Peaks early, then descends into portentous nonsense.

Those who haven’t seen “Lock, Stock” will probably get a bigger kick out of Snatch than those who have. The second time around, what seemed spontaneous can sometimes feel strained.

Depp attacks his role with relish, stamping his boot heels and recounting improbable erotic adventures in a wonderful Castilian lisp. Unfortunately, Depp's the only one flying over this cuckoo's nest. [24 Apr 1995, p.64]

Escape From New York gets more conventional as it goes along, settling for chases and narrow escapes when it could have had wild social satire as well. Carpenter has a deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility--which is both his strength and limitation. He does clean work, but settles for too little. [27 July 1981, p. 75]

The Falcon and the Snowman lurches about awkwardly, withholds crucial information and lacks a strong point of view. It is nonetheless fascinating, a kind of darkly comic illustration of the banality of contemporary evil. Penn is reason enough to see the film. [04 Feb 1985, p.15]

In Parker's hands, Billy's story has become a virtuoso horror show-an exercise in emotional manipulation designed not merely to arouse chills but to turn the audience into avengers. Despite the remarkably controlled, honestly conveyed performance of Davis, Billy finally seems far less vivid than his prison friends-Randy Quaid's highly combustible American roughneck, the superb John Hurt's strung-out English junkie. Parker captures their camaraderie well, but he fails to convey any sense of day-to-day prison life-so keen is he to get to the assaultive highlights. [16 Oct 1978, p.76]

For about an hour the writing, acting and direction coalesce in a prismatic, hyperkinetic ode to end-of-century doom. And then the two-hours-plus film starts to subside into genre convention. [16 Oct 1995, p.86]

Sidney Lumet's new film does have its absorbing aspects, but it doesn't provide any jolting insights into the pervasive process that turns elections into advertising wars in which candidates come fixing at us like Peter Pepsi and Calvin Coke. [10 Feb 1986, p.79]

In trying to appeal to a wide audience, quirky material has been forced to fit a formula that can't really contain it.

What charm, quirkiness and warmth the movie possesses is due largely to them (Cage and Leoni).

Under the direction of special-effects whiz Douglas Trumbull, Brainstorm provides lots of good cheap thrills and a juicy performance by Fletcher as a passionate scientist. But Trumbull is consistently more at home with technology than with the human drama (can Walken rescue his relationship with his wife, played by the late Natalie Wood?), and the spectaculariy cosmic ending leaves too many key questions unanswered. [10 Oct 1983, p.94]

It's an expertly made film that, scene by scene, holds your attention. But both emotionally and intellectually, it doesn't add up.

While this accomplished film holds you in its grip, it doesn't convince. The revelatory urgency that made Selby's book a literary scandal is long gone. [14 May 1990, p.75]

I Am Legend can't seem to make up its mind just what kind of movie it wants to be.

It's obviously a dangerously stretched premise, but writer-director Andrew Bergman keeps the plot rolling so fast you don't really mind. Bergman, who wrote "The InLaws" and "Blazing Saddles," mixes his comic punches well, from low slapstick to English-major jokes to Jewish social satire. [12 Oct 1981, p.99A]

There still is enough tightly staged action and sly humor to earn this latest installment a memorable place in Bond canon.

This flirts dangerously with the cornball. But for the most part The Natural is rescued by its fine polish: the gravity balanced by wry, sneaky humor, the rosiness tempered by darkness and disquiet, the fairy-tale vision dressed up in impeccably detailed period dress. [28 May 1984, p.77]

May be formulaic...but many good recipes are.

The hinge of Lifeguard's almost nonexistent plot is whether or not Rick will decide to give up his beach whistle for a briefcase. But the film is also extremely well acted by a cast of little-known players who deserve to go on to better things. [02 Aug 1976, p.78]

Of the three, Real Genius comes tantalizingly close to being a real, and interesting, movie. If only Coolidge weren't hemmed in by the formulaic plot. [26 Aug 1985, p.62]

This material is charged enough without piling on the melodrama and the lip-smacking violence. The movie too often sacrifices reportage for razzle-dazzle.

The Final Countdown is clunky, square filmmaking, but it's rarely boring, and the screenwriters come up with a final mysterious twist that saves the movie at the last moment from a disastrously anti-climactic turn of events. [18 Aug 1980, p.85]

What makes Stallone a figure to be reckoned with is that although these films can be looked at as sledgehammer mindlessness, they contain not only action, but a mystique of action. For all the blood and thunder, there's a strange stillness at the heart of Stallone. [27 May 1985, p.74]

The most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time. It's a mess, but one worth fighting about.

Damon's Ripley is considerably different from the charming sociopath in Patricia Highsmith's novel or the smooth lothario played by Alain Delon in the 1960 French thriller "Purple Noon."

If the movie ultimately doesn't work, this can be said in Frankenheimer's defense: that, with every right and probably much pressure to do so, he refused to rip off The French Connection as so many films with other names already had. [26 May 1975, p.84]

The period details are dryly elegant and painstakingly authentic. Yet the film feels underfed - there's not enough meat on the bones of the plot to warrant such opulence. [30 Jan 1978, p.55]

The Razor's Edge is a pretty lame movie, but you've got to salute Byrum and Murray for their bravely unfashionable commitment. For better or worse, they mean it. [22 Oct 1984, p.99]