Mostly, you get a pain in the head from the assault on your senses and déjà vu as thick as heartburn after an anchovy pizza.

As a British politician said of a corrupt but articulate peer, "The Cat in the Hat" is like a rotten mackerel seen by moonlight: It shines as it stinks.

As close to perfectly unwatchable as it can be.

Everything here has been done better in other books, other movies. The lone remarkable thing is the level of violence, which exposes the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system.

Atmosphere goes only so far in a story where the major characters fade from memory.

Let me say, in my desire always to be positive, that Serving Sara is the funniest film I know where a man sticks his arm up a bull's rectum to massage its prostate.

We can all share frustration with a process that frees the Doobs of the world, but this heavy-handed movie won't provide catharsis. The filmmakers treat subtlety as a sin - unless Schlesinger thinks he's being subtle by showing us O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark for only a couple of seconds on a TV screen. [12 Jan 1996, p.4E]

I'm afraid it just stinks.

Embodies all that's wrong with the sellout culture of Hollywood.

Emotionally stultifying and brain-dead.

Spike Lee's films have been provocative, blunt, thoughtful, misguided, daring, sentimental, funny, honest and silly. But 25th Hour earns the director two new adjectives: irrelevant and tedious.

Directed by William "When's the next chase scene?" Friedkin, acted by comatose David Caruso and monotonous Linda Fiorentino and Chazz Palminteri, Jade is more like "Jaded." [13 Oct 1995, p.11F]

I think this camp classic is an accident along the lines of "Showgirls": howlingly funny, filled with gratingly earnest performances, riddled with dialogue that will be quoted at parties.

A painful bore.

Weak, obligatory stabs at humor make it more generic than it might've been.

And what of Roger Avary, the writer who shared the Academy Award for writing with Tarantino? He continues to plummet toward oblivion with The Rules of Attraction, which ranks with the Great Pyramid of Khufu as a monument to self-indulgence.

Bertino directs at a funereal pace. Speedman remains comatose, though Tyler flickers fitfully to life. The mournful look on her face suggests she's remembering the days when she was given more psychologically complex scripts, such as "Armageddon."

I do have one overpowering Y2K fear: that Hollywood will keep belching out movies as excruciatingly dull, brutal, mindless and overlong as End of Days.

To call the film “unwatchable” is to unfairly insult Josée Deshaies; his lush cinematography delights the eye when the camera roams around Saint Laurent’s workrooms. But “incomprehensible,” “interminable” and “immaterial” all apply.

It's an uncoordinated, flailing hodgepodge of music videos, chases, crashes and moronic plot twists.

This script by the husband-and-wife team of Leora Barish and Henry Bean is hopelessly contrived and takes forever to get to the point. (I warn you: The film does not absolutely identify the killer.)

Just when the story reaches its idiotic nadir, Neil (Diamond) shows up to save the day with a song and a smile.

The worst horror sequel of this or many another summer.

It's bombastic, chaotic, plodding, visually dreary and patchily written.

Zomboid, convoluted excuse for a thriller is among year's worst.

Whenever the music subsides and the characters speak the Coens' lines, the film turns back into mush.

About 45 minutes into Swordfish, the picture degenerates permanently from drivel to sleaze (only a short drop).

The most catastrophic misfire in a dreadful movie season.