The problems here, I think, are weirdly simple. The movie takes our knowledge and our interest in the material for granted. It zips from one number to another, throwing a ton of frenetically edited eye candy at the screen, charmlessly.

There's really no other word for what Helen Mirren is doing in certain reaction shots, out of subtle interpretive desperation: mugging. She's mugging. She is a sublimely talented performer, and this is material with fascinating implications, and I doubt there's a moviegoer in the world who doesn't like Helen Mirren. But even the best actors need a director to tell them to tone it down.

I laughed here and there at She's Out of My League, but I sort of hated everything it had to say about nerds and babes and the sliding scale of self-image.

The flaw in Death of a President isn't one of morality. It's one of dramatic interest.

The Boxtrolls remains relentlessly busy up through its final credits, and it's clever in a nattering way. But it's virtually charmless.

It's a shame that this often cute script couldn't have better served, and been better served by, its actors.

It's a clever premise but not one that lends itself to an hour and 42 minutes of high jinks. You get the joke quickly.

The movie as a movie is a letdown, because all it consists of is Eastwood's hoarse, foul-mouthed complaining about today's "softies" and then his leading into battle in Grenada a bunch of rag-tag kids that he has molded into men. This is all material recycled out of films as varied as "The Dirty Dozen" and "Police Academy." [5 Dec 1986, p.A-C]

By the end of Novocaine, it’s as if the filmmakers — who have talent, and who are now off and running in a commercial sense — forgot how their movie started: with Quaid and Midthunder getting the material and the screen time needed to hook an audience’s interest, before the jocular sadism commenced in earnest.

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

Next Day Air is sort of bracing, though it isn't very good: Its total lack of dramatic and comic bearings, to say nothing of a point, keeps you wondering about the next fatality, in a half-interested way.

Faces the same problem of all sex-themed films, in that cinematic sex is often unsexy.

For an hour or so The Equalizer glides along and works; in the second hour, plus change, it turns into a shameless slaughter contrivance with a flabby sense of pace. I did like one line: "When you pay for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too." Washington's the rain; by the end, the movie is the mud.

Hollywood Knights mock of authority, slob heroes and snob villains, and raunchy, gross-out humor invite comparisons to "Animal House" and "Porky's." [11 May 2000, p.6D]

Opus has its moments. But even the surprises aren’t especially surprising.

Should please its core audience, which includes anyone who might actually want to win a date with Tad Hamilton. Others may opt to wait for another date with Kate Bosworth -- or Nathan Lane.

That narrative change works fine in principle. The larger question is one of rhythm, and the diminishing returns of one jump scare after another.

Sometimes funny, often strained comedy.

Forbidden Fruits can’t reconcile all of its influences and just ends up as a collection of references and high style without much staying power — it’s essentially the fast fashion of girly pop horror.

This isn't the first time Hughes has targeted kids who like reruns, though he does seem to be working his way back age-wise. He's progressed from his original brat-pack teens to a pesky 10-year-old in "Home Alone" to the 5-year-old here. If his next movie is called "Swee'Pea," you've been warned.

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.

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

It's more that the plot is incredibly predictable, the score is manipulative and the denouement completely unsatisfying. I can sit through cliched and even offensive (to a point). Just leave me with a little bit of mystery, an iota of suspense. That’s all I ask.

An honorable, evenhanded but curiously flat interpretation of events.

"Songbirds and Snakes” takes its job SUPERseriously, with more solemnity than imaginative excitement.

Scary Movie 2 had seven writers. Seven. That's one writer for every big laugh in its stealthy 82 minutes. More frightening: these jokes are worth waiting for.

This film is so harmless it`s boring.

It's a Hitchockian "wrong man" story, but there's a twist.