If they ever give Dolly her freedom and stop packaging her so antiseptically, she could be terrific. But Dolly and Burt and Whorehouse never get beyond the concept stage in this movie.

One of the many graceful touches in Welcome to Marwen is the total lack of pity or condescension in either world.

Diane Kruger, whose Lisa is subjected to logical whiplash by the plot, always seems to know when it is and how she should feel. Now that's acting.

It's pleasant and amusing. If I had seen it before I was born, I would have loved it.

Shirley MacLaine is still a big-screen force. With a quick dismissive glance or a sharp-edged delivery of a one-liner, she creates a handful of genuine and genuinely funny moments.

A well-made movie. I cared about the characters. I felt for them. Liberate them from the plot's destiny, which is an anvil around their necks, and you might have something.

An awesomely silly, tasteless and half-witted movie.

Ed Harris in Phantom is like Steve Carlton with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1972 — delivering a wall-to-wall, amazing performance that's lost in a sea of dreadfulness.

The really good superhero movies, like "Superman," "SpiderMan 2" and "Batman Begins," leave Fantastic Four so far behind that the movie should almost be ashamed to show itself in the same theaters.

Director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer, Paul Harris Boardman, deliver a routine procedural with unremarkable frights.

With The Comedian arriving in theaters, it’s safe to say I now have only nine spaces left on my list of the 10 Worst Movies of 2017.

Despite its considerable flaws, Salinger is a valuable and engrossing biography of the author.

The whole point of a Turtles movie is superhero power through ninja fighting. And no matter how it is dressed up, or what century it's set in, that's all there is inside the shell. [22 Mar 1993, p.24]

This is a classic example of a well-made, big-budget action movie that is less than the sum of its parts.

[Stone] gives us provocative notes and sketches but not a final draft. The film doesn't feel at ease with itself. It says too much, and yet leaves too much unsaid.

The movie never really comes together, and I think the fault for that begins with Williams. When the star of a movie seems desperate enough to depend on one-liners, can the rest of the cast be blamed for losing confidence in the script?

The fight scenes in Bulletproof Monk are not as inventive as some I've seen (although the opening fight on a rope bridge is so well done that it raises expectations it cannot fulfill).

The movie has been produced by Nickelodeon, and will no doubt satisfy its intended audience enormously. It does not cross over into the post-Nickelodeon universe.

Fire Down Below might be dumb, but it's not suicidal. [7 Sept 1997, p.46]

National Treasure is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.

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.

Projects like this bring out the best in actors, who take salary cuts to work in Chekhov (even at one remove). What we can guess, watching the film, is that the same players would make a good job of "Three Sisters" but are undermined by the faculty club, which works like a hotel lobby. There's no way to sustain dramatic momentum here.

There ARE times when Aloha doesn’t work — and yet I’m recommending it for its sometimes loony sense of wonder, its trippy spirituality, its brilliant cast and because I seem to be a sap for even the Cameron Crowe movies almost nobody else likes.

It offers a good dose of non-gory scares, tells a story of supernatural time travel that recalls elements of “Inception,” and pays homage to the genre Wan and Whannell love.

This sequel is a good improvement over the 2014 adventure that rebooted the franchise. The effects are better, the pacing is tighter and the overall impact is much more entertaining.

Pitch Perfect 3 feels like an encore nobody asked for.

There is some dark humor in the movie, of the kind where you laugh that you may not gag.

With a cleaner story line, the basic idea could have been free to deliver. As it is, we get a better movie than we might have, because the performances are so good.