It’s a luxe treatment of some puny satiric ideas, toned up by a cast led by Emma Stone and Lanthimos first-timer Jesse Plemons, who won the best actor prize this year at Cannes. But everything has a chance to go wrong with a movie long before the actors film anything.

Falling Down is an intellectually sloppy, rebellious working-man adventure film that is little more than a set piece for Michael Douglas playing out a revenge-of-the-nerds fantasy. [26 Feb 1993, p.C]

Everyone in The Comedian deserves a better movie than The Comedian.

As scary and minor-chord heavy as FearDotCom can be, there's no big payoff, no logical resolution.

A huge waste of talent (Witherspoon's) and time (ours), a supernatural romantic comedy that is neither romantic, comedic, super or natural.

The difference between Head of State and a good comedy is like the difference between Chris Rock and a real actor.

Certain scenes in When in Rome signify nothing less than the death of screen slapstick, but I’m hoping it’s one of those fake-out movie deaths where it’s not really dead, not forever.

It's a glossy, well-mounted, slickly done but almost stuporously predictable affair, both formula-bound and utterly illogical.

Though I would agree it's original -- it's the first aboveground romance movie I've seen in which the heroine is repeatedly spanked, verbally tormented and tied to a chair by her lover--- it's not an experience I much enjoyed.

The film never adequately uses either the dramatic talents of Nolte nor the comic talents of Short. The young girl (Sarah Rowland Doroff) is most effective because she rarely speaks.

The whole thing might as well all be written in Minions chatter. It's wacky, but somehow dull, kind of like conversing with a Minion.

Offers the most onscreen explosions in recent memory. It's almost pornography for arsonists.

Barker, who wasn't involved with the earlier Candyman, has never yet matched his stunning 1987 writer-director debut Hellraiser-and he never will if he keeps coming up with projects like this. [17 Mar 1995, p.J]

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]

It’s the last thing he wanted, I’m sure, but Eastwood’s latest ends up feeling like a stunt.

Director Godfrey Reggio gives us some ordinary and a few spectacular shows of people doing hard work to the accompaniment of the boring music of composer Philip Glass. This film is not in the same league with its fine predecessor, "Koyaanisqatsi." [20 May 1988, p.A]

The appeal of the film version, such as it is, relates almost entirely to eye-for-an-eye, severed-limb-for-a-limb vengeance, two hours and 41 minutes of it, with just enough solemnity to make anyone who thought "The Dark Knight" was a little gassy think twice about which superhero myth THEY'RE calling gassy.

Feels about 150 years out of date.

Snyder is not without skills, or ideas, but when a critic finds himself at odds with almost every aspect of a director’s visual approach to material like this, material like this becomes pretty joyless.

The whole endeavor is a naked attempt to cash in on the young adult fantasy trend spearheaded by "Harry Potter." There have been many attempts to snatch the Potter crown (and purse) but Artemis Fowl will not be the hot new kiddie fantasy franchise, based on this utterly charmless first entry.

I mean, whatever with the “X-Men” movies. It’s hard to even rent an opinion on the discrete strengths and weaknesses of a franchise that has devolved to the point of Dark Phoenix, a lavishly brutal chore nearly as violent as the Wolverine movie “Logan,” and a movie featuring more death by impalement and whirling metal than all the “Saw” movies put together.

What we get, while rarely boring, is a succession of senseless scenes bathed in formula-thriller blue light, full of blazing Uzis, exploding helicopters and sentimental male bonding.

This material is offensive. The film may end with a straight-faced reassurance that "no actual Torah scrolls were destroyed or damaged in the making of this motion picture," but it's perfectly willing to exploit the Holocaust for cheap, weak thrills.

So filled with illogical twists and ridiculous turns, that eventually it evokes unintentional laughs.

For me, the mechanics or even the (excellent) designs are not enough. Jeunet's archness keeps conventional empathy or engagement at bay, and by design maintains a tone of artificiality.

With Clockstoppers, Frakes hobbles along with a high-concept film that doesn't live up to its potential.

Blunt’s derring-do has its stray moments, and her comic wiles are most welcome. But this is blockbustering from a talented director whose talent has been pounded flat by the dictates of a script in the quality range of Disney’s “Lone Ranger.”

Knight and Day may well suffice for audiences desperate for the bankable paradox known as the predictable surprise, and willing to overlook a galumphing mediocrity in order to concentrate on matters of dentistry.