Loaded with cartoon violence (exploding mail-bombs, children hanging perilously from rooftops), numerous groin-kicks and a few mild expletives, Jingle All the Way isn't exactly heartwarming, egg-noggy holiday fare. [22 Nov 1996, p.04]

A mildly scary, totally meaningless excursion into the realms of psychological horror and alien-abduction conspiracies.

Arnold has a gem for the third millennium in End of Days.

Too freewheeling for its own good, like a Robert Altman ensemble piece without a gravitational core. But Hawke's actors are a talented troupe, and even when things get self-indulgent and fuzzy-headed (and boy, do they!), interesting stuff is going on.

Basically, it's a muddle.

Has to be among the worst movies ever made.

Filled with close-ups of Jesus and his apostles (all the better to hide the absence of elaborate period sets), mixing quotes from the Scripture with flat exposition, this low-budget affair is earnest and, alas, more than a little bit cartoonish.

BMH2 is a harmless, genial outing, a comedy that is amusing without ever rising to the level of funny. You sit through the film with a smile on your face, waiting for the laughs that never come.

Tedious, ludicrous and harmless glimpse of the dawn of civilization.

For every laugh that Zoolander 2 elicits, there's a pang that all this was funnier the first time around.

It is a pleasant, undemanding movie that takes place over 18 hours on V-Day and considers Very Attractive People whose romantic destinies converge, diverge, and cloverleaf like the interstates threading through California's Southland.

A light-as-powder family comedy.

Suggests that one way women can fight male violence is by using the weapons of the alpha male: Marking one's territory and firing upon anyone who trespasses.

Ice Cube possesses real screen presence, and it's a shame to see him squander his talents here. He and Epps made me laugh in "Next Friday." They made me squirm here.

Not one of Sparks' best flicks (The Notebook is quite good) Safe Haven is marred by film cliches. It has an alarming number of throwaway montage sequences.

Four film sequels and 14 years later, the best I can say of Ice Age: Collision Course is that it has nice coloring and good picture contrast.

The film is an accelerated version of MTV's perennial reality series, "The Real World," only with more drinking and more sex. The results, however, are the same.

The humor here is overcooked to the point of limpness.

"Kill Bill" without irony, and without Quentin Tarantino's flair for cool dialogue and chop-socky action (and without Uma Thurman, for that matter), Elektra is a pretty-looking, pretty dull adaptation of the Marvel Comic about a dishy, deadly assassin.

There's nothing to say that crass can't be funny - and it sometimes is in Daley and Goldstein's iteration - but Vacation loses any of the ooey-gooey, family-friendly heart that made you really want Clark to get to Walley World to begin with.

A Kid in King Arthur's Court - more precisely A California Mallrat at the Round Table, in which a contemporary Little Leaguer time-travels to the 11th century and teaches Arthur how to chew bubblegum - works too hard for its occasional laugh. [11 Aug 1995, p.05]

A mercifully fleet and lamentably uninteresting adaptation of the DC Comic about a war-weary Confederate soldier.

The best that can be said about Collateral Damage is that it offers a fleeting fantasy of American invincibility at a time when we desperately crave the reality. It functions as a movie narcotic.

A by-the-numbers extravanganza that journeys from London to Venice to Siberia to Cambodia without ever really going anywhere.

As for Duff, she's bright-eyed and bubbly, though her singing talents are nowhere near as awesome as Raise Your Voice's who's-going-to-win-the-big-scholarship plotline requires.

A strident and shocking jumble, Shadowboxer suggests what you might come up with if you decided to inject John Huston's dark 1985 film, "Prizzi's Honor," with Oedipal overtones.

In Glimmer Man, Steven Seagal shows not a glimmer of acting range. [07 Oct 1996, p.E07]

By turns pleasant and preposterous, The Greening of Whitney Brown is a reverse Cinderella tale for tweens.