Does have its charms. While the videography and most of the supporting performances are amateurish, Clark and Caland are winning actors.

The perfect thriller. Nothing too gross to creep you out.

Your 12-and-unders will dig it, and it might even serve as a sort of movie-Bookmobile and get them to read a little history, or at least a little Wikipedia. But otherwise it's utterly dispensable.

When Bekmambetov is in full stride and the gore, oaths and silver bullets are flying, it's a kick. The title may sound like a joke, but Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is serious fun.

The movie pads the good stuff out with a bunch of mediocre mainstream-thriller junk. It takes too long to get started, it pulls some key punches, its dialogue is deeply uninteresting, it relies way too heavily on endless jump-scares and its finale is pure slasher-flick formula.

I was annoyed by Levasseur and Aja's desertion of their tense, simple plot in favor of tedious "plot twists" that could, frankly, use a rest. It's a waste of a good first half. (Grade: A- for first hour, C- thereafter.)

A gloomy and overwrought fable, too heavy as family entertainment. [02 Jun 1995, p.26]

There's not much of a spell to The Loss of Sexual Innocence, which is a shame, because anything this moody and pretty ought to be spellbinding. [16 Jul 1999]

This is a semi-mean-spirited movie; had it remained that way, it could have redeemed itself.

If you want genuine laughs and romance in a carnival setting, go rent "Adventureland."

By being judicious with CGI, Proyas gives the film's handful of disaster sequences great impact.

As a director, Hanks makes some nice choices (Larry Crowne lives in a very naturally integrated suburb, for one) but there's little in the film that doesn't feel made-for-TV.

Getting worked up about John Tucker Must Die is a bit like getting worked up about the taste of flan.

The movie is not so much horrible as it is drab -- from its lazy plotting to its uninspired yuks to its cop-out ending to its relentlessly yellow-brown sets. "Mad Money" does little more than take up space, and you will be two hours closer to the grave when you leave the theater.

War of the Buttons means well. But ultimately there's only marginally more edge to this treatment of World War II than there is to the average episode of "Hogan's Heroes."

Amusing, funny (intentionally and unintentionally -- it's dubbed, so many lines come out ludicrous) and, by the ending, exciting.

A nice take on the traditional maniac-meets-girl horror story. [18 Mar 1995, p.C08]

This is grim and violent but well-acted, cleverly made and full of suspense. [14 Sep 1990, p.F16]

There's almost nothing to Battleship beyond its grindingly dull, digitally rendered naval warfare.

The script is inane, and though Ferri has some funny moments, the acting is annoying or hopelessly bland.

The movie is simple fun.

It's often said that actors with distinctive vocal styles could compellingly read the phone book -- in this case, it would absolutely be a more entertaining hour-and-a-half.

For 100 minutes, I didn't think about anything else at all. And sometimes that small relief is the best thing a movie can give.

There are two solid sight gags and funny supporting work by Amy Poehler as a boozy publicist.

Awfully sloppy entertainment, built on a script with only a glancing acquaintance with logic, filled with uneven performances and staged with a near-amateur touch for comedy.

Possesses the open-ended, continual off-kilterness of Shepard theater.

How the mighty (De Niro and Hoffman) have fallen? More like how the mighty have pile-driven themselves into the solid mass of rock at the core of the Earth. . . .

One of the great things about international cinema is the way it can remind us of our common humanity. For instance, it's good to know that beautiful, rich people are selfish and miserable the world over. That's one of the few positives a viewer can take away from a film such as La Mujer de Mi Hermano.

If it works at all, fitfully, it's because of the precociously talented and in-control Moretz, who carries the film on her own small shoulders.

Cthulhu (kuh-THOO-loo) shows that you can't go home again. Seriously: Don't ever go home -- you'll be sorry.

Some will hate this film, but there's something delectably junky about it -- like a bright colored candy glistening from a gutter, you just have to look at it.

Do yourself a favor. Rent "My Bodyguard" instead.

It's a spectacle, all right -- but mostly just of a lot of people, some of whom should know better, making an utter ash of themselves.

Surprisingly entertaining.

It's exactly the film Jarmusch wanted to make, but it's also smug, excruciating, borderline pointless. You could call it a deliberate effort to invert the conventions of the thriller; you could also call it, more rightly, a self-deluded disaster.

The trouble is that the film forsakes one sort of energy for another, and the downshift is a drag.

Perhaps the most curious omission from the movie Grassroots is that there's no mention at all of the classic "Simpsons" episode "Marge vs. the Monorail."

A carnival of stupid coincidences, paper-thin characterizations, and inept staging, lighting and montage.

Paul "Surfer Boy" Walker turns in a very credible action performance if you give him a Jersey accent, cover him in grime and beat the ever-loving tar out of him for two hours.

So Ayer, the director of the new Sabotage, does it smartly, subtly, by keeping some of the Schwarzenegger totems -- the masculine power, the enormous armory, the drainpipe-sized cigars -- and raising the quality of the surroundings.

It's shallow, it's silly, it's pat.

A frustrating combination of inspiration and routine, acuity and dullness, originality and fashion. Part web-of-life indie film, part troubled teen drama, part suburban satire, part comic book fantasy, it vacillates between the engaging and the silly, buoyed by energetic performances but pulled underwater by self-satisfied writing and direction.

It's pleasantly funny, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, from start to finish, even when it's staging broad, easy gags about baby barf and fat kids.

Worthless, tasteless and unfunny.

With a titanium body and a child's mind, Chappie is a fascinating figure, vividly rendered, enough so that you wish there was a better movie around him.

It's mostly full of schlock.

The whole thing has the feel of a fact-based dinner-table anecdote absurdly puffed up to feature length.

Sadly, director Jaume Serra has taken the Gothic premise of a madman casting his living victims in wax and, no doubt at the behest of copycat-hungry producers, turned House of Wax into yet another teens-versus-hillbillies slasher flick

Soggy.

An odd, jumbled, beautifully wrought, often confusing work, this animated feature manages to be a compelling, exhilarating experience.

While the plot of The Hunted is tiresome and the character development is phlegmatic, the picture holds fascination in its determination to trim away chat and guff and focus on tempo and filmic textures.

Clumsily animated feature; probably better as a video game than as a movie.

Takes its point -- our nation has an unhealthy obsession with beauty and physical perfection -- and uses it as a bludgeon.

Very few will remember it in a few months, which is probably just fine with the folks who made it.

If the behavior of the characters had been more recognizably human in its venality, and the film's perspective more ruthless, this custom-made compound might have worked.

Tired, clumsy and appallingly ugly to look at.

The result is a sepia-toned muddle.

A slick and exciting film

If all you care about is bang-bang, then Act of Valor should satisfy you. But if all you care about is bang-bang, then you're invalidating the very reason the actual SEALS appear in this film: to put a human face on their dangerous work.

Maybe you can skip the movie and just watch the credits.

The last half hour is full of plot twists, turns and pretzel bends. They are imaginative, occasionally funny, and they make some surprises truly surprising. But in the process they leave the last flickering glimmer of credibility back around Minute No. 61. [8 Feb 1992, p.C06]

For starters, everything's grimy and humorless in a way that infects even Aniston.

The film is shot (by Dan Lausten) with a credible creepiness, and it teems with clever touches. [17 Apr 1998]

There are bits of this film that titillate, undeniably, but mainly you wait for the comic to bring out the big guns, and then he leaves you feeling more teased than tickled.

Takes a fabulous idea and overplays it, making an average picture out of some truly extraordinary material.

It adds up to a truly taxing couple of hours: ham acting, visual noise, aural torture, elementary plotting and unconvincing emotions.

It's alternately mind-boggling and patience-testing, mixing astounding sequences of over-the-top invention with scenes of inept acting and indifferent filmmaking.

It's a movie that's races from no place to get nowhere.

One too many scenes with Hartnett's genuinely unpleasant doofus drain away any investment in a film that's suddenly become an elaborate farce without jokes.

Politics and art come together in predictable, moderately enjoyable fashion in Paris 36.

In the end, The Phantom remains mediocre, with flat cinematography and crude dialogue.

It's a waste of classic material. Rent "The Incredibles" and see what should have been.

It's all clichéd, of course, and has been since "The Exorcist" but it's still effective, perhaps more so with anyone who, like our hero cop, comes from the world of scented smoke and altar boys.

A dreary, overlong and occasionally laughable classical epic about the great Macedonian world conqueror, it's guilty of a sin that no Stone film has ever committed: It's boring.

Nicolas Cageologists will be sad to hear that he's entirely too normal in National Treasure -- he's mildly funny but doesn't make any of the kooky dramatic choices (needless accents, ranting about the orifices of Greek gods) that made his other Bruckheimer performances so much fun to watch.

What's really offensive, to Hawaiians and mainlanders alike, is that after more than 50 years Hollywood can't make a better Hawaii movie than Elvis did. At least he could sing.

Feels more TV movie-of-the-week than Oscar contender.

Armed with a cliche-ridden script and a gaggle of unconvincing performers, the result comes off more like an Ernest Hemingway letter to the Penthouse Forum than a revival of Hollywood magic.

The creators of Jupiter Ascending spent $175 million on special effects and 25 cents on a story. Audiences do not get their money's worth.

It all adds up to a sequel that is, against all odds, not a total waste of your serial-killer dollar.

The charming thing about Anacondas is that it neither takes itself too seriously nor is it steeped in postmodern irony.

The story of a dead man (Keaton) who comes back to life as a snowman to befriend his troubled son (Cross) is played for laughs and tears despite its very creepy undertones. [11 Dec 1998, p.31]

Coincidental plot puts kiss of death on apathetic film. [29 Apr 1991, p.D05]

The one unforgivable crime committed in this remake is the lack of the original's most famous line of dialogue: "Klaatu barada nikto." Would it have been so tough to squeeze that in somewhere?

Something of an unforgettable experience.

To be fair, there are moments when the film seems better than, finally, it is.

You might be better off reading the book and imagining Nolte as Socrates.

The action scenes and plot points frequently defy logic, the apparent assumption being that it's just comic-book stuff and doesn't really need to make sense.

See it for Belle. See it for the parkour. And for the wonderfully magical spectacle of a man flying.

If this Dracula can kill hundreds of enemies by himself — and he can, and does, in several dull and protracted battle scenes — then where's the suspense? If he's become a monster for noble reasons, then where's the dark conflict?

In the films at least, there's something so naked about the Potter/Percy story parallels that's it's hard not to sit there as a viewer and get distracted playing connect the dots.

It's earnest but shallow, and condescends to the youth market it's obviously designed for. [05 Mar 1993]

Theron makes Libby a bristling, emotionally crippled live wire, her anger, guilt, and distrust bubbling to the surface with the slightest provocation. She's neither quite as fascinating nor nearly as despicable a character as "Gone Girl"'s Amazing Amy, but director Gilles Paquet-Brenner is no David Fincher.

At its best during the anachronistic nightclub scenes and anytime prolonged dancing is on screen. It's mostly music video stuff, but the young actors are likable enough, and the film works up just enough momentum to give it some significance.

Is ``Consenting Adults'' a joke? The question bobs to the surface like a dead catfish about halfway through the Alan J. Pakula suspense melodrama. A barely plausible but engaging premise collapses, crushing credibility like a mouse. [17 Oct 1992, p.C14]

It all passes quickly, as far as that goes, but when it’s over it passes entirely. And something that sells for a premium price ought to linger.

In many places it's genuinely, absurdly funny--crass, sleazy and morally questionable, yes, but still funny.

Has enough kicks and verve to keep the winter blues at bay, at least for a little while.