There're some low New York laughs in Swingers and some nice clothes if you like bad taste, but on the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. At least they know how to make a sandwich in that town!

All honesty, rebellion and suffering, but no depth.

The overarching joke, of course, is that most movies are so lousy they might as well have been made by blind men anyway. Hollywood Ending is only mediocre, but you may leave wondering, what's Allen's excuse?

Godsend is two-thirds of a good movie, with a final third that's just downright awful. So much wasted potential only makes the whole thing that much more painful.

It's mindless, which is rarely true of French cinema, dull, which is rarely true of Hong Kong films, and portentous, which shouldn't be true of any film about a man-eating dog.

Chasers"is a road picture with a few genuinely funny comic scenes and a number of good performances. [30 Apr 1994]

Unabashedly sentimental and just as unabashedly cliched.

For a movie with such a vibrant real-life base, An American Rhapsody is surprisingly low-impact.

The movie has considerable intensity, particularly when it views hunting as a form of counter-guerrilla warfare, with the gunboys wandering into the thickets, daring the big cats to come bite them and get a bullet for their trouble. It's best trick, though, is a straight steal from "Jaws" in which the lion -- I couldn't tell if it was "Ghost" or "Darkness" -- slides across the savannah in the high grass, just a form in the seething stalks, its tail alone visible, like a fin in the glassy water. There's a primordiality, a natural human fear of things with teeth and fangs, really provoked by that image. Too bad the movie couldn't have checked into that vein more often. [11 Oct 1996]

It makes for quite a rumpus, but the material never catches fire.

Overdoes it and falls on its farce.

Surprisingly formulaic. So many scenes seem lifted from a 1950s melodrama, from Blake and Francis' repentent mother (Leslie Ann Warren) to the film's tearjerker of a final scene.

You have to be willing to take a lot of punishment for a few good scares.

Rebound is determinedly lightweight fare that shamelessly resorts to every crowd-pleasing cliche it can think of to wring sympathy and laughs from its audience. To say it succeeds is not meant as a compliment.

It's unfortunate that none of the principal actors is able to convey the passion the characters are supposed to have for each other.

While I have no problem with slackers making me laugh, when they start preaching, that's when my ears close and my eyes roll.

The out-of-control plot doesn't unfold gracefully or organically; it simply speeds along with no regard for anything other then getting to the next plot twist.

This turgid melodrama fast-breaks away from the heart of its own subject.

The bad guys just seem like a bunch of X-Games rejects, and Blart's ingenuity proves way more effective than it has any right to be.

It's just too bad that you can see everything coming from a mile away.

This movie proves to be the year's most anti-romantic comedy.

It's pretty off-handed, more a theory of a movie than a movie itself. [05 Oct 1996]

Despite stellar work from the cast, the movie seems as emotionally distant from its audience as its characters are from each other.

The casting in K-PAX is canny, but the picture as a whole is a clunky mix of the canny and the would-be uncanny.

Initially powerful and unsettling, the movie loses its hold when it becomes stupid and violent. [12 Apr 1996]

Unfortunately, whenever Beautiful threatens to work as parody, it veers uncomfortably into pop psychology.

As overstated and expository as a historical pageant, from the drippy music to a sputtering, running gag involving funky old jalopies to cliched speeches and teary-eyed deaths and a final voice-over crying out for peace. Why not add a song score and an exclamation mark in the title?

What's fatal to the film is that De Niro's character, though compelling, is so temperate and wise he gives no indication of why he was drawn to a life of crime.

Holofcenere genuinely wants to make pictures that plug into an audience's need for intimate contemporary comedies. But she doesn't do enough to quench that thirst.

In Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou tries to top the breathtaking poetic spectacle of his masterpiece, "House of Flying Daggers," and instead plummets into self-parody.

It's a sad day for film lovers when the best thing that can be said about a Western is that it's pleasant.

Remember mood rings? The Ring Two is a mood movie - a bad-mood movie.

A bit hard on the posterior, it is definitely easy on the eyes.

It's a rugged, almost chauvinistic celebration of American get-up-and-go that never acknowledges, even implicitly, that our get-up-and-go got up and went. It might be characterized by words begin with G: gusto, guts, gumption, gee whiz and gosharootie, though, er, never G-spot. [14 Jan 1994]

See it to be reminded (if you need further reminding) of this actress' remarkable range. Otherwise, take a pass.

Almost sinks under the weight of too many red herrings, but is rescued by a skewed sense of reality and pervasive sense of dread that should keep audiences from dwelling on them.

Domino should have been a terrific anti-heroine, but the movie never gets deep enough inside this walking time bomb to reveal what makes her tick.

As a whole, The Matrix Reloaded is thin on magic, charm, surprise and fun. It's less like an all-out escape, or even a thrill ride, than a sensory workout. At best, it's a treadmill-like bridge to the hoped-for splendors of episode three, The Matrix Revolutions.

Phone Booth may not be awful, but it's puny.

The movie annoyingly waits until the end to reveal the names of those experts who have been doing all the talking; it would have been nice to know these folks' qualifications first.

Borders on poppycock.

When the women are onscreen and their relationship is on display, Head Over Heels trips merrily along. But every time the focus shifts to Prinze, the film suffers from a bad case of fallen arches.

Shallow and one-sided.

It should come as no surprise that the dogs are as cute as caninely possible. But is it conceivable that, once you've seen 101 adorable dogs, 102 seems redundant?

Bullock is so good, working hard to pull off the transition from grief-stricken wife and mother to reluctant time traveler, you want to pull for her. So it's possible - not easy, but possible - to overlook the script's inconsistencies.

Too bad Dreamcatcher amounts to a pastiche of better films like the original "The Thing" and both versions of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." It ransacks the audience's memory warehouse.

Even in a world where stupidity mixed with cliche is all too often mistaken for humor, this movie barely meets expectations.

Yet it's pretty in all the wrong ways: pretty slight, pretty preachy and pretty affected.

Should sell its soul for a joke.

On the plus side, there's plenty of dry Canadian wit, a handful of songs and only occasional bits of nudity.

Find Me Guilty flat-lines early.

As a franchise, the James Bond series needs its stomach stapled.

There's much more than a little Stifler here. Still, there's a recklessness to the character, as well as Scott's performance, that almost engenders respect; he's so determinedly unregenerate, so outrageously lewd, so unrelentingly grating, one almost looks forward to seeing just how far he'll go.

The performances of Bell, Walters and Lewis make this movie worth seeing - as long as you silence your cynical side and bring some Kleenex.

Divided We Fall has a lot going for it, but its Places in the Heart ending, sentimental and incongruous, helps ensure that it will not find a place in a demanding audience's heart or mind.

Designed to shock and rock the viewer with disturbing imagery, the film misses the point once too often.

Smith and Lawrence have great comic energy and for at least half an hour are sublimely enjoyable -- until the movie's spirit of bloated gargantuanism takes over. [7 April 1995, p.5]

This is definitely a post-"Field of Dreams" movie, at home in an era that specializes in building ersatz old parks, like the honey at Camden Yards. I love that place, even if it's more theme park than ball yard (I also love theme parks). But "The Sandlot" isn't a theme park or a ball yard; it's a con job.

Arthur and the Invisibles tries way too hard.

Benigni is no Peter Sellers, but the inanity of the film isn't really his fault. He tries hard, and his rubbery willingness to absorb any punishment and come up looking as if he's just swallowed a very cold carp isn't without comic potential. But he is continually betrayed by the lame setups.

Outside of a strong (and largely misused) cast and an abundance of moody atmosphere, there's precious little to recommend this exploitative mess.

Still, it's hard not to long for the Pooh stories of old, those endearingly anarchic little tales that captured the wonder of a child's world without ever once condescending to it.

Overpublicized and underbrained,Basic Instinct is a bitter disappointment, worth maybe a 10th of the hype that the media have so obligingly ladled out for its benefit.

To its credit, Heartbreakers lives up to expectations. Almost.

If you feel yourself glowing after Love Actually, you might be suffering from sugar shock.

Girls Will Be Girls thinks watching outrageous people acting outrageously is its own reward. It isn't.

The word "yuppie" has fallen out of favor from overuse, but Closer's young urban professionals are so vain and superficial they may bring it back as the ultimate putdown. This movie is a yuppie nightmare.

Character-rich, but plot-poor.

Benefits from an amiable chemistry between Harrelson and Banderas, and Davidovich always makes a good tough-as-nails dame with more smarts than any man will give her credit for.

The problem isn't the history that the filmmakers leave in, but how much they leave out.

When Crews is onscreen, White Chicks is a film that fears nothing and no one. When he's not, it's a film too tentative and soft-hearted to scale the farcical heights to which it aspires.

Young Cyrus is undeniably cute, and some of her songs are as catchy as the law allows - especially "Hoedown Throwdown," But asked to anchor a full-length movie, she simply doesn't have the chops to pull it off.

Gets credit for avoiding the easy path. Too bad the path it chooses doesn't lead us anywhere we want to be taken.

Moonlight Mile leavens the mood occasionally, but it cheapens things by insisting that everybody onscreen and in the audience leavethe theater smiling.

Is there anyone out there who hasn't seen this movie a dozen times before? Maybe even as recently as last week, since it's basically the same story line as the funnier, if less heartfelt, "Four Christmases."

Starts out as a barbed, poignant little movie and turns into an excruciating slow-motion car wreck.

Has the fingerprints of earnest, first-time filmmakers all over it.

What the film needs is more heart, humor and maybe some honest-to-goodness humility, not energy. And unfortunately, that's about all Gooding seems able to bring to it.

The strong young cast keeps the film from being a total waste.

There are moments, heaven forgive me, that left me chuckling. Not to mention eternally grateful that it's these guys doing this stuff, and not me.

Gracie is painfully earnest, which might be OK were it not also painfully trite, painfully cliched and painfully formulaic.

And the movie, likable for short stretches, ends up seeming worn and frayed, like Christmas decorations left hanging until spring.

The problem with Lions for Lambs isn't its political engagement but its cinematic disengagement. Robert Redford directs and stars in this ambitious talkathon, which would have been more effective as a radio play.

Jarrold's reduction of the story is so archetypal that it's indistinguishable from soap opera.

Although the acclaimed documentary Gunner Palace contains some electrifying vignettes of the Iraq war, its jaggedly elliptical and hopped-up style lands it in a limbo between ragged and slick.

Does it make it as a movie? Only in fits and starts.

The secret reptile part of you yearns to see Berenger's laconic Shale enforce classroom discipline with his Uzi and back up the no-talking rule with a Claymore mine. But no. Rather, Shale tumbles quickly enough to the fact that more than routine violence is afflicting the school, that there is, in fact, a conspiracy.

Too much about the game and not enough about the town, the players and everything else.

Genteel but ultimately unnecessary entertainment.

No matter how "mock" this epic gets, it isn't mock enough. The "D" in the title must stand for dead weight.

Fans should be satisfied, but it's hard to imagine anyone else will be much interested in TMNT.

Even the title is off. I haven't heard an honest "Lucky You" since I was in sixth grade. For most people it registers as a sneer.

In its own B-film, let's-make-them-jump-out-of-their-seats way, Bats is quite the hoot.

Determinedly genial and relentlessly bland.

The setup is bad even by slasher-film standards: poorly acted, atrociously written and unimaginatively directed. But once Freddy and Jason have at it, the movie takes on a recklessly kinetic energy that finally delivers on its title's promise.

Most of the movie makes too much sense and is no fun at

It's obvious and stereotypical. It's leaden and unconvincing. It's not nearly as outrageous as it thinks it is.

A toothless series of vignettes rather than an insider satire on par with, say, "Bowfinger."