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

Flamboyantly over-the-top, visually kinetic.

The film, bound to bore the socks off impatient viewers, mistakes reserve for depth and ends up hamstringing its talented cast into playing characters you never care about all that much.

It's not awful; it isn't dull. But The Golden Child is a kids' film, and there are times when Murphy himself seems uncomfortable, as if he knows he's making a movie he wouldn't pay to see. [13 Dec 1986, p.B1]

The result is less an examination of the porn industry than it is a portrait of Jeremy's own humanity, with all its quirks and eccentricities.

So superficial and formulaic that even Garner's mega-watt grin can't completely save it.

Shakespeare's rich language does not fit soundly inside every mouth.

The movie does miraculously end up making good use of a couple of running jokes, and the cast soldiers on, though the laughs are meager. But mostly, Girl Most Likely is a case of good actors in serious need of worthwhile material.

Rhapsody fails to completely hook you, perhaps because the events happen so quickly you barely have time to sort out the characters.

In The Monuments Men, director George Clooney takes a wild, stranger-than-fiction true story and turns it into a dull, prestigious slog.

The coming-of-age tale The Way, Way Back is sweet, heartfelt and utterly trite and predictable from beginning to end.

Even if you're willing to overlook the preposterous plot holes in its premise, Accepted pushes its luck in its final half-hour.

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]

Though there's a scene of racial discomfort (nothing more serious) and a few rather flat-footed references to anti-war feelings back home in Hamburger Hill, the sense of time and place is missing altogether. Hamburger Hill is an all-purpose war movie with the requisite noble message -- war is hell, and futile, too -- but it could be set anywhere. In those parts of the world where local audiences will not accept an American adventure movie with the Vietnamese as vanquished foe (parts of Southeast Asia were shown Rambo with subtitles that portrayed it as a anti-Japanese commando raid from World War II), Hamburger Hill will play with few problems...Unhappily, neither screenwriter Jim Carabatsos (who did Heartbreak Ridge for Clint Eastwood) nor director John Irvin is able to provide the story any tighter focus, either. [28 Aug 1987, p.D1]

Bogosian is at his best in the flashback scenes, when Barry's a jock-on-the-make who has a beginner's balance of humor and slice-and-dice commentary. But by his crucial weekend, Barry has become the worst of talk show sins, a boor. He's the human equivalent of dead air. [13 Jan 1989, p.5]

While the movie sets you up to believe you're watching an old- fashioned American western (in other words, a morality play), it's confusing figuring out what the bad guys represent. [31 Aug 1984, p.C8]

Lives or dies by your ability to buy the sight of Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman snuggling in bed and enjoying hot, torrid sex. This may seem like a superficial approach to such a lofty, serious movie, but it is an insurmountable problem.

Point Break has some eye-catching visuals in its frenetic action sequences, but even the slow-mo surfing gets tedious. It's like being trapped in a soft-drink commercial. [12 July 1991, p.G5]

Given their off-screen love affair, how could this couple be so dry and dispassionate? [21 Oct 1994, p.G5]

Beautifully crafted, intricately plotted and obviously a labor of love. It is also a mess.

Lacks the one element that the filmmakers were most desperately aiming for: A genuine sense of fun.

Your basic, humdrum love story, Hollywood-style...The movie's soundtrack provides the most entertainment. Classic Elvis tunes such as Love Me Tender, Are You Lonesome Tonight and (You're the) Devil in Disguise plus others sung by Billy Joel, Amy Grant, Bryan Ferry, Dwight Yoakam and other contemporary pop and country stars keep the film groovin' -- but not enough to make this a Honeymoon worth remembering. [28 Aug 1992, p.G5]

Lumet patches his film together with a quilt of cliches. He wants you to like his characters so much -- to sympathize with their loss -- that he sticks them in unlikely situations that drip with sentimentality. [14 Oct 1988, p.E6]

Jam-packed with plot and characters, Thunderheart nonetheless drags along from scene to scene, never building any momentum or cumulative dramatic effect. It's a dull, muddled whodunit, an exploration of the relationship between Native Americans and white Americans and a tale of soul-searching by an uninteresting character. And none of it works. [3 Apr 1992, p.G13]

It's beautiful to look at, but there's little there to savor.

A combination rock-and-roll tearjerker and domestic drama. It is gloomy, boring and sentimental. [06 Feb 1987, p.C5]

This is superficial entertainment to say the least. But if you're looking for laughs, then Just Friends is just fine.

Don't blame Ormond, who is being vigorously groomed to be the next Julia Roberts in the days before Lyle Lovett. On screen, the poised Brit already has broken the hearts of some of the biggest hunks in Hollywood, from Brad Pitt (Legends of the Fall ) to Sean Connery and Richard Gere (First Knight ). Sabrina probably won't be her breakout film -- it's just not good enough -- though she's charming enough as a beguiling ingenue. [15 Dec 1995, p.6G]