Anderson creates a deluxe train set, for sure. All he neglects is building up an electric current or a head of steam.

A History of Violence is a hollow story from an empty graphic novel.

For most of its meandering running time Harsh Times is just a rough South Central L.A. buddy movie.

The movie finally comes to life when Liu turns up.

There's a self-loathing at the center of Friends with Money that makes it a tad unpalatable, as well as a sameness, a dependence on cliche, that makes it seem trite.

JFK is entertaining, if only because the cast of characters in the New Orleans underground is so bizarre. [20 Dec 1991]

Too bad it shortchanges the music and fails to provide much evidence for Wilson's appeal.

Tang Wei brings a terrible and awe-inspiring purity to an impure character.

It's doubly disappointing that all the subplots about Ace and Wallace and their fathers intertwine in increasingly predictable ways.

It's easy to be offensive in a movie; it's much harder to be funny. Which is why Scary Movie emerges as such a waste; when you're so good at the latter, why keep falling back on the former?

In The Last Samurai, the body count is almost as high as the dead-brain-cell count.

The only gold in Sunshine State comes from its three female stars.

The gleefully campy moments will earn Johnny Mnemonic cult status. Part of the movie's problem, though, is that it can't decide if it's a cautionary tale or a satire, and it falls apart when it tries to do both. [27 May 1995]

On screen, Road to Perdition becomes a lace-curtain shoot-'em-up about fathers and sons. The graphic novel is more kinetic and more powerful than the motion picture.

These actors have a firm playful grasp and a palpable affection for their characters' befuddled dignity and attraction. They understand what Wilde meant by the importance of being earnest.

As the movie rambles along with its own brand of quasi-magical surrealism, the links to real experience grow scarcer and more frayed.

Let's just say this is a perfect film for penguin lovers who also are devoted members of the Green party - and leave it at that.

The whole enterprise suffers from tired blood.

This whole movie has zero chemistry. Broderick and Hunt are a match made in hell; Firth and Hunt are a match made in limbo.

A handsome, accomplished piece of work, but it drove me from absorption to excruciation within 20 minutes, and then it went on for two hours more.

Doesn't break any ground -- but it looks good in a tight sweater.

The movie is occasionally cutesy. That's the worst of it. You can't call it gross, but it is cutesy.

Jack Frost can't possibly straddle its emotional shifts between morbidity and sheer nonsense. [11 Dec 1998]

The lack of condescension is the movie's saving grace, if grace is the right word. There's no snobbery to the low-blow humor, or to Reynolds' low-key, genial comeback turn, or to Sandler's more-ingratiating-than-athletic lead performance.

Neither Grimm comes across as especially interesting to watch, and neither does anything in the movie offer much to get excited about.

As it is, Hoot doesn't accomplish anything a picture book of the Everglades and a few well-chosen Jimmy Buffett tunes wouldn't do better.

With all the good will in the world, I couldn't warm up to Kit Kittredge. The movie is like a 1930s or 1940s short about Americans pulling together, stretched out to feature length.

Just don't think about what's going on, and you should be OK.