Manages to deliver a striking, nicely detailed, visceral thriller built on a corny, old-fashioned script.

If you're not on the Kids' wavelength, this could quickly become annoying. So, for that matter, could their offbeat sense of humor, which isn't just dark but gleefully dark. But if you like this sort of thing, it's fun hopping around with the troupe as their movie's geography gradually becomes clear. [21 Apr 1996, p.A2]

Chairman Mao wouldn't necessarily approve. And even today, China won't be showing Mao's Last Dancer.

Far-fetched as the premise is, I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt for the sake of the impressive cast. But as Flatliners rolled along, its pretentiousness became increasingly toxic.

Hobo hits the screen as a grim, visually ugly, intermittently funny-occasionally preachy piece with only the estimable Mr. Hauer to recommend it.

Two very good looking people play two offbeat and abrasively charming lovers in Love & Other Drugs. And when your screen romance is as sexual as this one, it helps if your stars are about as good looking with their clothes off as human beings get.

The actors make the most of Carroll's dialogue, which is often quite witty. [22 Jan 1999, p.17]

Fortunately, director David Carson and screenwriters Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga (all of whom have served in the Star Trek universe) keep the longueurs to a minimum. Whenever you feel like beaming up (or is it out?), they switch scenes.

May not be as emotionally compelling as John Ford's work ("The Prisoner of Shark Island"), but it's every bit as meticulously crafted.

Caine is magnificent. This is not some laughable Stallone-boxing-at-60 exercise in vanity. He's an old man playing an old man, but one who lived through experiences that both scarred him for life and prepared him for his final test.

Considered to be producer-director Stanley Kramer's most powerful film, containing his strongest message, a stern examination of the last days of mankind. [21 Mar 2004, p.8]

The Joneses manages a deft blend of the sexy, the sad and the silly. And Borte doles out his secrets and surprises in ways that make it easy to keep up with these Joneses.

The Brady Bunch Movie is certainly watchable, which is a lot more than I had been expecting. [17 Feb 1995, p.19]

Director Walter Hill (48 HRS., The Warriors) keeps things moving quickly while making sure that the story doesn't get lost amid the slam-bang action. And Hill's comic-book-style visuals are just about perfect for the material. [08 Jan 1993, p.20]

For the most part, Life Stinks is about as far from art - or even simple entertainment - as you can get. And if I may be forgiven a small joke that's as true as it is obvious, most of the time Life Stinks stinks. [30 July 1991, p.E1]

Not everyone has realized this yet, but with Wayne's World and So I Married an Axe Murderer, Mike Myers has somehow become the first major movie star of the '90s. [30 July 1993]

A Walk in the Clouds does have its problems, but it looks good enough to eat. [11 Aug 1995]

In the final analysis, the action-picture mechanics of the film are too limiting. No Mercy barely has a subject, much less a theme. Yet moments from the picture linger in the mind. If you don't leave the theater satisfied, you may at least be moved.

It's Shaq, making his motion-picture debut, who in the end turns Blue Chips into a slam-jam-thank-you-man experience sure to please basketball fans who aren't looking for more emotional involvement than a typical night at the O-rena. [8 Feb 1994, p.16]

No breasts. Twenty-one dead bodies. Exploding pickup. Exploding supporting actors. Neck-crunching. Zombie corral. Zombie target practice. Zombie bonfire. Eighteen gallons of blood. A 74 on the Vomit Meter. Kung Fu. Zombie Fu. [2 Nov 1990, p.13]

Failed attempts at satire aside, John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. is basically a routine action picture. [09 Aug 1996, p.22]

It's got everything the original had. Best of 1991. [22 Mar 1991, p.7]

When the dust clears, Blue Steel turns out to be just one more violent movie whose basic theme is women as victims. [16 Mar 1990, p.3]

It's a little racy for our "High School Musical" set. But Bran Nue Dae (say it out loud) will play anywhere fans like a musical so cute you want to pinch its cheeks.

A confident, cocky and often comic promenade down the same primrose path.

Wonderland is equal parts Lewis Carroll and Grace Slick. It’s inspired by Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass," but also, apparently, by Slick’s psychedelic ‘60s anthem, “White Rabbit.” It’s a trip, man.

What this film from the director of "The Devil Wears Prada" does manage is a gentle amiability.

The best faith-based film ever made, an uplifting, entertaining and wonderfully-acted account of surfer Bethany Hamilton's life before and after a shark bit her arm off in the waters off her favorite Hawaiian beach.

Kika is flamboyant and provocative. But the new film, which was partly inspired by the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, is ultimately quite serious.

Despite its shortcomings, however, the movie is often stimulating in a way that movies generally aren't. A dark, mirthless satire set in the near future, the film keeps your attention by holding a warped mirror up to our own time. [19 Mar 1990, p.C1]

A dark and brawny version of the Robin Hood legend that anchors itself in English history and loses some of the merriment in the process.

It's not as scary as it needs to be or as clever as it thinks it is, but the new 3D version of "Piranha" is at least as gimmicky as those fabled 3D films of yore. With all the pointless 3D cartoons and joyless 3D ""Clash of the Titans" conversions, at last here's a picture that tosses its cookies, its coffee cups and its D-cups right in your lap.

A winning narration (read by Greg Kinnear) holds things together. And there's just enough script for a good cast to run with. Harris and Madigan lift the whole enterprise just by being who and what they are - great actors.

The dialogue sounds irritatingly tough-clever, the premise is elaborately contrived, and the pacing is best described by the term "commercial-ready." But Narrow Margin has one element that lifts it above the all-too-obvious limitations of the material. That element is Gene Hackman. [21 Sep 1990, p.8]

True to the intent of the Christian apologist Lewis' novels, there are lessons to be learned, many of them delivered by the chivalrous mouse, Reepicheep, voiced with a plummy verve by Simon Pegg.

She's the One has fewer rough edges than The Brothers McMullen, but it also has fewer of the weird little nooks and crannies of personality that were the best things about Burns' debut film.

Bottom line: Stake out another movie. [23 July 1993, p.8]

Precious, protracted and pleasant enough.

If it's not an unerringly faithful adaptation of Shakespeare's play, it still manages enough wit and charm to come off.

Whatever its virtues, Eli is a movie that can’t help but suffer in comparison to the much-delayed and much better "Road."

What's missing in Point of No Return is basically the same thing that was missing in La Femme Nikita - cleverness. Both are stylish action pictures that would seem a lot more stylish with a few ingenious plot twists. [23 March 1993, p.E1]

A gorgeously animated combat fantasy - "The Lord of the Rings" meets "Happy Feet."

"Gattaca" director Andrew Niccol's sense of the zeitgeist is as on the money as ever with In Time, a sci-fi parable that plays like "Occupy Wall Street: The Movie."

For the most part, then, Tomorrow Never Dies is a straightforward action picture. And since the action is clearly and suspensefully staged, this unpretentious production turns out to be the best Bond flick in years.

The movie contains Jane Fonda's first big-screen appearance since On Golden Pond (1981); if she doesn't quite find a character in Martha, she is nonetheless riveting. Anne Bancroft, too, is impressive. Finally, though, it is Meg Tilly who makes the movie live. Her performance, which works on both realistic and symbolic levels, allows you to believe in the story.

This is still a most original take on the consequences of following your own "yellowbrickroad" when you don't know, for sure, that there's an Oz at the end of it.

Aniston's work opposite the screen's premiere mild-mannered funnyman shows her at her most engaged and pitch perfect.

A detail-oriented thriller that lets us keep up even as it races to a conclusion.

One great thing about the script for Housesitter - the new Steve Martin-Goldie Hawn screwball comedy - is that it takes the romanticism of shared dream-spinning and turns it into a sustaining comic device. The other great thing about the script is that it's beautifully structured. [12 June 1992, p.19]

Sweet, sentimental, silly and star-studded, Nanny McPhee Returns is one of the best children's movies of the year.

Three Amigos will never get any prizes for excitement or originality, but if there were an award for friendliness, this movie would at least be in the running.

The spookiest and most entertaining horror flick since "Paranormal Activity."

The ending smacks of Hollywood rewriting of history. But The Devil's Double shows the political consequences of Uday's misdeeds, the delicate negotiations that keep the people with grievances in line. And Dominic Cooper delivers a career-making performance.

The screenplay may have too many holes in it, but it gets a merit badge for the cleverness of its sarcastic dialogue, much of which is unprintable here. [13 Dec 1991, p.20]

3D or not, the film about the mop-topped Canadian - who turns 17 March 1 - doesn't let us get very close to "the talent."

A creep-out with style to spare. [16 Jan 1998, p.19]

It's a lot of fun to watch - over two hours of thrills, spills, elaborate sets and special effects, all tied together by a pleasingly varied (and lighter than usual) musical score by John Williams.

A newfangled old-fashioned movie about glory, honor, sacrifice and a martial code that crosses into fascism, homoerotism and homophobia at the same time -- there are plenty of turn-off buttons in this one. But by Zeus, this is a ripping yarn, told with limb-rending gusto, an iconic ancient battle as seen by an iconic comic-book creator, Frank Miller.

It's a fitfully amusing, not remotely scary slasher picture.

Whatever romance and charm Gruen summoned forth from these rough and tumble show people living by their own laws in a traveling, self-contained world of poverty and cruelty, director Francis Lawrence has hacked and ground them off.

The film may be a collection of little moments that don't add up, but on a moment-by-moment basis, it isn't hard to take. [22 Jun 1990, p.6]

The movie has a lot going for it, including an array of imaginative special effects and Fox's expertly calibrated performance. [19 July 1996, p.17]

Putting up with weeks - or even months - of such media-fed psychobabble is a big price to pay for a couple of hours of defiantly unwholesome entertainment. The Getaway might just be worth it, though.

After watching this hot-and-heavy costume drama, I had to wonder why there are not a lot more like it. Not that I necessarily wish there were, you understand. But this sort of picture has so much going for it from a "date-night" perspective that I'm surprised there are so few of them. [13 Mar 1998, p.20]

Except for the political implications of the addition of Freeman's character (which he brings off gracefully) and some revisionism about the nobility of the crusades (which, in my opinion, is long overdue), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is just an adventure movie - which is basically what I like about it. The second half is stronger than the first because it's swifter and more action-packed. Robin's feats of derring-do are always (as Costner might put it) neat - the more improbable, the better.

When the comedy is on this level, all the actors can do is to hang on and hope for the best. [23 Nov 1990, p.7]

A mirthless, joyless comedy with nary a hint of romance, mystery or justification for its existence.

Shockingly, it's funny. Often in shocking or at least wildly inappropriate ways.

The problem is that producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler (Night and the City, Guilty by Suspicion) simply has no idea what he's doing. I take that back. He knows what a producer ought to know: how to latch onto a hot topic and a hot star. Winkler also appears to have picked up enough from the directors he has worked with to give his film a certain second-hand slickness.

This rather basic story is really just a place to hang the action scenes, which should have been the movie's glory. But those scenes turn out to be the worst things about Mighty Joe Young, in which the action is edited, MTV-style, for maximum incoherence.

The new Funeral, directed by social commentator-director Neil LaBute ("Lakeview Terrace") doesn’t improve on the original, which wasn’t exactly a classic despite its classic structure.

Wild Bill is uncompromising almost to the point of orneriness. Director Hill takes you from one incident to the next, trusting you - or, rather, expecting you - to work out the connections among them. [01 Dec 1995, p.21]

Children will undoubtedly enjoy the ninja flick a lot more than their parents will, and it probably won't even give most kids nightmares. But couldn't a steady diet of this sort of thing help to desensitize very young children to real violence? If so, that's awful - not awesome - dudes.

Occasionally, the scenes of the bush people are just enough like the best parts of the original Gods to remind us what we're missing in the new one. But most of the time, Gods II is unamusingly antic. [13 Apr 1990, p.4]

It's a sordid tale and, in Gibney's telling, a cautionary one.

Working from a script she wrote with producer Andy Ruben, director Katt Shea gets some sexy vibes going, and the atmospherically lit production has an unexpected visual distinction.

All these years after Predator, these decades past the classic film, "Most Dangerous Game," that inspired this genre, it’s good to see the idea of the hunter becoming the hunted still gets the blood racing.

It's light in tone, feather-weight. But there aren't many laughs in it.

The basic problem with Indian Summer: The movie sacrifices credibility in an attempt to get easy laughs. [23 Apr 1993]

Goldberg's performance does have its moments, especially once she gets past the frenzy of the movie's first half. But like such accomplished fellow cast members as Maggie Smith and Harvey Keitel, Whoopi is wasted in this godawful nunsense. [29 May 1992, p.17]

There's an unexpected wistfulness, a bittersweet undercurrent to Going the Distance that could not have been in the script. This romantic comedy co-starring Drew Barrymore and longtime beau Justin Long was finished just as the real life couple was splitting up. For good, this time.

It just takes a very long time to get going. Apparently seventh grade doesn't pack as much potential for amusing, scarred-for-life trauma as sixth grade.

Even lacking the laughs and romance, he (Emmerich) has delivered an entertaining eye-roller of alternative history.

Take "Kick-Ass." Strip it of most of its wit and charm, amp up the violence, the sadism. Make it more crude and coarse and gory. And what you're left with is Super.

As good as the supporting players are, Cadillac Man is Robin Williams' show. He gives the production its pace, its zest and its heart. Without him, this movie is unimaginable. With him, it's consistently entertaining. Williams knows what every successful salesman knows: Sell yourself, and you'll sell the product. [18 May 1990, p.20]

A clever and adorable original film remade with most of the charm wrung out of it.

This new film adaptation of the old radio serial is like Batman (1989) without its spark of pop-cult genius. [01 Jul 1994, p.9]

This isn't the worst of the bunch, not by far. But my premonition is this won't be the finale this series has screamed out for these past few years. This decapitation train never seems to reach its destination.

It's a movie benefiting from another sparkling, sexy and emotionally available performance by Natalie Portman.

Well, it's not Hellraiser 2, but it's pretty decent. [27 Nov 1992, p.23]

Perry's great gift to this unfilmable play is getting it on the screen, his sharp eye for casting and his evident affection and sympathy for black womanhood, even in movies in which he doesn't don a dress.

Director Lesli Linka Glatter (NYPD Blue, Twin Peaks) gets nice performances from her young cast, which includes some of the best little actresses working today. Their adult counterparts are fine too. [20 Oct 1995, p.22]

Eat Pray Love isn't a bad movie -- just a spiritually dead one, wearing and wearying.

Quest for Camelot is certainly no improvement on the studio's jangly Space Jam of 1996. [15 May 1998, p.21]

This sequel lacks the zany spark that energized the first movie although the new film is often amusing and its narrative is more streamlined.

Basically, it's like a standard TV cop show with better-than-average acting and a few brief scenes of violence that would be too extreme to pass network standards...The word that comes to mind is generic.

Tombstone has quite a lot going for it, at least for the first hour, including all those colorful characters and lots and lots of action. [27 Dec 1993, p.D1]

Passenger 57 was directed by Kevin Hooks, a former actor who directed last year's Strictly Business. He manages to keep the action fairly clear, which is something that can't be taken for granted in today's adventure movies. [09 Nov 1992, p.C1]