First Date is a very ambitious independent film with a charming, casual attitude.

A better- than-average comedy that is raunchy and tasteless but ultimately funny from beginning to end.

The new Disneynature film lacks the fortuitous plot turns found in previous Disney documentaries, resulting in some awkward (and possibly deceptive) editing. But the movie has a strong protagonist and impressive footage, and the educational core is unsullied.

Someday, one hopes, Mulcahy will make his masterpiece blend of action and story. Until then, Highlander 2 will have to be considered a steppingstone. [01 Nov 1991, p.D7]

Clearly, this is not a film for everyone, but even though the routine gets highly repetitious, some of the heavy metal numbers are stirring.

Curiously enough plays like a 90-minute version of the old television show. That's not necessarily bad.

Pretty much everything shot by Shepard and co-director David Palmer looks as if it was done in one take. Hit & Run is closest in tone to the Tarantino-penned "True Romance," but it lacks that movie's menace.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: If Gilroy wanted to set a horror movie in the world of art commerce, fine. No problem. It’s not a bad idea. But to do it, Gilroy needed to respect the horror genre enough to create something sophisticated. Instead he went to the horror bargain basement and pulled out the cheapest horror conventions he could find, straight out of slasher bin.

There's a spark missing, and where it's missing is in Roberts' conscientious but all too reserved performance.

It's hard to deny that the first two-thirds of G.I. Joe is an enjoyable film, especially when graded on the curve of lowered expectations. Compared to other big-budget movies out this summer, it's pretty mediocre.

Halloween Ends is far from a great finale, but it’s a decent showcase for Jamie Lee Curtis, whose place in film history has long been assured because of this role. Will this be the last we see of Laurie Strode, or the “Halloween” storyline? It’s best to wait for the box-office reports. After all, franchises never die — they just change shape.

It demonstrates a filmmaker in complete command of his craft and with little control over his impulses.

Director Nadia Tass is an Australian film maker making her U.S. debut, and she does a good job of handling the male bonding. But, this becomes a road movie with too much rambling. [09 Aug 1991, p.F1]

All over this movie there are cliches that are just plain embarrassing, and unsettling moments in which it's obvious Kloves is writing about stuff he doesn't know a thing about. [13 Oct 1989, p.E1]

About a third of it is a brilliant setup - but it's for a joke that never happens, at least not completely. A comedy, especially a broad sex comedy, needs to go to extremes. But Sex Tape is a little careful and contained.

The mind-numbingly predictable, but admittedly watchable Hello I Must Be Going needed less whine and more surprise.

The result is more like an epic "After School Special" -- preachy, runny and oddly warm.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is the best part of every movie he's in. Then again, when you consider the pictures he's been in, maybe that's not saying enough. [15 Sep 1990, p.C3]

In this film, whenever Harper gets to do nothing but direct, as in the action scenes, Heart of Stone works. It’s in the convolutions of its flat script that the movie falls apart.

Pryce is very good, but Very Annie Mary is a bit too eager to please.

It’s long, downright dispiriting, enjoyable only sometimes, and yet there’s a feeling of authenticity. It’s neither bad nor good, but interesting. It might improve with age.

What looks good on paper contracts doesn't guarantee results. Stylized but spasmodic, this "Sweeney" seems more interested in distancing than captivating an audience.

The least appealing of the trilogy.

The action ramps up so much toward the end that there’s really no time to care whether it makes visual or logistical sense. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches.

If there’s a casualty in the sequel it’s Bell, who may be the funniest of the young actresses, but has the most limiting character, forced to repeatedly work a single my-mom-is-a-stalker joke.

The movie was written by Scott Yagemann, who taught seven years in the Los Angeles public- school system, and you can feel the rancor and bitterness he still carries.

Just not worth revisiting, unless one wants to tie one's brain into a knot for no discernible reward.

Tully doesn’t expand as it goes along. It feels insulated and hermetically sealed, and it seems to get smaller.

You may experience Visitors as more of a sedative than a punch in the guts.

A squishy-soft romance set to bouncing Italian pop. It's like a long swallow from a bottle of a very sweet wine. Goes down easy, warms the gut, leaves a film of sugar on the teeth.

An occasionally rousing but mostly just adequate sequel to last year's "Planes."

Light and innocuous.

Almost as mindless as "Fantastic Four," but more annoying in that this one has philosophical pretensions.

Much of it is enjoyable and has the aura of a superior action film, but it collapses into a laughable wreck and ultimately reveals itself as a mild waste of two hours.

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.

This is a film that wears its anti-tech bent like an old James Bond wristwatch.

It's gimmicky Saturday-morning cartoon wackiness in your face -- funny, but brain-deadening.

The film is too mannered, too stuffy. Even Malkovich's interesting performance won't let it break free of a formal style and cloyingly creepy tone that becomes precious while trying to be merely claustrophobic.

Kids probably will enjoy portions of Return to Oz, but at best, it's a mechanical movie that never finds a real heart to engage an audience. [21 Jun 1985, p.79]

A potentially great movie winds up buried inside a just OK one.

Tombstone, in spite of its action-movie pacing, becomes an awkward, unconvincing tale as Russell's stubbornly benevolent Earp is slowly nudged by moral compunction into fighting various scourges, not the least of them a vicious gang of red-sashed cowboys led by Curly Bill (Powers Booth) and his fiendishly cool gunslinging sidekick, Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn). [25 Dec 1993, p.E1]

Tooth Fairy would be substantially less likable without Johnson's native-born flair for self-abasement.

The movie is not as good as his recent low-budget effort, "Diary of the Dead," but there are enough moments of satire and coolness - two Romero hallmarks - to merit recommendation.

Never rises above the level of its gimmick.

It's a movie about an idiot in the grip of something common place. He starts off as a garden-variety idiot and progresses to a big idiot.

It’s as if someone made a backstage musical without any musical numbers, just the backstage part.

Superficially entertaining romantic romp.

Overacting and silly lines sometimes distract, and the latter sound sillier in Branagh’s forced French accent (“Ah love, it is not safe”). Still, Branagh’s direction and screenwriter Michael Green, who also scripted “Orient,” add diversity and convincing emotions to the mystery mechanics.

An Eye for an Eye may very well be the most unpersuasive documentary ever made.

Suffers from the bloat common to sequels.

Harmless enough, and its team of actors so frisky and enthusiastic that it manages to deliver a modicum of laughs despite itself.

Unfortunately, Raising Cain is largely a retread of De Palma's vintage thrillers from the '70s -- an extended self-homage that makes you wonder if his imagination got frozen in 1980.

So the movie's OK in spots, but it's mostly so familiar that even the young target audience may get that deja vu feeling.

The images of heaven somehow diminish the impact of the boy's experience, perhaps because heaven is just too profound for anyone to film.

It’s written by six screenwriters, and it feels like it.

Not sure we need to know this much about his family life.

A modest amusement.

Measured and somber, with few surprises.

The film's basic material, that is the history, is not without interest. And it must be admitted that every so often - for about 10 seconds every 10 minutes - we get a hint of the movie they wanted to make and hoped they were making: One about the thrill of early aviation and the promise of a young century.

From the start, we can see where this is headed: a big fat power struggle, with Omar at the eye of the storm. But the storm is more of a drizzle than an apocalyptic downpour, just one snippy conversation after another in languorous settings.

There's a psychological undercurrent. The movie occupies a zone where science fiction and nightmares collide and intertwine.

Unlike other recent films noirs -- ''The Grifters,'' for example, or ''After Dark, My Sweet,'' both of which were based on Thompson stories -- One False Move lacks style and wit, and doesn't explore its characters beyond their cheap, cruddy exteriors. [24 June 1992, p.E1]

Doesn't have much to say.

It’s a charming throwback to the martial-arts films of the ’70s and ’80s, with dazzling combat sequences punctuated by stiffly delivered exposition and hammy acting.

Danny Deckchair offers some welcome cinematic comfort food in a summer filled with bloated special-effects movies and bad teen comedies.

The Comfort of Strangers might look great and might seem to be heading somewhere, but ultimately the picture is just a lot of atmosphere dolling up a lot of hot air. [15 Mar 1991, p.E8]

This vaguely funny film is also the saddest and most depressing movie of 2013.

A perfectly OK drama, with a good cast and many good scenes, but it suffers from the usual maladies that films get when they've been out on the ranch too long: all-too-obvious symbolism and a serious case of the longueurs.

An energetic young cast, consisting of a mix of professional dancers and actors who do convincing imitations of Arthur Murray graduates, is positively inspired in numbers combining traditional ballroom steps with hip-hop.

True, the film doesn't need 110 minutes to tell a story this pat, but hey, in dark times, it takes longer to deliver a feel-good message.

Mostly it seems forced, pat and didactic.

His personal efforts are praiseworthy, but if glacial melting is in fact the "canary in the climate coal mine" (his words), the movie might have given us a bit less of Balog and a bit more of the startling sequences he produced.

Standard-issue slasher pic.

Jackass 3D has its moments, but it lacks the ingenuity and hilarity of the previous films - no doubt in large part because of the aging process.

A strange mix of the campy, at least in the English dubbing, and the awesome.

A Kiss Before Dying is a thriller without thrills, though it has some of the built-in kicks of a crime movie -- wondering what's going on, wondering why it's happening, wondering how it's going to end. Unfortunately, it ultimately gets so silly that the main thing people in the audience may end up wondering is why they're still sitting there. [26 Apr 1991, p.E1]

Brown, is a good enough actor and director to keep the film afloat for long stretches.

Unpolished but entertaining.

The new movie splits the difference between the horrible and the hilarious, with predictably lukewarm results. Still, the story is delicious enough to survive an earnest treatment.

A silly, cross-cultural shoot-'em-up -- the sort of movie that will work for those with some time to kill (no pun intended).

An over-the-top, rollicking, candy-colored raunchfest.

Most moviegoers will have trouble looking past Culkin the actor, who does a decent job of sending up youthful fame in a movie that's barely worth the effort.

Better for several reasons. First, they've jazzed up the animation. The backgrounds appear to be digital, and they are striking. The story is also less violent and combative.

It’s admirable, but it has long stretches of dull, and the tickets aren’t free.

The movie's narrative tension hinges on, well, nothing.

It all adds up to an entertaining combination of suspense and melodrama, a movie that doesn't cohere too well - and veers toward the silly in its more-obvious plot mechanics.

Night and the City is basically a mess, but De Niro, calling up his reserves of manic energy, is entertaining in the title role. He's foolproof, really: He even shines in mediocrity. It's a shame his talent didn't rub off on Jessica Lange. Playing Helen, a tough-broad barkeep who joins Harry in his biggest scam yet, the overly mannered Lange gives her worst screen performance to date. [23 Oct 1992, p.C1]

Really is just an excuse to string together some silly fake-movie clips.

Naysayers have been claiming for years that the "Moneyball" book wouldn't work as a movie. But ultimately, it's the cinematic touches that keep this film version from becoming something exceptional.

Here and there, particularly in flashback, Bening gets a scene or a moment to invest in and shine, but for truly a surprising length of time, Bening plays a woman who is asleep, literally.

Lucas knows his fans are un-boreable, un-annoyable and inexhaustible. For an artist, that's more a curse than a blessing.

The thinking part of this thriller needs work. It's not nearly as intelligent, thoughtful or penetrating as it promises to be.

It isn't terrible. It's far from a milestone in Japanese animation, and not an especially memorable entertainment. Yet it doesn't try to be either of those things.

Looks fantastic, but the film suffers from the TV-to-feature transition.

Director Paul Morrison ("Wondrous Oblivion") nicely re-creates the period, but puts too much weight on the sexual relationship as determining the men's artistic courses.

This conventional PBS-style piece intends to deliver the story behind the event without much more than the slightest nod to the music, which is shunted to the side in this telling of the already oft-told story.

The best thing about The Banshees of Inisherin is Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s sister, an intelligent woman with an even temperament and a good sense of humor who finds herself marooned in the wrong part of Ireland and in the wrong half of the 20th century.

There is no denying that every time Gyllenhaal steps into a frame she takes a sleeping movie and wakes it up.