Married to the Mob picks up pace throughout and builds to an exciting finish. [19 Aug 1988]

If John Waters had directed Mermaids, the new Cher comedy, it might have more of the spunk and the trash that it needs. In the hands of middlebrow director Richard Benjamin, it starts off promisingly but finally sinks into schmaltz and melodrama. [14 Dec 1990, p.E1]

As the camera follows four campers in a Portland, Ore., rock school for girls, the result is less a journey than a collage of random thoughts, circumstances and events. There's plenty of telling, but not enough showing.

It depicts the world of a century ago in a way that comments on the anxieties facing the world today, and it does so, at least for a while, with cleverness and a sense of fun.

Though Michelle’s transformation into a family-loving gal is hardly convincing, the film still moves along quickly, and McCarthy has some memorable moments in which her comic chops are on full display.

The movie isn't particularly well-paced, and I found it dull. But I've got to give credit to Todd Masters, who designed the special-effects makeup, to Gilbert Adler, who directed the Crypt Keeper sequences, and to Zane, who plays the Collector with style and wit. If I were 12, I might've loved it.

Although more Fiennes is always a good thing, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple simply doesn’t have the solid storytelling or enthralling characters that its predecessor has.

Is it a comedy if the audience laughs or is it a comedy if laughs were intended, irrespective of whether they're generated? Excuse Me for Living qualifies under the second definition.

It’s a more modest Traffic in several ways, adequate at what it tries to say about this dirty business but light on the wider scope of the suffering that it causes. Because there actually is a crisis, maybe it should be addressed with more of an emphasis on authentic details than on genre conventions.

Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, however, Vin Diesel shows no discernible comedic skills.

Does its conclusion make up for the gluten overload that was most of “Rebel Moon”? Well, the series’ not-at-all-original theme is redemption, so that depends on whether you’re in a forgiving mood or sufficiently wowed.

Lister is quite funny and engaging. It's just too bad that some of that screenwriting wit couldn't have been shared with the movie's protagonist.

The movie has some clumsy dialogue and awkward turns, but the picture is brisk and likable.

It's like watching a bad update of an Antonioni film.

Lego Ninjago is still nowhere near bad “Alvin and the Chipmunks” sequel territory. But at this rate, we may be only one or two movies away.

It is not what could be fairly called a bad movie, but neither is it fine enough to be a good one, with its lineup of dull characters and a limp story that functions like a conveyor belt.

With its picture-perfect Taipei cityscapes, appealing cast and soothing, smoothed-over storyline, Love in Taipei makes for a stress-free comfort watch. Fans of the book may just wish it had been truer to its source material — after all, isn’t teendom supposed to feel a little dramatic?

The sexual tension is thick between the woodland creatures in Alpha and Omega, an animated children's film with a plot that has more in common with "The Blue Lagoon" than "Bambi."

A sequel was called for, and so a sequel has arrived -- but it's a slightly zombie-like version, with the size, look and shape of the original movie, but without its lightness or spirit, its soul.

While not offering anything particularly surprising or challenging in its take on the unpredictable shadow of loss, “Good Grief” delivers plenty of heart.

Aniara has an intriguing premise, and it’s even fascinating at times, but despite an excellent production design, it never gets off the ground even as it speeds through the cosmos. The characters are not fully formed, so we’re not invested in their futures.

The film's editing and pacing are appealingly straightforward, not to say blunt, and the humor runs from dry to bone-dry to parched.

The film is often funny and even more frequently vulgar, exploiting every last chance for raunch in the full-chassis exchange of two grown men. The only thing missing: male nudity.

For all its goofiness, director Widen has made a film with some genuinely creepy moments.

Still, Silk Road remains watchable because both Robinson and Clarke are interesting screen presences. And there’s some humor, which consistently lands better than the thrills.

Perfectly acceptable, perfectly bland, competently acted but by no means a scary horror movie, in which "they" are coming to get people.

The Passion of the Christ should have left audiences in a state of exaltation. Instead it just leaves audiences exhausted.

The Providence Effect" is flawed, but it's still a moving film.

Rodrick Rules has a brighter comic edge than its predecessor - and a bit more spunk.

Director Ben Lewin has crafted a biopic spy thriller, kind of, but the script has neither the character shadings to be a biopic nor the pacing and twist and turns to be a spy thriller.

Basically, this is a really good movie until the last part, where director and co-writer Darren Lynn Bousman ruins so much so fast that you'll wonder if his actions are deliberate -- or if the studio interfered.

The most shocking thing about Come Play, however, is that it has a pretty good ending after such a long, poorly paced slog through scary movie cliches.

The story doesn't quite pay off, characters are underwritten and the surprise ending is contrived and unconvincing.

It's a modest and mildly funny effort, with good scenes and touches of incisive satire, but it's not quite funny enough, and it's undermined by its camera technique.

Granted, you don't expect much from a movie like this: azure seas and honey-dripped sunsets, perhaps, a little titillation and a few wicked laughs. But Robert Steadman's photography lacks the imagination of Almendros' work on The Blue Lagoon, and the rare erotic moments are no match for the dumbness of Leslie Stevens' script. [03 Aug 1991, p.C3]

The history itself is the main appeal here.

The film never quite overcomes a slightly stodgy quality.

Eminently watchable, with enough majestic vistas and heroic derring-do to get by. It could have been so much more.

The fact that the movie has to entertain with digressions is an indication of more than looseness, but rather a shoddiness...Nothing connected with the job is of any interest at all.

Slick, overly deliberate and brimming with hammy performances...directed by Rob Reiner with glistening, uninspired competence. [11 Dec 1992]

Muniz, however, is hampered by Stripes' constant moping, which brings out the "Malcolm in the Middle'' star's whinier tendencies.

If you can still be entertained by a thriller that unabashedly borrows from others of its ilk and don't mind reading subtitles, you could do worse than District B13. It's over so fast, in a quick 85 minutes, there's scarcely time to get bored by the silly plot.

Benefits enormously from smart casting across the board.

Affecting at times, but finally feels overblown and heavy-handed.

This tale of a young rape victim further brutalized by officialdom never lives up to its potential.

Though Zack Snyder is known as an action director, he is a genuine artist and one of the most exciting and promising filmmakers to emerge in the past 10 years. His new movie, Sucker Punch - let's just say it - is a failure, but there's so much talent on that screen that the movie can't be dismissed as a waste of time.

Enola Holmes films are too concerned with chases, romance and flattering their target audience to even consider challenging anyone’s puzzle-solving abilities.

The film’s thoroughness is a virtue or a problem, depending on one’s point of view.

Even the interesting parts of A Lego Brickumentary aren’t that interesting, but are rather more like the best thing you might hear while being cornered by the most boring person at a party.

Curiously and unexpectedly, the movie brings on a suffocating feeling of constraint. It's a consequence of seeing characters with such terribly limited mobility.

A movie with lots of heart but no heartbeat.

It would help if the plot were more than just an outline with a few convenient turns.

The main thing to like about Stone Cold is that the movie is honest enough to have things go wrong -- so wrong, and in ways that are unexpected. [18 May 1991, p.C3]

Oristrell's comedic sense only seems to succeed in spurts, and he often burdens the proceedings with a theatrical and contrived air that undermines the humor.

An odd picture, a rumination on depression and self-discovery that's couched as an office comedy.

The ending is predictable to anybody who's followed the trajectory of outsourcing. Outsourced humanizes those affected by it - even if the story sounds familiar.

Burden is a film of integrity, with something even better than a social conscience. It has a social purpose. If you see it, you’ll learn something.

To its credit, the movie eschews cheap dramatics, but at times it eschews dramatics altogether.

The result is an interesting but often frustrating effort by the director of "The Sea Inside," who proves that ambition and talent aren't enough to ensure a compelling drama.

The specifics of their predicament are well handled -- being thrown in a Third World prison may be every tourist's nightmare -- even if the movie eventually goes soft and squishy.

If you can get past a few swear words, the film's simplicity makes Glory Road a good starting point to get young kids to talk about racism.

Even if it means blowing more than half the budget on animal wranglers, any movie that profiles Saddam Hussein's eldest son and Iraqi psychopath Uday Hussein is incomplete without the presence of his personal zoo. It's like filming a Michael Jackson biopic and leaving out the chimp, Ferris wheel and kid who played "Webster."

Ultimately there's something too measured, too controlled in his film.

Becomes tiresome.

Buoyed by some sensitive performances and nearly tanked by insensitive filming.

It leaves one feeling queasy about human nature.

It's precisely Seagal's incongruity that has made him a great absurdist hero -- and that makes Fire Down Below a kick.

It’s conscientious. It’s watchable, and it’s never less than competent. But it seems to strive so hard to be inspirational, rather than letting the inspiration come through the story, that it becomes preachy and self-conscious.

It presents a mostly sympathetic portrait of Mildred Gillars, the American actress who made propaganda radio broadcasts for the Nazis during World War II. Not an impossible task, but a tough one that the best efforts of producer-star Meadow Williams and director Michael Polish couldn’t make persuasive.

To the extent Final Portrait succeeds, and it does intermittently, it’s a rather deadpan comedy about two men trying to understand each other against a cultural and generational gulf.

It has no ambition, little sense and false sentiment, but it does have velocity, high spirits and scale.

Teen Titans never reaches that sweet spot where adult and kid humor align in a single gag.

For all of its transgressive plush-toy sex and screw-'em humor, the plot is pretty standard stuff.

There are reversals of expectation, miraculous escapes from certain doom -- all the things that make thrillers thrilling. But The Da Vinci Code isn't thrilling.

The result is a film that's honest and tepid, intelligent and dull, worthy and forgettable.

So, there you have it, a bad good movie, or a good bad movie, but a very decent Jennifer Lopez movie.

It exudes goodwill and high spirits, occasionally makes you feel really good, and yet here and there and in some definite ways, it kinda sorta stinks.

Amenta was deeply moved by Rita's story, but his prosaic direction can't do it justice.

As one might expect from a Christian film, Miracles From Heaven centers on faith — and a major miracle — but it’s also a decent family drama about a mother’s tribulations in caring for her sick child.

It’s Ice Road Truckers with a plot and concentrated, well-staged jeopardy. The film’s vibe is different from the History Channel series, but fans of that show will likely welcome the return of familiar thrills and predicaments.

Only a temporarily compelling conflict for a feature-length film.

Vanessa Redgrave makes a regal if too-brief appearance.

Summer fluff that admits to being summer fluff, but it's no better off for admitting it...Intended as lightweight comedy, but if you think about it too much, it's not so funny.

Hawke is effectively brooding, which recalls his first collaboration with Almereyda, a 2000 adaptation of “Hamlet” set in modern-day New York City.

It's a little of this, a little of that, and in the meantime there's not a single joke to crack a smile over. [20 Mar 1993, p.C3]

Li is a phenomenon.

The Dance of Reality may not succeed, but it may hold some interest to cinephiles as a relic of a kind of extravagant, overheated personal cinema that doesn't exist anymore.

Directed by first-time film maker C.M. Talkington, Love & a .45 is a low-rent variation on Natural Born Killers -- ragged, raunchy, a bit bratty but not altogether worthless.

Well-acted as far as superficial characterizations allow (Costner and Jon Baird share screenplay credit) and impressively mounted for a wide-open-spaces pageant that, quizzically, was not shot in widescreen, “Horizon” is most successful at filling its frames with ambition.

Something is wrong with A Good Woman: The lightning never strikes. It's never quite alive.

As a movie, Spinning Gold is a clumsy effort with a lot wrong with it, except for the real-life story, which never stops being interesting.

Techine doesn't have much of a story to tell, so instead of moving the narrative forward, he expands it laterally.

The last five minutes of Midnight Sky are touching and beautifully acted — if you’re willing to wait for it.

It's a film with impressive elements, though taken as a whole it's pop entertainment that doesn't fully deliver on the entertainment end.

Dark City grabs your eyeballs and squeezes.

The movie, based on the novel by Simon Brett, tries very hard to make a statement about the feelings of a man who has struggled for years and suddenly finds himself over the hill, a shutout at work and at home. But the tale falters on Caine's character. [23 Mar 1990, p.E5]

The story is fluff, but it's mostly appealing.

Astonishing visualizations of the afterlife are coupled with a drawn-out allegory about communication between the living and the dead that becomes something of a trial to sit through.