After an exciting high-speed car chase reminiscent of the Mad Max pictures, The Rover settles into a two-character drama between Eric and Rey, but Pearce is so one-note that their relationship is never engaging.

Gere has never been better cast.

As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation.

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.

Coppola and her crew were allowed to shoot at Versailles -- family pedigree does pay dividends, apparently -- which gives the film a needed whiff of reality.

Some of the developments feel a bit predictable — shot in the dull hues of gray that match Maud’s life, Suffragette occasionally turns hard truths into platitudes — but the story is inspiring, buoyed by a fine cast, a pointed, important examination of the price paid for a shot at equality.

De Niro is solid in a role that requires little more than righteous indignation. The stretch, however, is by Sam Wanamaker in the role of a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in getting his Hollywood clients out of trouble by feeding them names to inform on. Wanamaker himself did 10 years in exile in England rather than answer a congressional subpoena after publicly defending the Hollywood Ten among other witch-hunt victims. The film is worth seeing if only for a look at him in this role -- these days, when the word hero is tossed about with something approaching desperation, Wanamaker gives us a glimpse of the real thing. Maybe he should have directed this one. [15 Mar 1991, p.G5]

Despite the efforts of the cast (Byrne and Murphy are particularly good), you rarely feel a thing for any of them, but I don't think you're really supposed to, anyway. The characters in Sunshine tackle thorny ethical questions and debate the sanctity of life on their way to the sun, but the movie is really about the voyage, not the voyagers. Enjoy the sights.

Nowhere near as insightful as Boyz N the Hood, nor as uncompromisingly truthful as Colors, South Central still has some worthy things to say. But the film continually resorts to stock situations to express them. [22 Oct 1992, p.F8]

The best parts of the movie, as in all Muppet ventures, are when director Frank Oz takes the action into pure fantasy. [13 July 1984, p.D1]

A hellishly bad film. [8 Feb 1985, p.9]

Mother and Child is good when it takes a harsh, unsparing look at lament and the burdens we carry throughout our lives. Then it goes for your tear ducts, and we're suddenly stranded in Lifetime TV territory.

The film builds to a three-pronged tumultuous climax, shot in slow motion that could have been overwrought but somehow isn’t.

14-year-old Noah Fleiss gives a performance that's every bit as astonishing as Haley Joel Osment's work in "The Sixth Sense."

It's the cinematic equivalent of a good page-turner, and even if it's nonsense, its claws dig surprisingly deep.

The film hardly aims to be serious entertainment, and, to its credit, it's never uninteresting visually.

For most of its running time, Wes Craven's New Nightmare is simply a s-l-o-w- tease to a paradoxical, reality-bending shockfest that never materializes. [14 Oct 1994, p.G9]

After a promising start, this ambitious but ultimately clunky and unwieldy movie dissolves into a pile of ideas in dire need of dramatization.

It's all pretty hoary stuff, but you'll be willing to overlook most of it because the premise is so compellingly delivered, with flashy sturm und drang, by director Wolfgang Petersen. [10 Mar 1995, P.5G]

Girls Town is a volatile little urban drama spiked with a dose of feminist outrage. [20 Sep 1996, p.6G]

Best of all, though, Part Deux lampoons the cinema of cheerful ultraviolence without mercy. You've probably seen the coming-attractions trailer in which Topper, having emptied his quiver, uses a live chicken as an arrow. The film tops that easily a few scenes later, when Topper's gun jams and he simply throws a handful of cartridges at some bad guys, all of whom are instantly slain. This is the genuine article: good spoof, no prisoners. [21 May 1993, p.5]

The script, which Harron co-wrote with Guinevere Turner, presents a disappointingly superficial portrait of Page as a person.

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.

An insufferably artsy, pretentious work, the sort of picture that gives art films a bad name.

Quartet is truly an actor's film.

The whole of Prometheus - which was written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, and rips off everything from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "Event Horizon" - feels derivative and passé: The film is a shiny, high-tech relic.

Canner is able to keep Orgasm Inc. trained on its eponymous theme with a brisk pace and precise detail that will be equally illuminating to men and women.

It's a small, heartening slice of life that feels like a crucial step toward something bigger.