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.

Loses all its energy in the last 30 minutes and ends up back where it started. Maybe that's the point, but if so, it's as subtle as a blow to the head.

This is Hollywood Hornby: not terrible, but not worth crossing a busy street for, and nowhere near as memorable as what the Sox did last year.

Harris gamely attacks his tortured, cliche-ridden character, but Deschanel, so likably offbeat in "All the Real Girls" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," comes off as just plain annoying and self-centered.

But director Underwood seems more interested in the schmaltz then the comedy. His career is following a downward line from the enjoyably funky creature-feature ``Tremors'' to the funny-but-corny ``City Slickers'' to this all-out sugar cube. [13 Aug 1993, p.AE15]

It's a funny thing: On the one hand, you fault Taymor for going out of her way to create some of the more disposable sequences. On the other, you can forgive her: Who wouldn't get carried away given the opportunity she has been given here to play with one of the world's greatest song catalogs?

Though the picture is definitely flawed, it maintains a joie de vivre that's surprisingly refreshing.

Both deeply weird and charmingly dear.

You can only kick against it so long before you succumb to its sheer energy and verve. Waters and company simply have too much fun for some of it not to reach out and touch you through the movie screen. If you can stand the pace, you'll likely leave happy.

The film as a whole is simply an interesting and amusing mess. [10 Aug 1990]

The most famous and (naturally) least engaging film on the subject, John Sturges' melodrama about the friendship between Earp (Burt Lancaster) and Holliday (Kirk Douglas) is handsomely mounted and as dull as a dish. [02 Jan 1994, p.D06]

The potentially huge audience for Million Dollar Arm deserves a better movie, less derivative and cynical and more like something real.

Offers a few laughs and a moment or two of drama, but it's finally more of a conceit -- and a familiar one -- than a film.

Has a shocking anger and force.

Almost totally emotionally bankrupt. But it's a very specific form of total emotional bankruptcy, one that feels honest and even uplifting at the time, because the actors are great and the direction's well intentioned and just-so.

Director Charles Haid (who played Andy Renko on ``Hill Street Blues'') and the crew have come up with the right amount of ingredients for another appealing Disney action-adventure movie, predictable though it may be. [14 Jan 1994, p.13]

When it's not lapsing into disease-of-the-week prose, Adam presents a credible account of the challenges inherent in this misunderstood and often-ridiculed condition.

It's so by-the-numbers and clumsy that it will only appeal to that little sect that's managed to wear out their "Evil Dead," "Friday the 13th," "Halloween" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" DVDs.

Not only compelling and complex, but educational.

Even if Salles' film can't possibly capture the impact of its source, it's intriguing enough to rate a place in the ever-expanding mythology of "the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live."

The 155 minutes of Watchmen are studded with inspired spectacles: fights and flights and imaginary creatures and reworked bits of history.

In the end, it's a perfectly decent, perfectly vaporous film, pretty but slight, predictable but never incompetent.

Though the fiction doesn't quite equal the documentary in razzle-dazzle impact, it's a credible, handsome and engaging entertainment.

This Diary of a Wimpy kid is too often dull, unappealing and clumsy, hobbled by unnecessary changes and inventions that add no charm, energy or, truly, point.

A genre movie like this one depends on pacing, and Focus hits at least three dead spots in the final act. Writer-directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra get so much right -- the sleek look, the plot set-ups, those montages in New Orleans, the supporting cast -- that it's painful when they can't maintain Focus and land it, before and after the big reveal.

Unfortunately, neither of these fascinating artistic giants is given much of a personality.

Football, they say, is a game of inches, and so can be moviemaking, and Leatherheads is a completely charming film that comes a few inches from being a great one.

Green is onto something with this paper towns metaphor, but it's nothing Rush didn't say better in "Subdivisions."

Peter Facinelli, as Bob, isn't up to verbal sparring with Kevin Spacey just yet.

It's a lovely film that suffers from an overdetermined structure and a reliance on a sensationalized plot line that, quixotically, is ignored for long periods of time.

You ride along with a movie like this with a big, dumb grin on your face and no guilt. Not one of this summer's megabucks movies felt this frisky or fun.

The only problem is that he's been such a shallow, ridiculous figure that exhuming any real sympathy for the guy is a Herculean task.

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.

Easygoing James Garner, befuddled Jack Elam, feisty Joan Hackett and townsfolk resist land baron Walter Brennan in a reprise of his "Clementine" role. [09 Mar 2001]

The film is a minor Christmas miracle: It succeeds on its own terms, despite the gossip hounds' best blood-sniffing efforts, and dares to be an entertainment rather than a statement.

The movie knows enough, most of the time, to just let the funny people be funny.

Grint's role is larger and more "mature" than we've seen from him. During his adventures, Ben is seduced by a Scottish lit-festival flack (Michelle Duncan). But in some ways, his work is more limited here than it is in the "Potter" films. I have no idea why so many people consider Ben worth fighting for, or over.

It's a comedy with an easy message, and it's sort of sweet. Not too raunchy, not too challenging. A good date movie for sophomores.

Leaves an unpleasant aftertaste: viewers will find that a musical can indeed help the medicine go down

The film, bleeding its central character of all shades but black and darkest gray, fails as both biographical chronicle and filmed narrative.

A charming small-town comedy, thanks to the playfully romantic lead actors.

Looks great, sounds great -- what's the problem? Everything else.

As the film builds toward a ludicrous finale, it poses a question: Foster is a far better actor than Charles Bronson, and Jordan a much better director than Michael Winner, so why is The Brave One so much less satisfying than "Death Wish"?

While Wolf Creek has clunky moments, when you want to slap the idiot prey until they wake up, the movie embraces a minimalism that feels refreshingly old-school in a field of slasher films drunk on self-referential wisecracks and narrative tricks. And Jarrat's jolly-creepy performance might place Mick in the pantheon of great movie killers.

You can almost feel Depp restraining himself from saying "Tell me more about Hunter," again and again, but his enthusiasm and appreciation are real, and that's a pretty good reason for this movie to exist.

It works as designed.

King is good enough that you can't help but root for her. But frankly, I can't imagine paying full ticket price plus concessions for that privilege.

Strip off the superfluities, and it's a chamber play about people with nothing in common talking about what, at their core, they have in common. A film meant to remind us of our shared humanity mainly unites us in frustration with its thick, gummy progress.

It isn't a lack of realism or philosophical consistency that rankles most, though, but rather the anticlimactic story and uninteresting characters that make this Hereafter not very sweet at all.

For all its superfluous and self-conscious moments, the picture is a draining kick.

Schumacher's depictions of street life are cartoonishly ludicrous and riddled with cliches -- a pair of garish hookers, for instance, can't be excused simply because one is played with engaging vigor by Paula Jai Parker.

For a certain brand of film geek, the best news about The Ladykillers is that it isn't a Tom Hanks movie. It's a Coen brothers movie.

In the end, the battle scenes are elegant and compelling and there are some fine moments when O'Toole, as Priam, summons his inner Lawrence of Arabia and makes us believe that we're actually watching a tragic altercation that brought down great men descended from gods.

Leaves you exhausted and even bored.

A moderately enchanting, sometimes thought-provoking corrective to the flaws in the story that inspired it.

Bottle Shock never quite connects. And considering the more recent transformation of Napa, the movie's triumphant ending rings a bit false.

The film sort of loses its touch when it gets "dramatic" toward the end -- it's the type of flick where the sky gets overcast when everyone is sad -- but it's hard to argue with the movie's general good spirits.

The plot, as hinted, goes strictly by the "How April Got Her Groove Back" book, but it must be said that the performances push it a notch above pedestrian.

With Paul Rudd as the would-be mocker and Steve Carell as the mockee, and all manner of new supporting characters and plot lines thrown in, and much less energy, delight, wit, humor and fun than the original was able to muster without any evident strain. There's the occasional bubble, I confess, but almost no delight.

If you've seen more films in your life than you have fingers, much of it will be forgotten by the time you floss the last popcorn skin from between your teeth.

For the most part it's a completely ordinary, completely familiar, professionally executed film. Nothing truly awful, but nothing unexpected, either.

What Alive does show is engrossing, a virtually unique experience re-created thrillingly and surely as faithfully as we can stand. [15 Jan 1993, p.13]

Not to be mistaken for a serious treatment of religious fervor or clerical corruption, The Monk is instead a knowingly over-the-top bit of gothic nuttiness.

An inspirational, and mostly entertaining, saga, Joy is a Horatio Alger story for the 21st century — but who reads those anymore?

In drama, tone, character and examination of the social issues tormenting these kids, Wassup Rockers is . . . taxing.

Pure, light entertainment.

While Mr. Bean's Holiday is hardly a memorable vacation, Atkinson proves an agreeably silly tour guide.

As in many of Smith's earlier movies, the moments of ostensibly genuine emotion aren't nearly as convincing as the moments of juvenile obscenity and quasi-homophobia.

Every generation gets the cinematic vampires it deserves...The current decade, judging from the bloodsuckers on display in Twilight, will be remembered as one of guilt, restraint and denial. It's just not that fun to be undead anymore.

Disco scholars convincingly analyze lyrics and fashions as presenting bold expressions of sexuality and democratic hedonism, while Kastner doesn't skimp on the vintage clips, which range from unintentionally hilarious to surprisingly impressive.

In many ways, a smashing success. It's built not only on a casually clever script but on two expertly balanced performances.

The Manson Family, with its attention to historical detail and chronology, is more effective and disturbing than those grade-Z shockers: It's a genuine look at unmitigated madness and evil. Needless to say, don't bring the kids.

Feels like a movie that wants to bare its fangs, but only manages a mild gumming.

Keaton offers glimpses of a directorial gift, but this odd little piece feels like a warm-up for something more compelling.

The star's innate vulnerability (and his ease with Dom's colorful but expansive vocabulary) makes the character more sympathetic than he has any right to be. And that, in turn, makes Shepard's film more entertaining than the Guy Ritchie ripoff it initially resembles.

Pacific Heights is the latest sort-of-Hitchcock film and a pretty good one better than most of Hitchcock's post-``Psycho'' output. [28 Sept 1990, p.G11]

The movie's fast pace, and the three gleeful central performances, keep I'm So Excited! mostly painless. But the rest of it has a whiff of the sort of desperation that can make an exclamation point in a title seem like a good idea.

Wide-eyed, deadpan and, more often than not, note-perfect.

Hanks is remarkable in one of the minor films in smarm-meister Spielberg's oeuvre.

Accuracy and realism are terrific, but if your film becomes boring, and your dialogue isn't smart, then you need to use more poetic license.

There's a certain bravery in Brandon's full embrace of the themes of Cronenberg père, who may be returning the favor with his next film, the Hollywood satire "Maps to the Stars."

Parts of “Spark” can seem like an ad for Burning Man, but the film digs deep enough into the pressures and challenges facing its organizers and attendees to be a worthy exploration of a unique phenomenon, even for those who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing just glitter and a thong in 110 degree heat.

Man of Steel has too many characters and too much plot, resulting in a movie that feels overstuffed and overlong.

Carrey’s Scrooge is deliciously pinched and credible. As, indeed, is this film -- that is, when it feels like Dickens and not a theme park ride.

It's a brave film, particularly on the part of Allen, and in many ways an accomplished film. But it's so bookish and clever that you can never fully embrace it, even when you wish you could.

But if the notion that Austen was more reactive than creative in her writing is troubling, so is the idea that she needed Lefroy to make her into a great writer. "Experience is vital," he tells her. We should be glad this guy never got his paws on Emily Dickinson.

It's a handsome film with a palpable core of piety, but it isn't as successful in depicting secular events as spiritual ones.

It's a handsome and spry movie, and it might even have managed to be a good one if there were even the least chance of believing that Wood, who can't weigh 145 pounds dripping wet, had the slightest chance of hurting anyone with one of his wee fists.

Somehow Lee fails to make it speak to us. His heart is in the right place, but like many of the crowd that swarmed Yasgur's farm, he has rather lost his head.

A hodgepodge of bits cribbed from such films as "Centurion," "Apocalypto," "300" and "Gladiator."

Hugely entertaining.

It has laser gun fights, forbidden love, and a rollicking group breakout from a fascistic old folks' home. What more could anyone want?

There's fun to be had in the re-creation of indelible screen moments, including several with Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh and James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins.

Clumsiness follows clumsiness -- the acting, the staging, the details of the plot -- until you reach the point of cool indifference. There's a lot more wrong here than can be corrected in a small space in the newspaper.

Unfortunately, the movie isn't a real success, as director Roger Michell ("Notting Hill") is both too ambitious in the story he tries to tell and not ambitious enough in the way he tells it.

'Bloodless' is the word for the whole enterprise.

The music is lively, loud, often powerful, sometimes raunchy, yet full of unexpected subtleties and nuances. The staging is frenetic but as perfect as the machines of the art can produce. This is first class music video.