There is no mythology, no irony, no real soul--just a Charles Bronson simplicity about the whole affair.

The harder this assault weapon went at my tear ducts, the more duct tape I wrapped around them as a defensive measure.

Stupid, predictable and fairly funny.

Might have struck a deeper chord with fans who are still looking for the Steve Earle who exists behind the music.

Anonymous is ridiculous, and like Oliver Stone's "JFK" it sells its political conspiracy theories by weight and by volume. But dull, it's not.

McQuarrie... is a real writer; his banter has snap and bite. His directorial skills are still catching up with his writing skills; the movie loses steam in the final half-hour.

At its best moments, Romeo Is Bleeding actually is the wickedly funny, violent black comedy it purports to be. [4 Feb 1994, p.C2]

Wilson does amusingly steely work, while Page goes bonkers, giving her gleeful nut job one of the more memorable horselaughs in recent American film history.

In French Kiss--a picture that isn't unusually funny or original but that has expert actors, smooth direction and ravishing French locales--we can get pleasure from the sheer, relaxed polish of it all, the effortless swing. It's a good time passer. [5 May 1995, p.C]

It's the film in which an entertainer at last becomes an artist, dealing with manifestly personal, painful emotions and casting them in a form that gives them philosophical perspective and universal affect. It's Spielberg's finest achievement, a film that will look better and better with the passage of time. [22 Dec. 1989]

Written by Marc Lawrence, a writer on "Family Ties," "Life With Mikey" has a sitcom sensibility. The script is simply incredulous, the lines are predictable and the stupid sight gags run from cake-in-the-face to, if you really want to know, retching-in-the-hat. One wonders why Lapine - a respected stage director ("Into the Woods," "Falsettoland") ever hooked up with this; obviously, he is determined to segue into films. [4 June 1993, p.F2]

The results are equal parts marital crisis, sins-of-the-father psychodrama and visceral body horror. They’re also a bit of a plod — especially in the second half, when whatever kind of horror film you’re making should not, you know, plod.

If you are willing to overlook the occasional missed block, clumsy tackle or dropped pass, there is more than enough in Varsity Blues to keep you engrossed.

Takes a fascinating true story and turns it into a conventional cop thriller, hoking up the provocative three-generation saga of the LaMarca family.

Though there is an artist's instinct behind Cadillac Man-an instinct that does surface here and there, with a particularly piercing line of dialogue or powerful gesture-it`s quickly blotted out by the Williams formula.

True Story is a case of a well-crafted film, made by a first-time feature director with an impressive theatrical pedigree, that nonetheless struggles to locate the reasons for telling its story.

The script is just so-so, but Ball’s directorial eye, clear in the first “Maze Runner” film though largely AWOL in the second, saves the third and final adventure from its own bloat.

The sequel's themes of friendship and interdependency fail to generate much momentum.

Clarke, among others, deserves so much better. If you watch her amid the suds of “Me Before You” (2016) and now Last Christmas, you see an actor of sound comic and dramatic instincts at the mercy of pushy material. This encourages actors to over-exert themselves in the name of delivering the goods with a smile that threatens to turn into something more like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.”

The Shadow shows what can happen when you overdress pulp. You wind up with something gorgeous and suffocated, bejeweled trash floundering in its own oversplendid stuffings. [01 Jul 1994, p.H]

Crowe's feature directorial debut, The Water Diviner, stems from an honest impulse to dramatize ordinary people who honor their dead. Yet the results are narratively dishonest and emotionally a little cheap.

If more of the picture had the inventively grotesque payoff of the scene set at the gymnastics tryout, capped by a female character's inarguably poor dismount, we might have something to puke home about.

It’s campy, it’s cheesy, it’s way more fun than you expect it to be, but there’s a knowingness to the whole endeavor on behalf of magician and audience. “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is the kind of lightweight, harmless and ephemeral entertainment that allows us to be escape artists from reality for a minute — so go ahead and indulge.

Too often the movie’s franchise mechanics and green-screen overload have a way of dragging “The Marvels” into generic sequeldom. But the stars give us something to hang onto, even if Larson — so good in so many films — has yet to master the useful trick of looking neutral yet invested in her many, many reaction shots.

You've seen worse. The film industry is capable of better.

A beautifully tooled action thriller about love and terrorism.

Billy's burning, self-destructive energy is about all Young Guns has going for it-the suicidal kicks James Dean found in chickie races are here transposed to six-gun shoot-outs, filmed in a slow-motion process that strives vainly to evoke Sam Peckinpah. [12 Aug 1988, p.H]

The satisfactions of the film are in seeing what a screen full of excellent players can do to steer you around the holes. Bana never quite seems enough to anchor a picture for me; all the same, he acquits himself sharply here.