Dick works best as a catalog of style: It's the story and the acting that are the window dressing.

I could see people enjoying Dan in Real Life, I guess -- the scenery is nice and the people are pretty and the songs are cute little emotion substitutes. But Dan? Buddy? It's not all about you.

Their collective timing is so off that the dead space around their endless bits is like that more commonly experienced during a job interview gone wrong.

The film drags and lingers and goes more or less nowhere, imitating its protagonists' lives so exactly that you want to give them both a good smack.

The film's structure is a reminder that being Pinteresque isn't the same as being written by Harold Pinter, and its lyrics prove that there's a big difference between something Sondheim-esque and the real deal.

Chock-full of the sort of levity that leaves you feeling you've been beaten about the head with a lead pipe.

As so often happens, politics and religion add up to a double dose of self-righteousness.

Witless, tasteless, toothless, pointless, garish, repetitive, obvious, and painfully dull, Pirate Radio is that exceedingly rare film that never, but never puts a foot right.

Not much in The Man From Elysian Fields resembles life on Earth, but there are a few moments with Jagger that feel desperate and human -- stuff from another movie entirely, in other words.

Jason Schwartzman is upstaged by his dog in 7 Chinese Brothers.

What's left is a husk with all the superficial features of a Scream movie and none of the heart, brains, guts or laughs.

From the evidence presented here, this film's three screenwriters have not only never taken a commercial flight, they've never met any actual human beings. The details of air travel and human behavior are equally foreign to the film.

A seedy little movie with little in the way of theme, purpose, energy or wit, 'R Xmas is the latest slice-of-death drama from that earnest maestro of grub, Abel Ferrara.

Tusk is a step backward into an insular world. True, it will probably play well to gore fans, and that dedicated audience who already cheer everything Smith does.

Making a movie with a sad-sack protagonist this hard to root for is like laying track for the main line express to nowhere. Watching it is like taking a ride so bumpy, with scenery so boring, that you end up hoping for a derailment. Either way, buying a ticket for The D Train is something to regret.

Might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.

Groove seems to be less about what it is chronicling than what its attempting to decipher.

Hampered from the start by the numbingly formulaic additions by screenwriter James DeMonaco ("The Negotiator"). Toss in needlessly fussy visuals and a climax that is hilariously out of whack, and you've got an excellent excuse to stay home and watch the original.

One can only hope that the parties responsible for Bandits are brought to justice and someone can stop them before they film again.

Allen's movies, even at their lowest, have usually boasted interesting musical scores, melding jazz, classical, and American standards. Irrational Man, though, uses The Ramsey Lewis Trio's "The 'In' Crowd," an already overexposed riff, so repetitively that I thought I was seeing the film with a temp soundtrack. The real Woody, whatever his flaws, would never have allowed this. I hope he comes back someday.

A contrived and sentimental melodrama, the film takes a promising premise and crushes it with mind-numbing repetition, sophomoric conveniences, plastic acting and the worst score, perhaps, ever heard.

Goes on too long and doesn't have much to say.

It just drones on and on, so repetitiously that you wonder if some of the reels have been shown twice. [7 Nov 1992]

There are movies that are made for the big screen, and movies that are made for the small screen; Passionada is the latter type.

Would somebody please pull the plug on James Bond? It's not that Tomorrow Never Dies is inconceivably bad. What with dashing Pierce Brosnan cavorting as 007, nifty Michelle Yeoh playing chop-socky on bad guys' heads, and a nearly-sentient BMW in Bond's bag of tricks, it's got at least as much going for it as, oh, a good Steven Seagal film. [19 Dec 1997, p.19]

The animation is dull, the thought is fuzzy, the storytelling is vague and the music just plain stinks. It's not "National Velvet," it's sure not "The Black Stallion," it's not even "Dances With Wolves."

Go only if you're really, really willing to suspend disbelief. [16 Jan 1998, p.23]

It doesn't help that director Ken Kwapis stages everything like a sitcom, has no sense of pace, and buries the theme of late-life friendship under a haze of sentiment and trail dust.