I respect it enormously, but it feels like an art film in search of a movie.

Nightmarish scenes are intercut with interviews with the real men. These could be more probing, and the film's urgency can tilt toward shrillness, but nobody else has made the disaster of Guantánamo so painfully vivid.

Richard Donner's sequel is more than eager to please -- it's desperate.

Shorn of its inside references, it's a very mixed bag - pleasant but overlong, funny when Steve Martin is on hand and stultifying when Frankie Howerd goes into his Mean Mr. Mustard routines, full of wonderful music that too rarely reaches the boiling point and pathos that sinks to bathos. [31 Jul 1978, p.42]

Pitched too broadly to get very deeply under your skin. Still, there are some smarts at work here, and it will make you laugh.

Shortbus tends to work better in its first, comic half, than in its second, more serious stretch, where the characters' trials and tribulations flirt with soap opera. The actors, formidable with their clothes off, aren't always as expressive fully dressed.

A patchwork affair held together by spit, a prayer and the volatile, baby-faced charm of Richard Pryor. [15 Aug 1977, p.77]

If you can overlook the obvious flaws -- a bumpy beginning, a villain whose motive is both too obvious and hard to swallow -- The Bodyguard has its flashy, shallow pleasures. There's some wit in Kasdan's script, and plenty of dread in the big Oscar-ceremony climax (reminiscent of "The Man Who Knew Too Much"). When it works, it's like watching a paranoid edition of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." [30 Nov 1992, p.80]

Since somebody this year was bound to make a movie called Valley Girl, let's be grateful the job fell to director Martha Coolidge, who has a light, satirical touch, and screenwriters Wayne Crawford and Andrew Lane, whose modest exploitation movie is thoroughly good-natured. [09 May 1983, p.85]

That's the real problem with Fahrenheit 9/11: not the message, but the method… Moore’s default mode is overkill: he even notes that on the night before the attacks Bush slept on "fine French linen." Surely scratchy muslin wouldn't have stopped the evildoers.

This is a smart and funny movie much of the time, but it's not that smart and funny, and it doesn't seem like old times. [05 Jan 1981, p.54]

Maverick moviemaker James Toback has latched on to the most fascinating cultural phenomenon of the American moment.

Jones even manages to save this somewhat tiring film.

Tony Bill's first film as a director has moments of genuine charm and humor, it doesn't overinflate the adolescent agonies of its 15-year-old hero, Clifford Peache (Chris Makepeace), and it has a nice feel for the indignities and intimidations of a boy's high-school life. But it rings true only when it stays in the classrooms and hallways of the Chicago public school to which Clifford has just been transferred. When it follows him home to the posh hotel where he lives with his father (Martin Mull) and his grandmother (Ruth Gordon), My Bodyguard suddenly feels like a pilot for a bad sitcom. [25 Aug 1980, p.74]

This fragile, precious chamber piece, co-written with Susan Minot, rarely seems worthy of the high style lavished upon it. [24 Jun 1996 Pg.83]

Gangs is a dream project Scorsese has wanted to make for 30 years. You have to honor its mad ambition. But sadly, it feels like a dream too long deferred.

Only the first half of Johnny Dangerously really works, but then such nonstop silliness is almost impossible to sustain. [14 Jan 1985, p.53]

Uneven but spunkily energetic movie.

The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.

Nair and Witherspoon pull back from the ferocity of Thackeray's portrait: they're afraid we won't find Becky Sharp likable enough. Yes, she's the most brilliant, bold and vibrant creature in this social panorama, but she should also be chilling.

Kloves doesn't want to play by conventional romantic comedy rules, but he hasn't quite figured out what to replace them with. After the first seductive hour, which dances on the edge of comedy and melancholy, The Fabulous Baker Boys grows increasingly frustrating. The audience is enjoying Klove's hip, knowing update of romantic conventions, but the director seems to think he's making "realism": he misjudges the gravity of his story, and his touch becomes more ponderous. [23 Oct 1983, p.84]

When the satire stays focused on Streep or her snooty Brit assistant (Emily Blunt), "Prada" is malicious fun. But the central story about how smart, idealistic Anne Hathaway, as Miranda's drably dressed new assistant, loses her soul in pursuit of success and great shoes is dramatically anorexic.

Writer David Rayfiel and director Lamount Johnson are making murky connections between sex, religion, repression and the emotional sterility of avant-garde art. The result is both specious and seductive, a kitschy ode to the pervasive eroticism of contemporary culture. [12 Apr 1976, p.94]

Hughes may deserve more plaudits as a social worker than a filmmaker, but you have to admit his hokey situation plays. The reason is the five terrific young actors, who bring more conviction to these parts than they perhaps deserve.

The Elephant Man has great dignity, sweetness and compassion in this portrait of an unlucky monster who must fight to make other humans recognize his humanity. But it lacks dramatic punch and repeats its effects rather than developing a truly complex texture. [06 Oct 1980, p.71]

Violence belongs in Dracula - the problem is simply that Badham is not good at it. Virtually every big action scene is confusingly staged and clumsily edited. It is particularly sad to report that Olivier is terribly misused. [23 Jul 1979, p.70]

Though The Bounty is almost willfully perverse in thwarting audience expectations, and though it ends anticlimactically, you can't dismiss it. You know you've seen something. A spell, however faint, has been cast, like the one the island casts on the Bounty's crew. [14 May 1984, p.81]

Like many movies with wimpy intellectual infrastructures, St. Elmo's Fire is not without a certain trumpery charm. [1 June 1995, p.55]