Manhunter is full of useful tips on interior decoration, but a movie it's not. [15 Aug 1986, p.JC]

A sleek, tight, fastidiously executed nothing.

What’s so maddening about A Quiet Place Part II is the unused potential. Krasinski opens up the world and timeline of the film, but doesn’t utilize it in any meaningful way, introducing new ideas but then jettisoning the opportunity. Again and again he falls back on more of the same old tricks from “A Quiet Place,” which was a bore to begin with.

"Damage" is a fruit bowl reduced to a raisin. [22 Jan 1993, p.B]

This comedy-romance about a mermaid who falls in love with a man does have one thing going for it, the lithe shape and pleasant underwater smile of actress Daryl Hannah. Otherwise, it's a desperately unfunny film that wastes the talents of SCTV favorites John Candy and Eugene Levy. [08 June 1984, p.12]

Just another self-absorbed teen chronicle, with the added twist of a little time travel and a surprise ending.

I find Lars and the Real Girl adorable in the worst way, bailed out only by most every member of its excellent cast.

Raiff most likely wanted to make a movie about a well-intentioned guy in his early 20s who gradually finds his way to a better life. What undermines his efforts is a creeping smugness and self-regard, positioning every side character as an intern in the Andrew Improvement Program.

The melodramatic clumsiness of the script, and, in one scene, its gratuitous endorsement of marijuana, betrays the youth of its writer, recent UCLA graduate Shane Black. And veteran director Richard Donner, whose credits include another cartoon movie, can't seem to thread the scenes together in any meaningful way. [6 Mar 1987, p.G]

It's a seriously withholding action comedy, stingy on the wit, charm, jokes, narrative satisfactions and animals with personalities sharp enough for the big screen, either in 2-D or 3-D.

Strangely unmoving. So what went wrong?

Certainly, the elements for a better movie are here. The credits are dotted with multi-Oscar nominees. But not all are well used. What Frantic needs most is an infusion of chemistry. Somehow Polanski has failed to make these actors connect.

There's no plot here; like the MTV show that spawned it, this movie is just a progression of increasingly disgusting and/or dangerous stunts.

It may well be a hit, but me, I'm waiting for "Iron Man 2."

Mountainhead is a talky movie and I tend to like talky movies. But at some point in the nearly two-hour running time, it just becomes boring.

Nobly intended and about half baked, School Ties is a slightly glorified ``Afterschool Special`` that might function as an introduction to the evils of anti-Semitism for sheltered teens.

Vincent & Theo is a by-the-numbers art biography that barely succeeds in recapping the best-known events in the life of its subject, Vincent van Gogh. There is something almost chilling in the degree of the director's evident disengagement from his material and the complete lack of craft with which he has filmed it.

Hanna presents the problem of the well-made diversion that is, at its core, repellent.

While there’s some payoff in the many visual callbacks to ’80s-and-earlier genre movies, at some point the filmmaker lost sight of how to best serve Goth a third time.

Instead of an escape from Hollywood’s cookie-cutter plots, it’s a retreat back into them, only the sexes have been changed.

Fletch tends to think he’s the smartest guy in the room. So how is that supposed to work when the performance itself is so adrift and unappealing?

Instead of dramatizing this subject’s life, it dramatizes the extravagance of moviemaking. The script shoves the dicey stuff off to the side: race, infidelity, a complicated figure’s inner demons.

Williams does a fine job with her role. I was pulling for her throughout her dreary journey. It's too bad it didn't get anywhere.

Maybe this review is more about me than about Conan O'Brien, but I really couldn't get past the odor of self-congratulation emanating from nearly every scene in Conan O'Brien Can't Stop.

The full-on assault on the audience’s tear ducts in much of “Guardians 3″ may be sincere, but the rhythms and pacing of the film never find the beat. We end up waiting for the reductive punchline, or for another round of wanton slaughter.

Superhero comic book movie with a script so feeble it might have been written with crayons.

It’s a luxe treatment of some puny satiric ideas, toned up by a cast led by Emma Stone and Lanthimos first-timer Jesse Plemons, who won the best actor prize this year at Cannes. But everything has a chance to go wrong with a movie long before the actors film anything.

A talky, plodding film that seems likely to bore children and adults in equal measure. [11 Dec 1992, p.B2]

The movie plays like a very expanded version of what would make -- and likely has made -- a cute TV newsmagazine segment.

It wanders and putters and follows its main characters around.

Though I would agree it's original -- it's the first aboveground romance movie I've seen in which the heroine is repeatedly spanked, verbally tormented and tied to a chair by her lover--- it's not an experience I much enjoyed.

The camera bobs and weaves like a drunk, frantically. So you have hammering close-ups, combined with woozy insecurity each time more than two people are in the frame. Twenty minutes into the retelling of fugitive Valjean, his monomaniacal pursuer Javert, the torch singers Fantine and Eponine and the rest, I wanted somebody to just nail the damn camera to the ground.

Knock at the Cabin is a real load — 100 lugubrious minutes of what is intended as steadily mounting dread and apocalypse prevention seminar.

While the actresses seem authentic in these interviews, they are forced and unconvincing in Jaglom's script, which centers on characters who might kindly be described as narcissistic Harpies. [21 Jun 1991, p.G]

Wasikowska struggles to activate a vague notion of female disenfranchisement and victimhood, triumphant. She and Pattinson fill in as many blanks as they can, where they can.

This is nothing more than a half-hour Ramar of the Jungle episode, blown up to motion-picture length.

Staggers and wanders and feels far longer than its 85 minutes, and it's best considered a calling card for better things to come.

The Signal combines the inconstancy of an omnibus film with the blandness of art by committee. The end result feels less like a blend of distinct styles than an opportunistic hodgepodge, a second-hand premise wedded to an attention-grabbing gimmick.

If Set It Off had concentrated on easy thrills like that well-filmed drive-through-the-walls robbery climax, it might have qualified as pulpy entertainment. Instead, it's that deadliest of beasts: an exploitation movie with pretensions to social significance. [06 Nov 1996, p.1]

It's passable.

The line between cool and cold is a thin one, however. Cool isn't the word for "Thirteen"; it's just smug.

What’s missing is not simply surprise, or the pleasurable shock of a new kind of ghost comedy. It’s the near-complete absence of verbal wit, all the more frustrating since Keaton is ready to play, and he’s hardly alone.

All the Old Knives settles for all the old tropes.

For me, the mechanics or even the (excellent) designs are not enough. Jeunet's archness keeps conventional empathy or engagement at bay, and by design maintains a tone of artificiality.

The circumstances of the story might be “timely,” but “Dreams” doesn’t help us understand the situation better, leaving us in the dark about what we’re supposed to take away from this story of sex, violence, money and the state. Anything it suggests we already know.

The first "H&K" caught people off-guard with its canny idiocy and zigzagging, picaresque treasure hunt premise. By now, there's no catching anyone off-guard with these two, except by way of the most off-color and off-putting means possible.

The film is organized in episodes, each one leading pretty much to the same conclusion, which is these are not folks we want contributing to our gene pool. Once that's understood, The New Age settles into a tiresome repetitiveness. Even its wittier turns-and, as "The Player" demonstrated, Tolkin has a caustic wit-play curiously flat. [23 Sept 1994, p.N]

Largely a disappointment.

When the film at last reaches its supposedly shocking conclusion, it resembles an overinflated balloon that has finally burst. It is a film that demands that you pay close attention, then rewards none of your diligence. [12 Apr 1991, p.4]

Crass but imponderable, bizarrely mixing glowingly back-lit sentimentality with stomach-churning violence and juvenile sex jokes.

Silly, sadistic and finally a little galling, Kingsman: The Secret Service answers the question: What would Colin Firth have been like if he'd played James Bond?

Calling Dredd 3D a movie is sort of a lie. It's a premise, and there are levels to reach, and always there's another grimy hallway to stalk, and then you turn right or left, and then kill some more.

A lame comedy about the quirky true story of the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team that competed in the Calgary Winter Olympics...The intelligence level of the comedy insults preteens. [1 Oct 1993, p.C2]

It's bankrupt in terms of imagination. All he (Romero) does is place his zombies in the basement of a missile silo and have a few crazed military types scream at the zombies and at each other. End of movie. [03 Sept 1985, p.5C]

In the end, Protocols of Zion is all context--a bit here about Father Coughlin, a minute there about the Holocaust, a stint with "The Passion" and a brief shot of Levin watching the beheading of Daniel Pearl--no soul.

It would still be a stinker even if it wasn't cloaked in a dark shroud of cultural and political relevancy. It's just that bad.

Rendered bland and frustrating by its endless attempts to make the odd odder.

A stupid, stylized road picture. [10 Sept 1993]

But here's the problem: Bruce Campbell's character is a complete stiff, and so is everyone else he meets who isn't a special effect. The result is that we couldn't care less who wins any battle in the movie no matter how inventively photographed. What about a love interest? Embeth Davidtz, as the lady who's waiting, doesn't have a sexy scene in the movie. [19 Feb 1993, p.C]

Despite a big budget, lots of technical flair and a good cast headed by Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames, it's mostly a bloody mess.

In a year of mass culture that gave us HBO’s excellent “Chernobyl,” Joker can claim the grimmest depiction of a meltdown.

On your deathbed you will want back the time it takes to see this one.

It lacks a sharp look and satisfyingly fleshed-out story and compensates with one numbing round of insect- or human-based peril after another.

Child's Play would probably be sickening if it weren't so relentlessly stupid.

High-minded sleaze, the film deceives you with its first 10 minutes, which are interestingly creepy.

It brings me no joy to relay this: From an irresistible “tell me more!” of a true story, Eastwood and his “Gran Torino” screenwriter Nick Schenk have made a movie that feels dodgy and false at every turn.

The real trouble with Psycho III is that it's one sequel too many. Norman and his Gothic manse have already been drained of creative resources. [03 July 1986, p.A]

Compared to so many varied and skillful female-driven hits such as "Bridesmaids," or this summer's "Trainwreck" and "Spy," Sisters isn't worth talking about.

Easy Virtue may be a bauble, as Larita's described at one point, but Coward's examination of hypocrisy demands real skill. The style should suggest "whipped cream with knives," as Stephen Sondheim once described "A Little Night Music." Elliott's film is more like curdled milk with a spork.

This medical miracle scene is by far the best in the film. Not because it is sexy or, perish the thought, Zen-like, but because it is pretty hilarious-a bizarre blend of the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges and Keystone Cops, with a little raunch dressing on the side. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is mostly a lot of grunting and groaning.

Despite the direction of John Huston, this story of a self-appointed Western judge (Paul Newman) isn't one of anyone's best. [06 Apr 1990, p.71]

Squanders a decent comic premise.

The exhausting slapstick violence is the film's chief variation, and it's no fun at all.

Director Godfrey Reggio gives us some ordinary and a few spectacular shows of people doing hard work to the accompaniment of the boring music of composer Philip Glass. This film is not in the same league with its fine predecessor, "Koyaanisqatsi." [20 May 1988, p.A]

It’s hard to believe that a lineup so stellar could generate so few laughs, but there it is.

So, as we watch this movie go through its predictable paces, we also watch two actors, one in character and one not. And that is an awful lot to ask an audience to suffer through just to see Russell deliver another dependable piece of work. [3 Feb 1986, p.C2]

The movie delivers, in its chosen way. But it’s a soulless way. The violence may be for laughs, and many Neeson fans will likely respond to the larky brutality of Cold Pursuit, which is very different from the star’s previous mid-winter vehicles (“The Grey” is my favorite). But I don’t get much psychic recreation from this sort of action movie.

The movie coasts on a blase, easygoing highway of cynicism regarding how America conducts its business of war. Despite all the Martifications and Scorsese-ing, we're left with virtually nothing, except the feeling that a pretty good anecdote has been inflated into a bubble-headed American Dream morality tale.

It's a serious drag to see how Ritchie has turned Holmes and Dr. Watson into a couple of garden-variety thugs.

The film, directed by Nancy Savoca (True Love) from a screenplay by Bob Comfort, is one of those sensitive dramas that defines its sensitivity by how brutally it can hammer the audience into feeling pity for its characters. [04 Oct 1991, p.L]

I kind of hate the movie’s mixture of bro comedy, sadistic practical jokes (don’t call it slapstick) and last-ditch pull for the heartstrings.

But while Downey is up to the material, and then some, the material is not up to him. The film plods along with the sort of creaky literalism that blunts its attempts at other-worldliness. It says something that Elisabeth Shue, in a bit part as Downey's frustrated girlfriend, has more presence than anyone else in the movie. Her sphere of real time and space is credible; the fantasy world the film attempts to create is not. [13 Aug 1993, p.C]

It's reductive, insanely violent slapstick, but that's the phenomenon in a nutshell.

John Waters is back with this awfully bawdy, never sexy, rarely funny, actually boring, one-note sex comedy.

Falling Down is an intellectually sloppy, rebellious working-man adventure film that is little more than a set piece for Michael Douglas playing out a revenge-of-the-nerds fantasy. [26 Feb 1993, p.C]

It's just a watery, undeservedly smug update of the low-budget, kids-stranded-in-the-sticks bloodfests of the 1970s and '80s.

Not only is [Penn's] film overlong and overwrought, it suffers from a pacing that is so deliberate it is positively sluggish. [04 Oct 1991, p.K]

The appeal of the film version, such as it is, relates almost entirely to eye-for-an-eye, severed-limb-for-a-limb vengeance, two hours and 41 minutes of it, with just enough solemnity to make anyone who thought "The Dark Knight" was a little gassy think twice about which superhero myth THEY'RE calling gassy.

Reynolds retains his skittery comic timing, and Jackman (while tonally a little lost here) certainly put in his time with a personal trainer. But there isn’t a single shot in Levy’s film that flows excitingly into the next one.

I won't pretend there aren't moments of sweetness here--there are, aplenty. But the promise of true emotion goes bust with bad acting, cheap writing and false sentiment.

What we have here is a much less radical movie than writer Hughes probably believes he has created. Yes, he's given us an individualistic girl, but she swoons like a robot after the first reasonably human WASP or WASC asks her for a date. [2 Feb 1986]

A remake for schlemiels, or at least easy marks when it comes to formulaic Hollywood comedy. But the film's peculiar sluggishness and nagging hypocrisy probably won't get in the way of its popularity.

It's tough to get on board with these monsters. They don't get the banter they--or we--deserve, and the screenwriters lean on wearying stereotypes.

Pacific Heights wastes our time and the talent of three top actors, Michael Keaton, Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine. What possibly attracted them to this inconsequential exploitation film about a tenant from hell terrorizing his landlords in an effort to steal their home? We keep waiting for the film to develop some larger meaning or greater purpose. It never does. [29 Sept 1990, p.C2]

This is the kind of movie that nice people call ambitious. Let's just leave it at that.

This is "Fight Club" without the irony or the metaphysical gaming.

Instead of becoming bewitched, we're caught up in one more gallery of cliches and storytelling blunders. The Glitches of Eastwick. [03 May 1996, p.C2]

Director Arthur Penn (Bonnnie and Clyde) may have intended this to be a campy homage to Hitchcock, but instead he gives us a boring, frustrating and stupid story. [06 Feb 1987, p.A]