Bier's direction seems tentative, unsure whether to go all-in on the pulpier aspects of the story or play it straight. She gets mixed results from her leads: Cooper is game but not fierce or conflicted enough; Lawrence doesn't get deep enough to pull anyone along on her spiral into madness.

So what is the picture saying? With its uneven tone, flat direction (on bad-looking digital video) and varied performances, very little.

No crime against the moviemaker's art, but it is flawed in a way we wouldn't expect from the director of "Shakespeare in Love."

Johnson's misplaced serious approach to Marlboro gives this style-heavy romp a few engaging moments. Rourke, looking as if he has new dentures, seems to be playing Bruce Willis. That's aiming low. [27 Aug 1991, p.D06]

By the time the film reaches its convoluted, bombastic and preposterous climax, any sense of real magic that it once conveyed has utterly vanished.

Dreary and dull.

The end result is mediocre, slightly sloppy and a mild waste of a great cast.

Endless and tedious. It's also written-in-crayon, smack-your-face dumb, and edited so that every other shot is a close-up of a flailing limb.

I appreciate that talented people wanted to honor Shelly by making this film. They likely would have better honored her by mounting her script as a play.

Occasionally, particularly when it sticks to simple slapstick, the movie wins a laugh. But the majority of it isn't just dumb and dumber, or even crude and cruder. At nearly two hours, it's just dull — and duller.

After the initial charm wears off, the whole thing gets check-your-text-messages dull.

Thanks to this flabbergasting howler of a sequence, Striking Distance becomes that rare thing: a movie so bad it's actually pretty good. [17 Sept 1993, p.AE17]

A high-tech concept done in by low-tech script and low-wattage performances. [26 May 1995, p.24]

An atrocity exhibition from start to finish.

Universal Soldier is another goony banquet of violence composed almost entirely of leftovers. It's a Frankenstein-monster of a movie with parts of a dozen or more films stitched and stapled together to make one lurching melodrama. [11 July 1992, C10]

It's not pretty. In fact, it's downright scary when the two of them, after an hour-and-a-half of insults, finally drop the robes and get into the ring. It's like two old leather handbags come to life and slapping each other around in slow-motion.

It devolves too often into slapstick shenanigans and comedy of embarrassment.

The tone of the film malingers somewhere between hyper-real comedy and thriller, but neither element really shines through.

While you're in the theater, it's actually -- heaven help me -- pretty fun to watch.

Unlike its predecessors, this one doesn't even try to aspire to myth. It aspires only to merchandising.

It may be mindless and sexless and humorless, but Jumper jumps.

Sets up a situation so weird, it's almost weirder that Rob Reiner directs it as a cookie-cutter romantic comedy.

Revenge of the Fallen almost feels like it's signaling an end-game for blockbuster movies: all sensation, no content, catastrophic expense.

An endearing romantic comedy that pokes fun at the ridiculous things people do for love.

Scooby-Doo is bad. Let's just get that right out of the way. Filled with unclever quips, tired humor, a lazy silliness and bland execution, the picture is a tedious puff of nothing.

Kind of a drag.

With limited means, Westby makes excellent use of Portland locations and cinematic references to make Film Geek a mostly spot-on, sometimes hilarious character study. His greatest asset is Malkasian, who gives Scotty the prototypical geek attributes.

A tepid disappointment that contains one mediocre chase scene and a lot of wasted talent.

The stifling piety of this film -- which regards anything old and vaguely arty as next to sacred -- needs some serious airing out.

There are a few chuckles, a few head-scratches and, thankfully, very few missteps. It charms.

If an eardrum-damaging score and people getting routinely slammed into stone walls at a 100 miles an hour without so much as chipping a tooth is your idea of a good time, then Van Helsing won't disappoint.

It's not confusing, it's just slow. Very slow. Glacial.

Of course, expecting Super Mario Bros. -- a live-action version of the kid-addictive Nintendo game -- to be a complex experience is like looking for Pauly Shore to win appointment to the Supreme Court. Plenty of talented people obviously worked hard on Super Mario Bros. to create something they hope will seem imaginative. But they're all trying to breathe life into a marketing decision. [31 May 1993, p.B04]

The deadly dull action-comedy Identity Thief is an infuriating waste of time, on all sides of camera and screen. I did not know I could yawn angrily. This movie somehow proved it possible.

So often out of control that it becomes absurd and exasperating.

A flawed fable but an intriguing one nonetheless. It's "Splash" gone existential. How many films can you name like that?

Hollow, frequently boring picture.

It's "Ocean's Eleven" for people who can't count past six.

Seeing Hitman isn't like playing a video game or even like watching someone else play a video game. It's like watching someone stupid play a bad video game.

If the plot unfolded in a less formulaic way, this could have been an impressive dark-tinged comedy. But in the end, it's more a case of talented actors trying to find something fresh in a fairly stale tale.

The script is atypically bland for Heckerling.

We're talking mediocre-to-bad. Still, the film has at least two bits that are funnier than anything in many better films and a fair amount of mild amusement in between.

It's a handsome film, but the pace is continually gummy and the set-ups stiff and artificial. Most crucially, nothing in it vanquishes the sensation that we're being sold something superfluous -- like a service contract for a carton of eggs.

The special effects and stunts are marvelous, but director Geoff Murphy (``Young Guns II)'' gets only perfunctory acting. No room for nuance at a fast trot. Even the fastest pace gets monotonous when nothing else is happening. 'Round and 'round and 'round they go, getting nowhere but making great time. [20 Jan 1982, p.C06]

Once goateed, acerbic Kingsley vanishes from the screen, he takes any smidgen of life with him.

Dazzling to look at but dreadful to listen to, the film is a tug-of-war of coolness and dreck.

A terrible, terrible movie. Its creators have a swell idea at the core, a wonderful leading lady, and several stalwart comic players in support, and they make of all of that a picture with the wit of an armpit fart, the verve of a boxwood shrub, and the appeal of a long night in an ER waiting room.

Suffers from sludgy pacing, flat writing and acting, and a strange and puzzling fondness for scatology and coarse language.

The dialogue is almost primitive at times, almost every female character is an idiot and McConaughey grossly overplays the bachelor-sleazeball antics at the beginning.

'N Sync is bouncy, harmless fun. And so is this stupid movie.

Think of the worst Spielberg thriller or one of Hitchcock's dull late career works, then make it ugly and fill it with bad performances; voila: The Happening.

Aloft reminded me of the work of another Latin American filmmaker, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who made somber, constipated dramas such as "Babel" and "Biutiful" before loosening up and conjuring the lunatic profundity of "Birdman." Llosa has the intelligence and directing chops — Aloft looks fantastic — to do wonders, but she should take a cue from him and warm up by just chilling out.

Does nothing right and, blessedly, vanishes swiftly like the aroma of a nasty belch.

It's OK to rip off/pay homage to a better movie, but the idea is to improve on it, and ideas one thing that's completely missing from Get Hard.

The movie starts out as a potboiler with a troubling character arc; unfortunately, it ends up becoming a goofy, story-overwhelming Rube Goldberg contraption that would make the producers of the "Saw" series blush.

What damage could Michael Bay inflict on Jason Voorhees that earlier producers hadn't already inflicted on everyone's favorite hockey-masked serial killer? Well, Bay could make Jason Voorhees ... boring.

If you've got a 10-year-old underfoot who needs entertaining, you could have a worse time.

Beyond a couple of cool guns and one long, gory, clever first-person shot, Doom is something the video games have never been: dull.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers failed to replace sex, splatter and cursing with sharp dialogue, characters and plotting.

Sporadically clever and chilling.

Best laugh at the movies all autumn.

There is nothing visually or thematically interesting about it. Nobody grows or changes. All the football coaches speak through clinched teeth, even when they're addressing 10-year-olds.

Basic essentially is a fun movie, surprise ending and all. To take it too seriously is to miss the point. Travolta is charming, his performance recapturing the old charisma.

It's peppy and cheesy and filled with life and humor in just the way, you imagine, that Susann might have enjoyed.

It's a forgettable series of bullet points barely strung together by charismatic performances.

The humor is on the level of flatulence by a chubby boy.

We end up with a piece of B-grade junk in which Elektra exchanges "banter" with the unexceptional Prout between fight scenes so badly shot that even Garner looks like a stunt double.

Nothing really connects, not the bullying brothers, not the frustrated parents, not the sight gags familiar to anyone who's seen the giveaway trailer. The whole production has a cheap, tacky look that the talented leads, Helms and Applegate, can't save despite considerable charm and effort.

Mingles bathos and pathos in unequal measures and instead of getting laughs, looks laughable.

The opportunity to give Jolie the room to swagger like the "Charlie's Angels" or "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" ladies is utterly squandered, and a video game franchise that might've resulted in a hoot of a film -- has been blown to dust.

All in all, it's hard to dispute that House of D declares its own worth on arrival.

It's a terrible movie, ugly to look at, tediously drawn out, unfunny in every cell and fiber of its being.

Air America is a pretty good blend of action, drama and rough comedy, although the comedy and adventure come out on top. [13 Aug 1990]

It's a film that's at once too much and not enough, laughable and groovy, dead serious and a total joke. And I mean no disrespect by any of that.

Structurally, this is as by-the-numbers as rom-coms get, right down to the wacky best friends, played by Judy Greer and Dan Fogler. For a while, it's low-key enough to be tolerable.

It's as beautifully acted throughout as it is photographed, and it has a quizzical tone somewhere between sociological documentary and farce. [22 Aug 1989]

With the exception of one long improv riff on a campground basketball court, Williams nicely underplays his role. Unfortunately, Sonnenfeld also underplays his. We should expect more of him.

Even the show-stopper "Tomorrow" comes off as half-hearted and obligatory. The choreography looks like it was improvised by the young actors who play Wallis' fellow foster kids — all listless jumping and arm-folding, no inventiveness or energy.

It's a yawn for the most part, depending on dull characters and uninvolving twists.

Like most Meg Ryan comedies, Uptown Girls has a heroine who's adorable only because it says so in the script.

If the movie wasn't about an actor but instead about an insurance salesman or a plumber who looked like James Gandolfini, it might come off better. But then, who says a plumber would care either?

Kickboxer is a film for the truly undiscriminating. It exists for one reason, to display the physique and kickboxing style of Jean-Claude Van Damme. Compared to Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone is Laurence Olivier and Chuck Norris is John Malkovich. [13 Sep 1989, p.C05]

It's been fascinating to watch the "intellectual" subgenre of the serial-killer movie -- the one where poetic evil geniuses elude the cops while leaving trails of art-directed crime scenes -- run out of ideas and start feeding on itself.

The movie's message -- repression is bad, self-expression is good -- is amiable, and Shore's androgynous appearance and mannerisms are more subversive stuff than the usual fish-out-of-water formula offers. But director Steve Rash can do nothing with the feeble comedy bits. [2 July 1993, p.15]

So drippy it really should be hung out to dry.

When you have to ask yourself whether this parable is intended as comedic satire or stone-cold-serious moralizing, that's a big sign that you're watching a misfire.

The plot is simplicity itself, and Jaden's quirk-free character and bland performance don't add anything. It's actually a little sad that M. Night Shyamalan has descended to this sort of vanity-project work-for-hire, but at least he didn't insist on some absurd twist ending.

Lopez is fine, sometimes quite funny, but she's better playing the take-no-prisoners planner than a goofy, insecure dork.

Director Jay Chandrasekhar ("Super Troopers") will never be mistaken for an artist. But he's competent with crude humor and manages to balance affectionate parody and rote imitation.

For all its improbability and rigorous emotion, Desperate does have its moments of quiet suspense and tension. Cimino often gets good performances and does so here. But when it's all over, nothing really unexpected has happened, and it has taken a lot of unpleasant moments to get through the desperate hours. [11 Oct 1990, p.C09]

Basinger herself doesn't have the vibrancy of a female hero.

Exists for one purpose, and one purpose only: to further the entertainment careers of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. It's like an Elvis movie for 'tweenagers. That doesn't make the film uninteresting as a pop confection.

Forgettable teen piffle.

For all his invention, Forsyth's reach ultimately exceeds his grasp. "Local Hero," without trying so self-consciously hard, conveyed more of the ephemeral beauty of life than Being Human does.

It actually makes the 1989 version (starring Dolph Lundgren) look pretty good by comparison. Oh, yes. It's that ghastly.

January Man has some amusing moments, and Mastrantonio manages to make her character interesting, but one can't forget that this cliche-packed, improbable script came from the author of Moonstruck. [16 Jan 1989, p.C06]

A movie of utter inconsequence -- a cinematic Listerine Strip that evaporates from the brain before you even get your popcorn tub to the trash.

Charles Grodin, in his first film in a dozen years, provides some of the best moments as Sofia's dad, while Mia Farrow is kind of creepy as her mom.