There isn’t a moment of spontaneous fun or humor in this long, turgid movie, the latest let-down for rabid DC Comics fans who’ve been waiting for someone to pick up the baton Christopher Nolan left behind and do this universe justice. With “Suicide Squad,” the long wait continues.

The visuals are really the only compelling reason to see Appleseed.

The movie is all visuals and atmosphere without an effective structure. It doesn't move you, it's on display. [24 Feb 1990, p.E5]

By the time Ceremony reaches its admittedly clever finale, you're too wrung out from Angarano's tiresome antics and Winkler's unconvincing dialogue to care who ends up marrying whom.

Realistic, it's not. But Max Keeble's Big Move, predictable though it may be, makes most of the right moves for the older elementary/younger middle school market.

Flamboyantly over-the-top, visually kinetic.

The result is far funnier and much less annoying than you might expect.

A shapeless, chaotic, overly frantic comedy that manages to make almost no sense, even if you're paying close attention.

The whole incoherent mess is sort of like a downbeat Gap ad, only longer and a lot more boring.

Coulter wants to explore the act of mourning as a theme, and how death sometimes reminds us that every minute of life should be savored. On that level, Remember Me certainly succeeds.

The occult thriller boasts snazzy photography, passionate acting and considerable suspense. But like Marathon Man, it is empty. This pulp never rises above being pulp. [10 Jun 1987, p.D7]

Even if you can get past the acting -- and in the case of the beautiful, blank Alba, that's asking a lot -- the film just sits there, not exactly torturous, but never very exciting, either.

The movie takes an excessively long time to cover short narrative ground, and the plot is muddled enough to confuse the target audience. [24 Mar 1993, p.E5]

What Alexander lacks in narrative clarity, it makes up for with pomp and pageantry.

Next to Club Paradise, Caddyshack looks like comic art. [11 July 1986, p.D1]

It's a tomb-raiding adventure movie several notches below Indiana Jones status.

The more Shrink tries to get you invested in the emotional turmoil of its characters, the more you want to reach into the screen and shake them and tell them to get over themselves.

Ultimately Three Fugitives is too sweet for its own good. It has moments of real hilarity, and moments of oh-please. Veber, we know, can do better. [27 Jan 1989, p.C5]

Yes, Aloha is a mess. But messes can be fascinating, and there’s a lot of tenderness and beauty and heartbreak here, too.

Winds up making a very good case for never going out of your way to help anybody.

You might not think it would be easy to make a dull film about love, war and a bisexual threesome, but Head in the Clouds manages this task efficiently.

The film is never arresting, though it's arrestable -- throw it in the clink and throw away the key. [13 Apr 1990, p.G11]

A View to a Kill, also like recent Bonds, is long. And though it is crammed with action -- car chase, boat chase, blimp chase, you lose track -- it begins, by the second hour, to seem quite long indeed. [24 May 1985, p.D5]

Though the fight sequences deliver the necessary kicks, Double Impact's script is a study in missed opportunities. [09 Aug 1991, p.G5]

It's not nearly as good as you figure it will be, but it is a full-bore, flat-out fantasy, and outside of the Disney animated jungle, we don't find many of those anymore. [18 Dec 1992, p.G5]

Sadly, Jupiter Ascending turns out to be the exact opposite: the worst movie the Wachowskis have ever made.

Homefront is done in by uninspired action scenes in which Statham’s athletic prowess is rendered unwatchable by hyper-editing, a shameful reliance on child-in-peril cliches to move the story forward, and so many loose ends that you wonder if 20 minutes were accidentally cut out from the movie.

The explanation for all this mayhem eludes me, and even a lame last-minute twist isn't enough to cover the fact that Jigsaw ain't as clever as the movie thinks he is.

SpaceCamp is perfectly harmless and perfectly dull, but it comes at a time when NASA could use an esteem booster. For all those who get just a touch queasy at the Top Gun lesson, in which shooting down planes in peacetime is presented as role-model behavior, SpaceCamp offers a nonviolent corrective. [6 June 1986, p.D6]

Director Fred Dekker does a serviceable job with what looks like a tight budget, and the movie will satisfy undemanding Robofans, but as a whole, Robocop 3 has the feel of a movie made to squeeze an extra few bucks out of a tired franchise. [08 Nov 1993, p.F2]

A failure on every conceivable level -- from its trite, pedestrian dialogue to its static, torturous pacing.

This movie didn't have to be good, but that it's so boring in its badness is tough to swallow.

Incredibly inane and boring special effects fiasco. [15 June 1988, p.D7]

Man on a Ledge just made me think of an old Van Halen song: Jump.

A Kiss Before Dying is nothing if not devious. But it's also a textbook example of incompetent direction. [29 Apr 1991, p.C5]

Double Dragon is not a great accomplishment, but it never stands still long enough to get dull, its sense of humor grows on you, and its lack of pretentiousness is refreshing. [07 Nov 1994, p.C2]

Just because the new The Day the Earth Stood Still is green, though, doesn't mean it's dull. If anything, there's a lot more mayhem and destruction this time around.

A high-tech freak show, a gallery of grotesqueries that are fascinating and repellent.

Simply creaks with contrivance -- particularly in its overwrought finale.

Amounts to Chicken Soup for the Soul-style torture -- unless you like that kind of thing.

One of those blessedly rare films based on a self-help book, is remarkable in one sense: It prevents "The Lake House" and its magical mailbox from being the most ridiculous concept on screen this summer.

Beastly, for all its potential pitfalls, works better than it has any right to. Credit Barnz, who keeps his young characters contemporary in a world of text messaging and status updates and yet also gives them depth.

Jackman's charisma breathes the fire into Wolverine, not the rather pedestrian script or the by-the-numbers action.

The tone is all over the place, which makes the movie difficult to take neither seriously nor as popcorn fluff.

One of the most anticlimactic finales I've ever seen in a movie

In Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, choosing the dumbest character is a colossal task.

And though this may seem a perverse observation, Extremities just doesn't work as well magnified and distanced by celluloid. If the attack involves a real man and woman who are just feet away in the same room, the horror, engagement and catharsis are far more deeply felt. [22 Aug 1986, p.D1]

The new Fame is practically identical to Alan Parker's 1980 original -- I mean, it's the same damn movie -- except for all the parts with heart and humor and poignancy and soul and fun.

In the end, they are only moments, and even at a merciful 86 minutes, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights feels formidably long.

An Innocent Man might have been a decent enough study of justice gone horribly awry -- if the screenplay weren't so crudely manipulative, if the bad cops weren't such cardboard villains and if the title character had been played by a more appropriate (and better) actor than Tom Selleck. [06 Oct 1989, p.G4]

Captain Ron is tropical and picturesque. But like a scenic island postcard, it has little scope or depth. [23 Sep 1992, p.E4]

Kline is OK. Mastrantonio isn't, really -- she plays Priscilla on the edge of a groundless hysteria. Kevin Spacey, fresh from a tightly controlled performance in Glengarry Glen Ross, loses it here. But the real villain is the ramshackle story. It's just a mess. [17 Oct 1992, p.4]

This lavish, spectacular reworking of director Desmond Davis' beloved 1981 original is the rare sort of remake that actually makes sense: With all due respect (and copious apologies) to the generation that grew up with the first film, Clash of the Titans just wasn't very good.

How can a movie as overstuffed with funny people as The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard be so listless and leaden?

A big, boisterous action-comedy - a funny, exciting and intentionally goofy summer movie that just happens to arrive in the middle of January.

The best thing you can say about Just a Kiss is that it isn't every romantic comedy that throws in suicide, bondage and a plane crash in between all the bed hopping.

A competent but not extraordinary action-comedy.

Taking a lightweight comedy such as this seriously is probably a fatal error, but there's no way around it: This House is built on a shaky foundation.

Teachers is more or less entertaining, but TV tactics are too diffuse on the big screen. America is still waiting for someone to produce a school satire with some teeth in it. [05 Oct 1984, p.C9]

Though the quality of animation remains dismal, Care Bears II has many pretty pictures; they just don't move very well. Kids under five, particularly little girls, seem enthralled nonetheless. [31 Mar 1986, p.D6]

Sometimes I suspect there is secret high-stakes contest in Hollywood among filmmakers to try and come up with a movie without a single original idea. If so, Life As We Know It is a contender.

The combination of youthful irreverence and military indoctrination is jarring.

It's the damndest thing, watching this light but genial movie self-destruct. It's as if writer-director Barry Levinson set out to sabotage his own film by gradually turning what should have been a minor subplot into the story's main subject.

Parts of The Bodyguard are inadvertently hilarious, as in a romantic encounter involving Houston, Costner and a samurai sword (she unsheathes it so very, very carefully). Others just seem to go on, and on, and on -- at two hours and five minutes, this one is easily a half-hour too long. [25 Nov 1992, p.E4]

Yes, it's junk. But it's funny junk, and it seems even to suggest a filmmaking intelligence (when was the last time you saw a shot from inside a human mouth as a giant tongue depressor closes in?) [26 Oct 1992, p.C6]

An amiable bit of fluff that is noteworthy largely for its sumptuous production design and its pairing of two of the screen's most popular "lightweights," Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. [07 Dec 1984, p.D14]

With a script co-written by Penn himself and based on a well-regarded novel by the late French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette, this one has to have some meat to go along with the gunplay, right? Sadly, no.

Mediocre.

Crudup is about as effective as anyone could be in the dreary World Traveler, but he can't keep this shallow, pretentious film from wallowing in banality and staggering self-indulgence.

The production values are downright dowdy. Creepshow looks more like Cheapshow. Yet the strong writing offsets the film's weaknesses. Creepshow 2 may not have the major-league excitement of The Exorcist or Aliens, but in its own right, it succeeds. The persistent screams from the audience tell you that. [13 May 1987, p.D7]

A by-the-numbers sports drama with a death grip on clichés and acting every bit as flat as the mat, seems unlikely to draw much of a crowd.

In most respects Police Academy 2 is witless, which complaint is admittedly akin to inspecting a Hefty bag and being dismayed to find trash. [03 Apr 1985, p.D7]

Stoops well below substituting style for substance.

Occasionally, Down Periscope floats but it isn't particularly see-worthy. [01 Mar 1996, p.3C]

Definitely funny. Goofy, ridiculous, with more gross-out humor than is strictly necessary but still funny.

Tedious and trite.

This odious, hypocritical movie marks director David Gordon Green's graduation into full-on hack.

What is evident from the film is that there was never any chance these two peoples could make a peaceful coexistence.

This inventive family movie sets up the most delightful premise, then squanders it on the kind of yawn-inducing CG adventure you might expect from one of those long, plot-heavy cut scenes that slow down video games.

Hot Dog...The Movie! involves soft-core quickies and schoolyard one-liners and is not much fun at all. [14 Jan 1984, p.C7]

If the story were not already stupid and cynical, the casting would kill the film in any case. Garner is utterly lost as a top sergeant; he doesn't even swear well, and some of the movie's most uncomfortable moments are those in which he tries. [16 Mar 1984, p.D10]

While the movie sets you up to believe you're watching an old- fashioned American western (in other words, a morality play), it's confusing figuring out what the bad guys represent. [31 Aug 1984, p.C8]

Kenan Thompson may not look the part, but he's instantly likeable as Fat Albert.

Stops dead the second the monsters fall out of view. It doesn't help that the movie's post-apocalyptic future is of the unimaginative backlot variety, or that the movie takes itself so seriously.

What's missing is originality and story and inventiveness.

The movie's hokey mysticism and heaving melancholy is closer in spirit to a solemn Hallmark greeting card.

The most fortunate thing about The Lucky One is that despite a plot hole so big it could generate its own gravity field, it's still not a bad movie.

Offers a few strange twists on well-used material. [12 Sep 1983, p.C5]

Roberts looks great bathing under a waterfall. It's just that no one had the heart, during this production, to tell her that it was stupid. And so, while all about her are laughing up the short sleeves of their safari jackets or rattling their Zambooli spears in impatience, Roberts plays Sheena as high drama, as best she can, which isn't so good. [18 Aug 1984, p.C1]

With director Mel Damski making his debut at the helm of a feature, Yellowbeard is a film adrift. [27 Jun 1983, p.C6]

Harrelson certainly proves an entertaining foil to Brosnan's more refined thief.

Tiresome romantic comedy that reinforces every imaginable gay stereotype.

While patience is a virtue in a marriage, we shouldn't need quite this much to make it through a movie.

As time goes on, and more King comes to the screen, The Shining, once widely disparaged, looks better and better. At least that film translated some of King's terror; subsequent adaptations, Pet Sematary included, do little more than animate the gore. [24 Apr 1989, p.C6]

This new, presumably improved Chainsaw is just as humorless as the original, but it's also slicker, glossier and resoundingly artificial.

Even though Taking Lives is not very good, it does contain a) a cool car chase and b) a sex scene in which Jolie goes topless. For some, this will be enough entertainment.

There's nothing here you haven't seen before, especially if you own a PlayStation.