Missed it by that much. Actually, the new version of Get Smart misses by a fair-size margin.

By no means a typical concert movie; the selections are played mostly in short takes and snippets. It's more a road movie with music, its war topic treated with earnest seriousness.

These characters deserve more than storybook plotting, as do we. The movie has won our hearts. It shouldn't be so timid about challenging our minds.

Lacks the energy and urgency of its source material.

Exactly the sort of personalized, non-assembly line treat some audiences are always trying, in vain, to find.

Limps along on a squirm-inducing fish-out-of-water formula that goes nowhere and goes there very, very slowly.

It wouldn’t raise questions about Harrelson’s prostheses and makeup, for starters, if the drama carried more urgency.

The latest “Purge” is an erratic, fairly absorbing and righteously angry prequel.

O'Neal and Hardaway are likable enough in limited roles; Cousy seems a little ill at ease. But forget all that. Blue Chips is only a triumph of marketing. Its casting suggests an official basketball picture, but its script belongs on the bench. [18 Feb 1994, p.C2]

The idea that rich people are an alien tribe is just one of many that get lost in Wittenborn’s distracted script. Instead of exploring the concept, he throws out random incidents until he hits one that sends the film into a dark, grotesque spiral.

Though the broad outlines of the plot are the same - a disparate group of human survivors takes desperate refuge in a Pennsylvania farmhouse while waves of flesh-eating zombies roll up from the surrounding countryside - the characters have been deepened and the thematic emphasis shifted. [19 Oct 1990, p.C]

An erratic but enjoyable sci-fi action movie with an extremely bent sense of humor. [09 Aug 1996, p.F]

Stuart Heisler's fascinating (but not biographical) backstage Hollywood drama about a fading Oscar-winning actress, co-starring Sterling Hayden and Natalie Wood. [19 Jul 2005, p.C3]

The end result is a movie that comes across as disappointingly vacant, a jumbled collection of good intentions gone wrong.

Regrettably, director Jeff Kanew has no use for touches like these. His film is broad, flat and superficial. The first half is devoted to quick, sketch-like scenes in which Douglas and Lancaster encounter various bizarre phenomena of '80s life (punks, frozen yogurt, aerobic exercise) and look surprised. The second half wanders into the standard "go for it" territory, as the two stars decide to take another crack at the train they failed to rob 30 years ago. [3 Oct 1986, p.D]

The content may be dubious, but the execution is hypnotic.

The whole movie plays like an improbable blend of "Repulsion," "High Noon" and the archetypal low-budget rape/revenge shocker "I Spit on Your Grave." Queasy audiences beware, but midnight-movie bookers take note.

No period of Italian history has produced more great movies than the WWII years . But, Malena romanticizes and even sentimentalizes those years.

Using a style heavily indebted to music videos - lots of fast cutting, odd angles and gratuitous camera movements - Hopkins keeps the energy level up, though his manner is a bit too choppy to keep all of the diverse elements together. [11 Aug 1989, p.B]

Oblivion is odder and less conventional than your average forgettable star vehicle; at times it feels like a five-character play taking place in a digital-effects lab. But there's not much energy to it.

A strange tonal mashup that turns the hypermasculine and hyperviolent world of glamorous spies, in the vein of James Bond or “Mission: Impossible,” and turns it into kid-friendly family entertainment.

The script by Jordan and Ray Wright, from Wright’s story, wastes little time in getting to what “Fatal Attraction” enthusiasts might call the bunny-boiling bits. But the movie frustrates. And it squanders Huppert, which really is a waste.

A Little Help settles for familiar and modest payoffs. It's not much. Yet Fischer clearly relishes the chance to play someone who's a demurely reckless mess.

The TV episodes invariably embed a character or a bit of dialogue in your brain that you continuously describe or repeat to your friends. No such find in the movie, though the offbeat soundtrack is very gettable.

Draft Day feels like a play, and I don't mean a football play. It feels like a play-play at its sporadic best, in the same way J.C. Chandor's 2011 "Margin Call" felt that way.

Young audiences will enjoy her journey from surly to empowered, and as countless visitors to Brookfield Zoo can attest, there's nothing like watching dolphins. So a star for Schroeder and a star for the title players.

Written by Nick Moore, Ruckus Skye and Lane Skye, the script just doesn't give us enough material to care about the story, which is devoid of subtext and keeps everything on the surface.

The sole curiosity in Blue Steel is the sight of Jamie Lee Curtis in cop`s uniform. There is nothing more to it than that-no tension, no character.