This predictable, uninspired addition to the endless saga won't win over nonbelievers.

Tucci can be so focused on Giacometti’s artistic process that he gives short shrift to the art itself.

When the plot turns coy and arch as Alfalfa falls in love with a kewpie doll named Darla, however, the film turns insufferable. [05 Aug 1994, p.48]

A sequel that has some snappy interplay, typically courtesy of Malkovich, but mostly feels like a cast working to manufacture what came naturally the first time.

In lieu of suspense, Rosenthal relies on a mood of free-floating anxiety, enhanced by West Virginia (actually British Columbia) landscapes where the sun never shines. As one-note as the title suggests, A Single Shot misfires.

This is a ridiculous movie - a thriller so indifferent to suspense, so above mystery that one character literally stabs another in the front.

David Frankel’s film reduces an extraordinary life to a predictable template of bullying, resolve, success, disappointment, and platitudes — a pattern repeated two or three times until the genuinely moving finale.

This fifth and mercifully final installment features so much idle anticipation that it's unclear whether we're watching a movie or an Apple product launch.

Eddie Murphy in another mediocre family comedy? Imagine that.

What follows is serviceable action set to music you'd find in a video game -- or a military ad.

Captain Ron is an inconsequential but inoffensive little comedy dedicated to the proposition that inheriting Clark Gable's yacht can be a real problem. A throwback to the plastic Disney family comedies of the late '50s and early '60s, it's at least trim and shipshape, if never inspired or original. [18 Sep 1992, p.56]

Ladling in so much schmaltz that even his in-house critic says, ''This thing's worse than `Terms of Endearment.'''

The pre-Thanksgiving release of Jonathan Levine’s The Night Before celebrates those Christmas blessings that are beloved by all: scatological humor, smarmy sentimentality, and gross product placement.

The remake is poky and overstuffed. It’s also 17 minutes longer than the 1940 original. Granted, eight minutes of that is closing credits, but still. Pinocchio’s nose isn’t all that’s wooden and too long here.

Object of Beauty is another zap-the-yuppies outing, more elegant than most, and sophisticated, too, but hollow and on the whole charmless as it leaves us uninvolved with the spectacle of cash-strapped John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell holed up in a posh London hotel, living on room service and dodging the manager. [19 Apr 1991, p.42]

Beverly D'Angelo, Rufus Sewell, Georgina Cates, Leo Bassi - tumble with zest through a daisy chain of sexual capers. But while warmly energized, their carryings-on also seem a little generic.

Harmless enough, but "indie comedy" sounds like something better seen at Urban Outfitters than at a movie theater.

This sequel, ruled by the commercial imperative to not tamper with a highly profitable franchise, mostly just goes through the motions, essentially replicating the first outing. [19 Nov 1993, p.93]

What might have proven an illuminating perspective on familiar issues disappoints as Bouchareb fails to turn his outsider’s point of view into new insights, and instead takes the easy route, falling back on familiar stereotypes in his tour of US misogyny and xenophobia.

Hardcore fans and gamers will thrill to the contractually required scene where a fighter has his still-beating heart ripped out of his chest. But that’s the only time Mortal Kombat shows a pulse.

Pitt’s presence makes a borderline-odious piece of work watchable.

If The Lion King redux sounds wild, the result is surprisingly tame.

She-Devil has its moments, thanks chiefly to Meryl Streep's way with the comic role of a la-de-da writer of romance novels. But devilishness is precisely what it lacks. Unlike "The War of the Roses," the other marital vendetta comedy opening today, She-Devil hasn't got the courage of its nasty convictions. [8 Dec 1989, p.59]

Larry Crowne isn't a movie for adults. It's a movie for adults who don't like things with screens and keyboards.

Some will say weird is fun for its own sake, but we say weird does not equal cinematic satisfaction. [05 Mar 1999, p.C6]

A film that ultimately says more about banality than evil.

I’ve said this a million times before, so it will sound familiar: All a rom-com needs to work is characters you want to see end up together. “Eternity” fails this test big time.

Both provocative and muddled, the film's a moody, passive-aggressive tract that's buoyed by superior performances and sunk by its own uncertainties. An alternate title might be "The Joylessness of Sex."

As cartoon rip-offs go, Open Season can be surprisingly entertaining, in a made-for-6-year-olds kind of way.

The movie's enthusiasm is as indelible and shiny as the lip gloss its star wears to bed.

Contrary to Gil Scott-Heron’s song, the revolution of “One Battle After Another” feels more televised than live. After 161 minutes of it, I was tempted to turn the channel.

It very much wants to be "Garden State" five years down the line.

It's mostly flat, despite being presented in 3-D, and the writing is so unimaginative that at one point a character yells out "yabba dabba doo!"

What’s missing is the assurance of tone that a Lumet would provide.

It’s a watchable disappointment that leaves mostly frustration in its wake.

Everyone involved in the film seems better than the material.

The film squeezes out its feel-good messages like toothpaste from a tube.

Despite its lush photography, Green Card has the texture of peanut butter. It's more romantic than comedic, but there isn't an abundance of either. [11 Jan 1991]

Even 007 is a big old queen. Yes, Roger Moore's on board as a lusty codger, who, unlike the rest of us, can't get enough of Sanz.

Too glossy to truly immerse audiences in the horrors it depicts.

If this is daring in theory, it's a failure in practice. Exactingly well-made, the movie is grueling and unpleasant in the extreme - that's the point - but it's also working from a specious premise, that film-school Brechtian devices can bring on mass enlightenment.

Even with an improved Dornan, the movie still belongs to Johnson, a character actress capable of making light of a movie pretending to be darker.

As the implausibilities and conspiracies and double-crosses pile up, Broken City paints itself into a corner. A plot can be confusing as long as the filmmakers themselves don't seem confused, but that's not the case here.

Something has been lost in the translation, and it's not just the script.

If nothing else, Braff gets good to great performances out of his cast. The standouts are Pugh and Freeman: She’s a violent slash of petulance, while he remains a master of barely concealed wrath. Both actors are willing to plumb the depths of desperation, but their hard work is wasted in a film unworthy of their talents. A Good Person is a mediocre movie.

The Fan isn't a strikeout, but it doesn't exactly knock the cover off the ball, either. It's more like a soft pop fly, taking its time before settling very predictably into a waiting fielder's glove. [16 Aug 1996, p.D3]

Marla Grayson is less a three-dimensional person (or even an interesting two-dimensional one) than a symptom of a sick society. And symptoms wear out their welcome pretty quickly. That shallowness renders Marla’s sexuality and stated feminism cynical rather than ironic, and it turns I Care a Lot into a lesser Coen brothers movie: No Country for Old Fogeys.

An intensely unpleasant killer-thriller mystery.

Landis spends too much time in the realm of the cartoony, where he's clearly comfortable, and less time in the area of the suavely insinuating, where any vampire movie really lives. Innocent Blood is pumped-up, but anemic. [25 Sept 1992, p.34]

Haggis finally finds the movie's groove late in the game, and the escape sequence itself is hectic, suspenseful, and enjoyably ridiculous.

The editing of the action sequences is an insult to the idea of narrative clarity.

No Escape is a tense but utterly predictable exercise in Western xenophobic paranoia and guilt.

Despite being well acted and sweetly moving when it strips down to the tender poem at its heart, Till Human Voices Wake Us spends too much time playing to an otherworldly suspense that simply isn't there.

Might give you a few decorating ideas if you happen to have been wondering about a home bomb shelter, but it's a thriller that doesn't thrill.

There may once have been a good and a bad film fighting for the soul of The Last Exorcism, but in its final moments, cinema's dark forces triumph emphatically.

If you liked the earlier ''Mummy,'' you'll probably like this one. In fact, at many points you'll probably think you are watching the earlier one.

Climax is the first Noé film, though, to flirt with the novel sensation of boredom.

Heartbreaking stories of patients suffering life-shattering illness make Under Our Skin compelling. It would have been an even better movie if the filmmakers had been more diligent in following the money.

Tron: Legacy gives us a dud stud named Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn, the hero of this petrified sequel to 1982's "Tron." None of what he sees impresses. The feeling is mutual.

Had Spacey made Beyond the Sea 10 or 15 years ago, it might have been close to transporting.

Hunter has a scene with Pacino in a cafeteria where she expresses a degree of emotional pain, just through how she looks at him and holds her head, that’s at once awful to see and magnificent. It’s hard to figure out what Pacino saw in the script. What Hunter saw was this scene and getting to act with Pacino.

Cool killers - Kitano's stock in trade - do not necessarily make for cool movies.

It's acceptable Shakespeare - no more arbitrary than most stage productions, especially the willfully anachronistic ones, or the ones with political agendas thrust upon them. [18 Jan 1991]

Why Branagh and the screenwriter, Michael Green (he also did the two earlier Poirot adaptations), would want to bring actual, real-life horror into a mystery movie masquerading as a horror movie is a mystery beyond the powers of even Poirot to solve.

Miracle at St. Anna is not work of outrage or joy. It's something distressingly new for the filmmaker: a work of obligation. It feels like a movie Lee made in order to say he did it.

The Dawn Treader, like its predecessors, has no real struggle or drama. We're dealing with kids for whom everything comes too easily for us to care.

One wonders if a director more playful than Kenneth Branagh might have come up with something less hectic and more fun — or even just as hectic and more fun. Taika Waititi, anyone? Jojo Rabbit is almost as odd a name as Artemis Fowl.

Actually, everything in Bowdon’s rant about America’s woeful public school system is important, including Bowdon.

It's not remotely as luscious or half as bold as Malick's movie, but it is shorter and more educational.

It's called Queens and, no, silly, it's not about six gay men who want to get married. It's about their MOTHERS. And this being a Spanish comedy of the lowest Almodovar-ian order, the moms are a lot more flamboyant than their sons.

Notably Wayansless. It's also notably devoid of a point of view.

A slow and silly action-comedy romantic-thriller.

The film’s closing is abrupt and maybe too tidy, but “Coup de Chance” is still a clever little thriller. It displays an admirable economy of storytelling, and its jazz-heavy soundtrack helps maintain a jaunty mood.

The role of investment banker Naomi Bishop seems right for Gunn, no question, and it’s one that she approaches with conviction. So why is it so hard to root for her, or for any of the characters here?

The film is very near a comedy, and I'm not sure that's on purpose.

Any originality in this new movie is overwhelmed by its lazy eagerness to embrace the new standard for R-rated comedy.

The Mighty Macs sticks so closely to the underdog-sports-movie playbook that it's practically generic.

As far as rehashed sequels go, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” could have been worse. That it’s slightly better holds out hope that the inevitable third film will be a major power up in quality.

While the movie seems designed to be a breakout for Jang, it's Lee whose work actually makes an impression.

A comparison to Baz Luhrmann is useful: Where Taymor self-consciously aestheticizes pop vulgarity, a movie like "Moulin Rouge!" just dives right in.

The result is a clattery, unfocused affair that at times is more irritating than fun.

A date movie “Monkey Man” is not.

It'll be a test of whether Cruise's star power and De Palma's ability to seduce audiences with visual style can compensate for a fundamental hollowness at the center. Mission: Impossible plays like a project trying to become a movie and not quite making it. [22 May 1996, p.63]

Mark Felt is a drama about an aggrieved control freak, which would be fine if director Landesman openly acknowledged it. He’s torn, though between offering a heroic celebration of the republic’s underappreciated savior and a more damning character portrait of a man who, for complex reasons, ended up doing the right thing.

All in all, the movie’s a muddled and overlong experience, one that every so often drifts into dull, unintentional camp.

Although his (Jarmusch) films have moments of sly obliqueness, they leave us feeling stranded in underdevelopment. This is the case with Night on Earth, which is launched on a promising conceit - nocturnal taxi rides in five cities around the world during the same time slot. By the time the film ends, we can't help wondering just who has been taken for a ride. [15 May 1992, p.85]

Because the movie’s carrying a heavy load of corporate expectations, it gets pulled in different directions by competing agendas before eventually collapsing into incoherence.

While Harrison Ford brings all you could hope for to the role of Clancy's hero, CIA analyst Jack Ryan, Patriot Games is a pretty routine, generic and on the whole pedestrian film. Considering the talent and obvious care taken, it's surprisingly flavorless. [5 June 1992, p.25]

The Menu might make you crave a hamburger or think twice before boarding a ferry to a private island with no cell service. But once the loose ends are tied up and the credits roll, it leaves you less than satisfied.

Although Rush gives the film visual texture, he can't give it credibility or metaphorical dimension. Color of Night is nocturnal, but not much more. [19 Aug 1994, p.49]

Has a daft sweep, and if you're in the mood for empty swordplay in baroque settings, purple dialogue delivered with straight faces, and romantic yearnings that never, ever resolve, The Promise may be your cup of oolong.

It's hard to tell whether this is a tribute to female solidarity or a lamentation.

If the movie can’t maintain its interest in Chan, why should we? This narrative splice job simply doesn’t hold together. Call it a taut mess or a hot mess, take your pick.

The only thing sadder than Jonah Hex is what appears to have happened to his movie.

There's nothing really wrong with Agnes Browne, except a tendency to take a few easy, convenient outs.

History is just one big playpen for The King’s Man, but some games are less fun than others. Maybe using a glimpse of Hitler for a cheap thrill wouldn’t seem quite so grotesque in a movie that were more entertaining, but The King’s Man isn’t so it does.

The techno-wizards at Industrial Light & Magic really knock themselves out here, but Casper is more serviceable than magical. [26 May 1995, p.85]

It's technically sophisticated and intermittently engaging, and its showdown is more than up to genre standards. But fresh it isn't. [19 July 1996, p.G4]