What makes Wolf Creek so effective is not its originality (which, let's face it, is practically non-existent), or even its amount of gore (the violence is implied more often than it's shown), but the ways in which McLean tweaks the usual formulas, so what you think is going to happen next almost never does.

Unknown is never boring, and Collet-Serra mostly keeps up a lively pace, but he doesn't do the movie any favors with the flat, dull way he films the scene in which we finally learn what's going on.

A big, rambling, entertaining love letter to the late Hunter S. Thompson.

Angry, potentially offensive movie.

So Doc Hollywood is warm and cuddly and not at all loathsome. It is much better suited to television than to the big screen, though it does serve to showcase Warner, who is attractive and engaging. And durn it all, you just can't hate it. [02 Aug 1991, p.G5]

Starts out feeling formidable in scope and theme but ends up awfully small and precious.

For all its anything-goes, Death Becomes Her never really cuts loose. The director, Robert Zemeckis, had big hits with the three Back to the Future films and with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Clearly, he's comfortable with pricey effects. But maybe that's all he knows. There's a great, slashing satire inside this movie, whining to be let out. [31 July 1992, p.G5]

Midlands finds some measure of success in its use of regular, real-looking people -- as opposed to the oddly glamorous characters who turn up in most romantic comedies -- but it's as though the writer used up all the personality traits before he got to Shirley.

If nothing else, the movie proves even the rich and famous make boring home videos.

Loud and frantic and filled with all sorts of business, but it's also empty and inert, a creative exercise that would have played better as a 30-minute short.

Irritating when it should be amusing, dumb when it should be zany, flat when it should be snappy.

For a movie whose characters are so preoccupied with immortality, Troy is curiously forgettable.

An enchanting romantic comedy between two lost souls in the most unexpected of places.

In an effort to turn Brashear's life into a larger-than-life sermon, Men of Honor almost manages to make it all feel like an overbearing crock.

The result is a rare live-action Disney movie that merits comparison to its beloved feature-length cartoons.

Even at 85 minutes, Throw Momma From the Train seems flabby; it's out of jokes before an hour is up. [11 Dec 1987, p.D5]

Mild and unassuming, the movie gleans its modest charm from Clooney and Pfeiffer's chaste flirtation, much like Doris Day and Rock Hudson did 40 years ago: There are no hot-blooded boudoir scenes here. Like its sensible co-stars, One Fine Day has both feet firmly planted on terra firma. [20 Dec 1996, p.6G]

Bottle Shock often feels out of place on the big screen, but it would probably play a lot better as a weekly half-hour TV show.

If Shag had been a music marketing ploy like Dirty Dancing or Salsa, the shagging would have come every 10 minutes. Here the dance accompanies something better: a pleasant story about appealing characters. [21 July 1989, p.5]

Pretty in Pink is not a bad film, but for those who do not come to it predisposed to re-indulge the agonies of young love, it is less than memorable. [3 March 1986, p.C6]

My Girl, nominally a story about a gently wacky family but actually a no-holds-barred assault on the tear ducts, is one of those movies you want to hate -- but I don't think it's possible. [27 Nov 1991, p.D1]

The hands-down funniest elements in Dinner for Schmucks turn out to be the mice dioramas, which become increasingly clever - even touching - as the film unfolds, then laugh-out-loud hilarious over the end credits. But you know you're in trouble when the best thing in your movie is a bunch of dead rodents.

Unfortunately, disappointingly dull, a lumbering Bore-us-saurus of a movie.

The sort of movie you enjoy much more while you're watching it in the theater than when you're deconstructing it on the way home.

The Cable Guy might not please fans looking only for Carrey's usual shtick, but from here, it looks like a step toward adulthood. [14 June 1996, p.5G]

The film manages to make the large ensemble, led by Ethan Hawke and Vincent Spano, seem noble at their blackest hour. It's an interesting feat. The rest of the movie, which was directed by Frank Marshall, Steven Spielberg's longtime collaborator and a director of relatively recent vintage (Arachnophobia), plays out much like a TV movie, plotted according to carefully timed peaks and valleys, alternating high drama with comic relief -- and just a bit too well-mannered for its own good. [15 Jan 1993, p.G5]

Laughable, contrived banality. You won't believe a second of it. [17 Sept 1996, p.25G]

What the film truly reveals is something else entirely: how Jennifer Lawrence can elevate any material, any time, even middle-of-the-pack fare like this.