Ultimately, Stateside ends up a diluted, scattered drama--less than the sum of its parts, but with an impressive cameo list.

Despite valiant efforts from Czerny and from the fine stage actress Vilma Silva, who plays one of Walsch's many saviors, the result would qualify as a blandly inspirational amateur hour if the running time weren't closer to two.

Taylor-Johnson is a solid actor, but on the page and in performance, Kraven’s barely there and too cool to care about what’s happening. Which makes it hard for moviegoers to care.

Dumb film; smart comedienne.

Here’s all you really need to know before the opening credits roll in Hitman: There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. And that’s a good thing, considering there isn’t much dialogue to carry the film.

Scream 7 is an unfortunate tarnish on this otherwise sturdy franchise’s legacy.

The acting's not the problem, and it's a nice thing to find Moore playing a human-scaled human being, with a recognizable human touch. The material has a hint of it too. But only a hint.

Loser is anemic.

Ultimately, the lazy, cynical underpinnings of Friday After Next are as visible as the film's soundtrack is obnoxious.

Yogi Bear gives cheap hackwork a bad name. Which is a shame, because hackwork made this industry.

The First Power is nowhere above average for the genre, and frequently far beneath it. [09 Apr 1990, p.2C]

This latest version is le pits.

An overblown clunker full of bad jokes, howling cliches and by-the-numbers action sequences.

The sense that the movie serves mostly to showcase a slew of purchasable cartoon figures loses nothing in the translation.

Ted Danson ("Cheers") is made for the small screen; blown up he looks empty. And his co-conspirator, played by comedian Howie Mandel in his film debut, isn't much better in a role that obviously was designed to let him do his sound-effects-filled comedy act whether the story warrants it or not. The film's many chases will wear you out in short order, save for one funny speeded-up sight gag. [15 Aug 1986, p.A]

Applegate, whose comic timing gets such a workout on TV, seems uninspired in a role that is essentially flat. What she needs - what the entire film could use, in fact - is a good dose of attitude. [07 June 1991, p.I]

A sort-of combination of "Lambs," "Batman Begins" and "The Joy of Cooking," Hannibal Rising ostensibly dramatizes the atrocities that turned Hannibal Lecter from loving child to serial killer. But this film is larded up with so many food references that I'm undecided whether this story belongs in a film compendium or a recipe file.

A ridiculous futuristic adventure film starring Emilio Estevez as a race-car driver who is captured by forces in the near future - 2009 to be exact - and used in a world-controlling power play. Mick Jagger co-stars, wearing a dyed mop of hair. An indecipherable plot isn't worth the effort. [24 Jan 1992, p.C]

Self/less hews closely enough to the premise of the 1966 John Frankenheimer thriller "Seconds" to qualify as an unofficial remake. Then again, anyone who remembers that one is not in the target audience for this one.

One of the most gorgeous science-fiction movies ever - and probably also one of the most realistic in detail and scientific extrapolation

Something that gets your motor racing briefly, but which you've seen all too often.

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

An uninspired misfire of a TV-series knockoff that, despite its great cast and smart filmmakers, never manages to scare up much magic.

A weak romantic comedy.

Galifianakis steals the show as the friendly fussbudget in a performance we've come to expect from him. The enormous potential on screen is tantalizing, which is why the disappointment of failed execution stings.

For the record, Gus Van Sant recently made "The Sea of Trees," set in the same infamous suicide forest, starring Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe. In its contrived sentimentality that film is twice as frightening as this one.

Despite my McConaughey resistance I got more guilty chuckles from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past than "Failure to Launch" or "Four Christmases."

An exhausting, predictable, even maddening moviegoing experience.