This third (and, I would guess, last) installment does what few sequels do. It actually extends the story into its logical destination rather than merely recycling familiar characters and situations. It's not terrifying. It is an audacious first film. It is fully as dreadful as fans might hope. Don't miss it. [22 May 1992, p.G5]

I like Sesame Street a lot, and this is the first time that they have made a real movie, not a television show, and I think they should make another one soon. [02 Aug 1985, p.C5]

Deja Vu becomes increasingly sillier.

Although the movie doesn't exactly romanticize the period, the film still generates a twinge of pride in viewers who lived in South Florida during that time -- and lived to tell about it.

The film has fun. In a way, Creepshow is a horror for grownups. It is grownups, after all, who understand that horror stories must be fun; if they're not, then they're just horrifying, and who wants that? [15 Nov 1982, p.D3]

Mr. Holland's Opus is compulsively watchable: Eager to please and never very challenging, it's the kind of movie you might stumble across while channel surfing and watch to the end. Almost despite itself, the movie also manages to celebrate the heroism of the teaching profession with surprisingly moving power. If only it had done it with more grace and less schmaltz. [19 Jan 1996, p.4G]

Despite the lack of substance, Run All Night is far better than those clunky "Taken" movies with their timid PG-13 ratings. If you’re gonna cut Neeson loose against the mob, a bloody R is the way to go.

The Black Cauldron is the unthinkable -- a Disney animated feature to which it is inappropriate to take a 4-year-old. Admirers of complex animation will no doubt relish the careful work. But those who believe in fairies may not clap their hands. [24 July 1985, p.D6]

Ultimately done in not just by its familiarity -- anyone who can't figure out where the story is heading hasn't watched enough Scorsese -- but also by the convenient coincidences and contrivances Gray relies on in order to pump the story into something greater than it needs to be.

Features the lamest story of any CG-animated feature to date.

The movie ultimately turns out to be less about sex than it is about the point in a friendship where two people decide they will both be better off if they part ways.

If "The Sixth Sense" was Shyamalan's take on ghost stories and "Unbreakable" his ode to comic books, then Signs is the evil cousin to Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Depending on your personal tastes, Intacto will either be an ambitious concoction of cerebral science-fiction or a towering pile of nonsense. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Unashamedly sticks with its light comedy roots.

A movie about grief for people who don't want to be upset too badly. It's a half-a-hankie tearjerker, a meek, polite weepie.

Absolutely Fabulous works best consumed bite-sized; there’s not enough here to warrant a full-length movie. Too much feels like padding.

Aggressively, defiantly stupid.

By suggesting that the man's life was as riotously funny as his plays, writer-director Laurent Tirard leaves us wishing he'd opted to do a straightforward adaptation instead.

Mission: Impossible is full of red herrings and MacGuffins, but even if you can't keep track of who's doing what to whom, it's hugely enjoyable for its sheer kinetic power. It's a soulless trinket, and it never really grabs you the way good action films do. But it moves like a demon, and it's consistently dazzling. [22 May 1996, p.1D]

A stale pastiche of crime-caper dramas that goes through all the usual reversals, betrayals and triple-crosses with a sense of weary obligation.

Nothing in it -- plot, dialogue or character development -- reaches today's standards of filmmaking.

Faster, leaner and more compact than the original. Dumber, too, but that's almost always the case with remakes.

For all its peripatetic energy, Limitless still winds up with the same-old blazing guns and wanton destruction of property. No matter how smart you may be, Hollywood will figure out a way to dumb you down.

Jurassic World gives you exactly what Howard’s character promises at the beginning — More! Bigger! Faster! — but you know there’s something deeply wrong with a film that expects you to shed tears over digitally created prehistoric creatures and rubber brontosaurus heads instead of rooting for, you know, people.

The Last Dragon doesn't aim to be more than it is -- a good funny Afro-Japanese-American-hi tech-martial arts- archetypal-fairy tale. But that's something. [30 Mar 1985, p.D7]

Like Russia's answer to "The Matrix" and "Lord of the Ring"s trilogies, Day Watch offers the second chapter in an epic battle between the forces of Light and Dark, the result of which is a gaping gray area where nothing much makes sense.

The movie never approaches the level of screwball fun its cast seems capable of. But the curiosity of seeing Arnie grunt and groan with labor pains is hard to resist. [23 Nov 1994, p.E2]

In between all the emotional seesawing, it's hard to figure the depth of these two literary figures, and even the times in which they lived. But they fascinate in their recklessness.

In The Shape of Things, love doesn't just hurt: It bites, and bites deep.

The result leaves the movie feeling like a one-note take on a complex subject.

There's nothing offensive about Barbershop 2, and maybe there should be. But even if the film plays it safe, it remains a cut above other mainstream comedies.

A slick, shiny video game of a movie bursting with computer-generated chase scenes and cool gadgets.

The movie, elegantly shot by Rodrigo Prieto, is sleek and brisk, using split-screens and graphics to help uninformed viewers grasp the basics of the corporate shenanigans the characters pull on each other.

The film is just a procession of increasingly grim and ugly scenarios and discoveries, capped off by a wildly frustrating ending.

It has been a while since we had a good, human movie about a war we could all agree on. In that, Memphis Belle is right on target. [12 Oct 1990, p.G5]

While The Lover is tastefully filmed, and narrated by respected actress Jeanne Moreau, any dignity it might have had is squashed by its cliched finale. The last shot is of a middle- aged woman alone in a modern apartment; when the phone rings, we know with agonizing familiarity who the caller is. [16 Jan 1993, p.E2]

Maybe it's a measure of the numbing awfulness of romantic comedies in general lately, but Definitely, Maybe isn't nearly so bad as you might fear; it's actually fairly pleasant, a bit too off-color to be a family film but enjoyable just the same.

For those in the 3 to 5 bracket, Elmo doesn't often aim wrong.

B-movies are the great anchor of American film. They're what we do best. And Night of the Comet, like Blood Beach and The Howling before it, honors the form even as it fails to transcend it. Things go bump in the night, characters exchange improbable dialogue and a good time is had by all even as the world comes to an end. [28 Nov 1994, p.B6]

Compellingly slimy special effects highlight this horror flick about a mad scientist who can turn people into snakes. [12 Apr 1997, p.2G]

There's something to be said about an old story given a new ending -- and making it work.

Handsome Harry has some shakily staged scenes and erratic acting, but it also has wonderful moments.

There was, however, another question the screenwriter should have asked: Why does the script focus on the wrong couple?

If its dark heart had won out to the very end, The Ref could have been a minor classic. But it's a hilarious antidote to heartwarming holiday films -- and has some of the cruelest humor of any comedy in quite some time. [11 Mar 1994, p.G5]

Mom (Elisabeth Shue) suffers from the fatal movie ailment of being so underwritten she's practically see-through.

Inherently laughable, but in all the wrong ways.

This is 40 is crude and dull, with a supporting cast that reminds you how utterly uninteresting the main characters are.

This is, after all, "Mary Poppins" turned on its head.

Wimbledon may have its faults, but it's the sort of upbeat fantasy that's tough to resist. Maybe love wins in tennis after all.

Writer/director John A. Davis (Jimmy Neutron) is a wizard at transforming the most mundane setting -- the front yard, for crying out loud -- into another world.

Not a bad movie - everybody wants dreams to come true - but its platitudes sound awfully hollow sometimes.

Night Watch represents the best in Russian special effects, a collaboration between 42 different CGI specialty firms all working in the service of a single goal: to create the nation's most visually transgressive film.

The Coca-Cola Kid is for grown-ups, but not all grown-ups. It leaves more than a few bubbles dancing on the tongue. [11 Oct 1985, p.D1]

Drowns in its own noxious fumes. Who knew being bad could be so dull?

The movie is intentionally elusive, like a memory you can’t quite fully recall, but the result has all the depth and weight of a greeting card.

Smith is an endearing, driving comedic force, one who makes the buoyant Hitch more enjoyable than it has any reason to be.

With its predictable confrontations and tacky fantasy sequences, you feel writer/director Jane Anderson steering the material toward schmaltzy movie-of-the-week territory at every turn.

August: Osage County is easier to watch on screen, and maybe for that we should be grateful.

It's a B-movie with A-list aspirations, and it's at its best when it's not trying to be something it isn't.

It's a disappointing chapter in what until now has been a highly entertaining, even thought-provoking series.

After an hour of being stranded among these restless soldiers and their increasingly aggressive locker-room antics, you, too, will be longing for combat -- for anything -- to happen.

Cosmopolis may be a cerebral mood piece, but it is loaded with strong performances that connect on an emotional level.

The result is that rare breed of big-studio pictures: A remake that makes sense.

The misery is there, all right, in every woozy, spaced-out shot of Hoffman clutching his gas-soaked rag. But in the end, do we really care?

Gripping family drama keeps Swimming Upstream from going under.

It's an obviously personal work, and that's both its primary strength and weakness: The movie has a distinct, carefully detailed sense of place and time, but it's also not as involving as Altman seems to think it is. It's thick on atmosphere, but short on plot. [16 Aug 1996, p.6G]

Pirate Radio does what it sets out to do. It rocks.

The Reader doesn't do enough to explore the guilt and betrayal the adult Michael feels over the acts of his elders.

The Year of the Dragon is full of florid language, saddled with Cimino's bogus insights and no more true to Chinatown than Heaven's Gate was to the prairie. But The Year of the Dragon is also robust and fast, violent and alive. There's an uneasy sense of the spurious about Cimino's art, but that's what he's making nonetheless. This is either a ya-hoo's delight or the best gangster fantasy since Once Upon a Time in America (long version); maybe it's both. [16 Aug 1985, p.D1]

The single redeeming feature of Child's Play is the manner in which the doll is slowly transformed into semi-human form. Scene by scene it turns into a half-pint, rubbery version of Jack Nicholson. And that's scary. [09 Nov 1988, p.D6]

Stoker is the sort of stylish, cerebral movie that engages your brain instead of your emotions, and yet you’re never less than intrigued by the breathtaking visual artistry of this slow-burn thriller.

Unfortunately even a clogging Timberlake can't stop the movie's march to a conveniently happy ending. Nor can he block the flow of psychobabble. It's enough to make any fan beg: Play ball. Please.

The most extreme English-language studio release I've seen in years.

The film works as contemporary fable, cautionary tale and perversely driven love story all at once. There's a gratifyingly wide streak of humanism running through it. And there's that "chemistry." Malkovich and MacDowell, bubble, bubble. Yes, indeed. [26 Apr 1991, p.G11]

The film isn't much of a character study; too many of its secondary characters are stereotypes, and it never fully engages our emotions the way "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist" did.

Under Siege is never at all convincing -- everything about the battleship (except the exterior shots) seems small and understaffed. There are supposed to be 30 bad guys, but they appear to outnumber the crew, and the interior scenes of the battleship's command stations are barely more ambitious than Star Trek's bridge. [12 Oct 1992, p.C3]

Hits the parallels between love and hip-hop a little too hard when the message is relatively easy to grasp: Don't sell out: not your art, not your heart. If only music business executives were listening.

For this last chapter, the filmmakers play things relatively straight, resulting in the best Shrek movie to date.

So TRON is an adventure story, with the requisite (and understated) love triangle at its heart. But it is also a story of remarkable special effects, and this is the stuff you haven't seen before. [09 July 1982, p.C1]

Psycho III is still a comedie macabre -- as was Hitchcock's -- but Perkins doesn't follow the Psycho path. Where the master trod subtly, the disciple relies on emphasis. [03 July 1986, p.D11]

The movie is unwieldy and overstuffed with subplots - and, at 2 1/2 hours, probably too much misery and sorrow for most viewers.

The latest collaboration between Cohen and director Larry Charles proves the formula they created with "Borat" and then started to milk dry with "Brüno" has finally run out of juice. Time to move on, guys.

The film feels more like an extended epilogue than a stand-alone adventure, which may be because it is the shortest (105 minutes) entry in the series.

This is an affair to forget.

Neither as good nor as bad as you'd hoped it would be: It's just a mediocre exploitation picture with an inspired premise (succinctly spelled out by its title), loads of gratuitous gore, a dash of equally gratuitous nudity and enough inanities to make you wonder if Ed Wood rose from the grave to serve as a creative consultant on the project.

Lean on Me is one of those movies that you know is swollen with hyperbole, but that you want to like anyway. Freeman provides a big reason. [3 March 1989, p.5]

Bogs down in a deep muck of inevitability.

It plunges so deep, in fact, that the film winds up bordering on the unwatchable.

Despite its exciting moments, the film is too long.

Anything but light on its feet. It lumbers instead of dazzles, drags where it should feint and jab.

Much of metal's appeal is the mythology of power -- mighty images of conquest (sexual and otherwise) carried on tidal waves of thunderous music. Spheeris shows us the insecurity, frailty and dim-bulb vacuousness behind the myth, in a film that is sometimes disturbing and always fascinating. [05 Aug 1988, p.C8]

Eclipse, like its two predecessors, is ham-fisted and obvious, a mass-market entertainment with a frustrating lack of imagination.

The movie - which caused walkouts and an uproar at Sundance - rewards your endurance with an utterly insane 30-minute climax of violence, audacious gore and all-around bad behavior (how this picture got an R rating is baffling).

Although (Untitled) makes a spirited effort to mine comedy from its outre characters and the orbits they inhabit, the picture feels thin and wan, like a joke you've heard 100 times too many.

Carrey's amazing transformation in Man on the Moon does justice to Kaufman's undefinable talents and his peculiar outlook on entertainment.

The Safety of Objects doesn't carry the power of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm," a similarly themed work about WASPS in crisis. Objects is too artificial, clunky with too many preposterous situations.

A hoot.

I'm not big on getting lectures from produce, and the Jonah story is not exactly fresh from the crisper, but Jonah is engaging enough for parents looking to introduce their kids to the veggiest story ever told.