Despite the great care and research that went into the movie, Frost/Nixon pales in comparison to Oliver Stone's "Nixon" when it comes to humanizing the infamous leader.

The first Hollywood horror flick I've seen that seems like it was made specifically for 12-year-olds.

A well-acted, well-crafted but excruciatingly tepid romantic film about a subject that will attract poetry lovers and yet test even their considerable patience.

I will tell you what The Village is not: It is not scary. It is not all that interesting. It isn't even much of a movie.

Unfortunately, The Island grows dumber as it goes along, gradually disintegrating into a generic good-versus-evil spectacular that not only defies all known laws of gravity and physics, but also suffers from the lack of morality that plagues Bay's films.

Overdone performances mar the fine ones -- (Turturro) has become, alas, a hambone.

For all its Buck Rogers-style derring-do, gorgeous vistas of an Art Deco New York and sepia-toned cinematography, Sky Captain is a static, uninvolving experience.

The idea of cracking a secret message from the enemy during war is thrilling; making the process interesting to watch is more problematic.

Corny? You bet. But it also proves surprisingly inviting -- for a while, anyway.

Chan's string of chop-socky films were never boring. Shanghai Noon is.

This is certainly not a movie worth going out of your way for, but don't be surprised if you happen to come across it on cable one rainy Sunday afternoon and find yourself watching it to the end. Even Lopez pulls off a few good moments.

Yes, it's all pretty silly. But for those who can stand the annoyance of the cardboard glasses, there are worse ways to kill a hot afternoon. [23 July 1983, p.D6]

A surprisingly sappy misfire from brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, a hug-it-out, touchy-feely movie that succumbs to the maudlin sentimentality they had avoided in all their previous pictures (The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Cyrus).

Start with a heaping helping of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Throw in some "Percy Jackson," a dash of "Twilight," a spoonful of "The Vampire Diaries" and a sprinkling of "Harry Potter," and you end up with The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.

Heartburn doesn't have enough good inside semi-fiction to be of much interest to the Washington cognoscenti, and it's not enough of a movie to stay in the memory of the outside-the-beltway crowd more than an hour or two. What it is is a chance to see our two most celebrated actors at work for a while between films. [25 July 1986, p.D1]

Time Regained is not really worth the time it takes to see it.

The idea, apparently, was to combine elements of E.T., Gremlins and run-of-the-mill slasher films, while keeping the whole thing palatable for pre-teens. Only Steven Spielberg has been able to make this combination work, and even he has had trouble with it; director Stephen Herek, who also worked on the Critters script, is the wrong Steve. [30 Apr 1986, p.C7]

It's only near the end, when Romanek sets out to release the tremendous tension he's built up, that One Hour Photo loses its bearings.

As a film, though, Gimme Shelter is unremarkable, a predictable story of redemption that happens awfully fast, to a girl who only seems to be in peril briefly — and has a rich dad to bail her out.

If any of this screams "cheap Generation X marketing ploy," you're right on the money. [31 March 1995, p.5G]

The good news is the updated version is scarier than the original, thanks to snazzier special effects, a shorter running time, moody lighting, a few solid jolts and one icky moment involving a bratty babysitter and a closet. The bad news is the film rehashes every horror movie cliché you can imagine.

It's surprising to see a three-hour movie about Chicanos being distributed by a major studio, and Hackford had an opportunity to do something special. Instead, he simply gives us more of the same. [30 Apr 1993, p.G5]

Oshima, the director who was once celebrated for the elaborately scandalous eroticism of In the Realm of the Senses, is here merely impenetrable -- though whatever it is that Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is about, Oshima does seem to mean it. [30 Sep 1983, p.D2]

The movie is so grand in scale that you can’t help surrender to the spectacle, even if the stuff that’s going on with the people in the film is often close to risible.

Isolated moments in Color of Night hint at Rush's visual creativity. He can spin afresh the most perfunctory scenes -- watch the clever way he shoots a simple fender-bender, or his spectacular take on an opening-scene suicide. But as the story falls into place, the visual embellishments feel increasingly hollow, like fancy icing on a grocery-store sheet cake. [19 Aug 1994, p.G5]

While the story starts tying up its loose ends nicely, as the end approaches, the film turns flat. It's a disappointment.

What saves Fly Me to the Moon from being a total wash is the actual mission itself.

The real love affair in For Love of the Game is between Costner and himself.