As for the dialogue, although the characters talk really fast, swear a lot, and overlap their lines, what they’re saying isn’t very funny or authentic. It’s as if David Mamet collaborated on writing an episode of “Two and a Half Men.”

The cynics will slap their foreheads, the squeamish will cover their eyes, but the revenge movie fanatics should be nice and satisfied after the whole ordeal.

It must have looked great on paper. On screen, it’s a soapy mess that even Joan Crawford in her delusional late-period prime couldn’t save.

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

Doesn't so much strike a lot of sour notes as fail to strike the right ones.

"Prison isn't all that different from a nightclub,'' comments Alig toward the end. Funny; this movie isn't all that different from prison.

When it’s time for the hot sex scene between Timberlake’s ambitious Richie Furst and Rebecca (Gemma Arterton), his boss’s luscious second-in-command, the encounter is as charmless and chemistry-free as the wooden banter that has led up to it. I’ve had dentist’s appointments that were sexier.

Fonda, who looks as if he's trying to hide through half the picture, was paid $ 500,000 to look like a convincing victim. It doesn't seem worth it. Even the corny special effects are better than his stilted, walk-through performance. [03 Dec 1989, p.B45]

Road House is the kind of action movie whose rigging is so blatant that there can be no air of heroism about it. Although Swayze and Sam Elliott, in the role of his mentor, have the decency to look sheepish most of the time, there's no end to the cynicism and merchandising on screen, especially in the sex scenes. [19 May 1989, p.45]

A warmhearted, hardworking little comedy that owes a lot of its charm to its modesty.

Manages to fascinate more than it entertains.

It’s a deep-thinking character study that’s provocatively if imperfectly presented — at least until the story devolves right along with its subject’s state of mind.

It's another one of those loud, penis-obsessed bro farces, lazily written (by actor Seth Rogen, among others) and haphazardly directed.

Old story, new beat: That sums up Feel the Noise, an acceptable if resolutely average low-budget drama set in the New York/Puerto Rican musical melting pot known as reggaeton.

An overwrought story of American politics and image-making that really only gets interesting in the final act.

Turistas is not a slasher film -- not conventionally. Released by Fox's new teen division, it's the latest aquatic titillation from John Stockwell, the man who also brought us "Blue Crush" and the shockingly good "Into the Blue."

Alpha and Omega is sweet, if not fresh.

Highly formulaic, make-'em-laugh-then-make-'em-cry comedy.

Denys Arcand has satiric fun with the media's way of taking celebrity culture at face value and nothing but. Eventually, though, the film becomes what it's ridiculing.

Long-delayed, pitiful excuse for a horror film.

Everyone has piled into this dumber, sillier, more consistently funny reprise with an enthusiasm that’s infectious, and not in a low-grade medical way.

A well-made, reasonably diverting night at the multiplex that will seem overly familiar to everyone except teenage girls.

When it was over I felt vaguely embarrassed. I wasn't just leaving a movie theater. I was taking a walk of shame.

Playing Clouseau's exasperated boss, Cleese rams his head into a wall minutes into the action. That's a powerful image, insofar as his headache was mine.

Bruce Willis appears to be one of those actors for whom there is no middle ground. His action films are either "Die Hard" or "Hudson Hawk." His latest, Striking Distance, is a "Hudson Hawk." It should have been called "Striking Out." [17 Sept 1993, p.51]

I don't know whether she's (Hudson) drunk, stoned, or simply out of her mind, but if it weren't so sad watching her pick away at this skimpy, overlong romantic lie, she might be entertaining.

A fully felt, decently crafted teen B-movie melodrama, plenty preposterous in places but alive to the vibrant miseries of being young and misunderstood.

Rambo III is just another of Stallone's exercises in narcissism and jingoism, death and glory wrapped up in one tidy package. [25 May 1988, p.75]

Sweetly earnest little drama.

Weintrob's stylish visuals mimic Web technologies, which succeed in making his characters seem all the more removed from reality. Now if someone would find a way to equip theater seats with a ''delete'' key, we could be rid of them completely.

Hartley's loquacity and arguable pretentiousness are stemmed by his sense of play. Even when they run afoul, his movies still have the conviction of their fun. No Such Thing barely has any convictions at all.

It's still a film with genuine laugh-out-loud moments, most provided by comedian Dennis Miller. On first glance it would appear Miller is horribly miscast in this predictable fang flick. But Miller's ceaseless verbal machine gun of one-liners salvages the movie. [16 Aug 1996, p.D3]

To call Johnny Mnemonic a disaster would be giving it too much credit. Disasters land loudly, resoundingly. This one lands with a dull thud. [26 May 1995, p.87]

Getting to the true root of his evil may necessitate "Saw LX."

Even an experienced director would have his hands full making anything out of this script. Four screenwriters are credited, and as any movie buff knows, the more writers, the worse the movie. Nowhere Faustian, this one aspires to camp classic status, but lurches lamely into vile gross-out territory. [10 Feb 1989, p.48]

At the very least, a movie like this requires coherence to stay afloat. Barring that, it needs a star to distract us.

So, yeah, Kin is a bit of a biker movie, too. More important, it’s also a family drama. In their first-time feature-directing effort, twin brothers Jonathan and Josh Baker — speaking of kin — turn Cain and Abel inside out and upside down. Why be east of Eden when you end up that far west of Motown?

An effusive, sad, visually gorgeous, and illuminating portrait of the artist.

The Guardian, based on a Dan Greenburg novel, is more suspenseful than most of the movies made from King's books. One reason is that Friedkin allows a certain weight of ominousness to accumulate, being in no hurry to let us know exactly what specific form the threat will take, or even from whom it will come. [27 Apr 1990, p.33p]

Four writers are credited with the script, and their combined efforts yield just one scene with genuine verve.

Branagh and Love's Labour's Lost all but will themselves into liftoff. They achieve it, and in doing so, they somehow make it right to our pleasure centers with their generous embrace of stardust and pizazz.

German director Roland Emmerich's action sequences are terrific and funny. [10 July 1992, p.37]

Pretty uninspired material for a dream-teaming of actresses who currently rate among the edgiest of them all.

Stallone and De Niro simply don’t generate enough combative spark to make this anything more than an amiably mediocre diversion.

Nothing in How to Lose Friends feels fresh or on target.

A video game cum movie that substitutes shrieking decibel levels for a coherent plot and any resemblance to originality.

Mostly a screenful of nothingness.

My Blue Heaven is weightless and unwieldy. It's a confused carnival of silly subplots and characters who never manage to form an ensemble. [17 Aug 1990, p.37]

For a movie to pretend, in the face of the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children directly or indirectly caused by our presence there, that we can wage war without anyone really getting hurt isn't naive, or wishful thinking, or a jim-dandy way to spend a Saturday night at the movies. It's an obscenity.

Once again, even reasonably committed fans will need a scorecard to keep track of who's fighting whom. What's the real target audience - i.e. kids - supposed to make of it all?

Some bad movies can make you feel awful for the people who made them and worse for the audience that shows up. The actors, the script, the camera: There's nowhere good they can go. For Greater Glory is that kind of bad movie: a total embarrassment.

Venom, the movie, is a reptilian Marvel mishmash whose touch saps the life force of almost everyone in it.

But what can you do with Hayden Christensen? He's as close as we have to an android actor. It's all a chore for him. He never looks sufficiently scared, impressed, or surprised by any of this.

An embarrassing romantic comedy from Rob Reiner.

Argylle is a cynical cash grab that has the audacity to use that “new” Beatles song, “Now and Then” (itself a cynical cash grab pieced together with far more skill than this movie) as the basis for its score and the “love theme” for Aidan and Elly.

A watchable, unnecessary re-do that works hard but lacks the charm to really zing.

2 1/2 hours of tumescence disguised as a motion picture.

In addition to the film's two extremely likable stars, the strong supporting cast features a who's who of rising African-American actors.

The average Bollywood routine is passionately cheesy. This movie seems cursed with a lactose intolerance.

This dog will inevitably let down purists looking for the elusive combination of smart and funny.

It's a much better bad movie than the first one. It isn't often in Hollywood that a director gets the chance to go back and essentially remake a failed film but Lambert, refusing to let sleeping cadavers lie, gets the job done this time. [28 Aug 1992, p.50]

Ignore the hype. You won't find anything startling or memorable in the derivative Hide and Seek.

The script is a little too clunky to serve Ricki Lake well, and Richard Benjamin's direction is a bit too sluggish to disguise her limited range as he crams this romantic fairy tale a little too forcefully into its predetermined mold. [19 Apr 1996, p.53]

Botches the chance to delve into the personality of a complex, alluring, and free-spirited woman.

The flat tire of summer movies.

A movie where the miracles -- and treacly moments -- keep topping each other.

The Host will make perfect sense to 12-year-old girls, while their college-age sisters will probably laugh themselves sick and their mothers will look at Hurt and wonder when he got so old.

Isn't for the kiddies. It probably isn't for anyone not interested in the darkest corners of the human psyche.

The copious violence, as always, is an assault - even aurally, as every thudding knife strike is made to sound like a boulder dropping on the theater.

It's a movie so late in noticing a shift in American male grooming that for a documentary on the subject to work, Spurlock would either have to pitch it to our grandparents (or be a grandparent) or trace the arc of the shift and unpack it.

If you doubt that August is the boneyard for movies too poor to release in other months, here’s The Kitchen, an addled and actively unpleasant crime comedy-drama with a high-profile cast and a mean streak a mile wide. Based on a limited-edition comic book and completed in July 2018, the movie’s been sitting on the shelf until enough people are on vacation to not see it.

A disjointed patchwork of zany character sketches lacking in coherence and credibility.

We haven't had a good Frankenstein, Dracula, or Wolf Man movie in a long time, so here's one where the whole gang shows up. One catch: It's not good.

You won't feel raped by it, but you well may feel that it's too ideologically earnest for the porn crowd and too hard-core for serious audiences.

Slides instantly into the realm of the forgettable.

Unfunny, predictable, and vulgar, it’s the generic equivalent of a Judd Apatow movie. As always, you get what you pay for.

So light it should wind up on the ''diet" shelf of the video store.

Deal doesn't really care about the characters as much as it does the World Poker Championships, where Tommy and Alex end up. Once we get there the movie becomes interesting because Cates understands the game and its dramas a lot better than he understands people and theirs.

Even at 104 minutes, practically a short by superhero-movie standards, Morbius feels draggy.

Revenge degenerates into a macho dance between Costner and Quinn, with the film chewing up and spitting out Stowe's character in troubling ways. [16 Feb 1990, p.89]

The longer it takes for the eldritch glop to hit the fan, in fact, the less true the movie may be to King. For better and for worse, Dreamcatcher is true to King.

Overall the results are amiable, if also slack and talky.

It’s a preposterously overstuffed strategy that, go figure, not only works, but even cures a thing or two that ailed the previous movies.

It is Close's performance that gives the movie its oomph and will leave adults with smiles as wide as the kids'.

Comes tantalizingly close to being interesting.

Once the “what is real, what is fantasy” questions are answered, and exorcism part deux commences, The Last Exorcism Part II abandons its half-intelligent, tender exploration of Nell’s vulnerability and desirability

It's that awkward, tedious monster mash of "chick flick'' and romantic comedy.

At nearly two hours, Mirrors is overlong for a summer horror toss-off, and the movie's three or four false endings make it seem even more of a haul.

Fienberg’s film spends most of its time trying to convince us that true love starts when you stop playing games. Then, in the final minutes, it reverses itself and puts gamesmanship back up on another wobbly pedestal. The result is hard to cheer.

There have been plenty of movies adapted from video games before, but Hitman may be the first one that actually feels like a computer wrote and directed it.

Primeval is a hoot if you're in the mood, though, and it gets points for trying to stuff a little globo-think into the minds of Friday night mayhem fans (who will probably rebel, since only one skull pops like a grape).

A by-the-numbers B flick with a preposterous script and a good cast trying their best.

Doesn't quite rank with the films that bracket Heckerling's pop-culture high priestess status

Loaded with priceless encounters that would seem incongruous in any other movie but play here as low-comedy facts of some parts of black life.

Ghost Rider is the kind of movie that's great stupid fun as long as someone else is buying the tickets.

Picture Timberlake in the booth recording his lines and you have the best joke in the movie. Everything else is actively painful, a frenetic, unfunny mix of action, romance, dud dialogue, and icky things popping out of the screen.

The Japanese animation is beautiful, and the script adaptation for the English-speaking audience is well-paced, clever, and absorbing enough to keep parents from squirming.

The sex bits are flat, the racial innuendo is flatter, and somewhere, Cosby is having a Pudding Pop and shaking his head in disbelief.