frequently, if perhaps unintentionally, very funny.

Too much of the humor falls flat. Thomas' numerous chase sequences through the streets, over the rooftops and through the airways of Budapest seem numbingly repetitive, and the script's reliance on castration gags betrays its overall lack of imagination.

Has a good cast, a nicely sustained mood of paranoia and several genuinely creepy moments, but ultimately ends up being one more highly formulaic teen screamer.

Here and there an inspired shot makes the film come alive, and at least three of its sequences had me positioned well on the edge of my seat.

Sadly, it's a disappointment. Nicole Kidman could hardly be more enchanting in the lead, but the script is one of writer-director Nora Ephron's weakest.

The writing here is truly dismal.

An unapologetic B-movie.

A fairly hypocritical exercise -- and one that's so flamboyant and overbearing that it comes perilously close to being a classic awful.

Director de Souza tries for a distinctive blend of exotic locations (Queensland, Thailand), big-budget explosion effects and a hallucinogenic style, but the mix ultimately turns out to be a recipe for tedium - and, though he tries, he can never quite give the movie the humor and flair that might have made it at least campy fun. [24 Dec 1994]

Before it runs completely out of creative steam in a disappointing final act, Celtic Pride flirts with being a surprisingly effective comedy about the phenomenon of sports obsession. [19 Apr 1996]

A credible action spectacular.

It’s a comedy, a romantic star vehicle, a thriller, a horror movie and a quasi-environmental parable that's calculated to appeal to all demographic groups. It's not enough of any one of these things to be particularly engaging.

Insipid, overcooked and dull.

It's an original and rather clever premise, but first-time director Chris Koch doesn't do anything with it.

A poorly written collection of comic-book movie cliches that offers nothing new to the genre, generates very little in the way of action thrills and plays like a self-important, humorless rip-off of "Kill Bill."

A movie in which almost nothing works.

Since the expensive new movie version of the popular video game, Tomb Raider, is very true to its origins, it's a colossal bore.

This week's excruciatingly dismal dating comedy. [8 March 1986]

As a director, Duchovny is in big trouble every frame of the way. His characters ring false, his scenes seem improperly motivated in a glaring way, and his distasteful obsession with imagery of unflushed cigarette butts bobbing in a toilet is beyond inexplicable.

Romano just doesn't have the stuff to bring off a role that requires a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks. He's supposed to be overshadowed by his nemesis, of course, but Hackman chews him up and spits him out so effectively that the movie is glaringly lopsided.

Neither (Gooding nor Ulrich) has the distincitve spark of an action hero, and their Butch and Sundance repartee falls so consistently flat that you end up feeling a little embarrassed for them.

Surprisingly, "North" fails most miserably on the level of children's parable. It has no solid emotional core to which an audience can relate: It doesn't touch the heart or come close to communicating a moral. It's just silly and trite and a colossal waste of time. [22 Jul 1994]

As far as these things go, the film's violence is not outrageously excessive.

A first-class snoozer.

Has a certain ghoulish fascination, and generates a fair amount of B-movie excitement.

If you find her (Ryan) distinctive persona to be too irritatingly cute to bear, this mannered movie is likely to play like fingernails on a blackboard .

Surreal, vaguely amusing, European-made drama.

As weak a star vehicle as Hollywood has cranked out this millennium.

An action buddy comedy is such an offbeat and inspired notion that it's impossible not to think of it without smiling.

The bright spot is Seann William Scott ("Dude, Where's My Car?") as Bo Duke. His good-naturedly maniacal manner and early Dennis Quaid killer smile are endearing, to the point where he occasionally threatens to elevate the movie into something special.

But a movie is only as good as its script, and this one is labored, predictable, sexually unimaginative (despite its salacious poster, and Eszterhas' reputation), surprisingly abrupt (only 90 minutes) and strangely inconclusive. [13 Oct 1995]

Far from a great movie, it nonetheless does its job as a family adventure and saga of a woman's personal growth.

Carl Reiner's Fatal Instinct is about as awful a movie parody as you'd ever want to see, but the guy certainly deserves some points for persistence. [29 Oct 1993]

It's hard to imagine how anyone could sit through this thing except squirming critics and violence addicts in need of a particularly gruesome fix.

Good performances are mostly wasted. Phoef Sutton's adaptation of the Abrahams' novel is poor, it works to an absurdly unlikely and dramatically dishonest must-hit-a-home-run conclusion, and - though it tries here and there - it has absolutely nothing new to say on the subject of fan obsession. [16 Aug 1996. p.30]

Rock, who seems to have studied every nuance of Beatty's Oscar-nominated comic performance -- is surprisingly appealing in what is often a straight role.

In this movie, he (Shelton) falls so hard he becomes, for the first time in his career, genuinely offensive.

Its heart is in the right place, and it doesn't flinch an iota from its duty of rubbing our faces in the horror of the Third World over the past two decades.

When the film suddenly turns into "Rocky" -- as all boxing films of the past two decades invariably do -- it invalidates its theme.

This is still Reiner's worst movie since 1994's "North." Wilson is lackluster, the film's depiction of the collaborative process is (unlike "Adaptation") tortuously false, and it's so disrespectful to the realities of writing and publishing that it has no satiric bite.

So witless, sit-com shallow and bad in every way that it's just not worthy of much discussion.

It's getting hard not to think of De Niro as anything but a dead-pan comedian.

This harmless but mediocre enterprise was doomed to failure from the start. Hollywood magic can do a lot, but it can't raise the dead.

Resnick's script never engages, the stars can't find the keys to their broadly played characters, and Ephron's direction is harrowingly out of sync.

Cliched, mostly routine and never especially satisfying.

Some of it works, most of it doesn't. But the real problem of the movie is that it's so utterly lacking in freshness and originality. This is exactly the kind of formulaic indie gay comedy that was so overdone in the '80s and '90s that it became a film festival cliché.

It is not just that this action-comedy is a totally stupid, by-the-numbers collection of every action movie cliche ever coined. It is that the thing is so upsettingly mean-spirited and incorrigibly ugly, a movie that absolutely revels in sadism and constantly asks us to laugh at the most sordid and explicit acts of violence. [17 Mar 1990]

Stiller and Black have the chemistry of fingernails-on-blackboard and the movie is disastrously unfunny.

It's incorrigibly unfunny.

Avoid the hype, just go enjoy the movie

Manages to squeeze by on Angelina Jolie's surprising flair for self-deprecating comedy.

The film's first-time director, the TV-commercial-trained Marcel Langenegger, is out to emulate Hitchcock with dashes of "Vertigo," "Strangers on a Train" and more. But his homage is uninspired and disconnected, and his film is a bore.

An innocuous waste-of-time.

It's only a notch above the routine, and it obeys all the conventions of its tired formula, but it also tones the anarchy with a serious edge and it works a surprisingly effective vein of race-relations satire.

The sad truth is that it's dreadful, despite a top cast and strong production values. [02 Dec 1994]

Anyone in the market for an overblown and totally mindless adventure-comedy will certainly get his money's worth.

The movie depends on one of those big surprise endings for its effectiveness, but the script gives itself away in the first act.

One more bloated effects-o-rama lumbering through a formula plot (super-villain out to rule the world) without much zest, imagination or awareness of its own absurdity.

Lacks the driving unity that gave "Gettysburg" its focus, dramatic arc, climax and catharsis.

A not-bad ghost story that marks a comeback of sorts for its star, Michael Keaton, who hasn't top-billed a movie for almost a decade.

It's a lifeless little caper piece that never develops the magic and intellectual fascination it needs to bond with an audience.

This ill-fitting Tuxedo is strictly off-the-rack.

In no way is this a serious movie. Still, it's hard to resist.

First-time director Steve Beck hurls a dozen ghosts and probably a million dollars' worth of prosthetic makeup at us for a full 90 minutes, but it's old hat and not a bit scary.

Plays like a series of well-done but disconnected acting-class sketches, filled with a huge cast of first-rate actors whose careers have all gone into decline.

This is a much dumber movie than "The Lake House." In fact, the script is an ungainly mess and ultimately a shaggy-dog story.

The movie has a suspenseful moment or two, and it's never hard to watch, but it's ultimately one more totally forgettable Hollywood thriller.

A resounding dud.

It's a tedious experience in almost every way: The acting is numbingly one-note, the CGI work is unconvincing and often downright shoddy, and the action is poorly staged and framed so close you can never tell for sure who is lopping off whose head.

The script is fatally stupid, most of the gags fall flat, the secondary characters add little, Hudson fails to make anything interesting out of the exasperated heroine, and the endless references to McConaughey's sexual prowess finally become revolting.

There's not an authentically scary moment in it.

Adults will quickly tire of the dragon antics; kids will be bored by all the moralizing and faux metaphysics. [31 May 1996]

The script starts repeating its best gags about halfway through, and the direction gets ever broader as it goes along until the film finally loses all effectiveness as satire.

It is so contrived and utterly stupid in every way that it surely must be the nadir of the genre.

Even though the supporting cast is likable and the film hits all the beats of its formula, it's weak, as if everyone has been to the well one too many times.

Anyone in the market for a bittersweet romantic comedy could do worse.

The unlikely marriage of Murphy and Craven is indeed strange, and it results in what often seems to be two diametrically opposed movies in one. Still, it's not quite as bad an idea as it sounds, and the movie is passably entertaining. [27 Oct 1995, p.30]

Marks a surprising maturity, restraint and confidence to Carrey's acting. Even more than "The Truman Show," he plays it perfectly straight here, and his natural charisma carries the movie with just the right dose of Jimmy Stewart charm.

A rather likable and very sweet-spirited story.

Has the distinction of being the very worst of all the many film versions of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel, "The Three Musketeers." Nothing else in Musketeer movie history comes even remotely close to its staggering wretchedness.

It's essentially a one-joke situation, but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and first-time director Spike Jonze definitely make the most of it.

The movie is a resounding dud: immaculately composed and shot (very much in the Kaufman tradition), but riddled with crime-movie cliches, wincingly obvious in its plot twists and rather badly acted.

It's hard to imagine how the movie year could possibly produce a more annoyingly stupid movie. It's so witless, broadly played and insulting to anyone's intelligence that it's almost as offensive, in its own way, as "Jackass: The Movie."

In a better movie, this grand-dame performance might have been fun, but it's surrounded here by an impossibly dull and unsatisfying whodunit plot, unintentionally funny dialogue and such absurdities as having Catherine stay up late one night and whip out an entire novel.

The cruel simplicity of the atrocity is made needlessly chaotic by artless camerawork that swishes rapidly back and forth across the action, to the accompaniment of a syrupy soundtrack.

In the acting contest that ensues, each star comes off reasonably well, though, surprisingly, Lohan (who had well-publicized emotional problems on the set) wins out over Huffman's comic drunk and Fonda's leathery evocation of her father, Henry, in "On Golden Pond."

Terrible in a terrible way: It's pretentious, incomprehensible and just numbingly dull.

A pretty dreadful affair -- ludicrous as history and a veritable gallery of visual cliches.

Has good intentions and the element of surprise -- it's never quite clear where it's going at any given point.

Rarely has paper-casting worked as dismally as it does for Jason Lee and Tom Green.

In Costner's best moments, he makes us absolutely believe this character and feel his pain.

The script and direction by Irish filmmaker Mary McGuckian is just deadly.

His characters and his situations all ring false, and his movie just seems painful and pointless. [12 Jan 1996]

Definitely deserves points for trying to be something thought-provoking and different, but it doesn't really stand up to analysis and it comes off as a pretentious mess.

Works best of all as a vehicle for Richard Gere, who has simply never looked better or held the screen more securely.

Though he tries hard for bravado, hero Edward Burns is terminally wooden.

An excruciating rehash that has virtually none of the wit and charm of the original.

The movie around Stallone is fairly dreadful, so overly stylized and poorly written that it's always a struggle to stay oriented.

Mr. Deeds, is -- perhaps predictably -- pretty much of a disaster. It's a bit like someone scrawling a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

To its credit, the film has an engagingly bleak and minimalist look, and a brisk pace. But the chills are few. Every step seems contrived, predictable or unintentionally funny.

It is relatively suspenseless and often distastefully crude.

Outrageously confident and wearing a kilt through the mayhem, Jackson proves once again that he has few equals in bringing off a broad, over-the-top lead.

It's lively but fails to disguise the fact that his (Charbanic) script is a dud and his career in videos has taught him little about the art of narrative storytelling.

Above all, Kranks lacks that basic kernel of credibility that even a goofy farce needs to work.

So violent and junky it seems to have been designed as evidence for the growing congressional movement to censor Hollywood.

Where "The Cat" book was anarchistic but ultimately sweet-spirited, this movie is ugly, dumb and colossally mean-spirited.