Add a megadose of bombastic James Horner music and a perfunctory love-affair subplot and you have a movie that's its own worst enemy.

The result would be an important drama if the screenplay (based on an early Arthur Miller novel) didn't lapse into preachiness and imprecision at times.

Amiable, though much too long.

An unconvincing talkathon that might have worked better on the stage as a two-man showpiece.

Now that it is at last on screen, my reaction is ... what's all the fuss?

Another Stakeout boasts a fine cast, but the writing is so uneven and the plot so poorly developed that the film's few amusing moments get lost. The talents of Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez seem wasted on this lumbering farce.

In supporting roles, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Rachel, the equally valiant house slave Newton makes his common-law wife, and Mahershala Ali as Moses, the leader of the renegade slaves, provide some powerful moments.

The good news is that, even though one must pace oneself through the dull parts, usually involving Mr. Popper's dullish family, he's in pretty good form whenever he's getting physical.

Wilkinson artfully deepens a character who in Wilde's original play was rather boobish. It's a marvelous performance in a pretty good film.

Wilson is pretty much the whole show. With nobody else around to steal from, he ends up stealing scenes from himself.

Very well acted and directed, if overlong.

As for me, I don't see why women being as slobby and gross as the guys is such a feminist breakthrough – especially since, as in Bachelorette, the slobbiness and grossness is witless.

Kevin Lima's feature-length cartoon has some funny moments, but why couldn't the gang at Walt Disney Pictures provide something for girls and moms to identify with, too? [05 May 1995, p.13]

This movie is "Finian's Rainbow" for dunderheads. Rudd has a few amusing moments talking to himself in a mirror (he's trying to convince himself he's a stud) but he would have been better off talking himself out of this film.

About the only thing I like about this movie is its shaggy, relatively apolitical stance. Instead of setting itself up as a brief for or against the Iraq war, it just moseys along without much on its mind except how to connect the dots in the plot.

Washington doesn’t look as if he’s having much fun, and who can blame him? Perhaps he agrees with me: Apocalypse movies, like apocalypse heroes, need some laughs, too.

The film also seems to end at least four times, which is three times too many. Better yet, it never should have started.

You don't see such feisty acting very often.

Content and style dovetail superbly in this offbeat drama, where images continually change in size and shape, evoking the story's message that human experience is always a pathway, not a destination.

The psychology of the story is shallow, but the action scenes pack a good visual punch.

The movie's gross-out effects are impressive but wearying. How apt that the director's name is Gore.

As slick and heartless as the original; the story has a few possibilies for irony and political commentary, but the filmmakers bury them in the general atmosphere of violence and manipulation. A few scenes are effective on their own terms, though, and Bridget Fonda does as much with her role as the heavy-handed screenplay allows. [26 March 1993, p.12]

This is a technological breakthrough, all right, but a breakthrough to what?

Peregrym is a fresh-faced beauty and Bridges is enjoyably cranky, but the film is as bland as an Afterschool Special.

Action freaks may enjoy the chasing and chomping, but there's no hint of human interest or moviemaking imagination.

The film's power grows from its dark-toned portrayal of the World War II era and from its evocative use of flashbacks, which show more interest in the characters' emotional lives than in story devices like surprise and suspense.

The filmmakers seem well in control of their chaotic material, but what can be said when the movie features wall-to-wall teenage alcohol abuse.

It’s an indication of how much this film needed a bright break in all the grim oppressiveness that when Mary-Louise Parker shows up in a giddy cameo as a foul-mouthed boozer, the audience suddenly lit up with laughter.

Peirce is gifted, but she lacks the ability of directors like DePalma to transform schlock into something deeply personal.

This sensationalistic tale doesn't delve very far into the issues it raises.

It’s a miniature art history lesson that is also a rapt communion between two people who, at least in this moment, are joined in the ecstasy of creation.

The only performance worth watching is Costner's. Now that he seems resigned to being something less than an A-list luminary, he is often modest and affecting.

The writer-director Andrew Niccol is best known for writing "The Truman Show," another movie that got carried away by doomsday deep-think. The deep-think here is even sillier.

The movie is well acted, deeply moving, and unlike some love stories, it doesn't feel forced or contrived.

Too bad the action scenes rarely rise above standard kung-fu comedy, diluting the film's otherwise considerable entertainment value.

He intercuts documentary sequences from a French news crew and also includes Arab website footage of insurgents and YouTube confessions from soldiers who witnessed a barbarous act, which we also see, involving the platoon and a young Iraqi girl. The concept is audacious but the actors are too theatrical.

The cumulative effect is somewhat overwhelming. How could it not be?

Pierce Brosnan wisecracks his way through the starring role with more aplomb than credibility.

Tatum muscles his way through the role with panache, while Foxx never gets a chance to break loose.

It's a rather lifeless re-telling of the Nativity, with greeting-card imagery and stiff performances.

At a time when screen comedy has its own problems with anger management, Sandler's self-possessed style is as refreshing as it is funny.

The material veers a bit too predictably from near farce to serioso dramatics but the trajectory here makes emotional sense.

The primary impression is lots of moping and mooning, plus a song at the beginning with some of the worst lyrics you've ever heard.

The dramatic situations aren't intense or knotty enough to match the moral issues behind them, however.

A total lack of chemistry between the stars -- neither of whom is particularly good at romantic comedy in the first place -- and you have a promising package that grows steadily less lovable as it goes along. Down with this movie!

There are lots of plot twists and romantic angles. What's lacking is laughs.

Much more silly than romantic.

Maybe Jackson should avoid any more movies with "snake" in the title.

Sometimes a film is best utilized as a travelogue. Such is the case with the comedy-drama The Girl From Monaco, which isn't much of a movie but offers scrumptious views.

Watching actors tap out code as big buzzing screens of digital data flash on the screen just doesn’t cut it.

The plot, as it unwinds, is increasingly eye-poppingly preposterous, but it holds you anyway, not only because of its outlandishness but because Plummer, against all odds, brings pathos and dignity to a role that doesn’t deserve him.

Hartley is very adept with actors, though – or at least some of them. Posey, for her part, displays a pert quizzical quality that's very charming and very funny. And Goldblum is tailor-made for Hartley's minimalist patter.

It's interesting to see a movie of this kind based on a single gospel, with no additions or interpolations from other sources. But except for a few scenes that evoke the reverent beauty of Renaissance painting, the filmmaking and acting are awfully stiff -- certainly not worthy of the timeless story being told.

As Leonard, Nivola isn’t bad, which is good, since the entire movie revolves around him.

Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, and Steve Buscemi are among the few performers who emerge with a shred of dignity at the end.

There is a germ of a good idea in the notion that an imaginary suitor can be more powerful than a real one. But director Alejandro Agresti isn't the man to pull it off.

Whoopi Goldberg has a lot of heart; Neil Patrick Harris gives a sensitive performance as her young friend; and the supporting cast is solid. The screenplay is gushy, though, and director Robert Mulligan rarely tones it down. [14 Oct 1988, p.21]

But there's no denying the movie's frequent hilarity, abetted by Mel Smith's superbly laid-back directing and on-target performances by an excellent supporting cast.

Merchant brings keen insight and rich humanity to this culturally revealing tale of psychological unease in a tense postcolonial world.

The action is mild enough for fairly young children, and grownups may enjoy its old-fashioned spirit.

Even if Zhao and her co-screenwriters were more adept at establishing the family-style togetherness of the Eternals, the emotional continuity is shattered by the incessant time tripping and globe hopping. Just when you think you’ve got your bearings in South Dakota, you suddenly find yourself in Mesopotamia.

In its final half-hour, all the stops are pulled. The movie is still wildly implausible but at least it's hurtling forward. The only thing missing from the proceedings is a windmill for John to tilt at.

The message of the film is that life isn't neat and predictable like a well-arranged business trip; yet everything in the picture is so calculated that there's no life to it. [23 Dec 1988, A& L, p.19]

Well acted and ably directed, if not very probing about its subject of underclass youth.

Alexandre Aja directs in full glop mode and the cast includes a few performers, including Ted Levine (from "Monk"), Robert Joy, and Kathleen Quinlan, who probably wish they were elsewhere.

There's something relentlessly superficial about the movie, and in one area that cries out for sensitivity - the treatment of racial differences among the characters - it falls down badly. [22 Aug 1990, Arts, p.11]

Electric Dreams tries to be as up to the minute as the latest rock video. But it looks more like a tired holdover from the ''psychedelic'' 1960s, another time when frantic visual effects were all the rage, and people rarely stopped to wonder what the point was.

The story is as simple as the average football cheer, but the dialogue has amusing echoes of "Clueless," and Dunst and Bradford make a mighty cute couple.

Rarely has a dance movie done so many cinematic pirouettes with such a graceful sense of audience-pleasing fun.

The problem with Possession isn't that it's filmed in a lackluster way, but that it shouldn't have been filmed at all. Byatt's novel is an adventure in language, telling its story through a kaleidoscopic array of Victorian-style poetry and prose, alongside gripping accounts of the characters' activities and escapades.

Konchalovsky keeps the action reasonably quick, but sentimental storytelling eventually swamps the picture.

This exceedingly romantic comedy begins with flair but lapses into clichés long before the sentimental (and predictable) finale.

It's campy fun, but if you've seen the previous sequels, the plot grows tiresome and lacks shock value.

The screenplay by Kevin Williamson ("Scream") keeps the lighting low and the tension high, though a bit more wit would have helped.

The end product is so clunky, scattered, and all-around soggy that sometimes you can't help laughing. At least Connelly and Reilly give their all, and Tim Roth is terrific as a weird lawyer.

The result can be viewed as an uproarious satire of science fiction in the "Independence Day" mold, or as a rehash of "Gremlins" without the novelty of the original.

The action is fast, furious, and as wacky as science fantasy gets.

It’s unfortunate, if predictable, that Hollywood found it necessary to almost entirely eliminate deep think in favor of deep action. As for Johansson, I have no big problem with cross-racial casting, but she’s so glum and seemingly uncomfortable here that you wonder if maybe she didn’t harbor the same misgivings as her detractors.

The Iron Lady is too bland to be controversial, too antiquated to speak to the present.

Goes on much too long, stretching a modest story into a marathon that outlasts its welcome by about 30 minutes.

The Normandy locations are evocative, but director Sophie Barthes compresses Emma’s multiyear rise and fall into what seems like a month or so.

When we last see a much older Moses en route to Canaan, we can at least be grateful that this film, unlike so many other movies these days, does not seem primed for a sequel.

Paul Verhoeven's movie takes more action than ideas from Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel, which is just as well, considering the book's goofy suggestion that military veterans should control society from top to bottom.

By peeling back the layers of the characters on both sides of the issue, the movie offers a potent reminder that, often, policy debates become mired in talking points. The danger is that we’ll miss the human stories at the heart of such matters.

Ultimately more ambitious than enlightening.

Smart and entertaining almost every step of the way.

No doubt Be Kind Rewind will soon make its way to – um – DVD.

Fallen will sell tickets on the strength of its appealing cast and high-impact camera work, but will probably fade from the scene more quickly than its demonic villain does in the story.

As a story, Wild at Heart is even less coherent than “Blue Velvet,'' to the point where whole characters and subplots disappear into a murky haze at the end. [17 Aug 1990, Arts, p.11]

Much of the movie seems wired and overeager when it ought to be refreshing and relaxed. Everybody sweats and strains to be magical, and while they often succeed, the onslaught of so much aggressive charm is exhausting.

Just about everything in this pea-brained epic is overscaled and overwrought – it's a cartoon trying to be a towering triptych.

The characters are hardly original...but Stone puts them into play with his usual fever-pitch gusto, producing what's probably the most heart-pounding gridiron movie ever made.

Directed by Charles Shyer, who brings much imagination to the first half but loses all momentum in the homestretch. [04 Oct 1984, p.27]

Though much blood is shed, the film is bloodless.

A genuine PG, gentle and wholesome almost all the way through. It's not a great movie, but it should attract family audiences.

Distinguished less by its elements of melodrama and psychodrama than by its intense acting and the vivid immediacy of Levring's powerful imagery.

Araki graduates from his usual obsession with teenage angst in this neon-lighted comedy, but fails to hit the visual and verbal high notes he strains so hard to reach.

Imaginatively acted, endlessly atmospheric.