An odd little concoction, a coming-of-age story that, only in passing, is also a mystery.

Director Doug Hamilton was given extraordinary access from the very beginning, so that we see Green Day composer and lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong having some of his initial meetings with Broadway director Michael Mayer, who conceived the show.

It's a maddening, satisfying, junky, enjoyable picture.

Ultimately, the story of Yves Saint Laurent makes a compelling argument for fashion as art, and begs to answer the question if there is such a thing as innate taste. And although the cadence might not be entirely original, the high-style results most certainly are.

Isn’t a bad film. But it’s a little slow and a little too un-chaotic for its own good.

In special effects, Lucas has moved a galaxy beyond. In energy, not yet.

The problem with Popcorn is that it's just as ridiculous as the horror movies it satirizes. [02 Feb 1991, p.C3]

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

Might have been more effective as a documentary.

You can't fool me. I know it's actually a parlor game.

It's no great shakes as a film, but its combination of mild comedy, slapstick, pathos, many photogenic canines and a positive message will make it irresistible to families.

It's one thing for a romantic comedy to be predictable - they all end at the same destination, after all. But it's quite another thing to be predictable at every twist and turn of the story.

Has a made-for-television style.

With convincing in-your-face footage, The Program is certain to be a crowd pleaser for fans who like their football action raw. Some of the roughest action is off the field. [25 Sept 1993, p.E1]

At heart, ridiculous -- ludicrous in its conception and silly in its spectacle.

A pedestrian film that provides little more than a superficial treat.

That the movie becomes silly isn't necessarily a problem, but it also becomes tiresome, degenerating into a series of martial arts interludes -- everyone unaccountably leaves his guns at home.

Cloying mix of screwball comedy and drama.

Yet another 'Stallion'? Talk about beating a dead horse.

Grading on the Tyler Perry curve, though, “The Six Triple Eight” respects its noteworthy topic — and its audience — as much as it possibly could.

A lovely though stubbornly shallow romp in nostalgia mixed with contemporary adult angst. [23 Apr 1993, p.C7]

An intriguing portrait of an insular community, but its recounting of the seduction of a bright young man by the surrounding culture is heavy-handed.

Why is Breakfast With Scot in theaters instead of set for broadcast on the Lifetime, Hallmark or ABC Family channels?

Sister Act is lifted above its formula by a strong ensemble cast. It's not just a matter of Goldberg and Smith, who are excellent. Kathy Najimy all but steals the picture as the bubbly, cheerful Sister Mary Patrick, and veteran Mary Wickes does a nice turn as Sister Mary Lazarus, a tough nun from an earlier era. [29 May 1991, p.D1]

Killers is the most gorgeous-looking torture porn film I have ever seen — and has a couple of tremendous action sequences. But it is also thoroughly disgusting.

Of course, the real problem here isn’t that Ritchie isn’t Noel Coward, but that he’s not clever or funny in his own right. The Gentleman isn’t offensive, and it’s not even good enough to qualify as coarse. If it weren’t mildly annoying, it would be as close to nothing as an experience can be.

Visually, the film is a stunner, dotted with psychedelic colors and many shades of red -- one battle is fought with red laser-gun sights -- some looking realistically like blood. When gangsters open fire, their falls are choreographed like a ballet. The problem comes when the cast opens its mouth and Elizabethan dialogue tumbles out.

Fails to engage.

Begins like a penetrating exploration of love, grief and suffering and ends looking like a highbrow version of "Bride of Chucky."

Targeted as Valentine’s Day comfort cinema, the new Paramount+ movie At Midnight is as sappy and predictable as it sounds, with walks along the beach, romantic getaways, candy-colored scenery and, of course, the inevitable mix-ups, misunderstandings and silly arguments that are requirements of the rom-com genre.

A road trip into the heart of that bumpiest of territories, the adolescent id.

The film Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away highlights both the strains of the franchise and the willingness to promote the brand at any cost - including a coherent narrative. It's a big promo reel, and not a carefully disguised one.

The Call might not be a classic for the ages, but for a Friday night? For a movie to take people out of themselves? And to make them marvel at the viewing experience that just happened to them? This one is hard to beat.

The film captures the harshness and the sweetness of our time.

If “The Jungle Book” is like taking a trip to Disneyland, then “Mowgli” is a hike straight into unknown woods with nothing but some duct tape and a Bowie knife.

Comedy is getting more and more nasty and more and more funny. But it’s hard to imagine any movie more nasty-funny than Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.

Mexican filmmaker Antonio Serrano applies the fantasy device so haphazardly as to render it irritating instead of surprising.

An idiosyncratic document of sexual obsession and guilt, it alienates as easily as it mesmerizes.

Can't sustain its narrative for a full 95 minutes.

The film has a fairly clever and original premise — one that’s better left unspoiled as a third act reveal. But the path to it is bizarre and beguiling with too many moments that feel like an episode of “CSI” or “Without a Trace” with much better cinematography and worse dialogue. It kind of makes you wonder what the hell Wan was doing here.

Hunnam makes a strong impression as a tough guy in the title role, but there’s something about either him or the filmmaking or the subject matter that allows viewers to resist making his problems our problems.

Day Shift pauses for a promising concept every now and then before zooming off to its next helping of amped-up gore. The graphic violence is never terribly disturbing, mostly because it’s rendered with cartoonish exaggeration.

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

The film is filled with unintentional laughs and with other moments that are simply jaw-droppingly absurd, either for the histrionic acting, the dated style of writing, the pseudo-science or just the spectacle of evil in pigtails. One could easily make the case that the movie is simply awful. Yet everything dated and peculiar about it is fascinating and does not detract -- it may even enhance -- the fun of the central premise. [05 Sep 2004, p.28]

The movie is never much more than fluff. But, like director Donald Petrie's previous film, "Grumpy Old Men," it has an honest core that enables it to keep its balance. [29 Apr 1994]

It's a so-so film with jarring tone changes and a plot that sputters before a predictable ending. But there are moments of inspiration and authenticity.

A movie with lots of heart but no heartbeat.

With its bigger budget and wider scope but less gripping story, “Peninsula” is much more of a generic, CGI-reliant action movie that often feels like a video game coupled with a few pages ripped from the scripts of “Mad Max” and “Escape From New York.”

But let’s be fair: If this were the first cop movie ever made, we’d be grateful for it. It holds interest. It’s never quite boring. And there are worse things you can do with your time than watch Boseman, Miller and Simmons for an hour and a half. Just know that 21 Bridges is the kind of movie you’ll forget five minutes after seeing it.

Even if a quarter of what Boreman claimed was true, she had a lot more coming to her than a sympathetic hearing and much prettier actress playing her onscreen. She practically deserved an apology from the male sex, and that, in a way, is what this movie is.

Marry Me is entirely Lopez’s movie, and she’s terrific, right there emotionally in some difficult scenes. But it’s too much Lopez’s movie — too many (lousy) songs, too many dance numbers. A half hour in, there’s no mistaking it: Lopez was one of the producers.

A final word about Bardem: He’s simply terrific. With his shaggy curly hair, exaggerated showmanship, athletic dance moves and operatic gestures, Hector is part Willy Wonka and part Gene Kelly — it’s Bardem’s most off-the-rails performance since his turn as a James Bond villain in “Skyfall.”

If one can accept the story’s videogame logic and cope with the kinetosis, “Hardcore” is often exhilaratingly extreme.

The chief virtues of Parkland are journalistic in the best sense.

The opening to John Carter is a dud, a battle between airships made of woven bamboo, bursting into computer-generated flame over a sandy terrain. There's nothing to see, nothing to think about, nothing to care about, and nothing to feel, just emptiness. The emptiness is never filled over the course of 132 long, barren minutes.

Mulholland Falls is a provocative crime drama with a limp script and a forced feeling. But star Nick Nolte is a ticking time bomb as a brutal Los Angeles police detective with a hulking, gasping sense of pain and meanness. He gives the film an odd, askew tone that keeps it tough and alive.

I won't tell you Taken is great, but it's great fun.

Has a gutsy premise, but no guts.

Essentially a throwaway film.

So if you don't mind, I'll just go back to believing that someone named Shakespeare (whoever he was) wrote Shakespeare's works. And I'll just go back to regarding them with awe.

An average action film, made slightly better by Cruise, and more bizarre by Herzog, and more watchable by Pike, but still within the average range, a silk purse that still says oink.

Romeo Is Bleeding -- not the best title -- takes chances, and although not all of them work, the film manages the difficult trick of swinging wild while holding together. Part of the credit has to go to the consistently well-pitched acting, by Oldman and Olin and also by the actors in smaller roles, including Annabella Sciorra's quiet but edgy turn as Jack's hard-to-read wife. [4 Feb 1994, p.C3]

The banter, often Smith’s strong suit, is witless and tiresome, mostly obsessive conversations about minor characters in “Star Wars” and other aspects of pop culture. It’s probably not Smith’s intention, but we end up feeling sorry for the characters, that they inhabit such a tiny mental landscape.

Wilson is basically playing an even more feckless version of his "Office" character, Dwight, another intense and self-deluded doofus. It's a character that works better in smaller doses.

Ryan's comic timing continues to delight, while Kline is touchingly heartfelt as a man doing what is evidently all too easy to do -- fall in love with Meg Ryan.

Always is such a lamentable production _ hardly a moment rings true _ that you almost feel like saying ''pardon me'' when you wonder why it apparently didn't occur to Spielberg or anyone else involved that no chemistry was taking place. Not only are the stars rather uninteresting people, they don't seem to like each other in any way that you can feel. [22 Dec. 1989, p.E1]

Disenchanted, a delightful follow-up to the beloved fairy tale Enchanted, delivers everything you could ask for in a sequel. It not only continues the original film’s magical mix of music, animation, live action and humor, but also takes the story in a new and interesting direction.

So forced and contrived in delivery that it's tedious. That's not good when the intention is to be audacious.

Kilmer dons 12 disguises in all, polishes them with impeccable accents and pliable postures and gives a performance that's far and away the best aspect of the diverting The Saint.

This is a terrible movie. It has no business being as terrible as it is, because it boasts a perfectly acceptable horror premise and a perfectly acceptable cast.

Funny, heart-tugging, intermittently awesome and a loving if ambivalent homage to the heyday of martial arts cinema, writer-director Larry Yang’s film may not blend tones as seamlessly as Chan’s best work from the 1980s and ’90s did. But “Ride On” is moving and thrilling enough to be a worthy capper to the Chan canon.

The truth is, Studio 666 really is just one joke, and so McDonnell had only one play that he could make here — to take that joke, to hit it hard and keep hitting it, and then get out fast, while the audience is still laughing. He doesn’t quite do that. At 106 minutes, Studio 666 overstays its welcome.

Life With Mikey is friendly and funny and ought to renew a lot of lost affection at the movies in coming weeks -- it's solid entertainment with heart and an ever- so-gentle contemporary edge. [4 June 1993, p.C1]

Wolf Man does not fully compel until it becomes ridiculous, employing a wolf-cam perspective that shows what a werewolf sees when he encounters people: glowing-eyed figures who look like AI-hallucinuted Teletubbies.

What makes this film special and memorable is the character of Danny Green, who is not the usual neighborhood hoodlum you see in movies.

A flick so terrifying and brilliant that it makes the two other Chainsaw sequels seem like After-School Specials. [20 May 1995, p.E6]

It's so bleak that it would play like a contrived neo-noir if it weren't so consistent, committed and obviously sincere.

We are aware going in that Varsity Blues' cannot be a landmark of world cinema. Yet working within the tired formula, the picture turns out to be not so bad.

As exciting to watch as any Warren Miller ski film, Billabong Odyssey also has the sensibility of a good PBS documentary.

Hoodlum is an overlong gangster movie, a bloated and often laughable attempt at an epic.

A canny buyer will beware the blandishments of car salesmen, but it's a mystery why Robin Williams bought the inane script for Cadillac Man. [18 May 1990, p.E3]

The real problem with True Story is contained in its title. The story isn’t too good to be true, but rather too true to be good.

A smart farce that would make Hugh Grant and his fans proud.

This is the world of Maze Runner: The Death Cure, the third installment in the “Maze Runner” trilogy, a kind of destitute man’s impoverished cousin’s answer to the “Divergent” series.

Though Carolla and co-filmmaker Kevin Hench devise some funny situations — particularly, the one in which a newly divorced woman insists on coming back to his room — the overall feeling that comes across is one of sadness, and that seems intentional.

The movie's bereftness of invention can be measured by how no story element builds on another. Instead, Happy Feet Two is plotted so that a bunch of disparate things happen, until it's time to end the movie.

Most of Last Christmas consists of watching this young woman stumble and fumble through life, and thanks to Clarke’s effortless ability to engage a viewer’s sympathy, that’s almost enough.

The Shadow is more than just the product of the trend to make high- tech features out of '30s superheroes. It's adventurous film-making, genuinely enthusiastic and genuinely inspired. [01 Jul 1994, p.C1]

Crowe is not messing around here, not trying to dream up opportunities to throw himself another close-up. He’s a genuine director.

Final Destination 5 is irresistible, and the reason it's irresistible is that it speaks to us in the language we all understand, which is fear.

Stylish, playful and buoyed by the chemistry of its returning ensemble, “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” sharpens the franchise’s act with a surer hand to present a dazzling heist film that doesn’t treat its audience like a mark, but rewards them for paying attention.

Thankfully, the movie clocks in at a mere 105 minutes. The Marvels doesn’t have much to say, but at least it says it quickly.

The movie is just good enough to make us want more and to understand what's missing.

Suffers most from being overlong.

Young Guns is really a modern action movie in the revenge mode, disguised as a western. But with all its faults, it more or less works. Palance is a great heavy, Estevez makes an off-the-wall hero, and there's usually enough happening on screen to keep you interested. [12 Aug 1988, p.E3]

Because Benavides is a south Texas town, the screenplay touches inevitably on the flow of immigrants at the border - and resentment at their presence. But All She Can puts a new face on this resentment, highlighting the frustration of legal Mexican Americans.

In addition to Bana and Hall, Jim Broadbent is outstanding in a couple of scenes, as a government official, watching from the sidelines and offering warnings and advice. Broadbent is somehow menacing, pathetic and persuasive all at the same time.

That's a lot of talent and star power at play here, made all the more conspicuous in that they don't really get much to work with. Not only is the movie just so-so, but the parts themselves aren't much.