The movie's anchored by a strong lead performance and a steady sense of humor.

Thought-provoking, making this a solid date movie science geeks and philosophy freaks alike.

The story, as so often in bad farce, treats them all as idiots, so it's almost impossible be engaged by anything other than the pretty rooms, gondolas and costumes.

The lunacy to which The Equalizer descends is especially disappointing because the movie starts out with some promise.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit though, gets the international-espionage ingredients almost exactly right.

Despite some arresting visual flourishes and Downey’s inherent likeability, it’s nearly incoherent both as cinema and as story. No, this isn’t your grandfather’s or your father’s Sherlock Holmes, but if theirs featured Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett in the lead, it was better by miles.

For good and ill, there is only one John Waters.

Rosemary Clooney (that's Danny Ocean's aunt) steals the show as one half of a sister act accompanying the boys on their yuletide misadventures. The real highlight, of course, is the Irving Berlin score. [24 Dec 2004, p.39]

Despite the avoidance of fundamental surprise -- there are a few good ones along the way -- Shoot To Kill is still an OK suspense adventure. Director Roger Spottiswoode (Under Fire, The Best of Times) makes the most of the wild, sometimes vertical terrain, and the acting is fine. [15 Feb 1988, p.C04]

A scary performance by James Woods as a racist assassin brought to justice after 30 years and the sheer importance of the true story redeem an awful script. [03 Jan 1997, p.16]

Despite some rough edges, Dogfight is a sweet, enjoyable match. [08 Nov 1991, p.AE15]

Wants to be both a hot-button, ripped-from-the-headlines statement movie and a crowd-pleasing, rip-roaring action thriller. It ends up meeting each goal about halfway.

As is, it's a pleasant but unremarkable retelling of a story as old as the Dead Sea itself.

The writer-director has done a lot of opera, onstage and on film, and he sure is fond of the dramatic gesture. His leading man, Poelvoorde, is not at first glance the type of guy who'd captivate two such stunning women, but this is France, and his desire and anguish is real.

The pleasures of Buffalo Soldiers mainly come early on, before the film becomes a sloppy mixture of tones and story lines. Afterward, you're left mainly puzzled and looking for a way to wash a bitter aftertaste out of your mouth.

Whishaw's oddly charismatic performance makes the despicable Grenouille into an almost sympathetic antihero. The rather astonishing finale will likely have audiences either howling in derision or ardently dissecting afterward. And it must have given the bluenoses at the MPAA fits.

With very little dialogue and through what's essentially a gimmick, we come truly to like these guys.

Hollywood used to make a fair number of films like The Escapist (sigh: remember grown-up dramas?), and it's a satisfying variation on a once-familiar theme.

Foley is an actors' directors stuck here with a genre piece, and it shows: The action (save a killer car chase) is clumsily staged. Still, the story about corrupt police in New York's Chinatown has occasional moments of depth. [12 Mar 1999]

Another Bond film that turns out to be an unspectacular spectacle, at times winking and fun but too often plodding and hackneyed. That said, as usual Brosnan is terrific, walking through dunderhead moments and a tedious plot with grace.

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.