A revealing and bluntly honest portrait of a previously unknown filmmaker.

The movie is best when it sends up the whole culture of child stars and commercials -- "I wanna grow artistically," says one well-paid brat. "I wanna work with Michelle Pfeiffer." But it loses its edge, and soon Life With Mikey is awfully close to the thing it sets out to lampoon. [4 June 1993, p.G5]

Suffers from dialogue that often sounds like convenient exposition as well as from a climax that feels too pat and prosaic. But the film is peppered with small, explosive scenes that have a refreshing complexity.

Williams is wonderful. But though you can see Williams straining and heaving at the traces, working against the confines of a script he could have rewritten between scenes, he makes a character out of it anyway. [18 May 1990, p.G5]

True Story marks the directorial debut of Rupert Goold, a respected British theater veteran who also co-wrote the script and knows how to engage the viewer with simple scenes of two people talking (with a few modifications, this could have easily been a play).

Directed by Russell Mulcahy (the Highlander movies), the movie never generates enough suspense to keep the storyline moving. The visual effects are splashed about carelessly, weakening the would-be climactic showdown. [01 Jul 1994, p.G5]

It makes the predictable journey surprisingly fun and enjoyable.

It’s filmed with a sharp eye and filled with good performances.

As is usual for this durable genre, victim and villain are well matched. Though House on Sorority Row does not have a single screeching-cat red herring, and though power tools are not employed, it does have a classic of low camp, a scene in which a girl who has just been nearly brained by a falling corpse repairs immediately and alone to her bedroom, where she changes into a baby-doll nightie and stands with her back to an open window. [23 Feb 1983, p.B4]

Hellraiser III manages to make even the fearsome Pinhead himself seem like. . .well, a pinhead. Clive, it's time to give these characters a rest. [19 Sep 1992, p.E5]

Full of intriguing possibilities, it is a film propelled by a puff of hot air, not a tornado of brilliantly realized political, philosophical and artistic ideas. Sometimes, it is so embarrassingly bad that one can only laugh and wonder how Lumet could have missed the windmill by so much more than a mile. [31 Jan 1986, p.D9]

With such a large cast, none of the actors is able to turn her character into a fully realized person.

Honkytonk Man is Clint Eastwood's long, long ramble through the American Southwest in search of period, in search of character, in search of self-control. As a director, at least, he never finds the latter -- among the many things wrong with his latest film is that he apparently could not bring himself to slice away any of the flab. [22 Dec 1982, p.D18]

A coming-of-age film you've seen before. [20 Oct 1995, p.8G]

Red State is as profane and anti-establishment as any of his other films, but the stakes are infinitely higher this time: This Kevin Smith movie has an astonishing body count.

Everyone in Hit and Run is clearly having a good time. It's the audience that gets left out of the fun.

The film is far from perfect, but it's likely to inspire more than few quests for balance -- or at least a fabulous bowl of linguine.

Planet of the Apes is never quite boring -- the movie is constantly giving you something new to look at -- but it's still a disappointingly dull and underplotted ride.

It's not easy to forgive a movie that so ungratefully wastes its potential with such a poorly structured plot, but Shaft has a few redeeming moments up its sleeve after all.

Hollow and pointless.

As played by the sublimely dazed Keanu Reeves (Ted) and Alex Winter (Bill), the boys are appealing at first, but their witlessness wears thin quickly. So, too, the movie. Ignorance may indeed be a happy state, but you wouldn't want to live there, and even this short visit seems much, much too long. The film acknowledges its empty-headedness early, when the boys meet Sock-rates. [20 Feb 1989, p.C-6]

The best thing about this big, imaginatively detailed movie is its premise, which director Francis Lawrence, a music-video veteran, takes his time exploring.

This tale, about a young woman and her quest to become one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, turns out to be scarier than it is charming: a real shame, considering the effort and talent that has gone into the production. [15 May 1998, p.7G]

Fails to offer a single moment you don't see coming but its cast is appealing, and it provides a welcome respite from young wizards, talking robots that turn into trucks and other staples of this long, hot, boy-focused summer.

The running character of a dim-bulb scientist of Indian or Pakistani extraction, who is prone to malapropisms, badly accented English and Carson-esque wink-and-giggle innuendo, might not seem offensive in a better film. Here it seems designed only for cheap laughs. The laughs come. They are cheap. [09 May 1986, p.D5]

A thoroughly wholesome, if not particularly entertaining, experience. [17 Jul 1992, p.G5]

Benjamin's creative visual style isn't enough to lift a weak story. [18 Mar 1988, p.D7]

Unfortunately, Life After Beth starts feeling more conventional the wilder and darker it gets, and the laughs become more sparse as the movie winds to its bizarre and but unsatisfying conclusion.