Green Zone isn't so much a bad movie as a misguided one.

Jackie Earle Haley, the fans' choice to take on the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of the 1984 boogeyman blockbuster A Nightmare on Elm Street proves stunningly, rousingly…adequate…for the job.

An ultimately unsatisfying allegory about war and whimsy, the new film has its attractions, but it's certainly no Aladdin. [18 Dec 1992, p.19]

Cute, bordering on cutesy, yes. Light and shallow and inconsequential in a lot of ways. But funny? Rarely.

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 Paranormal doesn't tamper with the formula that worked in the first two films. It lacks the "money" moments that those films delivered and ends with a finale that is downright conventional. "Paranormal" reveals itself for what it has become, the "Saw" of found video thrillers.

If “the gals” have to bow out, at least they try to do it in a sprint -- in their Manolo Blahniks. It’s a pity nobody told them you can’t run in heels -- in sand dunes.

You don't have to be a baby sitter to like The Baby-sitters Club, but it would help. It also would help if you're in early adolescence. [18 Aug 1995, p.20]

The problems with North go beyond casting, however, way back to the movie's central idea and to the filmmakers' failure to think it through. [22 Jul 1994, p.23]

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]

The ads in this film are so funny that I wish I could report that the production containing them is equally hilarious. But as it turns out, Crazy People is wobbly - a watchable but unremarkable showcase for the exceptional ads.

This is the sort of picture in which people slap each other as they take their marriage vows, suddenly develop life-threatening diseases, and, again, have violent confrontations whenever there's a break in the action. Anything for a laugh, anything for a tear, and nothing much authentic.

In Under the Cherry Moon, the self-styled auteur is obviously aiming for a romantic tragedy with occasional lighthearted moments. What he ends up with, however, is purest camp.

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

This new Sabrina stresses the material's Cinderella love story - the part, that is, that was corny and somewhat dated even in the '50s. What director Sydney Pollack and his screenwriters (Barbara Benedek and David Rayfiel) have done is a little like redesigning the Ford Pinto and keeping the unfortunate old gas tank. [15 Dec 1995, p.19]

But this movie is no more interested in Cleveland than it is, really, in baseball: It doesn't have the passion for the sport's curiosities that Bull Durham has, nor the feeling for the sport's heartbreak of Eight Men Out. Watching Major League may be better than watching no baseball at all. But its place in the annals of baseball-moviedom is bush league at best.

In a lot of ways, Die Another Day is a return to Bond's bad-old-days, the early 1980s, when the plots were outlandish and haphazard, the stunts were fake and the whole enterprise was being treated as a cartoon.

Malkovich temporarily brings the movie to life, but, finally, it's too little, too late. Amusing though it is, his brief performance probably won't be enough to keep "Jennifer Eight Is Enough" off the ballot. [6 Nov 1992, p.23]

How bad is Something to Talk About? Well, it's not the worst movie I've seen this year, but it is the biggest waste of talent. [4 Aug 1995, p.18]

If it's not the most awful thing I've ever seen, it's close enough to make me wince.

We're No Angels is far from heavenly. It never even gets off the ground.

To watch To Wong Foo is finally to be reminded that camp-meisters often have a weakness for sentimentality that is far more appalling than anything they do in the name of outrageousness. [08 Sep 1995, p.17]

Gasp! And you thought Scream was predictable. [26 Dec 1997, p.11]

Somehow, the new production fails to sustain the creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky and altogether ooky visual sweep that held the first film together.

No one looks particularly comfortable, not even Midler, who has most of the best dialogue. She's watchable as Stella, but that's really the nicest thing I can say for her work in this unfortunate picture. Does Bette Midler really believe that people of limited means can't raise their kids decently? Or is the Divine Miss M making some great joke whose subtle point I am failing to grasp?

Color me dissatisfied with Color of Night. For starters, it's a murder mystery with a really obvious solution. How obvious? It's so embarrassingly obvious that even I figured it out - and I can never figure these things out.

The Lawnmower Man has it all - melodramatic plot, bad acting, special effects that will undoubtedly seem cheesy in about five minutes and even a concluding sequence in which the usual lofty moral is voiced.

Altman's method is risky, but when inspiration strikes the result can be wonderful. When it doesn't, the result can be, well, Ready to Wear.