House of D is the kind of movie that particularly makes me cringe, because it has such a shameless desire to please; like Uriah Heep, it bows and scrapes and wipes its sweaty palm on its trouser leg, and also like Uriah Heep, it privately thinks it is superior.

It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s not nearly as self-deprecating and funny as it needed to be.

The Woman in the Window is filled with dramatic touches such as a dizzying overhead shot of a staircase, a skylight just begging for someone to come crashing through, pieces of evidence conveniently left lying about and visual references to far superior noir thrillers, including the aforementioned “Rear Window.” It’s also filled with cheap scares, false alarms, dumb cops, loud storms and tricky camera angles designed to make us feel as disoriented as Anna. The only thing those elements really succeed in doing is giving us a headache.

Ansiedad is a smart charmer, and well-played by Cierra Ramirez, she should really be above this sort of thing - above the whole movie, really.

Gun Shy is a loud bang signifying nothing, a tired and second-rate actioner — and an embarrassing resume entry for the likes of Antonio Banderas (“Desperado,” “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”) and Olga Kurylenko (“Oblivion,” “Quantum of Solace”).

The best thing about The Hero of Color City is its good voice talent — and its running time of only 77 minutes. Other than that, this is a pretty lame computer-generated animated movie that will likely not engage kids much past the first grade.

Stealth is an offense against taste, intelligence and the noise pollution code -- a dumbed-down "Top Gun" crossed with the HAL 9000 plot from "2001."

A labored and sour comedy.

The hypodermic needle, which has been keeping a pretty low profile in the movies, deserves a better comeback than it gets in Dr. Giggles. So does the medical profession: Even those who still believe in it will find little to recoil from in this un-hellacious tale of a mad doctor's mad son returning to his small hometown to make murderous house calls. [26 Oct 1992, p.27]

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.

The kind of movie beloved by people who never go to the movies, because they are primarily interested in something else--the Civil War, for example--and think historical accuracy is a virtue instead of an attribute.

The movie adds up to a few good ideas and a lot of bad ones, wandering around in search of an organizing principle.

The plot risks bursting under the strain of its coincidences, as Sara and Jon fly to opposite coasts at the same time and engage in a series of Idiot Plot moves so extreme and wrongheaded that even other characters in the same scene should start shouting helpful suggestions.

There is a kind of studied stupidity that sometimes passes as humor, and Jared Hess' Napoleon Dynamite pushes it as far as it can go.

The screenplay by Kim Barker requires Bullock to behave in an essentially disturbing way that began to wear on me. It begins as merely peculiar, moves on to miscalculation and becomes seriously annoying.

So much talent — and everyone goes down with the ship in one of the worst movies of 2021.

I laughed, yes, I did, several times during Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. That's proof, if any is required, that I still possess streaks of immaturity and vulgarity.

It is the anti-Sundance film, an exhausted wheeze of bankrupt cliches and cardboard characters, the kind of film that has no visible reason for existing, except that everybody got paid.

If you liked the original, the best way to preserve that memory is to stay away from this sequel.

Invasion U.S.A. is a brain-damaged, idiotic thriller, not even bad enough to be laughable.

An efficient delivery system for Gotcha! Moments, of which it has about 19. Audiences who want to be Gotchaed will enjoy it.

Unless this is a parody of “Star Wars,” it looks like we’re in for a long and ponderous, CGI-dominated slog filled with stock characters, slow-mo battle sequences and interminable flashbacks designed to give clarity to a murky and convoluted story. Spoiler alert: It’s not a parody. We should be so lucky.

The film is a sharp disappointment to those who have been waiting for 10 years since the master's last film. The best that can be hoped is that, having made a film, Coppola has the taste again, and will go on to make many more, nothing like this.

Spade, clearly bored with his petulant-pipsqueak persona, does the kind of sleepwalking that gets ridiculed on TV by David Spade. Make no mistake: He's over this. [2 Feb 1996, p.31]

The poster art for A Thousand Words shows Eddie Murphy with duct tape over his mouth, which as a promotional idea ranks right up there with Fred Astaire in leg irons.

Return to the Blue Lagoon aspires to the soft-core porn achievements of the earlier film, but succeeds instead of creating a new genre, no-core porn.

Needful Things is yet another one of those films based on a Stephen King story that inspires you to wonder why his stories don't make better films. The movie only has one note, which it plays over and over, sort of a Satanic water torture. It's not funny and it's not scary and it's all sort of depressing.

Why do they persist in making these retreads? Because RoboCop is a brand name, I guess, and this is this year's new model. It's an old tradition in Detroit to take an old design and slap on some fresh chrome.