Medicine Man is an adventure story with a message: We must save the Amazon rain forest. It's certainly a noble cause, filmmakers forgot to make their movie any fun. [08 Feb 1992, p.E6]

Even the most ardent fans of Braff’s first feature film, the charming Garden State, will struggle to warm up to this self-indulgent, uninvolving drama about an immature, almost-middle-aged guy trying to find himself with questions he should have had answers to long ago.

The new Total Recall fails on the most basic levels: Its characters are dull, and its action is duller.

Often feels choppy, as if chunks of connecting narrative had been lopped off in the editing room.

What's lacking is any sense of Beverly's brightness. She's supposedly smart, but she never displays a shred of intelligence.

Although the picture is nominally the story of a man with a murderous temper, it is less a thriller than a metaphor for the plight of illegal immigrants.

Disney's half-baked recipe for box-office success. Hocus Pocus is a pretty lackluster affair, owing to excess characters and a choppy, wandering script. [16 July 1993, p.G7]

Johnston fails to make a story set in 1891 England relevant to contemporary audiences.

There's an audience for old-fashioned romance, and Dear John will please most of it.

Most certainly a personal work -- so personal, in fact, that I can't imagine anyone but Coppola being able to sit through it.

The production has a Disney-ish, well-scrubbed feel to it, and were it not for a sprinkling of obscenities would be G- rated. But Russkies is never quite right, even as pap. [06 Nov 1987, p.D5]

Disney's latest incarnation parries and feints somewhere between the "serious" melodramas of vintage Hollywood and the frisky cavortings of Richard Lester's mid-'70s send-ups. [13 Nov 1993, p.G3]

Though even Blake Edwards, the director behind the Panthers, could not make the connective material in this film work well, there is so much joy in the vintage Sellers that Trail of the Pink Panther rates as one of the funniest films of this year. Sellers' outtakes are funnier than most of the new material on film today. We shall not see the like of him again soon. [21 Dec 1982, p.C7]

A slight, not entirely engaging mystery with slight overtones about the dangers of racial profiling that, unlike "Clockers," treats its urban-plight theme as a backdrop, instead of its main subject.

A welcome antidote to the depressing, feel-bad sadism of recent horror hits like Hostel and Saw II, Final Destination 3 puts the fun back in watching stupid people die Rube Goldberg-elaborate, ridiculously gory deaths.

The screenplay by W.D. Richter (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) turns Needful Things into a pitch-black comedy -- a rather lifeless one, unfortunately. There are more laughs than scares, though the movie still carries a creepy undercurrent of nastiness that pops up periodically, to great effect. [27 Aug 1993, p.G5]

Sometimes less truly is more, and Love in the Time of Cholera is proof.

Exactly the formulaic, by-the-numbers movie it appears to be. These Tigers deserved better.

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

Best of all, though, is Seann William Scott as the profoundly annoying, profoundly vulgar Stifler.

With it's buxom, raven-haired star, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark skips a chance to spoof B-movies and instead shatters the all-time record for breast jokes in one movie. There's at least one every three minutes, and a tassel- twirling ending that stretches the limits of this PG-13 picture. But the real immorality here is that a quirky character -- yes, Elvira has her moments -- is played like an unfunny bimbo with one-liners that die quick deaths. [04 Oct 1988, p.C4]

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

The finished film has been tinkered with and tweaked so thoroughly that it borders on the incomprehensible.

I'd have thought you'd get more for $3 million. The dialogue here is among the worst in modern big-budget memory; even the cliches are lame. [20 Mar 1992, p.G5]

A film that's funny and entertaining for kids and adults.

Skin Deep works best when the director delivers his stock in trade -- slapstick and sight gags. [3 March 1989, p.6]

Never gives us a single reason to care about any of these people. It's a druggy, sordid spectacle.

Still of the Night is a restful thriller, soft and dreamy and largely undisturbing. Like the wee hours themselves, the movie seems to stretch its time beyond the normal frame of minutes; here, 90 of them go by at the pace of an entire evening. [17 Dec 1982, p.D14]