Unless you are a Dante scholar, and perhaps not even then, following Inferno is a wild goose chase – without the goose.

John Turteltaub directed the drama, which lapses into medical jargon and new-age clichés near the end, but it scores telling points with its respect for intelligence and optimistic view of human potential.

Bullock is cute. Grant is even cuter. They have the timing and panache of a first-rate comedy team.

The screenplay is so stale that even fans of the previous "Jurassic" installments might think this is one clone too many.

Lots of filmmakers, lots of opportunities, lots of bad taste, very few laughs. [25 Sept 1987, p.23]

The idea of a Woody Allen movie about fame is enticing, but a meandering screenplay and uninspired acting make this one of his thinnest, tinniest films.

The most pressing question I took away from the film is, Are they really still teaching "A Tale of Two Cities" in honors English classes?

The movie has almost enough corny appeal to offset its lack of originality, though, and Walken is fun as Cagliostro, the court's great prognosticator and all-around weirdo.

Kids may yawn at the movie's dawdling pace.

The topic is thought-provoking, the flashback-based structure is interesting, and there are surprising twists near the end. But there's also an overdose of sentimentality that badly dilutes the picture's impact.

The film contains so many endings that it's hard to tell what impressions the filmmakers want us to leave the theater with. Buy a copy of the book instead. It remains an excellent read.

Armageddon may sell tickets, thanks largely to a high-powered marketing machine that's been conducting its own countdown for the past several months. But it's not a pretty picture.

There is barely a whiff of genuine transcendence in this grand-scale extravaganza. The special effects are courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, but the magic here is largely industrial.

The Bucket List is a movie for oldsters that, paradoxically, looks as if it was made for 15-year-olds. If this is what is meant in Hollywood as "thinking outside the box," then it's time to get a new box.

Few things are more dispiriting than a holiday movie straining to become a perennial. Such is the case with Fred Claus, an insipid Christmas comedy.

Amid all the mayhem, there is Paris in all its faded-light glory. Is the movie worth seeing as a travelogue? Only if you are (a) a masochist, (b) a terrorist, or (c) desperate.

At heart, this is an old-fashioned monster flick decked out with Hollywood's full battery of high-tech visual effects. It's as goofy as it is gory -- stay away if you don't like in-your-face mayhem.

Tries to be a new "Something Wild"; ends up being tamer than tame.

The only saving grace is that this time around, the script (yes, there is one, and it was concocted by Ehren Kruger) has occasional wisps of lucidity, and Bay delivers – overdelivers – on the mayhem.

The Haunting can't quite decide whether it's an out-and-out thriller, a psychological drama, or a systematic demonstration of the latest computer-generated effects. But it should attract big crowds for a weekend or two on the strength of its attractive stars and deliciously spooky setting.

Notable only for being a catalog of just about every kid-pic cliché ever committed to film.

Being touted as the first film ever shot in the Smithsonian complex. With any luck, it will also be the last. This is not the best use of our landmarks.

Serial killing and other insanity in the French countryside, with ineptly dubbed English dialogue.

The story has more violence than brains, but Hong Kong action star Chow makes an interestingly moody impression in his first Hollywood role.

Is it possible to truly start life all over again? Arthur Newman might have been better if it had not started at all.

The nonlinear story consists of loosely linked fragments, some more effective than others, threaded together in a broodingly poetic way.

Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney, grafts two distinctly different types of genres: the socially conscious race relations movie and grisly film noir. It’s an uneasy combo made even more so by the fact that the film noir stuff has all the juices.

Ritchie is so adept that the film is compulsively watchable, but it’s watchable in the same way as a massive train wreck or the slow-motion demolition of a high-rise.

As the doomed princess, Q’orianka Kilcher, who costarred as Pocahontas in Terence Malick’s “The New World,” has imperially striking features but limited acting skills. If her performances should ever rise to the level of her looks, she’ll be great.

For all the special effects – like its predecessor, this is in 3-D – the film coasts on Johnson being charming and Caine being Caine.

It's enough that these two castaways are friends, but I guess friendship doesn't cut it when you're trying to create a star-driven hit. It should, though. Better a believable friendship than an unbelievable love affair.

A very uneven dark comedy.

The best thing you can say about Mad Money is that it has a good cast. The worst thing you can say about it is that the cast is extremely ill-used.

The movie is very small in scale, but the performances are appealing and Fernandez's screenplay casts an interesting light on the main characters' self-images as Latina women.

Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez provide the star power, but what's missing is script power.

The script is replete with howlers. My favorite, from Kitsch, after the aliens strike: "I've got a bad feeling about this." Indeed.

If the Warner Bros. wizards have it right, what a girl wants is to see as much of Amanda Bynes as she possibly can...It's not so great for the rest of us, since the film has nothing else to offer.

The movie is as adolescent as it sounds, but Kahn keeps your eyes popping with truly nonstop action and some of the most outlandishly inventive effects you've ever seen. And of course Cube is so supercool it's worth the price of admission just to watch him.

McClelland is a joy to watch, even when the story strains too hard for lovable whimsy, which happens much too often.

The movie takes fascinating material and transforms it into a routine soap opera.

Mostly trite and tacky despite Robin Williams's strenuous acting.

The action ranges from mildly humorous to merely vulgar; and far too many of the laughs revolve around racially crude confrontations between sweet, blond Goldie and denizens of the big, bad ghetto. [10 March 1986, p.33]

A deluge of funny, inane jokes.

The repetitious script -- cobbled together by no fewer than five writers -- shows interest in nothing beyond action-centered plot gimmicks and tame romantic shenanigans.

De Niro and Hoffman almost give comic life to this brainless, vulgar farce.

If you're the kind of moviegoer who likes puzzling out the plots of insoluble movies, then by all means rush to see Stay, a great big blurry mess.

This latest whiffle ball from Team Apatow is a mildly amusing comedy.

Lachow goes for cuteness and whimsy every chance he gets, missing a lot more often than he hits.

Goodman's comic delivery gets maximum mileage from a few amusing situations, though.

The picture repeats itself a lot, but Dash is a good sport in poking barbed fun at the PR machinations of today's music business.

Pratt does a creditable job of playing distraught without seeming like a ninny, and Lawrence at least looks stylish, though she’s not called upon to do much acting. You can almost hear her saying to herself, "I wonder what David O. Russell has planned for his next movie and can I pretty please have a role in it?"

The more the picture reveals, the less interesting it gets, transforming its hero from an intriguing mystery man into a standard-issue screen vigilante -- and steadily upping the violence, complete with harrowing torture scenes, in a lame effort to keep our juices flowing.

Christopher Hampton's film conveys the basic plot of Joseph Conrad's sinuous novel but loses the book's sardonic tone and psychological depth.

When promising independent filmmakers decide to jump on the bandwagon and pump up the gore, the results are sure to be touted as visceral and unflinching. Don't be fooled. Kramer has even commented that the movie should be viewed as a modern-day Grimm's fairy tale. It's grim all right.

Its most impressive aspect is its visual style, patterned to some degree on Sergio Leone westerns. A picture this long and dense should work harder to be cogent and coherent, though.

Gilliam's visual style has never been more energetic or inventive, and nobody could be attracted to dope after this portrait of drug abuse as a hallucinatory quagmire.

At once dreamily surreal, acutely intelligent, and strikingly tough-minded, this pitch-dark dramatic comedy recalls David Lynch and "Donnie Darko" while remaining fresh and original to its core. A stunning directorial debut.

The most powerful scene in the movie, and the one that most fully encompasses its meaning, belongs to Mrs. Morobe (the marvelous Thandi Makhubele).

Hailee Steinfeld’s Juliet is rather lovely and rather bland; Douglas Booth’s Romeo might have stepped out of a special Renaissance Faire edition of GQ.

Described in the film's production notes as a "classic French comedy" – although I've never heard of it – and perhaps this is the core problem. French farce doesn't mix well with English gooniness.

A pleasant little dawdle and yet another example, in these dog days for cinema, that dogs are a movie's best friend.

As a frightfest it's better than today's average.

It soon gets down to its real business: fights, face-offs, and showdowns mired in the shallowest sort of Hollywood machismo.

It's a standard science-fantasy fable, but the visual effects are mighty impressive.

Based on Bennett's own experiences, the movie has no penetrating insights to offer, but it's acted and directed in an improvisational spirit well-suited to its ultra-low budget and digital-video technology.

Lively, colorful, violent, stupid.

Penn is always entertaining when he's playing characters drunk with depravity. Gangster Squad could use more of him.

This unevenly paced comedy is an amusing parody of monster movies from "Them!" to "Alien."

How can we take this doomsday scenario seriously when we keep waiting for Bruce Willis to rise from the ashes?

It's bold, and big, and even beautiful at times. That's more than most recent movies can claim. [26 Aug 1982, p.19]

The bad guys, who specialize in funny beards, funny accents, and shaved heads, would feel right at home in an "Austin Powers" movie.

I persist in believing that Melissa McCarthy is capable of starring in a movie that not only makes a scads of money but is – you know – good.

As Lucas’s girlfriend April, Isild Le Besco brings a sprig of sunshine into the film’s fetid hollows.

Stay home.

Writer-director David Ayer doesn’t have the right graphic technique for a comic-book-style jamboree – he’s strictly a noirish-pulp guy – and the characters, all of whom are promisingly introduced, fizzle fast.

Numbingly violent action.

The acting and crooning are sadly uneven, making this a shaky comeback vehicle for the screen musical.

The story is so sentimental that even soap-opera buffs may feel it outwears its welcome.

See the film, if you must, for Mara, who will be starring in the upcoming Hollywood remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." She's a sharp, vigilant actress whose career bears watching.

The film is deliberately old-fashioned in its approach; the story line is resolutely linear and the production values are deluxe. It all makes for a fairly enjoyable, if schematic, backstage extravaganza.

Good contributes very little to a conundrum that has occupied historians and psychologists for half a century.

Overwritten and overcooked, Remember Me still manages a few explosive sequences between Pattinson and Pierce Brosnan.

John Schlesinger has directed Mark Frost's screenplay with great technical skill, constructing highly charged suspense scenes. Robby Muller's cinematography also stands out. The violence is disgusting even by recent standards, though, especially since much of it is aimed at children. And the portrait of a barbarous Afro-Hispanic religion will hardly ease tensions in this time when racism and xenophobia are already rampant. [12 Jun 1987, p.21]

It's fun to watch superheroes who aren't quite at ease with their abilities, but "The Incredibles" - last year's similarly themed animated film - is livelier and funnier.

If nothing else, I hope that The Comedian signals an attempt by De Niro to once again take acting seriously. Without much supporting evidence, he’s still routinely called our greatest living actor. There’s still time to make good on that.

By turns fascinating and infuriating.

Despite its deficiencies, and the inadequate screen time allotted to Theron (who's quite good), Sleepwalking has a core of feeling. It's about a do-gooder who, lacking all skills for it, does good anyway. His emotional odyssey has real poignancy.

It's astounding that the ingenious creator of "JFK" and "Wall Street" could make an epic on war and empire that's so utterly simplistic and unreflective.

The unchanneled energy of Robin Williams can't redeem this messy yarn.

Too bad the clever bits are swamped by no-brainer gunfights, rescues, and chases galore.

Crowe is deft at keeping the various plots spinning, but there are too many of them, and they don’t intersect pleasingly.

You'll enjoy this sentimental drama if you feel good intentions are their own reward, at least where movies are concerned; but it'll exasperate you if you want your entertainment to have some connection with the world we actually live in.

The first hour is eloquent and true. Once the story takes its big turn toward tragedy, though, it becomes predictable and sentimental.

A View to a Kill plods along dutifully, observing the rules of the series with dull consistency.

I enjoyed this movie more than the last two films from the Wachowskis, the interminable "Cloud Atlas" and "Speed Racer." On the other hand, "The Matrix" it's not.

Denis's pungent images create a nightmarish mood but don't bring full artistic coherence to her odd mix of gothic horror and postmodern reverie.

The story is rarely as touching or funny as it wants to be, but children may enjoy the fantasy elements. [24 Dec 1998]

All the good points together can't make up for the film's mostly soggy acting, particularly by Sean Young and Matt Dillon in the leading roles, or for the technically inept way the voices have been dubbed over the picture - the characters sound like they're reading their lines from a phone booth. Even second-rate Hollywood movies generally have a certain amount of craft and professionalism, but there's precious little here. I say, kiss this one goodbye. [17 May 1991, p.13]