Seems to vanish from memory even as you're watching it. The movie is an exercise in minimalist storytelling.

The script is riddled with so many clichés, you count on the battle scenes to wake you from your stupor.

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

As the character grows soft and sentimental, so does La Soga, and the film's edge is terminally dulled by an avalanche of cliches and schmaltz.

The Neon Demon is a voluptuous provocation, a stylish free-fall down a gonzo rabbit hole that is as entrancing as it is maddening. Here is a rarity in this season of summer movie doldrums: A film that is guaranteed to elicit strong reactions.

Like "An Officer and a Gentleman", Top Gun travels a cramped emotional range. The characters don't really change, but have plot devices imposed on them. Unlike its template, however, Top Gun does have a payoff: Maverick and his pals do a lot of flying, and many of the aerial scenes are impressive. [16 May 1986, p.6]

Woody Allen's new movie, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, will not make you cry, as Annie Hall and Manhattan were capable of, and it won't make you cringe, as Stardust Memories almost demanded. It is not screamingly funny, romantically piquant, bitter or even, in most ways, unusual. With the exception of a single recurring image--that of Allen as an amateur inventor of the early 20th Century, flapping about in various homemade flying machines--there is not even anything of the absurd in this film. It's just an engaging Woody Allen movie, in which much of the humor is familiar and the tone is as moistly appealing as the title suggests. [18 July 1982, p.L3]

A few times, when Eddie and the Cruisers are making their music, the movie begins to hook you. But less-than-skillful plotting always lets you off the hook, and the ending is a letdown and a tease. [26 Sept 1983, p.6]

Stones fans will enjoy Let's Spend the Night Together, flaws and all; those who aren't devotees of the venerable band won't be converted by the movie, and probably should stay away. [17 Feb 1983, p.B9]

Unfaithfully Yours turns mildly manic in its last half-hour or so, but it's not enough to redeem that first hour, when Moore and Kinski go through familiar motions in search of something special. For too much of their movie, what they're looking for isn't there. [13 Feb 1984, p.C6]

There's a frothy, almost whimsical undercurrent quietly bubbling beneath the dead-serious story, and it finally bursts to the forefront in the ridiculously happy finale, which argues without the slightest bit of shame that crime sometimes does pay - really, really well.

The Brothers Grimm gives you plenty to look at, but it's not much to see.

That rare biopic that’s shorter and swifter than it should be. This turns out to be both a blessing and a curse.

A decent cast, led by Peter Weller (as the geologist/hero) and Rambo vet Richard Crenna (as Doc), grapples gamely with the script and hauls down the paychecks. [21 Mar 1989, p.C7]

You can’t shake the feeling the script is trying too hard to please, upping the drama despite the fact that what made the first film so enjoyable was its relative simplicity.

Mostly, though, the movie is a hack sitcom romance in which the big question is how long it will take Tom Selleck to confess his love for Nancy Travis, Mary's mom. [21 Nov 1990, p.D1]

Mostly due to luminous writing, Baxter's novel evoked a sense of magic, but this Feast, though never completely uninteresting, leaves you hungry for enchantment.

The talented cast fails to gel into a dynamic ensemble.

The actors are fine: It's their long, arduous trek that lets the movie down.

There is something weirdly appealing about Commando and its self-deprecating celebration of violent excess. [16 Oct 1985, p.D5]

A rare movie, one that manages to be both quiet and electrifying, touching and unnerving. But it is not a great movie, even though its stars deserve for it to be.

Yes, it creaks. It creaks mightily. But The Net cheerfully plugs along, asking you to swallow one whopper after the next without burping. [28 July 1995, p.6G]

Social concerns aside, Mighty Joe Young is a Disney film at heart, and director Ron Underwood keeps the emphasis on crisp action sequences, setting up a thrilling chase down Hollywood Boulevard and a finish at the park that is almost guaranteed to turn eyes misty. [25 Dec 1998, p.11G]

A competent but utterly unnecessary retelling of the story.

Wild Bill is handsomely mounted and nicely acted, but it's also strangely irrelevant, a big ho-hum of a movie. [01 Dec 1995, p.5G]

The film, with its uniformly terrific cast, stern Gothic overtones and steady but measured pacing, is a crisp, old-fashioned delight, eschewing cheap tricks for repeated tiny pricks of unease that work up to a continuous gnawing dread.

Won't make you forget Kidman's better work, but it's not a film you long to excise from your memory.

This is an insignificant film with a passably entertaining premise that goes wildly to hell the instant it strays from its comic ideals with brief, unsatisfying detours into the realms of art and high-end lingerie.