I wish the results were better, and a lot stranger. Cahill’s world-building has its moments, though. And the filmmaker did determine — correctly — that it’d be fun to have Bill Nye, the science guy, in a bow tie, portraying a sniffy scientific researcher.

Welcome to Marwen is a misjudgment only a first-rate filmmaker could make.

To work, it has to make us feel crazy with love, like "Vertigo" did. Instead, it often just makes us feel crazy for believing any of it.

The dialogue can drive you crazy with its self-consciousness.

The movie was attractively filmed by John Schlesinger, but the subject matter is stultifying and not the least bit spooky. [12 Jun 1987, p.A]

Robinson is undone partly by his own workmanlike touch as a writer, and partly by matters of casting. I like Harris, and he's quite moving here, but every time Duchovny reappears the overall energy level sinks to crush depth.

I don't think it will seriously disappoint longtime fans, but it made me itchy as I watched it unfold in ways that the comics never did when I read them in the '60s.

Half the time, Deliver Us From Evil is genuinely interested in Sarchie's all-too-human demons, and half the time we're marking time until the big exorcism and an ending that keeps the door open for a sequel, should the market demand it.

Everyone in The Comedian deserves a better movie than The Comedian.

Salerno blows little more than smoke in this one, especially near the end, when we get to the maybe-probably-sort-ofs regarding the maybe-probably-possibly full vault of unpublished work.

Despite honorable work from Theron, Robb and Stahl, Sleepwalking makes good on its title in a not-so-good way.

Vast, riveting, madly audacious movie biography.

Throughout, Williams seems hampered, hand-tied and almost mind-controlled, as if afraid of letting his hyperkinetic style take off. That`s too bad, because without it, Club Paradise is amiable, amusing and effortless, words that are good news when the subject is bittersweet comedy and disaster when the intention was clearly slapstick.

First-time director Paul Hunter delivers a quick-cut, loud movie that betrays his MTV roots -- but then again, the script never demands that he do much more than exactly that.

With Clockstoppers, Frakes hobbles along with a high-concept film that doesn't live up to its potential.

There aren't many surprises in Fire Down Below, except for the presence of a few very good actors (Harry Dean Stanton, Kris Kristofferson, Levon Helm) and a slew of country stars in cameo appearances (including Loretta Lynn's twin daughters and singer Randy Travis, who looks to have a future as a movie heavy). [8 Sept 1997, p.C2]

Overall the film is alluringly over-the-top without being overcooked.

The script of Shrink, written by Thomas Moffett, plays like "Crash" without the angst or the perpetual racial conflagrations.

The film never adequately uses either the dramatic talents of Nolte nor the comic talents of Short. The young girl (Sarah Rowland Doroff) is most effective because she rarely speaks.

The jokes are sodden, relying on tired wordplay and sarcastic delivery to draw the faintest of laughs.

The Sisters isn't just bad Chekhov; it's bad Chekhov modernized and then plunked in front of a camera.

Despite a blue-chip cast, Aloha is just frustrating. It can barely tell its story straight, and Crowe's attempt to get back to the days of "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous" is bittersweet in ways unrelated to the narrative's seriocomic vein.

The sequel's not bad; it's not slovenly. Some of the jolts are effectively staged and filmed, and Wan is getting better and better at figuring out what to do with the camera, and maneuvering actors within a shot for maximum suspense, while letting his design collaborators do the rest. But Leigh Whannell's script is a bit of a jumble.

Ultimately, any sass, sentiment and personality are obliterated in the noisy chaos of the climax, which is a grayish brown blur of flying spaceship parts, whirling turtle shells and shouts of "the beacon!" It's more cacophonous than cinematic, and loses the quirky charm of the cartoon in the avalanche of computer-generated violence.

Pitch Perfect 3 is so breezy it's completely weightless, but it manages to deliver just enough of the goods.

That it is a pseudo-hip filmmaking fantasy doesn't make it any less pretentious, or any less a turnoff.

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

Townsend seemed to me ill-matched as a romantic hero: way too moony-eyed and mushy to cope with the likes of the towering Theron and torchy Cruz.

Ernest movies would still seem to be an acquired taste, but this one affords the adult viewer a few unexpected pleasures.

This Little Women adaptation is faithful to a fault, which results in a very strange world where this group of five present-day women depends on men for their social lives and careers — basically anything that gets them out of their cozy house of feminine fantasy.

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.

While this production certainly ranks above Van Damme's prior efforts, it's still full of the sort of macho overkill typical of today's action genre. [09 Aug 1991, p.B]

One of the most mawkish films ever made.

The movie doesn't really work, but the jet boots would be the envy of Iron Man, and they allow our hero, unwisely named Caine Wise, to speedskate through the air, leaving pretty little trails of light over downtown Chicago.

Line to line, Stallone has a particularly numbing penchant for the f-word. But the key f-word in Homefront is "familiar."

Now and then The 355 sticks a landing.

It's not a film, it's an excuse to show victims bleeding at the mouth, or getting shot in the eye, or plucking out their own eyeballs. Most gruesome of all, the sequel oozes dialogue that is best described as "functional."

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]

The show has its moments-some funny scenes, some wild stop-motion Phil Tippett computer action, some of Torn's scenery-chewing. But they're only moments. RoboCop 3's main problem is that nobody fouled up its program. It's a RoboMovie. [05 Nov 1993, p.C]

Though the film falls short of its aspirations, there's something magical about it. It's a poetic look at transience, betrayal, loss and doom.

To be fair, it's little better or worse than the original. But, to be honest, the original--minus its nascent stars--wasn't very good.

Poltergeist at this point is a brand name without a distinctive product to sell-no vivid characters, no unique situations, no look or meaning of its own.

The supporting players in Man on a Ledge bring more to the party than the leads, and my suspension of disbelief seems to have gotten hung up in traffic while attempting to cross the suspension-of-disbelief bridge from the Brooklyn side.

Despite the holes in the script, Fatal Attraction writer James Dearden moves the action along competently and has two compelling young actors in Dillon and Young. [26 Apr 1991, p.C]

Perhaps if you are a Sega-head or Nintendo freak, and your mission in life is to rack up awesome scores on Double Dragon, you may find this loud and tedious movie more enjoyable than I did. But I doubt it. [04 Nov 1994, p.M]

A wild, wanton and wasteful western farce that's so overblown and underwritten it almost makes you cringe to watch it.

Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, confining his usual two-and-a-half-note vocal range to half that.

Impresses more than it entertains.

The joys of singing give the movie a hook, but when Duets aims for lyricism, it's got a tin ear.

Too cute, too transparent, too precious and ultimately too much.

The cast is quite good. But Peaceful Warrior, which is basically "The Karate Kid" with a bigger kid and a bigger mentor, represents a journey of predictability, rather than a destination worth the trouble.

A chaotic headbanger, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is saved from pure flat-footed blockbuster franchise adequacy by six things, three of them on Hugh Jackman's left hand, three on his right.

Green just isn't the superhero color this year.

Shot in Chicago, this is a picture that looks better than it sounds and is made much better than it deserves to be.

Some comedies have the knack for affrontery and shock value; The Change-Up, written by the "Hangover" team of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, merely has the will to offend.

None of the characters has been written with any personality, and none of the actors succeeds in discovering any. [05 Mar 1993]

Fawcett isn`t half bad--she works hard and doesn`t commit any egregious technical faults--but she doesn`t have the resources to give her slimly written character a sufficiently commanding inner life, and it`s difficult to get beyond her sunny, fashion-model good looks. It`s another sad case of the clown who wanted to play Hamlet.

Since I sort of liked “Step Up 2: The Streets,” I’m not surprised I sort of liked the remake of Fame.

A pelvis-gyrating, ponytail-releasing, shirt-unbuttoning good time.

It's a dream of a movie, if only in the literal sense. The film means well; so it seems churlish to mention its total absence of originality. Care Bears poaches shamelessly on everything from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Androcles and the Lion," but its greatest debt is to Lewis Carroll, whose engagingly warped mind would surely recoil at this confection. [07 Aug 1987, p.Q]

This 1989 movie looks much of the time like an old idea that's been too enthusiastically colorized. The prison sequences work best, and they seem almost like a completely separate film.

As a film, "Consenting Adults" has little to distinguish itself from the other entries in the genre, apart from an entertainingly hammy performance from Spacey and the clever production design of Carol Spier, with its emphasis on bold color effects (the interior of the Otis house is painted an infernal red) and complicated architectural spaces. But this, of course, is the kind of filmmaking that defines success by its adherence to the norm, not in dangerous departures from it. [16 Oct 1992, p.C]

Sloppy, grimy but quick on its feet, which puts it ahead of certain other (“The Hangover”) R-rated comedies (“The Hangover”) we’ve seen this summer (“The Hangover”).

The biggest problem with Why Him? though, isn't him, it's her. Stephanie is so underwritten, that though these men are competing ruthlessly over her, she drops out of the story completely. She's the center of attention, but she's a void.

Too much. Too numbing. Too coy. And ultimately too violent.

Too much of Nobody’s Fool makes do with well-worn exchanges and contrived, overheard conversations.

It's another slick-and-quick muscle car of a movie, racing along for a couple of hours, taking you nowhere as fast as it can.

Leans on just as many stereotypes as it tweaks.

Marisa Tomei turns in a blitzkrieg performance.

It has a charming actor named Scott James as Joe's buddy, Curtis Jackson. And it still has smartly produced scenes of black-clad ninja performing sleights of hand, foot, spear, dart, knife, chain and scimitar. What it doesn't have is a shred of originality. [07 May 1987, p.13A]

When the actors are in cars, the movie's fun. When they get out to argue, or seethe, it's uh-oh time. Happily, director Scott Waugh comes out of the stunt world himself, and there's a refreshing emphasis on actual, theoretically dangerous stunt driving over digital absurdities.

This is your warning that if you have any affinity for the ballet, avoid this at all costs.

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

The movie begins with a tragedy and eases into a more interesting blend of drama and comedy than we've gotten in this genre lately.

The dance sequences are sexy and energetic, more than compensating for a love relationship in the film that is thoroughly illogical and wooden. [22 July 1983]

Most of the ingredients for a strong, tough film are there, and they have been sadly botched by a few key collaborators.

So it’s one of those Hip, Now updates, albeit with jokes riffing on pop-cult artifacts that are already Then. I mean: “Jerry Maguire”? Moratorium!

Levinson has written and directed in many genres. But rarely has he made a film as indecisive and diffident as Man of the Year.

The steady Costner gives a competent enough performance this time out as he dances with foxes, or at least one, while Grammy winner Houston is quite impressive in her feature debut, displaying both hot and cool emotion as well as performing six new songs...Unfortunately, she is assigned to handle lines like, "You're a hard one to figure out, Frank Farmer," and "I've never felt this safe before." Unfortunately, too, the romance gets in the way of the thriller, and when the two principals finally take to their bed, so does the movie. [25 Nov 1992, p.C2]

The book’s melancholy spareness has been replaced by a “Here” existing somewhere in a pristine, remote suburb we’ll call Uncanny Valley Falls, a few miles away from real life.

Dr. Giggles strains for the kind of charnel house humor that once was the glory of 1950s horror comics like Tales from the Crypt. But Coto's imagination, like Dr. Giggle's rusty scalpels, isn't all that sharp, and the picture soon peters out into a flat, predictable series of stomach-churning unpleasantries. [26 Oct 1992, p.5C]

It’s a little “Karate Kid,” a smidge of “Fight Club” (with none of the ironic ambivalence toward violence that David Fincher brought to that story), a lot of “The O.C.” (evil boy Gigandet played an evil boy on that series), and presto: probable hit.

Junk food laced with testosterone.

The Exorcist: Believer has its moments, but we’ve had a half-century of this stuff. And the filmmaker in charge has to show us something new; there’s more to life, and moviegoing, than coasting on cherished memories of projectile vomiting and head-swiveling.

Despite some moments of genuine tension, Dot the i walks (and occasionally hops right over) a very fine line between thriller/drama and parody.

There's some fun potential here, but Marvin's direction is plodding enough to snuff it fairly quickly. Yet Charlie Sheen, promising in his second-banana appearances in Lucas and Pretty in Pink, emerges with his promise intact. Sheen already has the reserved but powerful manner of a Wayne or an Eastwood; with a little more maturity, he could be a contender.