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.