Filmmaker Kormákur orchestrates all this with broad strokes and winking intrigue, although the line between hambone melodrama and irony-tinged satire gets walked across a few too many times.

Unfortunately for Disney, the real obstacle confronting the submarine isn't the giant lobster. It's a foul-smelling ogre, and it's no contest.

Edgeless as a marshmallow and twice as syrupy.

Tai Chi Zero, the first film in a planned trilogy, will leave hard-core fight enthusiasts wanting. But it's a droll, pleasant diversion all the same.

On stage variously with Boyz II Men, Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus, and Ludacris, Bieber carries himself like a squeaky-clean homeboy with an angelic voice. On him, swagger looks sweet.

A charmingly off-the-wall little tale. Black doesn't do anything he hasn't done before (in fact, he's already done his remake of King Kong!).

Washington's portrayal of a down-to-earth, dedicated detective is what we've come to expect from the star: intense, meticulous, likable. But there isn't much depth to his role. [16 Jan 1998, p.03]

Casa de Mi Padre is at its best (a relative term, mind you) when it's at its silliest and most surreal.

300 is "Gladiator" for the gamer set.

Curiously, despite Johnson's imposing physique, it's the kids who do most of the smashing and grabbing, right up until the climax, when it's all-hands-on-neck.

A turbocharged and pungently enjoyable take on the sport so many observers see - Stone, of course, included - as a reflection of the darker side of American life.

A gloriously tacky horror movie with an inclination toward the occult, The Mother of Tears hails from the Italian schlockmeister Dario Argento, who photographs his Euro movie star daughter, Asia Argento, with something more than paternal pride.

There is so little emotionally or intellectually at stake in most popular entertainment that Goya's Ghosts, Milos Forman's challenging, compelling and wildly uneven film, shoots like a cannonball into the solar plexus. I can't remember when I've been so physically and mentally shattered.

Heartfelt and artfully shot, the movie - with little Rodrigo Noya, wearing big eyeglasses, in the title role - is too sweet for its own good, even as some of its characters do things that aren't terribly sweet at all.

A wholesome little drama aimed at the pre- and early-teen crowd.

Fascinating and strangely involving piece.

For genre geeks, this can be fun - although nothing in Scream 4 is quite as clever as the filmmakers seem to think it is.

Steamy and sexy with a smack of sadism, the movie is a throwback to old-school Hollywood action/romance.

This ninth installment in the Marvel mutant superhero franchise is rife with urgent and (dare we say?) apocalyptic comings and goings, with characters and confrontations that seem at once familiar and befuddling.

Alas, it's a throwback that's thrown its back out - limping along, trailed by battalions of stereotypes and ammo rounds of cliche.

Where "Run Lola Run" was like a perpetual-motion machine, The International seems to forever be stopping in its own tracks. Tykwer takes coffee breaks to explain the convoluted and dicey plot.

Black's caped "luchador" grows on you. Like a fun guy.

Most parties concerned maintain their grim countenances, their characters struggling to find the sweet spot between honor and greed, between doing the right thing and doing the absolute worst.

The real problem is that there's nothing to George but the movie's props.

Somnambulistic pacing, kerplunkingly unfunny jokes, and mugging thespians making fools of themselves. Truly torturous spectacle.

Movie and book both are delightful, but very, very different.

Easy to like, and easy to forget.

The Frighteners approaches the mysteries of near-death and out-of-body experiences with a script that is - even by this summer's prevailing standard of dumbness - out of its mind. [19 July 1996, p.03]