It's the best new battle film since "Black Hawk Down," a movie it surpasses in sheer feeling and bravura style, if not in nightmarish panic and suspense.

An uneven mix of genres that, even when it misses the mark, gets points for originality and a good beat.

The heartfelt truthfulness of Gardos' tale, and the performances of all leads, particularly Johansson, make the film a powerful account of the universal search for identity and the meaning of "home."

No doubt about it: Top Gun is going to be the hit that "The Right Stuff" should have been. They are not in the same class of films, but this much must be said: The aerial sequences in Top Gun are as thrilling -- while remaining coherent -- as any ever put on film.

What The Last Full Measure demonstrates is how powerful it can be to shed light on these experiences, through testimony, bearing witness and yes, ceremonial recognition.

Wahlberg has the presence, the glower and the laconic line readings to guide us through a mess of pain, painlessly.

Writer and director Alex Sharfman’s splurchy dark comedy carves itself into halves, a clever first half followed by a more routine second one. Yet it’s a feature film debut signaling a filmmaker of actual wit. So you go with it — I did, anyway, most of it, more or less — even when its sense of tone and direction goes sideways.

Never calms down for a second. It's the visual equivalent of the "Sabre Dance," and its only oxygen comes from the actors, who are quite good.

A lively, well-made schlock thriller that will doubtlessly be forgotten in two weeks, but in the meantime should provide a few pleasant evenings for fans of the genre.

The movie's smooth to the point of blandness, but its faces really do tell a story. And having Gere's silverly mane share the same film with Strathairn's is almost too much fabulous hair for one diversion.

Thoroughly dull. [23 Nov 1990]

Lapica isn't yet enough of a writer or director (or an actor) to make the dramatic arc unpredictable in any way. It may be effective for some as therapy. It is far less so as cinematic storytelling.

Robert Benton’s recent films have been vexing combinations of gentility and stiffness, and despite a fair bit of nudity "Feast of Love" behaves itself all too well. It’s as neat as a pin; it ties up every loose end in careful "Playhouse 90" style. Despite some awfully smart actors, Benton’s movie made me long for a few interrupted sentences and the occasionally conflicted character.

It's an admirable attempt, though a less than completely successful one. The film's disappointments lie not so much in Almodovar's controlled, respectful direction as in the strange gaps and displacements of his screenplay, which never seems to supply the scenes we most want to see. [20 Dec 1991]

The pathos really are shameless, arriving with killing regularity and false humility.

Roughly half the scenes are terrible, nervously edited and predictable. The other half transcend the innate shrugginess of the script. At the end there's a dose of voice-over narration assigned to Johnson that is so, so very Carrie Bradshaw, you half-expect Sarah Jessica Parker to show up with a lawsuit.

The movie -- even though it's based on real events -- seems unsatisfying and unconvincing.

Irwin Winkler's The Net, which should have worked a lot better than it does, is a glossy, intricately plotted, mostly implausible suspense movie about a woman on the run.

Michael Showalter is a funny man, but … how to put this gently … not a funny movie star.

Mighty Joe Young is a mighty big movie about a mighty big gorilla. And a lot of it is mighty bad -- unless you're a devotee of high tech and low camp, elephantine effects and mouse-sized stories, politically correct nostalgia and/or Charlize Theron and Bill Paxton in jungle outfits.

The film is ruled by sound and fury signifying an attempt to launch a new franchise.

Gets by for many of the same reasons "Date Night" got by, all of them performance-related.

Besson's commercial instincts for sleek, violent fantasy are often sound, but "Valerian" is more sedative than show.

What Kasdan's "Earp" needed was more humor and better villains. "Wild Bill" has the humor and villains, the flash and energy, the fire and style. And when, at the end, Hill seems to throw it all away, it almost hurts. But you can say one thing about "Wild Bill": Unlike most movies, it has a lot to throw away. [01 Dec 1995, p.C]

Natasha Richardson glides through the film version of Patrick McGrath's novel Asylum in various states of fear, desire and undress, a swan among Yorkshire frumps.

A paper-thin wish-fulfillment comedy about escaping small-town repressions and blasting conformity.

Somehow lacks lightness and weight. This is a movie that tries to work a bloody suicide attempt and a murder into a comedy of manners, with almost everything registering in the same narrow spectrum of inconsequence.

If only they had allowed their characters to develop naturally after those first mismatched meetings, Km. 0 might have ventured into more intriguing territory.

More thoughtful than advertised. And as a confection, it's less sweet and more flavorful than your average wedding cake. [20 June 1997]

The film leaves a sense of entrapment and despair. Its characters are caught in a shrinking world that leaves no room for notions as grand as "good" and "evil," but only a sordid, creeping malignancy that levels everything in its path. [24 Apr 1987, p.AC]

It's funny what you buy completely onstage and resist completely, or nearly, on-screen. Case in point: Mamma Mia!

Think Like a Man is what it is. But its hangout factor is considerable, because the actors' charms are considerable.

Barron concentrates on keeping the action moving at a brisk clip, drawing on his music video experience to serve up an entertaining series of odd camera angles, gratuitous camera movements and complicated lighting schemes. The results are lively and funny enough to keep adults enthralled as well as kids.

It's an entertaining picture — pulp, coming from a place of righteous indignation.

Rachael Leigh Cook, as Laney, the plain Jane object of the makeover, is forced to demonstrate the biggest emotional range as a character, and she is equal to the assignment. I look forward to seeing her in her next picture. [29 Jan 1999, p.A]

Skyscraper — a sort of reverse "Die Hard," where a family man breaks into an imposing structure to save his family — scoots by on the thinnest of premises, and an even thinner script.

Like its title heroine, it's sparkly, pretty and flirty--but often all wet.

Viewed through the right lens, "My Date…" succeeds as a warm, heartfelt story about childhood crushes and the pursuit of lifelong dreams. (Through another, it's downright unnerving.)

Probably the last movie to carry a credit for the late Christopher Reeve--as well as the last credit for Reeve's late wife, Dana.

Whereas the original film had a grain of originality and social commentary in its story of what happens because of the surprise appearance of a Coca-Cola bottle, the new picture offers only tired jokes. [13 Apr 1990, p.C]

What's wrong is the decision to let all the actors improvise their lines...At the end, Irreversible looks less like captured or even distorted life than an acting class.

The best sequences involve Frank's inventive ability to stay within 75 feet of his car, but otherwise, it's the charismatic unruffled dexterity in the face of impossible odds that rivets.

For a film about deep water terror, Jaws 2 is really quite shallow. [16 June 1978, p.3-2]

The key to the film, however, is the joyous performance of Mike Myers, who plays both the Beatle-mopped Austin Powers and the bald-headed Dr. Evil.

It has a jokey irreverence that keeps it from teetering over the edge to absurdity.

The only glaring fault of this otherwise fine film is that director Jeroen Krabbe's sense of drama is far too heavy-handed in spots.

A classy supernatural lady-in-distress thriller.

Griffin may well get there, but he's not there yet.

Beautiful to look at, and diverting enough. The material written to fill out the story is entertaining, but it doesn't resonate. You can't top what Seuss wrote.

A rash and prurient tale, full of the sort of stylish venom that could almost elevate it to artful kitsch. Almost. [29 May 1992, p.C]

A contemporary teen summer romance with a modern sexual twist--though in many ways, it's just the same old malarkey.

Better Off Dead, a seemingly teenage comedy that wasn't good enough to be released during the prime summer play dates, is utterly devoid of appeal. [15 Oct 1985, p.C2]

This debut picture never makes up its mind about what sort of comedy it wants to be. But at least it has one--a mind, that is.

This movie also offers less: less wit, less charm, and only a few scraps of the old movie’s crucial songs (though “Baby Mine” receives its moment, in a campfire rendition).

Rough Night is good one minute, weak or stilted or wince-y the next, though even with seriously uneven pacing and inventiveness it's a somewhat better low comedy than "Snatched" or "Bad Moms," or (here's where I part company with the world) the "Hangover" pictures. Yes, even the first one.

The animation technology is top-notch, but the gentle spirit of Beatrix Potter's books is subsumed into a chaotic, violent mayhem, manically soundtracked to the day's hits.

This Australian production pairs two always-watchable actors, Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, yet never compels us to feel a thing.

Native Chicagoan Vaughn remains enigmatic, protected from the camera’s more candid intrusion. But you get a sense of his deep values, virtuous instincts and quiet love of ordinary people.

An old-fashioned comedy. And in this case, "old-fashioned" means tired, out of date and so abominably blah that you'll fall asleep in your popcorn.

It’s a morose sort of screwball comedy with heart, and right there that’s three elements going in related but separate directions.

There's really no other word for what Helen Mirren is doing in certain reaction shots, out of subtle interpretive desperation: mugging. She's mugging. She is a sublimely talented performer, and this is material with fascinating implications, and I doubt there's a moviegoer in the world who doesn't like Helen Mirren. But even the best actors need a director to tell them to tone it down.

Then there's screenwriter Steve Conrad. He's interesting. He likes his protagonists to suffer a little en route to finding a better place, and not in the usual sitcomic ways.

Savage Grace comes up bland and seems to go nowhere in particular.

The film's real subject is the unacknowledged intensity of the father-daughter bond and the difficulty of separation, though Shyer, true to his name, shies away from the more painful implications of the material. [20 Dec 1991, p.B]

Though the film has a plot a simpleton could follow, its hallmark is confusion. Its sense of time and place and its point of view are muddled. [13 Oct 1989, p.L]

Treviño’s effervescent and empathetic performance as Marisol keeps A Man Called Otto on track, both actress and character proving to be the saving grace for this curmudgeonly fellow, and film.

Clarke has loads of talent, but in Me Before You she's undermined by director Sharrock's technique, and an endless slew of overeager reaction shots (She's clumsy! She's twinkling!) exacerbated by editor John Wilson.

It's possible to admire or respect a movie without enjoying it too much, and that's partly the reaction I had to Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. It's an incredibly ambitious film of sometimes thrilling visual achievement, but it didn't connect fully to my mind and nerves.

A classy triple shot of film erotica from three brilliant writer-directors.

Beautifully produced: a moving film with a fascinating story and exemplary acting.

Now that Smith has gotten these characters and jokes out of his system, here's hoping he can turn to material that doesn't require winking at the audience.

Here we witness a healthy friendship between a gay and straight male that doesn't call for stilted changes in personality or sexual orientation.

Ishtar is a good movie, but you can't help but wonder if, lurking somewhere in those cans of outtakes, there isn't a great movie, too. [15 May 1987]

The script is half-a-fortune at best, and visually the picture is staid. But you stick with it, because it's Williams and because certainly no one since Williams has written this sort of embroidered dialogue.

I admit I would've had a hard time getting through it without the help of Simmons and Addai-Robinson, over there in the B plot. The character at the center of the story is treated with respect and admiration, but in dramatic terms he's about as real-world plausible as Batman.

Isn’t eye candy; it’s a drool-worthy slice of eye pie.

A movie as unsubtle as its title suggests, Fear is too seriously intended to work as trash and too ungainly and ugly to register as entertainment. [15 Apr 1996]

A highly entertaining and visually breathtaking movie, capable at times of rocking and delighting you.

Save for the compelling oddity of seeing Michael J. Fox as a cocaine addict, this drama offers nothing special. [1 Apr 1988, p.A]

Predators, plural, starts well and ends poorly, and in the middle it's in the middle.

Not bad, not great, a little less pushy and grating than the usual.

The reason Just Wright works is simple. It finds ways to let familiar characters move around inside a familiar premise like living, breathing, likable human beings.

But once the action wanders off the playing field, "The Program" shows all the cleverness, originality and depth of the Chicago Bears' offense.

Shallow though it may be, is a breakthrough.

The movie is an odd mix of tones and styles, and the thriller plot is casually introduced, shoved aside and reintroduced. But, like all Duvall's work, Assassination Tango breathes with humanity.

There are two good things to say about The Young Black Stallion" It's beautifully shot, and it's short.

Muddles through as a film so uninterested in character, it doesn't bother assigning names to them.

A bit of a tweener, neither triumph nor disaster, a war-games fantasy with a use-by date of Nov. 22, when the new "Hunger Games" movie comes out.

A packed convention of contemporary cliches. [31 Jan 1986, p.J]

No one member of the ensemble cast stands out, though one member stands effectively outside it - cult director Sam Raimi, of the "Evil Dead" series, doing a hilariously deadpan Jerry Lewis imitation as Stick, the camp's addled handyman. Just what Raimi is doing in the film is a mystery explained only by the press notes: turns out that Binder and Raimi are old Tamakwa campmates. [23 Apr 1993, p.C2]

Director Ardolino and his unnamed colleagues should be given a couple of swift raps across the palm with a ruler.

The Gentlemen is so blinkered by its outdated (and often offensive) alpha male perspective that it's blind to the elements that could have made it great.

It's all very "Scarface"--the De Palma remake of "Scarface," not the Hawks original. In other words, it doesn't feel modern at all. It feels about a generation late and 400 years short.

This is a better movie than the vacuous "Insurrection," thanks largely to a sympathetic screenwriter, longtime "Trek" fanatic John Logan ("Gladiator"), and a crew (headed by Patrick Stewart's Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Brent Spiner's android Data) determined to go out in glory.

For awhile, the stately symphonic score, urbane setting and understated dress make Birth feel powerful--until it feels empty, lacking what Glazer so furiously exhibited in his equally stylized freshman endeavor: heart.

I liked the movie mainly for Barrymore. The way she handles the crucial, early "I love you" moment (he's saying it to her, and the camera shows us what she's thinking), you think: This is one canny actress.

What a vivacious-looking, tartly-scored bore of a movie.

The kind of fascinatingly bad film only a really gifted and fearless moviemaker could make: a 92-minute long raggedy-raunchy vision of sex, transit and alienation in which Gallo focuses on himself so obsessively, it's as if he'd become his own stalker.