The movie, let it be said, is not awful, but the kinetic battles are chaotic, and the look of the Quantum Realm is oddly drab in its interweaving of digital and VFX elements, seeming at times to be more like several first drafts of a new “Star Wars” franchise instead of a natural extension of this one. Midway through, as everyone on screen was restating their interest in getting home again, I thought: Same!

The Doom Generation can't help but choke on the poisonous fumes of its own cloudy existentialism. [10 Nov 1995, p.G]

There isn't much nuance or complexity to be found in The Call of the Wild, but it's an old-fashioned animal-friendly adventure flick for kids, a modern-day and high-tech “Benji” based on a classic piece of literature.

This one's just OK, but at midnight, after who knows what, OK might be enough.

Everything not right with Don’t Worry Darling wasn’t right from the beginning. Even a good director — and Wilde is that, though her hand in developing this material clearly wasn’t without some wrong turns — must deal with script problems if they’re there, in the story, lurking and waiting to mess everything up and send audiences out muttering, wait what?

The film plot about the needy kid who redeems a male loner has been done to death, and on the surface, Martian Child just looks like another entry in the genre, a close follower to “About A Boy.”

It’s just not funny or fresh enough, and that has everything to do with the material and how it’s handled visually, and nothing to do with the people on the screen.

This dizzy sequel can’t match any of the first “Detective Chinatown” action highlights, such as the food fight at Bangkok’s floating market. Here’s hoping the third outing, which will take the main characters to Tokyo, returns to the amiable, artful high jinks of the first.

The Mountain Between Us falls flat, struggling to truly enthrall beyond a basic love story.

The action is brilliant, the combat sharp and rattling, and the film follows the historical record more closely than most Hollywood films.

Whitaker's performance is the rock here. Even when the confrontations and evasions get a little ridiculous, he's neither wholly saint nor sinner, but something like a human being.

Never quite measures up to Pemberton's reach, but there remains enough to be excited about to wonder what will follow this imperfectly made though valuable work.

Stranded in this charmless fantasy, Stiller is reduced to his old halting, squirming tricks.

The movie's heart, of course, is with poor addled Mike and his kids, but 17 Again works only fitfully to make the Efron/Perry character worth a story.

A mostly bland, sporadically crude, by-the-numbers romantic comedy about two gay men in love.

FX 2 is entertaining enough, but lacks the zip and wit of the original.

Good, grungy fun.

Evans and Kelleher could have used the same premise to tell a different story -- one in which viewers could relate to some of the perks of being First Kid instead of just the inconveniences. Luke could show kids a more exciting world. [30 Aug 1996, p.C]

Felitta and Reiser mean nothing but well with this project, but too many lines sound fraudulent, and Reiser, it must be said, is a hopeless ham in the reaction shot department.

Kuzui has imposed a heavily block-lettered feminist message on the movie, suggesting that Buffy discovers her empowerment as a woman by driving huge, phallic stakes through the hearts of her enemies. In this case, having it all means being feminine and bloodthirsty, too. [31 Jul 1992, p.B]