There is really no one to like in this film.

As Vaughn's therapist mother, Sissy Spacek comes off best. But she's a rare bird of whom it truly can be said: She's always good. No matter how grim the material.

Slow and dragging, Pootie Tang is worse than a below-average sketch-to-screen Saturday Night Live film.

A movie about a pair of garbagemen that falls into the general category of refuse. [28 Aug 1990, p.4C]

Marked for Death is, even by the xenophobic standards of the recent action genre, uncommonly racist and misogynistic.

A complete disaster, almost certain to kill any more sequels. Chase waltzes through a series of boring costumes and cliches as he journeys to the South to claim a mansion as an inheritance only to find it's a hot property. The script here is anything but a hot property. [24 March 1989, p.A]

Not only does American Outlaws distort history, but the filmmakers have created a dull, one-dimensional pop icon out of James' complex character and legend.

An abysmal, embarrassing sequel to the adult-talking baby movies. [5 Nov 1993, p.C]

In code, Wonder Wheel dances along the edge of the writer-director’s off-screen life, namely the allegations by Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, of sexual molestation, and Allen’s controversial marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Allen’s then-partner Mia Farrow.

When the film at last reaches its supposedly shocking conclusion, it resembles an overinflated balloon that has finally burst. It is a film that demands that you pay close attention, then rewards none of your diligence. [12 Apr 1991, p.4]

You watch the movie in a dumbfounded stupor. Why on earth was it made? [26 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

The violence of Class of 1999 is so extreme, so redundant and so meaningless that Lester ends by nullifying his own message - it seems that brutality in the name of law and order is wrong, but that brutality in the name of entertainment is just fine. [11 May 1990, p.E]

Think about the worst movie ideas you've had in your life, the ones so embarrassing they make you wince. Now imagine this: a modernized version of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" titled Scotland, Pa.

It’s hard to believe that a lineup so stellar could generate so few laughs, but there it is.

In the new wave of kiddie animal movies -- "Babe," "Black Beauty," "Gordy," "Fluke," "Roan Inish" and all the rest -- Dunston Checks In is valuable only as a new standard of screenwriting ineptitude. Don't play it again, Sam, at least not with this bunch.

Craven has proven himself a talented director of horror films on several occasions, from Last House on the Left to A Nightmare on Elm Street. But this time he's chosen a project that plays not at all to his abilities, which lie with the creation of isolated, disturbing images rather than with the careful sustaining of suspense through story-telling. [13 Oct 1986, p.5C]

Tired ethnic stereotyping abounds in the Striptease script, which is at a loss for any kind of drama between Moore's dances. Not for a second do we care about her as a mother, wife or working woman. Only her first dance in a modified man's suit approaches the energy of the much better Flashdance.

The mayhem in The Mummy feels desperate, mistimed, grueling in the wrong way (the film's violence is infinitely less appropriate for preteens than that of "Wonder Woman").

Van Damme himself, a graduate of the blank-stare school of acting, is so without emotional inflection on the screen that his most affecting moment in this film, if one is to judge from a preview audience's reaction, is when he drops a bathrobe for a couple of seconds of magnificent gluteal exposure.

It's a long slog, not because what the film says is provocative but because the technique is as slack as the writing.

Called upon to do little more than imitate the mannerisms of their French predecessors, Nolte and Short seem hemmed in and desperately uncomfortable. [27 Jan 1989, p.A]

The theory seems to be that if you indiscriminately toss in enough familiar ingredients, you get soup. But Graveyard Shift is more like lumpy water. [29 Oct 1990, p.5C]

A miserable ripoff of The Karate Kid with three whitebread young-uns taking lessons from their Chinese grandfather on how to be upright and horizontal ninja warriors. They get their kicks trying to knock off a Steven Seagal imitation who is running drugs.

A wish fulfillment fantasy of staggering silliness, both smirkingly cutesy and gratingly offensive, this is one for the movie ash heap.

Certainly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creations have suffered permanent damage thanks to Ritchie's films.

At the end of 83 unmerciful minutes, audiences will be exclaiming, "Dude, I can't believe I sat through that movie!?" Stick to the trailer.

The sad truth is, I can say nothing to recommend this film.

Better Off Dead, a seemingly teenage comedy that wasn't good enough to be released during the prime summer play dates, is utterly devoid of appeal. [15 Oct 1985, p.C2]