This movie is sick. It pretends to be a warning against compulsive gambling, but it falls for the oldest dodge in the gambler's book: "I only gambled enough to win back my losses." Maybe I shouldn't have expected anything more from an MGM movie that was shot on location at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

Movies like Eye for an Eye cheapen our character by encouraging us to indulge simplistic emotions - to react instead of analyzing. It provides a one-in-a-million situation and tries to teach us a lesson from it; thoughtful audience members will be aware they're not being treated fairly. This is filmmaking at the level of three-card monte. If you don't believe me, see "Dead Man Walking."

It is a "thriller" without thrills, constructed in a meaningless jumble of flashbacks and flash-forwards and subtitles and mottos and messages and scenes that are deconstructed, reconstructed and self-destructed. I wanted to signal the projectionist to put a gun to it.

If the plot and screenplay are juvenile, the production values are first-rate, and the lead performance by newcomer Elizabeth Berkley has a fierce energy that's always interesting.

I realized there was no hope for the movie because the plot and characters had alienated me beyond repair. If an audience is going to be entertained by a film, first they have to be able to stand it.

The plot, in short, is underwhelming. It merely follows the reporters as the screenplay serves them the solution to their case on a silver platter. Yet curiously, Deadline flows right along.

This is a disappointing waste of good acting talent, coupled with a very pedantic and not very intriguing story from first-time screenwriter Christina Hodson.

It's surprising to see a director like Michael Apted and an actress like Jennifer Lopez associated with such tacky material.

If you haven't already guessed, Ed is not a great movie. What it is is a fun way to spend 1 1/2 hours not thinking. [15 Mar 1996, p.33]

Of course it's completely ridiculous, but at the same time it has a certain disarming charm.

It makes little sense, fails as often as it succeeds, and yet is not hateful and is sometimes quite cheerfully original.

Bad movie. Ugly movie.

I kind of like the idea: A cheesy '80s band called the Suburbans reunites for a tribute album. I kind of like the cast: Everyone from Jennifer Love Hewitt to Robert Loggia pops up. I even kind of liked their "hit song," and probably would have bought their album in my teens. But it's impossible to like this movie, and there's no kind way to say it. [29 Oct 1999, p.30]

A Sound of Thunder may not be a success, but it loves its audience and wants us to have a great time.

A fog of gloom lowers over The Whole Ten Yards, as actors who know they're in a turkey try their best to prevail.

So ludicrous in so many different ways it achieves a kind of forlorn grandeur.

Movies like this work if they're able to maintain a high level of energy and invention, as the Mad Max movies do. They do not work when they lower their guard and let us see the reality, which is that several strangely garbed actors feel vaguely embarrassed while wearing bizarre costumes and reciting unspeakable lines.

In the stunningly tone-deaf and horrifically unfunny The Very Excellent Mister Dundee, Hogan plays himself in a “Curb Your Enthusiasm”-esque conceit gone terribly wrong.

Depp is one of the very best of America's young actors, but "The Brave" is a lightweight and unbelievable story that takes itself with terminal seriousness. [14 May 1997, p.45]

The long-delayed biopic Gotti is an entertaining and well-acted but uneven B-movie.

The result is not a movie that is very good, exactly, but it's entertaining and funny.

There's no chemistry between Deeds and Babe, but then how could there be, considering that their characters have no existence, except as the puppets in scenes of plot manipulation.

If he wants a future in the movies, Andrew Dice Clay is going to have to play somebody other than himself.

Bride Wars is pretty thin soup. The characters have no depth or personality, no quirks or complications, no conversation.

A slick production of a lame script, which kills time for most of its middle half-hour. If anyone in the plot had the slightest intelligence, the story would implode.

The joy of Dirty Work is in Macdonald's observational writing and sardonic delivery. Because he and director Bob Saget never take the film too seriously, nearly every scene transcends the ordinariness of the movie's plot line by giving way to Macdonald's charisma. [15 Jun 1998, p.32]

Predictable to its very core, and in a funny way the predictability is part of the fun. The movie is in on the joke of its own recycling.

This movie owes so much to the "Road Warrior" pictures that I doubt if it could have been made without them. Since the movie so clearly required great dedication, especially in its visual effects and the use of its desert locations, I can only wonder why they didn't spend equal effort on finding an original story to tell.