Aiming for a piece with the raw impact of "Precious," on which he served as executive producer, he (Perry) ends up with 134 minutes of misjudged intensity.

They Will Kill You is both irreverent, and reverential to its references, and cartoonishly violent in increasingly surreal ways, but it also maintains the emotional core at the center, which is Asia’s blind big sister protectiveness over Maria, powered by the guilt she feels over not being there for her. It’s a simple, but primal character motivation that Beetz sells with a wild-eyed ferocity.

American movies about childhood often have a spurious feel. They can be grandiosely phony or sentimental--or both, as in Home Alone. Unfortunately, Now and Then, despite massively good intentions, fits right into the program. [20 Oct 1995, p.J]

Hit & Run is pretty rancid as comedy. Worse, the chases are strictly amateur hour, all shortcut editing and no gut satisfaction.

The very elements of Eat Pray Love that helped make it a success in 40 languages -- the breezy prose, the relentless sorting-through of dissatisfactions, a steady stream of intriguing sights -- turn the film into a travelogue with a little spiritual questing on the side.

This century's Planet of the Apes is a rouser, a screaming-banshee fun house.

The new movie, like its predecessor, is a crime thriller with a moral viewpoint, an eye and ear for street color and a taste for macho movie fantasy.

Some of its parts are nifty, but the sum of these parts is nothing.

Rahul Bose's pleasant little flick, could have been much more than just fine had the director taken more risks. Instead, this movie pulsates with lost opportunity and unanswered questions.

It helps if you think of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" as sort of a "Sesame Street" for teens. Beneath the self-aggrandizing plot, the rock music, the dudespeak and the humor lurks a smattering of knowledge. The premise is spectacularly silly, but harmless. Bill and Ted are a couple of woolly-brained teens who spend so much time dreaming about the rock band they're going to start that they are about to disqualify themselves from a public education. [20 Feb 1989, p.7]

Though the story is potentially fascinating and the visuals sometimes spellbinding, the movie itself is stranded in the purgatory of the second-rate.

The film is finally impersonal, almost anonymous; it's a chilly, lumbering project that carries little of the mark of lived experience. [25 Dec 1992]

There are flashes and occasional whole sequences when Edwards’ directorial eye snaps into focus.

It’s a lame and weaselly thing, made strangely more frustrating by some excellent performers.

After seeing No Reservations you'll be hungry for a really top-flight meal. And, to go with it, a better film.

Short Circuit is an obvious WarGames ripoff in which a robot steals every scene from wooden performances by the always-too-eager-to-please Steve Guttenberg and the usually likable Ally Sheedy.

What an enormous waste of talent and money is Labyrinth. [30 Jun 1986, p.3]

The Equalizer 2 just doesn't deliver the thrills.

Aubrey Plaza is so deadpan she's undeadpan, and not just in her new zombie movie.

The movie successfully balances the sentimental and bittersweet only about half the time. The performances are intelligent and well-crafted, and Blethyn is unmistakably a star performer, attracting attention like a vortex. But she's somewhat miscast here.

Not bad, not good, Ice Age 3 may be OK enough to do what it was engineered to do, i.e., baby-sit your kid for a while and rake in the dough.

Frame by frame, Crudup is fascinating.

Despite its title and promotion suggesting explosive action, Boiling Point is an almost leisurely thriller. It has less to do with Wesley Snipes' inner roilings than with writer-director James B. Harris' cool, sardonic view of criminology. [21 Apr 1993, p.C3]

Director Marc Webb moves it along, with a rock-solid lead, very well sung, courtesy of Rachel Zegler.

Overall, The Brothers is glossy fun, but it should have given us more ideas and energy.

As its awkward subtitle suggests, the execution is more than a little sloppy.

In making a movie that preaches love for odd ducks, Schumacher has turned Flawless into the oddest duck of all.

Lesnick seems to be saying that lesbian characters on screen can also meet cute significant others, spar in a lite Woody Allen fashion, and have a happy, sappy Hollywood ending. But a sitcom is still a sitcom -- gay, Greek or otherwise.