Mrs. Winterbourne doesn't amount to much. But it's such a professional job, done with such glow and verve -- and the people making it seem to be having such an infectiously good time -- that it's hard to resist. Good comedies are easy to love anyway. [19 Apr 1996, p.C]

One of the best of its streamlined, over-produced, double-clutch kind: a high-speed, slicker-than-slick car-chase movie with unexpected deposits of character and comedy.

It's a movie of elegant surfaces, great background music (by both the Mahlers), gossipy underpinnings and pretensions to romantic grandeur.

Good performances in bad movies are nothing new, but it's sad that Moore's first major cinematic outing scrapes the bottom of the melodramatic barrel.

In a film which can't seem to decide whether it's comedy or drama, folksy or sinister, every scene is played for ambivalence. The result is a definite maybe. [23 Sep 1988, p.L]

The film may as well be titled "Stephenie Meyer's Waiting Around."

If you are at all squeamish about incest and/or prefer sex scenes without violent undertones, you should avoid this movie.

This material, though, is damn thin. Like so many films derived from the pictures and words of a graphic novel, The Kitchen feels perfunctory and sterile and under-detailed.

The material may be formulaic, but the spirit of the piece is friendly.

A movie that's underwritten, overdirected, overproduced and almost constantly over-the-top. But it's also, at its best, a big tongue-in-cheek extravaganza.

Barely has there been a group of more smug and obnoxious characters in a single film than in St. Elmo`s Fire.

Carpenter writes his own scripts -- here with past collaborator Larry Sulkis -- and their "Ghosts" screenplay lacks the density, character and humor of a Hollywood genre classic.

Fast-moving shocker, but it's a dull shocker, so morally dead that it deadens you to watch it. After a while you couldn't care less if anyone is slaughtered or raped -- including the heroines.

A flashy-looking low-budget indie about drugs, love and crime in small-town Iowa. But, speaking as an ex-small-town Midwesterner, I found it hard to buy.

Yet the movie's no stinker. Like their video-game counterparts, co-stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo somehow manage to weave their way past threatening obstacles and escape with their dignity.

Gordon is lost, and his style of shooting - telescopic close-ups, which never give us enough space to appreciate the performers - feels wrong for comedy.

A sweetly benign comedy that allows the actor (Jones) to lampoon his tough guy image honed in "The Fugitive" and "U.S. Marshals."

Moving slowly these days, Reynolds does less than no acting in this role, and he’s still the best thing in Deal.

In “Morbius” the actor’s willful disinterest in figuring out the rhythm of a scene, what’s important in it and how to bounce off his scene partners — well, it’s acting in a vacuum. What he needs is a director who can steer him away from his favorite scene partner, i.e., Jared Leto, long enough to activate the material at hand, even if it’s just a third-tier Marvel franchise hopeful.

It's corny, cussed and carnal.

It may not work for everyone, but those for whom it works will find much to savor and puzzle over in The Turning.

Most novels can't be encapsulated well enough in a conventional two-hour movie format, and Dreamcatcher may be one of them -- a miniseries gone wrong.

This is going to be more of a consumer warning than a traditional film review, because Red Sonja is like a can of dog food covered by a label featuring a picture of a sirloin steak.

Each time Sheen threatens to take the film to another level, director Noton throws in a pratfall or a car chase to knock it down. Three for the Road" is a film that must struggle to be stupid; unfortunately, it succeeds. [15 Apr 1987, p.5]

Very much a looking-back movie; its most obvious model is "American Graffiti." But if you know that particular slice of early '80s Manhattan, you may be as amused as I was. [26 Feb 1999]

The best thing about this self-mocking affair, which runs a leisurely two-plus hours and affords plenty of time for an insane body count, is Antonio Banderas' manic gusto in the role of a gabby mercenary.

Like most sequels, this one is worse than the original. The special effects look cheaper, the villains aren't as evil and the action sequences have all the vitality and creativity of the later, lethargic Karate Kid movies. [28 Mar 1997, p.D]

By today's standards, it is only medium-bloody, though it's more than usually grim, its young protagonists sullen enough to qualify for the "Twilight" movies. Yet it affords precious little sadistic pleasure, partly because it "dares" to lay out more directly the pedophiliac demons plaguing Freddy the serial killer.

How is it possible that actors as expert as Close and Depardieu can wind up together in a mostly brainless big-budget stinker?

In addition to being a good-looking movie with a pumping Foo Fighters anthem, "Score" is actually a philosophical argument against our culture of tests.

Ultimately, Stateside ends up a diluted, scattered drama--less than the sum of its parts, but with an impressive cameo list.

Despite valiant efforts from Czerny and from the fine stage actress Vilma Silva, who plays one of Walsch's many saviors, the result would qualify as a blandly inspirational amateur hour if the running time weren't closer to two.

Taylor-Johnson is a solid actor, but on the page and in performance, Kraven’s barely there and too cool to care about what’s happening. Which makes it hard for moviegoers to care.

Dumb film; smart comedienne.

Here’s all you really need to know before the opening credits roll in Hitman: There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. And that’s a good thing, considering there isn’t much dialogue to carry the film.

Scream 7 is an unfortunate tarnish on this otherwise sturdy franchise’s legacy.

The acting's not the problem, and it's a nice thing to find Moore playing a human-scaled human being, with a recognizable human touch. The material has a hint of it too. But only a hint.

Loser is anemic.

Ultimately, the lazy, cynical underpinnings of Friday After Next are as visible as the film's soundtrack is obnoxious.

Yogi Bear gives cheap hackwork a bad name. Which is a shame, because hackwork made this industry.

The First Power is nowhere above average for the genre, and frequently far beneath it. [09 Apr 1990, p.2C]

This latest version is le pits.

An overblown clunker full of bad jokes, howling cliches and by-the-numbers action sequences.

The sense that the movie serves mostly to showcase a slew of purchasable cartoon figures loses nothing in the translation.

Ted Danson ("Cheers") is made for the small screen; blown up he looks empty. And his co-conspirator, played by comedian Howie Mandel in his film debut, isn't much better in a role that obviously was designed to let him do his sound-effects-filled comedy act whether the story warrants it or not. The film's many chases will wear you out in short order, save for one funny speeded-up sight gag. [15 Aug 1986, p.A]

Applegate, whose comic timing gets such a workout on TV, seems uninspired in a role that is essentially flat. What she needs - what the entire film could use, in fact - is a good dose of attitude. [07 June 1991, p.I]

A sort-of combination of "Lambs," "Batman Begins" and "The Joy of Cooking," Hannibal Rising ostensibly dramatizes the atrocities that turned Hannibal Lecter from loving child to serial killer. But this film is larded up with so many food references that I'm undecided whether this story belongs in a film compendium or a recipe file.

A ridiculous futuristic adventure film starring Emilio Estevez as a race-car driver who is captured by forces in the near future - 2009 to be exact - and used in a world-controlling power play. Mick Jagger co-stars, wearing a dyed mop of hair. An indecipherable plot isn't worth the effort. [24 Jan 1992, p.C]

Self/less hews closely enough to the premise of the 1966 John Frankenheimer thriller "Seconds" to qualify as an unofficial remake. Then again, anyone who remembers that one is not in the target audience for this one.

One of the most gorgeous science-fiction movies ever - and probably also one of the most realistic in detail and scientific extrapolation

Something that gets your motor racing briefly, but which you've seen all too often.

The slogan for Red Planet could be "In space no one can hear you yawn."

An uninspired misfire of a TV-series knockoff that, despite its great cast and smart filmmakers, never manages to scare up much magic.

A weak romantic comedy.

Galifianakis steals the show as the friendly fussbudget in a performance we've come to expect from him. The enormous potential on screen is tantalizing, which is why the disappointment of failed execution stings.

For the record, Gus Van Sant recently made "The Sea of Trees," set in the same infamous suicide forest, starring Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe. In its contrived sentimentality that film is twice as frightening as this one.

Despite my McConaughey resistance I got more guilty chuckles from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past than "Failure to Launch" or "Four Christmases."

An exhausting, predictable, even maddening moviegoing experience.

(Kids) are likely to reject Grizzly Falls as though it were a piece of chewed-over bear fat.

There are few words to describe the awfulness of this movie, but let's give it the old college try: dismal, depressing, embarrassing and utterly lacking in any artistic or social worth.

My Life in Ruins will neither ruin nor change nor significantly impact your life.

After the insufferably dense mermaid mythology of "Lady in the Water," Shyamalan clearly wanted to keep things simple. He whizzed straight past "simple" to simplistic.

Is the movie good enough to do what it’s designed to do? Not really. It’s designed as a launching pad for a “Dark Tower” television series, scheduled to star Elba and Taylor. So this is an hour-and-a-half TV pilot; it just happens to be a big summer movie too.

The quality of a movie comedy varies indirectly with the number of times someone in it is punched or kicked in the groin. On that score alone, "The Nude Bomb" is a bust. [09 May 1980, p.29]

Where the "Friday the 13th" movies demand nothing less than virginal purity as a condition of living through the last reel, Deepstar Six, which seems intended for a slightly older crowd, is willing to settle for a firm commitment to monogamy. [13 Jan 1989, p.O]

The surprise here isn't that 15 Minutes isn't a masterpiece; it's that the movie works at all.

The words "Welcome foolish mortals" open Walt Disney Pictures' The Haunted Mansion, a movie based on Disneyland and Walt Disney World's classic theme park attractions. The foolish mortals, of course, would be those who pay $9 a ticket at the door.

The whole grand tradition of the humor of movie stupidity, from Laurel and Hardy and Mortimer Snerd to Jerry Lewis and Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, seems to crash and burn in this movie, which ends with Payne's idiotic laugh wheezing away over the end-titles. It almost sounds like the beginning of a laugh track-which "Major Payne" could certainly use. [24 March 1995, p.H]

It is beautifully shot and the production design is first-rate. Another strong point is the presence of some excellent actors in small roles. Unfortunately, they all have to work opposite Van Damme, who keeps trying to be witty and smart, but still comes across as a bit of a lunk.

It's a mystery why two bona fide comic stars, working very, very hard to keep this thing from tanking, couldn't pressure their collaborators for another rewrite or three.

It's those scenes-and computer graphics ingeniously engineered by Richard Hollander and VIFX-that give "Ghost" what little kick it generates. Its hero and villain may be hackers, but its heart is hack. [30 Dec 1993, p.20]

This new Friday the 13th, unquestionably savvier and snappier than the original "Friday the 13th," though just as useless, is a needed return to simplicity.

It's the knockabout biblical lark Mel Brooks never got around to making.

Red One is the holiday fantasy built on retribution, punishment and crushed hopes we deserve right now.

To call this movie a dog would also be an insult to canines, so let's just say Scooby-Doo 2 is a Scooby-Don't.

Doom, the film, aspires to be more than just a gory shoot em' up--though it'd still be a stretch to call it a thinking man's action movie.

There is some excellent location-shooting in downtown Los Angeles during the climax, seen through the lens of a bodycam or quadcopter or drone camera. It’s not enough to save the aesthetic of the entire film, though, which is somehow both gray and nauseating.

The real problem is that there isn't enough whimsy in the world to save this unengaging story.

Jingle All the Way has been well shot and imaginatively designed. But somehow that makes it worse. So does the fact that all the actors, Schwarzenegger included, are skilled enough to make you watch them. [22 Nov 1996, p.C]

A movie about a pair of garbagemen that falls into the general category of refuse. [28 Aug 1990, p.4C]

An overblown, overspectacular, oversold movie without an original idea in its head.

The kind of movie that produces a particular series of questions: How the heck did this get made? Who needed a tax shelter? Who had money to burn?

Compared with Martin's first "Dozen" and the recent mega-family movie "Yours, Mine and Ours," this sequel is Academy Award material.

An almost mystifyingly bad movie.

Numbingly gory when it isn’t just plain numbing.

Aims for a sadness and desperation that is crudely announced rather than subtly demonstrated.

The movie, one of those surprise-twist detective stories, doesn't really stand up to scrutiny in the cold light of the theater lobby.

A flabbergasting waste of time and talent.

Emmerich has no time for poetry or magic, even when the director and his digital wizards (here doing wildly variable work) are trying to dazzle. He’s a taskmaster and a field marshall, not a visionary. But I enjoyed 10,000 B.C. more and more, and more than just about anything Emmerich’s done before.

Band of the Hand does not lack humorous moments. Unfortunately, most of these occur in the first half of the movie as the young criminals play out their primitive conflicts. But this able group of young actors has been given the difficult and insurmountable task of breathing life into a film that cannot decide if it is an after-school television special or a ''Miami Vice'' episode.

In sum it plays like 12 landlocked episodes of "The Love Boat" rammed together, though without the same rate of intercourse.

Succeeds in bringing the best attributes of Nickelodeon TV to the big screen.

Unfortunately, the home-run performances of Cube and Epps are handicapped by inept and illogical action sequences.

I like Duhamel, and in her first straight-up dramatic role Hough does well enough, though her singing and/dancing career thus far has trained her to oversell, as opposed to sell, as opposed to act naturally.

This movie thrusts you so close to these intoxicated idiots that you practically have to wipe off secondhand tequila, sweat and spit stains afterward.

If only they didn't cannibalize their source material so much, then take an extreme rule reversal just before the end credits, they might have achieved something original, rather than just a fan-fiction derivation of George A. Romero's canon.

Shapiro has constructed a by-the-numbers script that telegraphs every plot twist with the exertion of its setups. We know that a hive of yellow jackets in the orchard, a carousel in the attic and Darian's fondness for horses will somehow make it into the final minutes of the film. It is hard to work up the curiosity to stick it out and find out how. [6 Apr 1993, p.7]

Has the air of a film and actor (Beatty)reaching clumsily for a golden past that's gone.