This movie has more parable than paranoia, more metaphor than roar and gore. [16 Sep 1992, p.3C]

True Stories is a great-looking and, with Byrne's score, great-sounding film, but it's marked by a flaw of sensibility, a too-great division between the one who is looking and the ones who are being seen. [31 Oct 1986, p.A]

for all its flaws, Born on the Fourth of July provides the final proof that Tom Cruise is the real thing-a movie star with all the natural, unforced ability to connect with an audience that the title implies. [20 Dec 1989, p.1]

Good cast, nearly hopeless script.

It is well made as far as it goes. I wish it went beyond its own carefully prescribed limits of the commercially acceptable.

Midway through I started wondering why I wasn't laughing more. "Baby Mama" was not written by Fey and/or Poehler, which may be the reason.

Stillwater feels like a movie filmed in a slightly blurry state of mind, then reshaped in the editing stage into a whole new blur. You don’t know where it’s going, and that’s a plus. Yet director and co-writer Tom McCarthy’s drama is as uncertain as his good movies, “Spotlight” highest among them, are quietly confident in going about their business.

Part of the problem here is one of proportion: The movie throws a misjudged majority of the material to the villains and lets the unfashionably sincere and sweet-natured Muppets fend for themselves.

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.

Berenger and Rogers look right and move right, but there is no spark behind the emotions they dutifully mime. Shading is something the director reserves for inanimate objects: He makes things come alive and turns people flat.

Bruce Willis' film debut should prove to be a disappointment for Moonlighting fans, because the script he has been given here does not compare to the elaborate material he has worked with on some episodes of the TV show. Willis plays a business man who winds up falling in love with a woman (Kim Basinger) who goes crazy every time she has a drink. Director Blake Edwards (10) does not distinguish himself with this exercise in nonstop slapstick, and the performances of both Willis and Basinger are lost amid the rubble. [08 May 1987, p.C7]

Suffers from an overwhelming sense of teen movie facility and "Murder She Wrote" neatness.

At its best, Transamerica made me laugh and feel for Bree. At its worst, it made me cringe at the potential creepiness of its central relationship.

"Masked" is erratic and volatile, too, from scene to scene, moment to moment. The script is chaotic, but the top-flight actors play their hearts out.

No question, there are funny moments. There should have been more. [21 May 1983]

Even before the witness-protection/trial angle has been conveniently jettisoned, it's clear that the plot is no more than a compulsory ingredient in a previously tested formula. Workmanlike in its execution, reliably predictable throughout, the movie might as well have been called "Another Paycheck."

The solid cast and honest Austen scholarship make Becoming Jane fitfully entertaining. But it's hard for the film to escape the shadow of Austen's superior talent when it filches so much from her books.

A movie that must spend most of its running time explaining its hopelessly complicated premises, which leaves very little room for anything much to happen. [22 Nov 1989, p.C1]

You couldn't accuse the film of practicing what it preaches: careful stewardship of a precious resource.

In the sadistic yet middling road-rage thriller Unhinged, Crowe literally steers the vehicle delivering the big box of acting, over- and under-. While there’s barely a movie there, a year from now, when the multiplexes of the world will either largely be back, be gone or be something in between, we’ll have forgotten Unhinged.

Adapted by Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm") from Tom Clancy's best seller, "Patriot Games" is an uncomfortably angry, completely bald-faced fantasy about violence as an answer to middle-class, middle-age ennui. Sadder still, it isn't a very effective one. [5 June 1992, p.C2]

All the young actors, especially Joshua Hartnett as the misunderstood drug dealer, deliver fine performances in their diverse group, which forms a kind of horror film equivalent of "The Breakfast Club." [25 Dec 1998]

It's a tick better than the movie version of "Jumanji," if that's any help. If you liked the book, you'll find the film of "Zathura" faithful in most respects, though not so much amplified as padded.

Why does this film, with so many first-rate artists in its corner, not quite work? Partly it's a matter of style, but mostly it's because the script is made of tin.

If only the film had been a more visually satisfying experience.

Sayles must have meant his movie to stir and provoke, but the self-contained look of it yields something else-a sense of quaintness, of harmless nostalgia.

Visually, it's busy, hefty and propulsive, but emotionally and thematically, it's as light as air. These engines could have used a bit more in the tank.

The action beats come straight out of the video game "Call of Duty." And when you have real SEALs placed in a picture that lives and dies on the same old first-person-shooter aesthetic, you have a film divided against itself.

Just an OK thriller, full of standard scenarios and cookie-cutter characters.

A few moments of sly inspiration are not enough to carry an entire feature; along with the tears, it leaves behind an aftertaste of phoniness. [16 March 1990, Friday, p.H]

Lacks the energy and urgency of its source material.

As silly movies go, this one is at least pretty exciting. But in the end, Typhoon leaves you feeling as exiled from the two Koreas as Sin is.

Perfect late-summer drive-in fare.

We're No Angels is a small, quiet film trapped inside a big, noisy one; no longer a tale of transcendence, its a sad lesson in the weight of Hollywood machinery. [15 Dec 1989, p.C]

The Addams Family doesn't deliver. After a while the ghoulish one-liners and macabre sight gags grow repetitive - the sadistic/masochistic interplay between Morticia and Gomez particularly grows weary - as too much of the humor comes off like unbridled Late Mel Brooks. [22 Nov 1991, p.B]

What it doesn't have is a way of making sense of its comic and dramatic strains, together, in the same movie.

Jarmusch's whole method consists of reversing expectations. The problem with that method is that you quickly begin to expect the reversals; the unpredictability becomes predictable. Jarmusch is a talented filmmaker, with an original sense of humor and a sharp and distinctive visual style, but he won't be a great filmmaker until he stops approaching his material from the outside.

The film itself, which has everything from erection jokes to a computer-generated tornado, comes down to a battle between the interpreters and a screenplay riddled with convenience, cliche and well-meaning contrivance.

Loosely entwining a half-dozen major characters, though two or three get disappointingly short shrift, “Babylon” thins out all too quickly, settling for a strenuous ode to the dream factory and its victims and exploiters, who occasionally make wondrous things for the screen.

This is familiar clowning territory for our actors -- hypothetically well-matched here, with Carrey a far more sophisticated and energetic comic partner for Leoni than Adam Sandler was in "Spanglish."

Emerges as cutty, indistinct and confused, full of shots that don't match and spatial conceptions that would look flat even on TV. The more Branagh strains to appear “cinematic,'' the more he looks like a man of the theater. [23 Aug 1991, Friday, p.B]

The B-17 was a machine designed to accomplish a specific task, and so is Memphis Belle. The mission of this movie is to provoke a strong but narrow range of emotions in the viewer. It may succeed, but its mechanical nature is never in doubt. [12 Oct 1990, p.C]

A decent example of that strange new genre that has arisen to serve the home rental audience-a soft-core porn film directed primarily toward women. [29 Apr 1988, p.L]

Too high-minded to stoop as low as it does, particularly in its unforgivably manipulative ending.

As skillful and charismatic as Gere is, I never get the sense he's really in there, conversing with his fellow actor.

A genial, sloppy, minor affair, offering a smidgen of inside baseball, which includes a gag at the expense of the forgotten, late '80s Lucas-produced epic "Willow."

After an intriguing start, Transcendence — aka "The Computer Wore Johnny Depp's Tennis Shoes" — offers roughly the same level of excitement as listening to hold music during a call to tech support.

There are no surprises in this movie -- not even in the Bollywood parodies, when the hero and heroine finally, subversively kiss. There is talent, though.

The film is responsible, earnest, well-intentioned and, as it was in Sundance, maddeningly inconsistent.

Director Morel brings some style and speed to the proceedings, though I found The Gunman increasingly numbing in the carnage department. Compared with someone like Neeson, Penn's avenging angel is a less relatable fellow.

Predictable and dull.

As sports movies go, Gridiron Gang isn't bad, just not top-line material.

Soft and predictable -- which might be OK if there were more laughs and insight.

I love what The Whale is doing for Fraser’s career. But not since John Wells blanded out the movie version of “August: Osage County” has a well-regarded play looked quite so at sea on screen.

I laughed three or four times, mostly at verbal byplay since director MacFarlane struggles when it comes to timing, filming and cutting sight gags.

Kasdan has inherited much of his father's surface skills; he knows how to round out a scene and keep things on story point. But In the Land of Women doesn't for a moment feel messy and chaotic where it counts.

The details of this Twin Peaks are slight and repetitious, and their meanings are numbingly obvious. Behind small town America's facade of sweetness and light, there exist darkness and evil-news that is a day late and about $7.50 short. [28 Aug 1992]

The movie is made well, if you’re buying what it’s selling, and if you don’t consider a story or a script as crucial to the quality of a thriller.

The movie can't quite embrace its characters or their scene; Wahlberg even cracks a joke over the end credits that heralds the late-'80s ascendance of hip-hop, which, of course, spawned Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

It's also likely that audiences other than the very young will find the action too restricted and too repetitive. It's far too modest and leisurely a film for children who have been exposed to MTV. Still, there is a charm in Camp's relaxed, low-tech approach; his is a cottage industry that merits a degree of respect and support. [19 June 1987, p.G]

A professionally made movie, just not an essential one. There's little fresh or provocative here, and if you can't be shaken by this story, why bother?

The movie goes too far on too little motivation - and the middle section, with its maggoty villains, roiling skies and native revolts, seems almost barmy. Yet Exorcist: Beginning does score a small victory. It's not as bad as you'd think.

It relays an uplifting story that, ill-advisedly, is not so much Holocaust-era as Holocaust-adjacent, determined to steer clear of too much discomfort.

True fans (i.e., the people who are most likely to buy tickets) probably know a lot of this stuff already, and they might be disappointed by the lack of drama and the brevity of 3-D racing action.

Snatched, more about victimhood than women running their own show, is funny here and there, but in ways that make the bulk of the formulaic material all the more frustrating.

Slickly produced, well cast and very excitingly made, it's based on plot hooks so silly, most of them blow up in your face.

The fact is, neither Harrison or scriptwriter Benjamin Brand is very honest with the audience.

Part philosophical dialogue, part macho thriller, John Frankenheimer's The Fourth War never really finds its identity as a movie. [23 Mar 1990, p.O]

A smorgasbord of bad ideas, sumptuously over-realized.

That the film doesn't live up to our anticipation of a rolicking good time is only part of its disappointment. [11 June 1986]

Their adventures are not special, nor are their personalities. If young people want to experience a genuinely exciting airborne adventure in a movie theater right now, "Top Gun" is the picture to see--not SpaceCamp. [6 June 1986, p.AC]

I’m not saying the film needed to be formally experimental. But as it is, the documentary feels deeply pointless.

The whole thing is a wild concept, hinging on the plausibility of every character's motivations, which are all a bit squishy.

Director Carl Reiner, an old comedy pro, does well enough with the comedy's dumb but funny big-bust and jock-strap jokes. [09 Aug 1985, p.D]

The only redeeming aspects of the film are its striking production design by Philip Jefferies--a sweltering Miami similar to the look of ''Body Heat''-- and a convincing performance by Richard Masur as the city editor of the film`s fictional Miami newspaper.

The eerily precise Heigl, who provided confident back-court support as the exile in Guyville also known as “Knocked Up,” has no trouble filling a leading lady’s shoes. She’s just snarky enough to be interesting, and she knows how to take a fall.

This film is very different: chilly, methodical, a slave to 10-ton metaphor as opposed to metaphoric provocation.

The actors save it, periodically, from itself, simply by setting a natural tone and finding some truth in an extended sketch.

Sniper moves briskly along, aided by the lush photography by veteran Bill Butler. [29 Jan 1993, p.I]

If this documentary were about a serious painter, it would be judged a travesty not unlike commercials that goose up the couple in "American Gothic" or show the Mona Lisa laughing.

Davis and Garcia are both fine, and Hoffman gives an entertaining performance that still smells a little much of acting. But it's in the supporting roles that Frears makes his taste and talent felt, guiding such performers as Kevin J. O'Connor, Tom Arnold and Cady Huffman to quick, quietly efficient characterizations. [02 Oct 1992, p.B]

There is little to dislike in The Mighty Quinn, but neither is there any compelling reason to see it. [17 Feb 1989, p.C]

Imagine a Judy Blume rewrite of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," and you'll end up somewhere in the ashen yet uplifting vicinity of How I Live Now.

One of the most gifted dramatic actors working in movies today, Swank is stunningly ill suited for romantic comedy (or this one, anyway).

The film lacks a single emotionally authentic moment.

The film disappoints particularly in relation to "Young Adam," an earlier picture about sexual obsession from writer-director David Mackenzie; this one's more in line with the creamy tones and surface readings of "Asylum."

By making concessions for a possible sequel, Dracula 2000 wilts when compared in the light with other Dracula films.

Yet another disappointing summer sequel, Lethal Weapon 2, with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson reprising their cop-buddy roles in pursuit of South African drug lords. [7 Jul 1989, p.A]

What Vice says, and how it says it, will have half its audience nodding in angry, contemptuous agreement, and the other half calling it a liberal smear. In other words it’s like everything else in the culture right now.

At times the film appears on the verge of morphing into a singing-cowboy musical.

It's a harmless enough movie, and quite a good-looking one; Bettany and Dunst are an attractive enough couple, even if Lizzie has been written as a selfish little snip and he as a whining man-child.

With Sean Connery as Agent 007, James Bond was a human-scale figure, an exceedingly cool guy to be sure, but a guy nonetheless. With Roger Moore as Bond, we are simply watching a lightweight actor stroll through a role.

As paranoid thrillers go, The Package manages to commit both of the genre's primary sins. It's at once nearly incomprehensible and totally predictable. [25 Aug 1989, p.A]

If you have ever been the butt of a practical joke, you have some idea how you will feel during the last few minutes of April Fool's Day. [27 Mar 1986, p.2C]