Its main message is that everyone should believe and behave in exactly the same way. Groupthink wins again!

The picture's real interest lies in detailing the villain's sadistic crimes, though, and this is rarely fun or edifying to watch.

Has moments of real visual creativity.

Shallow and sentimental in the sappiest Hollywood tradition.

The acting is weak, largely because many of the performers seem uncomfortable speaking English. The last half-hour works up a fair amount of action and suspense, though.

With the mounting number of first-rate, even masterly foreign-language films locked out of movie theaters due to wary distributors, it's worth pondering why such laughable dreck as German actor-writer-director Vadim Glowna's House of the Sleeping Beauties actually made it through.

A private eye enters a horrific world of degrading sex and bottom-feeding pornographers.

Not even veteran talents like Dukakis and Scheider can surmount the artificial dialogue, arbitrary plot twists, and wan humor of this disappointing comedy-drama.

I don't mind a movie where people spend a lot of time jawboning, but what they say had better be interesting. In Spinning into Butter we are spoon-fed the deep dark revelation that racism can exist as virulently in liberal environs as in reactionary ones. Alert the media.

Cumming's antic acting is the only asset of this boisterous comedy.

The Last Airbender is like a Care Bears movie that got waylaid in the fourth dimension. It's insufferably silly.

The Griswalds drive to Las Vegas "because half the fun is getting there," but the fun never begins in this disappointing sequel to the Vacation slapstick comedies.

It's a sort of soullessly cheerful cynicism that is about as far from Seuss as one can imagine.

A lovestruck Californian kidnaps a neighbor's dog as a way of getting her attention.

Sordid and sleazy, although the lead performances are hard to fault.

Different viewers might find different portions worthy of anything from zero to four stars, but anyone with a faint heart or weak stomach should stay miles away from it. [24 Oct. 1997, p.13]

In all it's a pleasant surprise if not a great comedy.

What ensues is a Halloween-style blood bath accompanied by graphic sex scenes.

There are a few amusing moments, helped by subdued performances from Affleck and Gandolfini, but this is no "Bad Santa" despite its obvious ambition to play similar holiday tricks.

The slasher-movie genre may never die, but can't its perpetrators think up variations more clever than this by-the-numbers rehash?

The acting is uneven and most of the romancing seems so mismatched.

The junior Giannini, who has inherited Giancarlo's handsome looks, portrays his mercurial character with energy and flair. Madonna doesn't. Indeed, it's hard to remember the last time a certified celebrity gave a performance so monotonous, unimaginative, and all-around tiresome to watch.

Lange and Paltrow give it their all, but they can't save this one from plot holes, continuity mistakes, and heartlessness.

Perry and Hurley don't have much chemistry, and the story is so dumb you might want to sue it for stupidity.

So stupid you'll wish you'd brought a duffel bag of your own.

This boatload of clichés is strenuously unfunny.

Scott Wilson gives a surprisingly lively performance as the apparent villain of the story, while good guys Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy strive to out-bland each other. The action is generally vicious, vulgar, and vapid. [9 May 1986, p.25]

This business of the 88 minutes ticking away is a pale imitation of the old "High Noon" ploy of playing out suspense in real time. After a while, though, I began to take a perverse pleasure in wallowing in the awfulness of it all.