Amos & Andrew, written and directed by E. Max Frye, relates the intersection of these two different destinies, in a style that ranges from roaring farce to biting satire. [05 Mar 1993, p.C2]

Thankfully, Reynolds (bearded, looking a bit like Jason Lee) adds some scrappiness and humor to a series that might otherwise have collapsed under self-parody.

The action sequences, when they arrive, are so poorly staged and absurdly one-sided that they contain no excitement or suspense. Again and again, the film finds the huge, hulking Seagal beating up on flabby middle-aged men - and even then, resorting to such questionable techniques as wrapping a cue ball in a handkerchief and using it as a club. [15 Apr 1991, p.C7]

A feast of bad taste, a demonic hog-wallow.

It's still strangely remote, only fitfully romantic, never really convincing.

Despite some imaginative fatalities, is less a movie than a slick video game.

May try to revive the eerie spirit of the Gothic novel, but, unless you're suffering from amnesia yourself, it probably won't surprise or thrill you.

There's really just not a lot here. I'm sure Racer's story will entertain the very wee ones -- but so do keys.

It's more or less a grown-up picture, and not bad at that, though its muted and patient style has both its merits and its drawbacks. Still, as I say: not bad.

Dempsey's pleasant enough, but he hasn't yet learned how to play against a mediocre script's obviousness. Monaghan has, which is gratifying.

This new heist movie by the great thriller director John Frankenheimer flails around like its own dysfunctional gang of casino robbers.

A perennial problem with music-oriented movies is that the excitement of a live performance so seldom translates successsfully to the screen, and rap is no exception. There are plenty of big names involved in Krush Groove, but the music alone isn`t able to carry the film, and the plot certainly can`t.

Distressingly ordinary for such an extraordinary subject.

Striptease has its moments, but by the clunky ending it has gathered more steaminess than steam.

The film starts out gently enough, capturing the after-hours banter of the chauffeurs as they play cards and try to ward off Casey`s intrusion. Unfortunately, this charming opening quickly degenerates into a film so needlessly obscene and offensive that it is hard to imagine what its creators were hoping to achieve.

The Navy will no doubt like what it sees, yet a project such as this should impart some sense of the times we live in.

The lighting is appropriately dim, the music is reasonably clever, and they get in a few nice scares in the beginning. But as the movie wears on and Angela’s desperation grows, any glimmer of fun seeps away. And we’re left watching the same old grim game of cat and mouse.

The movie is all preening and very few laughs, though Daddario and Efron have a few moments, and Johnson remains a supremely likable slab of movie star.

Combine the uninhibited raunchiness of John Waters with the gross-out zeal of the Farrelly brothers and you get Another Gay Movie, a parody and comedy more numbingly disgusting than funny.

The script plays like ''The Dirty Dozen'' saving the passenger list of ''Airport `77.''

Succeeds as a guilty pleasure, a monster mash that clobbers the recent lackluster sequels plaguing both legacies. If only that were a higher compliment.

Even if you enjoyed the mean, funny 1995 John Travolta-Elmore Leonard crime comedy "Get Shorty"-and many of us did-this forced sequel isn't likely to help you repeat the experience.

Brewster's Millions is a PG film, and the humor is sanitized. Pryor grins, Candy gurgles and we sit there stone-faced noticing all the holes in the plot. Once Pryor figures out a clever way to spend money by using rare stamps on letters, why doesn't he keep on doing it? Yes, that might make for a short movie, but given the way Brewster's Millions turned out, it would be no great loss. [22 May 1985, p.3]

Gimme Shelter suffers from an acute case of the fakes. The speeches sound like speeches, and not good ones.

The atmosphere in Serenity, by design, imparts a slightly uneasy and hermetic feeling. In Baker Dill, who sounds like a line of gourmet pickles, Knight has the makings of a compellingly messed-up antihero. That’s a start. If movies were all start, then this one might’ve worked.

A facsimile of a masquerade of a gloss on "Charade," and on all the lesser cinematic charades that followed in the wake of director Stanley Donen's 1963 picture.

Packed with gratuitous dumb moments -- which is too bad, given that the premise has promise.

The film is surprisingly easy to sit through, digest and even enjoy. Why? A lot has to do with Hogan's well-documented charisma as a performer.

In her (Audrey Tautou) latest film, a quest for romantic and religious fulfillment called God Is Great, I'm Not, she stretches her range to encompass one more personality trait: annoying.

It's not so important to follow plot twists--I couldn't--but the emotional thrust Kelly and Scott want to drive home is plain: Once Domino is asked to use guns and knives and nunchucks for a purpose outside the law, she's alarmed, appalled, aghast.

What isn't scary--or exciting, amusing or fun--is XXX: State of the Union, a movie so preposterous, cliché-packed and over the top that it makes the original "XXX" seem as good as the original "State of the Union."

In scenes such as hundreds of Natives being slaughtered by U.S. troops behind Gatling guns, we have Tonto and the Lone Ranger acting like a couple of comic-relief ninnies, screwing around aimlessly for laughs on a handcar. It's as if the movie were having a nervous breakdown. At one point the masked man gets his head dragged through horse manure. Watching The Lone Ranger, you know the feeling.

Carell's pal and "Daily Show" colleague Jon Stewart has a cameo as himself, one of a chorus of godless media star non-believers who do not see God's larger plan for Evan. Yes, well. At least "The Daily Show" is funny.

The performances are pretty good--with the exception of the nauseatingly sweet H. Hunter Hall (the son of the director) as Junior and a one-note scowl from rapper The Game, who plays Meat--and the screenplay, by Hall and Darin Scott, has some genuinely funny moments.

Director Burr Steers milks them dry, like an overeager farmer at milking time, which is a paradox since this is the wettest picture of 2010, what with the sea spray and Efron's tear ducts and the general metaphysical mist.

Each time a character gets tossed in the air by some manifestation or another, the effect is cheesy. Still, I've seen worse. For the record, the violence in Annabelle is far less copious and sadistic than the stuff in the Denzel Washington movie everybody's going to.

Half the time I wasn't sure what Lee was going for in terms of tone, or style, or focus. It was a tricky assignment to begin with, because McBride's novel, and his screenplay, is part socio-historical corrective, part magical-realist folklore, part wartime procedural.

Though they're a good pair (Hopkins and Rock), this isn't a very good movie. It's slick but hollow.

I laughed all the way through it.

About as sharp an updated version of the original as is Jennifer Lopez's song of the same name a modern, Latina version of the Beatles classic.

Responsible for this trash is director Fritz Kiersch, and remember that name. Last year Kiersch gave us one of 1984`s worst films, his adaptation of Stephen King`s ''Children of the Corn.'' Now, with Tuff Turf, Kiersch has made the ''worst'' list two years in a row.

The film is half rutting goat, half preacher.

In his thoughtfully paced, well-acted film, Hoge doesn't set out to solve the "why" of Leland's ghastly crime. He's more interested in examining the reason why society needs to create and interpret a reason for horror.

Kathy Baker, as Burden's elegantly sodden mother, shows the only sign of interpretive life in this stiff-jointed enterprise. She has about five minutes on screen; she's lucky that way.

Nonstrously over-whimsical. It's a gigantic, fatuous whoopie-cushion of a movie-big, smiley and flabbergastingly dumb. Watching it, you may get an odd, overwhelmed feeling, as if you were being smothered to death by party balloons. [15 Oct 1993, p.N]

The film is a fancy-pants muddle in terms of technique. And if Bloom doesn't do something about his smirky tendency to troll for audience approval, his career may be severely limited.

This script bumps along, good ideas jostling with weak, derivative ones, and Seftel doesn't seem to know which way he wants to handle the material. Also, with Cusack playing yet another soul-fried wiseacre running on emotional autopilot, the piece doesn't have much of an engine.

Baldwin's Kudrow is a one-dimensional, humorless variation on his corporate tyrant in "Glengarry Glen Ross." When the writers attempt to add color -- like with a female office worker who blathers about caffeine and Bart Simpson -- the results induce cringing. [3 Apr 1998, p.A]

Turns out to be a Hollywood sequel of surpassing silliness and wasted talent.

It's a soul-crusher, and when I say it may be the most dehumanizing experience since "Hostel: Part II" the comparison is not an idle one.

By the time the ending rolls around, as we watch the slow unclamping of jaws from jugulars, we feel exhausted. Imagine how the actors must have felt.

When the humans have the sense to keep quiet, and the animals are doing their shtick, there's great fun to be had.

Though The Kid & I falters as both a comedy and an After School Special, it works as a rather touching episode of "This is Your Life," with a parade of cameos from Arnold's career that'll coax a sniffle or two from his family.

What could have been a juicy, pulpy noir, based loosely on the real-life 1976 Mustang Ranch love triangle involving Joe and Sally Conforte and Sally's boxer paramour, instead has the dramatic consistency of rice milk.

A weirdly out-of-scale movie that constantly juxtaposes the trivial and the cosmic, less to comic effect than to a mounting sense of muddle and uncertainty.

Has the shelf life of a dented milk carton. Pop-culture movies in general age rapidly due to ever-changing slang and fashions.

Big problem straight off: tone. The violence isn't slapsticky; it's just violent.

A dim-witted remake of the great "Bonnie and Clyde," with Estevez playing a decent young man saddled with an unfair criminal record that prevents him from getting a job. [9 Jan 1987, p.AC]

The lovely shots of Appalachian vistas are spoiled by cheesy special effects straight from the 1960s Chroma-Key era.

Original, it's not. Exciting, it is. This jacked-up B-movie hybrid of "Black Hawk Down" and "War of the Worlds" is a modest but crafty triumph of tension over good sense and cliche.

It is hard to imagine a world where films such as Child's Play 2 - essentially, a dim excuse for a prolonged, extremely exploitative display of abused and abusive children - can pass as mainstream entertainment. [13 Nov 1990, p.3C]

The script isn't really good enough to worry about whether it's being over-directed; in fact, E. Elias Merhige's over-direction is one of the best things about this movie--along with Ben Kingsley's grimly unstoppable killer-of-killers, Benjamin O'Ryan.

Perhaps Figgis proves his unconventionality with Cold Creek Manor after all, creating a thriller without resorting to the genre's usual bag of tricks.

It's basically an anger film, a catharsis for problems we haven't learned to solve. As that, it does its job well, with humor and surprising grace. [18 Sep 1987, p.18]

There are few sports the movies haven't tackled. Side Out (1991) found one: volleyball. Thirtysomething star Peter Horton brings his shaggy dog sincerity to his role as Zack, the former king of the beach who gets a chance at redemption when he becomes mentor to C. Thomas Howell. [17 Sep 1991, p.3C]

This is the worst, least, dumbest picture made by people of talent this year.

Unfortunately, the humans only have scripts to support them. So for every bear triumph, Country Bears also features cliched jokes, corny sentiment, ludicrous shtick and the most flabbergasting set of star cameos since Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson wandered into "Men in Black II."

When Gosnell's script does wander into some emotionally complex territory--in the depths of the jungle, Max encounters an old army buddy from Vietnam (John Rhys-Davies)--Thompson does rouse himself momentarily to provide some sequences of unexpected sensitivity, but he quickly returns to his dull, professional indifference. [21 Nov 1986, p.L]

The Cloverfield Paradox is “Lost” in space — a faint, well-acted blip on the radar of your viewing life.

Disturbingly lightweight and emotionally risk-free.

A surprising and delightful romantic take on modern women.

When a movie keeps repeating its title, you know it's a stinker.

But for all the pondering The Possession of Hannah Grace inspires, it’s also true that at 85 minutes, it still manages to feel tedious at times. The dour environment doesn’t help, the humor doesn’t pop, and disappointingly, the scares just don’t land.

At its best, it's buoyant pop entertainment focused on three things: speed, racing and retina-splitting oceans of digitally captured color.

Madonna stayed married to director Guy Ritchie just long enough to absorb his most grating cinematic instincts - shooting in every style, in an addled, shuffle-mode, falsely glamorizing way until all is chaos. And, astonishingly, boredom.

It's a wholly passive performance, and one that touches not at all on Pryor's special gifts. This man desperately needs a new agent.

Seven Pounds has a heart as big as all outdoors. Unfortunately it's made out of high-fructose bull.

Television sitcom-style directing and writing.

Feels more like a music video than a serious look back at a time, a place and a very smart, funny and unconventional man.

Stuffed with smart Internet gags, silly movie references and a happy energy that makes you forgive the sequences that don't work.

Like too many sports-related movies, this one falls back on that One Big Game, the final score that will set everything right.

Though trailers for Little Black Book try to sell it as a zany romantic comedy, don't judge this book by its cover. Those who stick with it will be surprised and maybe even laugh in between a tear or two.

Bewilderingly bad.

Imagine "Twins" with the Danny DeVito part played by a dog, or "Lethal Weapon" with the mastiff standing in for Mel Gibson. [28 July 1989, p.A]

Clean, precise and terribly sullen, After.Life is like its female protagonist. It feels stuck between worlds, or genres.

Director Richard Rush is one of the more talented and mysterious figures in American filmmaking. But though it has been 14 years since his last feature (the 1980 live-wire classic "The Stunt Man"), his new movie, The Color of Night, is sometimes just as hip, lively and blast-your-eyes funny as ever.

The poster’s the funniest thing about the project: Johnson, sporting a pair of fairy wings larger than his forearms, glaring at the camera.

By forcing definition on Flux, the filmmakers rob her of any allure. What do they offer instead? Clumsy exposition, bland PG-13 gunfights and subpar computer animation.

Are the results funny? In the margins, yes.

Add the American work ethic to an Italian bedroom farce, give it to a director reknowned for small, natural, gently humorous films, and you come up with Loverboy, a comedy that is more often distasteful than funny. [2 May 1989, p.7C]

It's a real shame that most new boxing movies try to copy the crowd-pleasing, sentiment-choked tactics of "Rocky" rather than the stark drama of "Raging Bull" or the realistic grit of "On the Waterfront" and "The Harder They Fall." Against the Ropes is only the latest sorry example. The sad thing is that, with this real-life story and subject, it could have been a contender.

Crass, shoddy and crudely exploitative of the public's worst instincts, John Badham's Bird on a Wire reflects just about everything that's wrong with American movies right now.

The biggest surprise may be what the filmmaker doesn't show; he withholds a big dramatic payoff, so the audience must fill in the blanks.

Horror movies don't have to make sense in the real world, but when you have to help their internal logic along this much, it's pretty much a cue for heckling -- or checking your watch.

Feels like a demonstration reel for toys, action figures and future DisneyQuest installations.

Unintentional comedy that will bore even the 15-year-olds at which it is undoubtedly aimed.

Serves as both an homage to and shameless thief of its influences. The result: a sprawling, deformed, undisciplined piece of cinema that hobbles along on weak, genre-splicing tactics.

Sometimes, you can use a smaller devil to catch the Devil, the movie suggests. But in this case, the entire movie goes to hell in record time.