As close as a movie about three Iraq war soldiers should come to mediocre TV comedy.

The Book of Eli is “The Road’’ with twice the plot, four times the ammunition, and half the brains; it’ll probably make 10 times the money.

Watching Shea Whigham and Michael Shannon in The Quarry is like watching two highly qualified surgeons try to jolt a comatose patient back to life. They get the limbs twitching nicely, but the heart never turns over and starts running.

Luhrmann is working a tricky game: He's trying to come to terms with modern Australia's racist legacy while telling a ripping yarn while also making fun of ripping yarns - but not too much.

The film collapses under the weight of the effort to shoehorn Shakespeare's story into a context that ultimately doesn't accommodate it.

The film's biggest problem, however, is its naive inability to understand that sex comedies, to amuse, must be about more than sex.

Jig is involving, if at times overly slick.

Too many cliches and not enough energy have come along for the ride.

You'll see worse, but The Dark Half could have been darker. [23 Apr 1993, p.45]

The performances by Plotnick, Leupp, and Roberson comprise a jarring special effect.

Formulaic but extremely good-natured comedy.

Green and his cast deliver a wonderful surprise. Echo himself, a generically precious alien, is the least of it. The funny, moving, authentic bond among the kids in the movie is the unadvertised draw.

Few comedians talk so much to get a laugh, and sometimes the strain shows... And the directors don’t do him any favors by the annoyingly frequent close-ups of audience members in convulsions of laughter.

But, oh, the action. Tommila and Jackson have a couple of escape sequences that are exhilaratingly choreographed, never mind that one employs a meat freezer as its key prop. Kids should dig these bits. After all, off-kilter as Helander’s sensibility continues to be, he’s got a passion for popcorn-movie energy that can be contagious — especially when he’s not trashing Santa.

Unfortunately, the material flounders from the broadly farcical to the bombastically melodramatic. Race and ethnicity aren’t so much the problem as gender is. Despite Gainsbourg’s efforts, her character becomes a caricature.

Writer-director Nic Bettauer can't decide whether to play Duck for tears or laughs.

It’s not hard to see the script’s appeal for the actors, John David Washington and Zendaya. Playing the only characters in the movie, they get a very serious workout and give seriously good performances.

Astro Boy alternately soars and sputters through a story line that’s not quite sure who it’s aimed at.

At its best, Year of the Fish makes a virtue of naivete - its heroine's, its director's, and the fragile fairy-tale belief that everyone deserves a happy ending.

A noisy and lazy stopgap movie that goes absolutely nowhere and takes 2 1/2 hours to get there.

Bale and Watson make most of the film more interesting and watchable than it might otherwise be, finding flesh and blood in a script that isn't always equal to their talents. [23 Apr 1999]

The big difference between Luc Besson's "La Femme Nikita" and this big, slick remake is that this new film has less visual edge and is more sentimental. It's more upfront with the idea that Maggie, as she's called here, has feelings. Still, Fonda's at her most compelling in the early scenes. [19 March 1993, p.50]

Directing the film version, Lee gets lost in the grotesque pomp of the halftime spectacle and its lead-up. He gets fine performances from the actors playing the soldiers and a terrible one from Stewart, who flails her arms like an amateur. Martin’s role is beneath his talents, while Vin Diesel’s, as a Zen warrior of a sergeant, is almost beyond belief.

The result is sometimes charming and always visually astonishing.

Peregrym is like a secondhand Hilary Swank. She has a looser presence and might be a better actor, but since we already have Swank, finding out is not a priority.

Doesn't try to be anything it's not. It's happy being a funny, shoot-'em-up, run-for-your-life, green-guts monster movie. And as green-guts monster movies go, it's a beaut.

The first half of The Heart of Me is just that sort of hoot. You know where it's all headed, and you can't wait for it to get there, as the cheap, cruel ironies pile up almost farcically.

What saves it is that it's lighter than mousse and is animated by a handful of engaging performers.