As a director, Schweighöfer deftly plays around with a few genre conventions, handles action scenes capably if not distinctively, and stages a decent enough Point Break tribute.

When its biggest trick is finally revealed, it is not entirely satisfying.

Although the film doesn't live up to complexities of the human issues -- nor the awesome tragedy -- that must have been faced in real life, what you feel watching it is a mixture of horror, moral self-examination, a tinge of inspiration, and -- let's face it on these winter nights -- you feel cold. [15 Jan 1993, p.C1]

The Beverly Hills Cop formula shows serious signs of wear in its third outing as Eddie Murphy tries desperately to hold onto his tough-guy, mock-grin edge while screenwriters and director John Landis do little more than stir-fry lame gags with furious but tiresome fusilades of gunfire. [25 May 1994, p.E1]

Yes, it's got painful and funny moments, but by the time it's all over, I was worn out coping with all Dad's manifold transformations. [28 Oct 1989, p.C3]

A sweet-natured if formulaic romantic comedy.

It's Valentine's Day! Unrealistic romantic expectations are in the air! And Safe Haven does the unrealistic romance thing pretty well.

It's a prevailing sense of humor that makes this an entertaining, if silly, film adaptation of the Marvel comic.

It's a fascinating concept, gorgeously rendered. Seeing the paint actually dry, however, would probably be more fun than most of this overly expository film.

Ernest Goes to Jail is a cute picture, good for what it is, which isn't much, but that's OK. [07 Apr 1990, p.C3]

Any movie that celebrates the power of music, friendship, family and all of that scientific stuff Kid Cudi keeps jabbering about has got to be somewhat welcome at this particular point in the space-time continuum, right?...Oh, and stay past the closing credits for a little extra excellence.

Starts off as a comedy about an unlikely friendship between a white man and a black man who meet over a pick-up basketball game on a Los Angeles playground. Then it switches gears and for a time seems as though it's going to be a more serious look at these men and their world. Finally, it just falls apart completely, and the last hour is a chaotic, meandering mess. [27 Mar 1992, p.D1]

Cube falls into the dreaded trap of allegory -- aaaaaargh! -- and the clunky dialogue makes a midnight bull session seem brilliant by comparison.

A pretty lame premise for a movie.

It's good for a few guffaws and chuckles, but in between the screen has a tendency to stretch at the corners and go flat.

Despite some solid acting, the film is lacking in surprises. For all the suffering that these characters endure, there's very little payoff.

Although Lounguine has a lot to say about Russia's struggle in its transition to global capitalism, his film is strangely uninvolving, lacking dramatic sweep.

Bigger is not always better. Thor: The Dark World pumps up the action and special effects and loses some of the human element that made the original "Thor" something charming and unexpected. True, this sequel gets better as it goes along, but that's a very steep climb just to arrive at not bad.

When Ross gets serious and grasps for allegorical import, Pleasantville bogs down in mixed ambitions.

In Secretariat, the fictionalized bits are simple exaggerations - broad, Disneyish adjustments in races and other realities.

It's just a simple thriller whose goal is little more than to keep moving.

Best reason to stay home and rent "Disturbia": I Am Number Four is a little better and makes loads more sense than "Eagle Eye." But neither has the sass and pluck of "Disturbia."

There’s a lot in Scream VI to satisfy longtime fans, but it still feels like a step down from the last one.

Just one big wipeout.

Ultimately, it's a cold, caustic film that doesn't take a strong point of view but seems to offer up its numerous set pieces.

The film holds no surprises. It's strictly by the book, uninspired and only vaguely sincere. But Michael J. Fox is not by the book; he is always genuine. Fox's charm, his comic ease and his genuine good acting manage to keep this mediocre ''vehicle'' afloat, scene by scene, to the end. I believed he was in love with the girl, even though I couldn't figure out why. [1 Oct 1993, p.C3]

Part travelogue, part narrative and part art-history class. The class is what's best about this pretty decent movie.

Much of Astronaut comes off as tedious and self-amused, but the musical vignettes are fun.

The tales are worthwhile, but it's challenging to find a common thread among them that goes beyond vague generalities.

The picture is willfully gross, fundamentally stupid and in no way worth the discomfort of watching it. Yet it may be the most well-crafted piece of garbage this year.

It's dull in the precise way that life can be dull. To watch it is like sitting in on a staff meeting, listening to people talk on and on and on. Professors are used to talking nonstop, and in a few cases in At Berkeley it's rather astonishing to hear them repeating the same ideas over and over, instead of just coming to a point and stopping.

Earnest, heartrending look at the divide between religious fundamentalists and their gay relatives. It's also heavy-handed and devotes too much time to bigoted views.

Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, teaming for the first time on the big screen, are moderately fun but suffer from what looks like a case of too-calculated Hollywood packaging.

As Hunt’s life unravels, so does the movie, though the story maintains a certain baseline of interest just by virtue of being sordid.

Segerstedt's anti-Nazi stand is the only reason to be interested in him, and yet half the movie is about his domestic life.

Really, the only thing kinky about this movie is its title.

A mostly incomprehensible, occasionally inspired slice of misanthrope from acclaimed French provocateur Jean-Luc Godard, is as crotchety as its legendary director.

Blue Caprice tells its story in fragments, a provocative strategy that sometimes works to chilling effect, sometimes not.

Polanski attempts a precarious mixture of drama and comedy here -- seesawing between a serious look at sexual obsession on the one hand and an antic, spoofy tone on the other. It's a bold risk, but it rarely works because we usually don't know if Polanski is being intentionally funny, or merely inept. [25 Mar 1994, p.C3]

From moment to moment, Rumours is almost entertaining. But for it to work, you pretty much have to root for it. The movie invites you not to enjoy it so much as to appreciate the effort.

The documentary They Call Us Monsters tries, and mostly succeeds, at putting a human face on teenage criminals facing life in prison.

Zellweger takes an otherwise passable mainstream comedy and all but ruins it with her lack of effort.

There's something in Ned Kelly' that's lost in the translation from Australia to America, and the overly emotional film score is just a symptom.

Loses momentum midway into the boys' journey.

For the most part, it's fairly pleasant and interesting enough to be there.

The documentary isn't particularly thrilling, or even very informative, but it's almost certain to lower your blood pressure for 83 minutes.

It is aimed primarily at children, and its affectionate treatment of animals is certain to please most of them.

Woo's aggressive, cartoony attack in the film, which makes for its biggest delights, also wipes out whatever chance it might have had of making an emotional impact.

In a way the faults of New Nightmare are the faults of the horror genre as it now exists. Once you get the set-up, the rest of the film is just incidents leading up to the big confrontation. The problem is not in knowing what will happen, but in waiting for it to happen. [14 Oct 1994, p.C3]

Director Leon Ichaso (A Kiss to Die For) is intent on presenting the Harlem story in near-operatic terms, but ultimately the beautifully rendered, photographically engaging Sugar Hill is crippled by its own self-importance. [25 Feb 1994, p.C1]

For the most part, this film has the disadvantages of Chinese action films, without the advantages. That is, it overdoes the action and it’s short on character, without attaining the manic, wild heights of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early ’90s. Still, it’s nice to see Chan once again in a Chinese environment.

As a romantic comedy, Cease Fire is more annoying than amusing.

As a movie, Charlie’s Angels has serious problems, but the new Angels trio is promising and shows there’s life yet in the old formula. There’s something going on here. It’s just not quite there yet.

There are just so many ways Carine Roitfeld can say she loves fashion in Mademoiselle C, a somewhat interesting documentary that brings us into the inner workings of a magazine, but harps a bit too much on her ideas of fashion and style.

In Elemental, we have a visually splendid and absolutely gorgeous rendering of a half-baked idea. For some of its running time, it can get by on looks. But ultimately, things like story and making sense start to matter, and that’s when the movie takes on water.

Story pitches are made. Coke is snorted. There is lesbian sex. Fellatio. An earthquake. A murder. Just another day in Hollywood.

Only when it makes the claim for Page as a pivotal figure in American culture does it overstate the case and become tiresome.

There is a sweet romantic comedy action that sometimes emerges in this bone crunching, bloody spectacle, but only occasionally does it surface.

Well acted, well crafted and might have been a truly searing drama if it weren't so simplistic, pat and predictable.

Everything in the movie is suffused by a vision of life that is resoundingly and evidently false, but as this vision is not repulsive, but is intended to reassure, the lies don’t produce anger or frustration. No, they bring on the laughs.

It has verve, color and energy, but there's something fundamentally bogus about it.

Features bursts of humor and electrifying energy offset by speechifying and a dud of a subplot.

A confounding and unsatisfying film.

It's hard to get swept away when you're struggling to figure out who's doing what to whom and why.

Inventive and intermittently amusing.

In many ways a beautiful movie, and yet in other ways it’s not very good at all. As an achievement in stop-motion animation, it’s stunning — seamless and detailed, so perfectly done that it’s easy to forget that you’re witnessing skill and not magic.

Predictable.

Steep begins to feel a mite in need of tighter editing. In truth, the film will appeal primarily to skiers, while others may get a bit, well, snow-blind.

As Bilbo, Freeman is a pleasure to watch to the extent we get to watch him. His timing is brilliant — he gets the movie’s only laughs. He has tremendous sensitivity and an ability to seem like he’s about to say something — and then convey it without saying it. He could have made a great Bilbo. Instead he’s the one thing that has made this trilogy bearable.

The first half of My Worst Nightmare contains some of the best comedy and the biggest laughs of the season, and the second half ... eh.

The King of Kings gives the Jesus story an animated treatment with some whimsical Dickensian touches. It’s nothing to write scripture about, but it should provide amusing and possibly enlightening Easter entertainment for younger children.

All this makes Zama interesting and unique and something to be respected. But none of this translates into anything resembling a satisfying narrative or even entertainment as we know it. Still, as bleak experiments go, Zama is the real thing.

This is the weird thing, Old Dogs is not that bad.

Clearly, an effort was made to create a serious, thoughtful movie.

Long before the finish, Man From Reno has flat-lined.

Amusing performances -- especially from Willis, who takes on a new personality with each new hairstyle -- can't disguise the fact that the film is basically a pastiche of recent movies.

A sexy, mildly entertaining import.

Well-intentioned but predictable romance.

Theo Padnos, who was kidnapped and held for nearly two years by al Qaeda in Syria, has a compelling story to tell. Unfortunately, it is not compellingly told in the documentary Theo Who Lived.

Pitt’s all-in performance and an impressive supporting cast supply enough roughhouse wit and Brooklyn grit to hold up scenes that might have otherwise gone down for the count.

Heartfelt but somewhat bloated documentary that's partly an homage and partly a literary mystery.

Clunky adventure story.

Ultimately, this is a very predictable picture, made by the director of “The Full Monty,” Peter Cattaneo. Its formula inevitably rises up like a wave and submerges everything Thomas is trying to do. To extend the metaphor, she swims along and doesn’t drown. But unless you love this kind of movie, Military Wives will be, at best, a pleasant diversion and, at worst, a not-so-bad waste of time.

Sweaty, filthy, miserable and well acted.

It’s nice to see Pegg stretch a little and play the bad guy. Too bad Kill Me Three Times doesn’t give him better material.

Entertainment value and reasonable length still make the film a decent, low-effort option for home viewers — especially those already subscribed to Hulu.

Try as it might, the movie is hardly profound, and the murky atmosphere and the leaden pace drag things down.

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 near-miss, but a miss all the same.

The mystery of Nancy Drew' is how a movie can get so many things right -- particularly the inspired casting of Emma Roberts as the spunky teenage sleuth -- yet ultimately disappoint.

The film, written by Tomine, remains largely faithful to the book, which was already filled with caustic dialogue primed for a slacker movie. Yet there’s a sense that Tomine’s world has become sanitized in translation.

A time-waster that might be diversionary on a dull cross-Atlantic flight -- but only in the absence of alternatives.

[Duhmel] brings surprising nuance to an ostensibly shallow character, a guy who's not really bad, just caught up in his own celebrity.

A film with no context, it is a sporadically interesting, overlong look at the legend as she nears 70, still performing before her legions of fans.

The film is never truly funny, but it's an amusing novelty, gaining strength from smart characterizations and sly cogency about the way people are exploited under the limelight of celebrity.

In the end, Homeroom lacks impact, taken as a whole, but anyone who sees it will derive something from the experience.

The film is fun and extreme, and though in the end rather pointless, there’s a certain audacity here — a delight in extremity — that’s appealing.

Reminiscence is never not interesting, but Joy leaves a lot of the intriguing issues unsatisfactorily explored.