Depends on one's ability to accept Sandler in the part: For me, the casting felt too much like a stunt, a filmmaker's compromise to get his intimate, uncommercial script green-lit.

The lack of effort, right down to the unimaginative title, is dispiriting.

In New Jack City, director Mario Van Peebles seems determined to show that he can make a movie as shallow and violent as any white Hollywood hack. No problem: He did it. [8 Mar 1991, p.G12]

Unlike most pictures about people living on the fringe, The Motel Life is never drab or depressing.

One of the problems with director Mike Flanagan’s occasionally involving but ultimately dull thriller is that the whole movie hinges on a reflective piece of glass.

The movie has a profound understanding of the back-and-forth nature of the bond between boys, and it ends on a silent note of forgiving looks and instant reconciliation that is the privilege of the young, whose lives aren’t yet complicated enough to put resentment before friendship

If anything, the 1983 To Be or Not to Be is more tasteless, while a great deal less engaging, than the original. [16 Dec 1983, p.E20]

Broken English takes 30 minutes to do what most romantic comedies manage with a simple montage. That's a good thing, by the way.

Wisely, Romper Stomper never preaches or moralizes: The subject matter does that well enough on its own. [03 Dec 1993, p.G4]

Pfeiffer is the antithesis of the girl next door: You just have to look at her to know that she was born to be bad.

The best moments in Matchstick Men belong to Cage and Lohman, who, in "Paper Moon" fashion, prove that the family that cons together, laughs together.

The To Do List is a funny movie, but only if you’re not easily offended.

It is not in most respects more than an ordinary thriller, however; were it not an Eastwood picture, it would be instantly forgettable. [17 Aug 1984, p.D1]

If there's one thing missing above all else from today's action movies, it's the lost art of the car chase.

Rose made the perfectly splendid and terrifying Paperhouse, a film-festival thriller from 1988, which Candyman resembles not at all. Paperhouse scared you because it was quiet and subtle and eerie. Candyman is just Barker stuff -- all hook, no suspense. [19 Oct 1992, p.C6]

The movie never feels as strong as its ideas. It has a kind of movie-of-the-week gloss to it -- no weight, no power, all going-through-the-motions. There are a couple of reasons for this, and both involve Hoffman in the title role. [02 Oct 1992, p.G5]

Written and directed by James Mottern with more attention to character than to plot, Trucker is a simple, unadorned study of a loner forced by circumstance to embrace the world again -- but only on her terms.

I suppose if you haven't seen Rocky or its many imitators, The Karate Kid might have its modest charms; there's a good bit of man-to-boy philosophizing in it, on the order of "To thine own self be true," and that's harmless enough. But there's a measure of laziness in this whole idea that is dismaying, that borders on cynicism. One wonders what went through the minds of the filmmakers as they prepared to make a film that has been made so many times before. By the look of The Karate Kid, some quick-play box-office may have been the highest aspiration. [26 June 1984, p.B3]

Fast Times at Ridgemont High could have been the sleeper success of the summer, but uncertainty of tone and a lame, derivative ending reduce it to the status of a missed opportunity. [13 Aug 1982, p.D6]

The plot lines all eventually fold into one another to form a well-rounded picture of a family struggling to gain a foothold in a foreign culture, though writer-director Miguel Arteta settles for a disappointingly conventional finale. Still, Star Maps has enough poetic grit and offbeat, unexpected humor to make Arteta a director worth watching. [22 Aug 1997, p.9G]

Both a dazzling technological achievement and a really sweet movie.

Saura's storytelling style draws us deep into Goya's world, a disturbing but bittersweet place that can look hauntingly modern.

This is courtroom drama at is best, especially when you listen to the sublime soundtrack.

Frida, the kaleidoscopic drama based on the life of the Mexican painter/feminist/icon Frida Kahlo, was directed by Julie Taymor, which is the movie's first blessing.

There's nothing so artistic about it as to attract the same art-house crowd that braved subtitles to discover "Nine Queens," and yet, it's professional enough that Spanish speakers will be glad to have a heist movie on par with "Rush Hour 3" or "The Pacifier" made in their native tongue.

If Magic Mike XXL is bulging with anything, it’s inane conversation.

Kudos to the production team for finding a perfect chimp for the lead role. Little Virgil has a look of such perfect solemnity and clearness of intent that not only do we not doubt that he could fly a plane, but we begin to suspect that he could craft a better script as well. [17 Apr 1987, p.D1]

Downey gives a nervy, riveting performance in The Soloist.