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

Michael J. Fox seems a lot breezier and smarter than what's surrounding him in For Love or Money. It's an old-fashioned romantic comedy that's a little too old-fashioned as it clanks through its plot. [1 Oct 1993, p.52]

It's not hard to take, but neither does it go anywhere really interesting, nor do the characters much involve us. The curious thing is that it had every reason to register as something more detailed and specific than the flatly generic thing it is. [23 Apr 1993, p.50]

Flat-footed and far too broad, it’s a reminder why “Saturday Night Live” skits don’t run two hours and 18 minutes.

While visually handsome, Oscar is terminally sluggish. [26 Apr 1991, p.71]

Bitter Moon would be a camp classic if it weren't so dispiriting watching Roman Polanski cannibalize and then finally parody himself into narrative and artistic collapse. The film's big problem is that it's so totally devoid of the sexual energy it needs to traverse the gantlet of perversity through which Polanski sends it. [15 Apr 1994, p.94]

With inconsistency, [Collins Jr.] articulates the murkier and subtler aspects of a thinly written character through his physicality, revealing flashes of brilliance. But this feels undermined by directorial choices that don’t embrace or take full advantage of the potential primal nature of the performance.

A second-rate novel and a second-rate movie, in which some interestingly faceted acting can do only so much. [28 Sep 1990, p.46p]

Since each member of the 10-man crew is given his small equal share in the movie's script, none of them is able to add emotional weight to the realities of soldiering. That means that actors like Matthew Modine and Eric Stoltz have no place to go with their talent. Like the movie, no one is bad, really, but then no one is good. [12 Oct 1990, p.29p]

What Fatal Instinct seems to overlook, though, is that erotic thrillers such as "Basic Instinct" and "Fatal Attraction" do a pretty good job of parodying themselves. Rather than really develop any of their setups, writer David O'Malley and director Carl Reiner seem to think it's enough simply to cite the originals. [29 Oct 1993, p.51]

It's one of the year's most unforgettable exercises in pointlessness. [16 Sept 1994, p.62]

Although it's the first time Hank Ketcham's mischievous kid has been brought to the big screen after a few TV versions, the film has the air of a weak, warmed-over sequel. [25 June 1993, p.51]

No less than the first film, this new effort is both disarmingly sweet and politically appalling. [13 Apr 1990, p.48p]

Henry & June is a gorgeous film, one aimed at the intelligent and discriminating. As iconography, it's a stunner. But it would be better off as a silent. It's an example of talent and intelligence determined to do everything right, only to have almost everything come out wrong. [05 Oct 1990, p.53p]

German director Uli Edel's film of Last Exit to Brooklyn, while honorable, just doesn't roar off the screen the way the novel roared off the page. [11 May 1990, p.33p]

As he proved in his screenplay for Moonstruck, John Patrick Shanley has an ear for New Yorkese and a soft spot for eccentrics. Both are in evidence in The January Man, but what could have been an offbeat, original cop movie fails because Shanley can't meet the more conventional requirements of the genre, such as plotting, characterization and suspense. [13 Jan 1989, p.47]

This remake of The Desperate Hours, the 1955 Humphrey Bogart criminal-on-the-lam suspenser, is crisp and atmospheric - and doggedly ordinary. [05 Oct 1990, p.46p]

For all its propulsion (when it isn't slogging through would-be love scenes), Metro is unable to avoid seeming like yet another of the vanity movies that got Murphy into the career trouble from which he just extricated himself. Murphy vulnerable is more appealing than Murphy as supercop. [17 Jan 1997, p.D6]

When the chemistry isn't there - and it mostly isn't - the actors and film seem merely self-indulgent, despite the obvious devotion with which She's So Lovely was made. [29 Aug 1997, p.C3]

Nicolas Cage has had one of the stranger careers in Hollywood history. Considering Hollywood history, that’s saying something. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, with its splendidly winking title, trades on that strangeness.

Franco Zeffirelli's reputation as a popularizer of Shakespeare stems from this gusty swirl of a 1968 production built around - and aimed at - teens. The uncomprehending looks on the faces of Leonard Whiting's Romeo and Olivia Hussey's Juliet only increase the film's demographic pull, as poetry is replaced with prettiness. [18 Jan 1991, p.32p]

Onstage, Noises Off was a riot. On film, it's in the salvage business, snatching a few vagrant laughs from a reworking that otherwise sinks like a failed souffle, reminding us yet again that farce onstage and farce on film are two fundamentally different constructs. [20 March 1992, p.30]

Sonatine is less stylish and affecting than Fireworks. Its deadpan satire becomes indistinguishable from numbing slack as the waiting game is played out.[17 Apr 1998, p.F7]

Visually, Fat Man and Little Boy is almost obscenely beautiful. But while Joffe's eye is magnificent, his dramatic instincts are flaccid. [20 Oct 1989, p.79p]

The sad thing about Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart is that it fails in every important respect, yet is in no way cheap or exploitative. [20 Sep 1990, p.81p]

Red blood, white sands and a blue Corvette are the real stars of "White Sands," the slick new Roger Donaldson thriller that's more about its plot convolutions than its characters, and more about its visuals than either. [24 Apr 1992, p.85]

It's too diffuse, too turgid, an intelligent failure, but a failure nonetheless, with no real heat between Garcia and Thurman, riveting as she is as the blind woman literally and figuratively struggling to find a purchase on the world. In the end, it spends so much effort avoiding cheap obviousness that it seems to implode on its own muted restraint. [6 Nov 1992, p.38]

There are the obligatory bonding scenes, including a boxing match and an early morning heart-to-heart, but without tension and warmth. Jones manages to be lovable, but he and Cage never manage a chemistry. [25 May 1990, p.50p]