Most of the characters are one-dimensional, and Avary's over-the-top directing doesn't make them interesting for more than a few isolated moments.

The consequences aren't remotely as comic as they're meant to be.

The subject is likable and the story has possibilities, but why does every single performance sink into a self-indulgent mess of hammy overacting?

The story is a retread of the old "Exorcist" and "Omen" formats, but it delivers as much action and spectacle as fans of the genre could want.

The movie is just plain muddled - showing the Hoffa forces performing a heinous crime one minute, then glamorizing and sentimentalizing them as if the other stuff had never happened.

The tale is full of songs and action; still, it would be more exciting if the Warner Bros. animators came up with new storytelling ideas instead of relying on time-tested Disney formulas. [29 May 1998, p.B2]

See it after you've eaten dinner. And don't see if you've recently been to "Ratatouille."

The movie has enough color and spirit to make lively viewing.

Alas, the movie is less clever than its characters.

This noisy, disorganized story is riddled with clichés, stereotypes, and self-indulgence from beginning to end.

[Godard's] rehash of ''King Lear'' is peculiar, but it's also that rare thing in the movie world: a genuine original. [22 Jan 1988, p.22]

It’s all meant to be funnier than it is.

The characters of this Dutch comedy aren't very interesting or original, but it has a stylish look and spirited performances.

Well made, nice performances, very slowly paced.

It’s a clunky, over-the-hill gang escapade enlivened only by the presence of the three Oscar winners, all of whom are so far beyond the movie’s meager demands that to say the actors are overqualified would be the grossest of understatements.

As dull as it is to watch, "Star Trek" at least possesses a measure of intellectual pizzazz: not enough to provoke thought and discussion, exactly, but more than many "Star Wars" imitators have bothered to give us. [4 Jan. 1980, p.15]

Writer-director Massy Tadjedin cuts back and forth between these twin temptations. Will Michael succumb and prove Joanna correct in her suspicions? Will Alex's French accent conquer all? Do you care? I didn't.

The jokes mostly fall flat and the dramatic scenes fall even flatter.

The one thing that isn’t artificial – the most important element of all – is the movie’s spirit. Acting in franchise blockbusters often amounts to get-the-job-done professionalism. In “Jungle Cruise,” however, the actors approach the material as if they’re enjoying a day out at Disneyland.

Sometimes a movie thinks it's one thing (charming) when it's really something else (creepy). Such is the case with writer-director Stephen Belber's Management.

Depp and Rush are still in there plugging away. They’re troupers, but the series is all used up. If there is to be another sequel it will have to be called "Pirates of the Caribbean – At Wit's End."

It’s another one of those films, like “Book Club,” in which the cast far outshines the material.

The result is this metabiography that says almost nothing about the great photographer's life or art.

Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts contribute major star power to the uneven tale, but it never becomes as convincing as a real conspiracy theory should.

Potty jokes and bawdy gross-outs predominate, and the few good laughs are swamped by the overall laughlessness.

Solondz is a courageous social commentator and a canny provocateur at the same time. He'll never get to Hollywood if he stays on this track, but cinema will be a lot duller if he ever mends his incendiary ways.

A movie that has more sap than a pine forest.

The first half is high-quality science fiction, the rest is a high-tech chase adventure with a gleeful yen for destructive thrills.

Wilson does his callow good-guy routine (if you close your eyes you'd swear he was his brother, Owen) and Thurman looks as if she'd rather be stalking prey in "Kill Bill."

Leo, in particular, seems poleaxed with good intentions. Her Lois wins the Most Understanding Wife award.

The setting is cramped and the story is illogical, but it's suspenseful as long as you don't think about it very hard.

Old-style animation slows down after a snappy start, but it's lively enough to keep kids from fidgeting too much.

Beyond being a showplace for crash-and-burn effects, Poseidon seems to be stumping for togetherness.

There is nothing magical about seeing one’s umpteenth car chase. Mark Ruffalo plays the weirdly scruffy FBI agent on the case, while Morgan Freeman, in super-slow mode, plays a famous magic debunker. He’d make the ideal critic for this movie.

O'Donnell portrays a hip nun, but the movie is more ponderous than pop. [10 Apr 1998, p.B2]

A richly appointed period piece, it features kingly tantrums, mistresses, bodices, roaring fireplaces, incest, and mutton. It also features sharply enunciated, period-perfect dialogue in which nary a contraction can be heard.

Something is going on all the time, even if that something is oftentimes clumsy, nonsensical, or flat. But the sheer whoosh of the story line keeps you watching anyway.

Wrong Is Right tries to be an intellectual epic comedy thriller -- a bold mix, to say the least. But its force is muffled by its bulk. Despite its good intentions, it's a dud. [20 May 1982, p.19]

The picture has moments of raw emotional power, but these are overshadowed by lapses into needless vulgarity and sadistic violence, especially in a repulsive scene that lingers on the vicious brutalization of a helpless woman. [04 Mar 1994, p.1]

The Four Feathers ends on the same dubious note as "Black Hawk Down" and other recent war movies, suggesting that loyalty in the trenches -- not the reason for fighting in the first place -- is all that matters. Many will disagree.

Moviegoers tired of ethnic humor will find plenty to complain about.

Law is lively and Shyer keeps the action hopping with help from the movie's original gimmick of having Alfie keep up a running monologue to the audience.

Newman's magnetic face isn't enough to raise this intermittently amusing thriller above the ordinary caper-comedy crowd.

Rob Cohen's movie has flashes of wit, but there's little substance to the story, and Draco's charms are surrounded by too much graphic violence. [31 May 1996, p.13]

What we get are themes and variations on previous good work, to lessening effect.

The film somehow manages to be both a turn-on and a turnoff.

It should all be sharper and funnier than it is.

Barry Levinson's filmmaking style is often imaginative. The story contains horrific scenes of sexual torture as well as sadistic killings and other disturbing material, though.

Certainly offbeat, but not on a level with director Kim's previous work about marginalized people.

Sadly it's been botched. Guess Who serves up such flat dialogue and stilted situations that it's hard to sit through.

Moves at a lumbering pace, peppered with ungainly gags and dramatic moments with little emotional power. The ironic commentary on show-biz superficiality is sabotaged by Niccol's failure to make his own story seem real.

The story is as contrived as it is comical.

Ingenious, eye-opening documentary.

There's something foul about staging the assassination of a sitting president in order to push a political agenda that could just as easily have been put forward without resorting to such sensationalism.

At its best it's refreshingly offhanded. It's a hit-and-miss movie that's worth seeing for the hits.

Its screenplay veers in highly questionable directions before reaching a mean-spirited climax that outweighs Ron Howard's workmanlike filmmaking and the contributions of a star-powered cast.

Tamer than tame in every respect, which makes it great for little kids, if not for the grownups who bring them.

The Good German is a prime example of a movie made by highly skilled and intelligent filmmakers that nevertheless seems misguided from the get-go.

The best I can say is that it’s another tour de force for Gyllenhaal, although his intensity isn’t matched by the movie itself, which sacrifices much of its power by too often settling for easy, nut-brain effects.

It occurred to me that Emmerich and Co. might be playing this whole thing for laughs. It probably occurred to them, too.

Gries and Morris act up a storm as the optimistically named Sunny Holiday and his long-suffering manager.

The story never gathers much dramatic momentum despite an impressive cast and a lot of dank Middle Ages atmosphere.

Less a documentary than a love fest for Al Franken, this scattershot movie, shot over two years, follows the zigzag trail of political satirist Al Franken as he feuds with Bill O'Reilly, campaigns against George W. Bush, and helps establish Air America.

Ought to have been state of the art. But there's not a whole lot of artistry to be found in this movie.

This sort of cinema is as dehumanizing as the aliens who serve as its intergalactic bad guys.

Lounguine tells the story with more discipline than you'll find in his earlier films, painting a crowded portrait of a society moving toward a future it can neither confidently predict nor look forward to with anything but nervous anticipation.

Supercharged with an energy and ingenuity that "Run Lola Run" once had a patent on.

The omnipresent Benedict Cumberbatch plays Assange, stringy white-gray hair flowing, and Daniel Brühl is Domscheit-Berg. Condon and his screenwriter Josh Singer don’t quite know what to make of this duo, perhaps because the men didn’t quite know what to make of each other, either.

Peter Segal's comedy has a few witty moments surrounded by a lot of silliness.

Michael Douglas plays US Secret Service agent Pete Garrison, and his jaw has never seemed tighter.

Doesn't evoke New York and its vignettes are trite – with one exception, a touching sequence directed by Mira Nair with Natalie Portman as a Hasidic bride and Irrfan Khan as a Jain diamond merchant.

The most interesting plot development – Frankie starts falling for Sam – is nipped in the bud. Some things even a soap opera won't stoop to.

By turns antic, frantic, and dull, "Pippa Lee" is unconvincing – emotionally, dramatically, filmically.

Directed by Allen Hughes and written by Brian Tucker, the film is a collection of crime noir oddments that don't add up to a full meal.

It's an impressive movie, pointing to Howard as a promising new director.

Talking dogs were cute, once. It's a tad disconcerting, however, when a canine starts lip syncing to the voice of Carl Reiner so it can complain about flatulence.

A couple of scenes directly reference the Iraq war and the Holocaust (where the humans are herded into cattle cars), and this is taking things much too seriously. This is a big blow-'em-up franchise movie. It should not under any circumstances be confused with a Statement.

Long, bombastic, and violent, but fantasy fans may enjoy its fast-moving energy.

What begins as a pretty good comedy devolves rapidly into a high-flown example of Hollywood messagemongering.

What is missing here is any real sense of what it must have been like for two great writers to be living together, especially in that era, with its push-pull of progressivism and parochialism. This is a movie about fireworks where nothing ignites.

Allegorical in the worst ways, Antichrist is about as profound as a slasher movie.

The drama is long on 1950s atmosphere and complicated feelings, short on emotional depth and real psychological insight.

Furtado's comic thriller is a telling commentary on modern avarice in Brazil and elsewhere, which touches on everything from "The Simpsons" to "Rear Window" along the way. Too bad it runs out of ideas before the overlong story is over.

Quite funny and eye-catching.

The first half of this freewheeling comedy-drama finds Toback at his imaginative best. The second half sinks into silliness.

The movie makes a commendable effort to celebrate bravery and underscore the terrors of war, but its melodramatic approach is more spectacular than insightful.

Words and Pictures is a minor effort from Schepisi, but minor Schepisi still trumps most of what’s out there.

The Catcher Was a Spy, directed by Ben Lewin and starring Paul Rudd as the Ivy-educated Berg, who was fluent in seven languages, is a much more pallid experience than this eminently juicy subject deserves.

Texasville rambles along in an amiable way but never gets to the heart of the issues it raises, from the shakiness of modern marriage to the meaning of community in a mobile and increasingly rootless age. [28 Sep 1990, p.14]

The only admirable aspect of the comedy is its insistence on the stupidity of racial prejudice. American moviegoers must be desperate to hear that message if they're willing to sit through so much ridiculous horseplay in order to receive it. [01 Jul 1993, p.12]

Movie actors are notoriously inarticulate about their craft, but what about movie directors? If the documentary Great Dir­ectors is any indication, the returns are a bit more promising.

Moderately amusing sequel, which is best when it relies on dead-pan acting by the stars, worst when it drags in summer-movie stupidities like an incessantly talking dog.

Takes a humane look at an episode in recent history that's received little attention.

Coogan and Broadbent are agile and expressive, but too much time goes to Chan's silly stunts. A colorful disappointment.

This feature-length sitcom episode is handsomely filmed, but not as funny as you'd hope with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton in leading roles, and some of the humor has a nasty edge. [8 Dec 1995, p.13]

There are some virtuoso moments (the discovery of the mutilated corpse is extremely well done and blessedly ungraphic), but overall the result is much less than prime De Palma.

Garner is good, and so is Brian Dennehy as a crusty ranch owner; Abigail Breslin, playing a leukemia patient, demonstrates that she was not a one-note wonder in "Little Miss Sunshine."

The movie is a straightforward nuts-and-bolts affair of no particular consequence, except for Neeson’s performance, which rightly does not resolve the question: Was Felt acting nobly or vengefully?