One gigantic pile of cornball clichés, but there's no denying the movie works you over anyway.

Boiler Room's behind-the-scenes veracity makes it highly compelling.

The tone and mood of Shutter Island are different on the screen from on the page -- the shadows darker than you imagined, the violence more ghastly, the blood redder.

Winkler isn't half-bad in a role that requires quiet reaction rather than the facile caricature we see in "The Fonz." Keaton is aggressively funny for awhile, though the lasting impression is of a cut-rate Bill Murray. [30 July 1982, p.D2]

We hear a lot about the great hunger for "wholesome" films, but it is rare that one is successful; wholesomeness and treacle seem to have become confused in the Hollywood mind. The Man From Snowy River is different. It's a lesson in how such films should be made. [26 Jan 1983, p.B8]

In their defense, it must be said that Dennis Quaid (as the chief dreamer) and Kate Capshaw (back again, this time in the time-honored woman's role of "assistant scientist") make an appealing couple. The presence of Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer is more problematic; someone paid these people a lot of money to sleepwalk. [16 Aug 1984, p.B6]

Simply too odd and unconventional to ever appeal to a broad audience, either at the multiplex or on home video.

Buoyed by a superlative soundtrack, ATL plays a familiar song about growing up, but hits notes that sound brand new.

The slight but enjoyable Youth in Revolt finds plenty of mayhem to take advantage of Cera's against-type performance. Oh, the things we do for love.

Charles Bukowski would have loved this foul-mouthed, fiery, reckless woman. Against all odds and common sense, you will, too.

These Fitzgeralds are loud, selfish and often maddening, but they're a loving group, and you wouldn't mind spending more time with them.

All the right elements for a rollicking farce, except one: The movie isn't funny.

Even if V for Vendetta isn't nearly as incendiary as it's been made out to be by some alarmist critics, there's still something enjoyably subversive about it, beginning with the way it tramples over the conventions of the contemporary action film.

The movie is funny and scary and touching in all the ways the best children's pictures are, but it is also fast and compact, running a perfectly paced 93 minutes (including credits).

The movie is more somber and less wondrous in tone than the first film, especially since the lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson), who would have been instrumental in leading the Narnians to victory, has disappeared.

The movie is facile and manipulative, but it can't hide the gifts of Jackie Gleason in the role of Hanks' father. [30 July 1986, p.D6]

Marvel Studios will only be able to draw from this well only so many times, though, before fatigue sets in.

Ends up as colorless as Reeves' first Superman suit.

Executive Decision is a gripping, though occasionally overcomplicated, thriller arranged like a Tom Clancy novel. [15 Mar 1996, p.7G]

As funny as a lot of the film is, Dogma remains as frustratingly uneven as the rest of Smith's work.

It's a gentle and wholly implausible comedy with an appealing character carrying the load -- no more. [27 Sept 1986, p.D3]

Stupid and exploitive, the movie is loaded with cartoonish gunplay, car chases and strange allusions to The Godfather. This is an offer you'll gladly refuse. [06 Nov 1996, p.5D]

And still 42 persists in entertaining you, even when you’re cringing, because the real story is so compelling.

Instead of leaving you lamenting the lack of creativity and originality in the film industry, this modest, playful thriller puts you in a forgiving mood.

Aggressively bland coming-of-age story.

An engaging and powerful portrayal of puberty gone awry.

Greystoke has its many pleasures, and despite its bobtailing at the hands of the bottom-line-watchers, it has the sweep of epic. [30 Mar 1984, p.D1]

Here, finally, is a giant monster movie made in the anything-goes CGI era still capable of making your jaw drop.