Lean on Me wants to be taken as a serious, even noble film about an admirable man. And yet it never honestly looks at Clark for what he really is: a grownup example of the very troublemakers he hates so much, still unable even in adulthood to doubt his right to do what he wants, when he wants, as he wants.

The "Be Kind, Rewind" stickers on patrol car bumper stickers may well address the quick fate of "Two If by Sea," but there will be a lot worse comedies on the rack with greater reputations when that happens. [15 Jan 1996, p.31]

I can't really recommend the film, unless you admire Caine as much as I do, which is certainly possible.

A serviceable if sometimes overwrought biography, with solid performances and the courage to spotlight not only the heroics but the appalling misdeeds committed by the iconic Ms. Mandela.

In the occasionally poignant but ham-handed and only semi-funny Where to Invade Next, Moore is at his shtickiest.

This is a film that moves quietly along but speaks volumes.

Sandler, at the center, is a distraction; he steals scenes, and we want him to give them back.

This is a great-looking movie, a triumph of set design and special effects, creating a fantasy world halfway between suburbia and a prehistoric cartoon.

The film doesn't make us work, doesn't allow us to figure out things for ourselves, is afraid we'll miss things if they're not spelled out.

It's the kind of movie that provides diversion for the idle channel-surfer but isn't worth a trip to the theater. A lot of it seems cobbled together out of spare parts.

A documentary that does the job it sets out to do. I wish it had tried for more. It is a competent TV sports doc, the sort you'd expect to see on ESPN. Unless you are a big fan of Senna or Formula One, I don't know why you'd want to pay first-run prices to see it.

Fatal Attraction is a spellbinding psychological thriller that could have been a great movie if the filmmakers had not thrown character and plausibility to the winds in the last minutes to give us their version of a grown-up "Friday the 13th."

The movie presents the surfaces of Obermaier's life but never lets us understand who she was.

Hitchcock liked typecasting, he said, because if an actor was right for a role, that made less work for the director in getting the audience to accept the character. Here the casting is so wrong that nothing quite works.

Begins rather awkwardly, but ends by making a statement that explains a great many things. One question left unasked: Why did we promise to defend Taiwan with nuclear weapons but refuse to recognize it as a sovereign nation?

Is this a good movie? Not exactly; too much of it is on automatic pilot, as it must be, to satisfy the fans of the original Shaft. Is it better than I expected? Yes.

It's got a unique . . . well, I was about to say charm, but the movie's last scene doesn't quite let me get away with that.

Queer is a good-looking film with moments of great promise that is much like Lee in that it wears out its welcome and tries your patience far too often.

The Two Popes is the kind of well-made but flawed release you can wait to catch on home video.

It's fun, it's slick and it's carefully put together, but it's more of an exercise than an accomplishment. Everyone does their schtick, the plot complications unfold like clockwork, but we find ourselves not really caring.

Who was this movie made for? Not for me, that's sure, but I have a hunch younger kids will find it satisfying.

Burton's made a film that's respectful to the original, and respectable in itself, but that's not enough. Ten years from now, it will be the 1968 version that people are still renting.

It's one of those movies where you smile and laugh and are reasonably entertained, but you get no sense of a mighty enterprise sweeping you along with its comedic force. There is not a movie here. Just scenes in search of one.

I liked it in the same way I might like an arcade game: It holds your attention until you run out of quarters, and then you wander away without giving it another thought.

Director April Mullen shoots Wander like a kinetic horror film, which results in some pretty cool sequences but also far too many quick-cut flashbacks to the deadly auto accident, which results in us feeling more annoyed and manipulated than intrigued.

Palo Alto is a well-directed but relatively slight, only occasionally provocative and unremittingly bleak slice of life.

The saving grace for this film is the group of young actors.

Although Sanctuary is stylish and initially intriguing, it’s eventually a real chore to spend an entire feature-length film (even with a relatively brief running time of 96 minutes) with two boors who are also kind of boring, despite all the histrionics and fang-baring and manipulative mind games. They find themselves and each other a lot more interesting than we do.

The central weakness of Cocoon: the Return is that the film lacks any compelling reason to exist. Yes, it is a heartwarming film.

The Last Starfighter is a well-made movie. The special effects are competent. The acting is good, and I enjoyed Robert Preston's fast-talking The Music Man reprise (we've got trouble, right here in the galaxy) and the gentle wit of Dan O'Herlihy's extraterrestrial. But the final spark was missing, the final burst of inspiration that might have pulled all these concepts and inspirations and retreads together into a good movie.

When you wind a plot up as tightly as this one, it runs along nicely for awhile, but then the last half-hour has to be spent simply resolving everything.

I found the idea of the plot more interesting than the plot itself, and am finding the movie more fun to write about than to see.

The Aristocrats might have made a nice short subject. At 87 minutes, it's like the boozy salesman who corners you with the Pinocchio torture.

We go expecting to be inspired and uplifted, and we leave somewhat satisfied in those areas, but with reluctant questions about how well the story has aged, and how relevant it is today.

Variable ratings: The Hand (4 stars), Equilibrium (3 stars), The Dangerous Thread of Things (1 star).

The biggest reason to see the Italian dramedy “Mia Madre” can be summed up in two words: John Turturro.

For all its predictability and averageness, Texas Chainsaw Massacre does have two fantastically executed shock scenes.

Doesn't quite click.

I can't recommend Mission to Mars.

A moody, effective thriller for about 80 percent of the way, and then our hands close on air. If you walk out before the ending, you'll think it's better than it is.

While the performances are solid and we do get a few touching moments, the film sinks under the weight of too many intersecting storylines and too many loud and fiery and surprisingly mediocre action sequences.

There is clear definition between closer and further elements. I've seen a lot of 3-D recently, and in terms of technical quality, this is the best.

Kevin Spacey brings another of his cynical, bitter characters to life -- very smart, and fresh out of hope -- but the movie doesn't give him much of anywhere to take it.

When a film telling three stories and spanning thousands of years has a running time of 96 minutes, scenes must have been cut out. There will someday be a Director’s Cut of this movie, and that’s the cut I want to see.

Whatever happened to the delight and, if you'll excuse the term, the magic in the "Harry Potter" series? As the characters grow up, the stories grow, too, leaving the innocence behind and confusing us with plots so labyrinthine that it takes a Ph.D from Hogwarts to figure them out.

The Gumball Rally is an easily forgettable entertainment, but at least it has a certain amount of class. "Cannonball" was straight exploitation.

The first three minutes convince us we're are looking at a commercial before the feature begins. Then we realize the whole movie will look like this.

Eisenberg is a fine writer and shows clear promise as a visual storyteller, but it becomes a chore to spend even an 88-minute movie with his increasingly off-putting characters. We know they’re not supposed to be likable, but they should be more interesting.

The movie exhibits the usual indifference to the issues involved. Although it was written and directed by Elie Chouraqui, a Frenchman, it is comfortably xenophobic. Most Americans have never understood the differences among Croats, Serbs and Bosnians, and this film is no help.

There's so much flashing forward and backward, so many spins of fate, so many chapters in the journals, that after awhile I felt that I, as well as time, was being jerked around.

It leans HARD into the romantic comedy tropes, to the point that you might find yourself giving into the silliness and the over-the-top embracing of so many clichés. It’s like you’re getting bombarded with rom-com snowballs for the entire movie.

A perfectly competent genre film in a genre that has exhausted its interest for me, the Zombie Film.

I liked a lot of the movie, which is genial and has a lot of energy, but I was sort of depressed by its relentlessly materialistic view of Christmas, and by the choice to go with action and (mild) violence over dialogue and plot.

Conor Allyn’s No Man’s Land is filled with noble ideas about the value of listening to and learning from the “other side” in the immigration crisis, but as it becomes increasingly heavy-handed, we feel as if we’re sitting in on a lecture.

The first movie combining Ping-Pong and kung-fu and co-starring Maggie Q. How many could there be?

Beatriz at Dinner is entertaining enough as farce — but over the course of a feature-length film, the characters actually become more one-dimensional and less believable.

No God, No Master has an authentic period feel. But Green is focused on so many historical figures and potential storylines that the film feels rushed and, at times, confusing.

A fairly stylish adult vampire movie, and Delphine Seyrig (last seen wandering about a resort hotel in Last Year at Marienbad) is a most satisfactory vampire.

The movie has been cast, designed, clothed, scored and edited to the bleeding edge of hip, but it hasn't exactly been written.

Take away the drugs, and this is the story of a boring life in wholesale.

I can see what Thomson is getting at and even sort of appreciate it at times; the movie isn't boring, but it meanders and loses track of plot threads. Any feelings we have for the characters is muted because they all richly deserve to die at one another's hands.

The Stepfather has one wonderful element: Terry O'Quinn's performance.

Yes, it’s another sports movie about underdogs reaching for the stars and winning, but what makes it unique is Starks’ interesting story and the fact that it’s about golf.

Father of the Bride Part II is not a great movie and not even as good as its 1991 inspiration. But it is warm and fuzzy, and has some good laughs and a lot of sweetness.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back tries its best to turn a paperback romance into a relationship worth making a movie about, but fails.

For all its stylistic flourishes, “The Silent Twins” winds up a relatively superficial entry in the genre of mental health biopics.

There is an irony here. The film exhibits an admirable determination to do justice to a real story, but the story's not real.

Not a successful thriller, but with some nice dramatic scenes along with the dumb mystery and contrived conclusion.

So I Married an Axe Murderer is a mediocre movie with a good one trapped inside, wildly signaling to be set free. The good movie involves a droll and eccentric Scottish-American family whose household embraces more of the trappings of Scottishness than your average Glasgow souvenir shop. The bad movie is about a young man's romance with a woman he comes to suspect is an ax murderer.

Maintains a certain level of intrigue, and occasionally bursts into life.

Flashes of inspiration illuminate stretches of routine sitcom material; it's the kind of movie where the audience laughs loudly and then falls silent for the next five minutes.

This might have worked as a short film or a 30-minute TV episode, but as a feature film, it grows increasingly cloying as the minutes tick on.

When a movie begins to present one implausible or unwise decision after another, when its world plays too easily into the hands of its story, when the taste for symbolism creates impossible scenes, we grow restless.

Everyone involved is far too talented to mess this up too badly, but it soon becomes clear that Curtis intends to reduce us to quivering sobs mixed with heartfelt gratitude for every blessed day of life.

Charles Bronson, who has recently started to enjoy a long-delayed superstar status, is very good and slit-eyed as the mechanic, and the movie's premise is a nice one with a lot of neat twists toward the end.

“Axel F” is the very definition of passable, comfort-viewing, nostalgia-tinged entertainment. It’s a good-looking film, and it’s wonderful to see Eddie Murphy returning to one of his signature roles and pumping it back to life after he sleep-walked through “Cop III.” It’s just a shame they got the band together after three decades, only to have them perform by-the-book renditions of the same old songs.

The story is so-so, in other words, but the pummeling is primo.

Though colorful and sweet-natured and occasionally capable of producing the mild chuckle, this is a safe, predictable, edge-free, nearly bland effort from a studio that rarely hedges its bets.

It’s an ambitious reach, and the talented cast of mostly familiar names is game for the challenge, but Crisis goes over the top with too many key plot developments. The end result is a serious case of Messaging Exhaustion.

A pleasant, inoffensive 3-D animated farce about a team of superspy gophers.

Lansky loses steam every time the focus is on somewhere other than Lansky.

What is good about this film is very good, but there are too many side trips, in both the plot and the emotions, for the film to draw us in fully.

Sometimes in an imperfect movie there is consolation simply in regarding the actors.

First-time feature director Dante Ariola (working from a script by Becky Johnson) has a good feel for these characters and keeps things moving along at a brisk pace.

Thanks in large part to Costner’s robust, earnest, growling, deadpan voice work as a dog who can be brilliant one moment and fantastically clueless the next, “The Art of Racing In the Rain” still comes close to winning us over … Until the final scene, which was so shameless and manipulative, I wanted a refund on every lump in the throat and teary-eyed moment I had experienced to that point.

It’s the MMA version of Million Dollar Baby meets Rocky in Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised, a well-acted and occasionally involving but overly long, cliché-stuffed sports film that hits all the usual notes and piles on the subplot drama to the point where we’re nearly exhausted by the viewing experience.

It’s a romantic comedy with all sorts of possibilities that instead relies on heavy-handed sight gags and over-the-top performances.

There are some wonderful special effects, but, alas, the movie bogs down with shooting, car chases and plot twists that make it a bit tiresome. Still, it's some fun, especially watching Jagger, Hopkins and the supporting cast tangle with a future in which fried rats seem delicious. [21 Jan 1992, p.27]

The fancy stuff and foolery impedes the story and its emotions; the underlying story was strong enough that maybe a traditional narrative would have been best, after all.

I like Miley Cyrus. I like her in spite of the fact that she's been packaged within an inch of her life. I look forward to the day when she squirms loose from her handlers and records an album of classic songs, performed with the same sincerity as her godmother, Dolly Parton. I think it'll be a long, long time until she plays a movie character like the free-standing, engaging heroines of Ashley Judd, but I can wait.

Annette Bening plays Julia in a performance that has great verve and energy, and just as well, because the basic material is wheezy melodrama.

It is not a bad movie, mind you; it's clever and shows great control of craft, but it doesn't care, and so it's hard for us to care about. To see it once is to plumb to the bottom of its mysteries, and beyond.

It’s a great-looking ride with a few legitimate jump-scares and some suitably chilling imagery, but the finale leaves us frustrated and let down, wondering: Is that all there is?

There will be better movies playing in the same theater, even if it is a duplex, but on the other hand there is something to be said for goofiness without apology by broken lizards who just wanna have fun.

Director Seth Gordon (“Four Christmases,” “Horrible Bosses”) knows how to film fast-moving comedies with star appeal, and Diaz (who hasn’t lost an ounce of onscreen charisma) and Foxx are terrific together, but wouldn’t it have been lovely if they had tackled more creative and challenging material?

Wahlberg has grown so much as an actor we can pretty much buy him as a college professor/author. There’s just not enough depth to the character of Jim, and not much of a story arc.

Despite the stylish direction from the duo of Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and winning performances by Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, “Novocaine” sputters to the finish line.

Look at the performances. They're surprisingly good, and I especially admired the work of Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn as the parents of one of two girls who go walking in the woods.