Despite its implausibilities, Only the Lonely disarms you with its innocence. [24 May 1991, p.E1]

Now comes this American version, which turns out to be the exception, an American remake that's better than the European original.

This offering is a mostly undistinguished addition to the long list of films about alienated and self-pitying young people.

Kate looks like most other productions from 87North, the company behind such cinematic cage fights as Atomic Blonde and the John Wick films. Honestly, this could have been called “Nuclear Brunette.” But with heart.

Clearly, the goal was to make a visually opulent Christmas movie, but these visuals end up sucking up much of the film’s life and spirit. It de-emphasizes the human element, and it makes the movie too long.

The formula is tired, and it’s particularly sad to see Shazam! surrender so completely and pathetically to it, when it might have been DC Comics most human superhero franchise.

A Rubik's Cube of a movie, an intriguing, layered puzzle that isn't easily solved.

Lacks the finesse of other puzzle films.

It's an interesting spectacle, but not enough to carry a movie.

The last half is so superior to the first that you wish they'd rethought the whole thing and devised a way to make it more of a one piece.

Director Mike Figgis (''Internal Affairs'') adorns ''Mr. Jones'' with some unconventional touches, abrupt fade-outs that give a touch of poetry to the endings of scenes -- and keeps the audience believing that ''Mr. Jones'' is a class act long after it's obvious it's not. [8 Oct 1993, p.C3]

The A-Team is a Joe Carnahan movie, i.e., an experiment in propulsion and personality over substance and story.

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

A thoroughly enjoyable three-or four-gimmick comedy.

A series of vignettes that are edited in much the same way one might click from one random Craigslist posting to the next, the film is a fun and free-form celebration of the site's communal spirit and only-in-San Francisco ethos.

It is great summer fun.

Emilio Martinez-Lazaro fails to provide a consistent tone for his movie, which totters between earnest realism and camp.

This stylized romantic comedy offers limited, largely synthetic rewards.

The performances are heavy-handed, except for that of Jon Hamm, who benefits not only from playing something of a wise guy (a sports memorabilia salesman), but also from his own unsentimental instincts.

Here is a culture in which female strength, having no outlet, must become distorted or lethal. In Therese and her aunt, we find two manifestations of the same disease.

Pretty insubstantial.

Almost all of its screen time is taken up with explosions, chases, shootouts, heads coming off, folks getting sliced in half -- and the odd thing about it is that after 40 minutes, it's not disturbing anymore. Just dull. [21 Nov 1990, p.E1]

A so-so, OK, perfectably acceptable, nice, rather charming romantic comedy with two stars who are entirely watchable.

The Thing Called Love should have been a nice, middle-key romance, with a few gentle digs at Nashville's fevered, wildly competitive country-music scene. Instead, it's a hapless, well-intentioned mess -- running in half a dozen directions at once, looking half-planned and semi-improvised, and featuring a skittish, overly mannered performance by Phoenix. [16 March 1994, p.E1]

For the silent masses who cherish those "Hallmark Hall of Fame" specials, but wish they had just a little more profanity, the release of Around the Bend is occasion to rejoice.

For all the precision shooting, Autumn is a colossal misfire, a tedious film noir wannabe. It doesn't even qualify as film gris.

It's mostly entertaining, and has some strong moments, but it lacks the special magic that a musical needs, that sense of its inhabiting a parallel universe where any wonderful thing can happen at any moment, including music suddenly arising from nowhere. [10 Apr 1992]

Despite bursts of hilarity and an A-list cast, this is a dark, difficult, weirdly existential film - like some seriocomic spin on "I and Thou."

The pleasures of Gringo are the pleasures of genre: It’s a fun type of movie, but it’s not a good version of the type.

In almost any other filmmaker’s oeuvre, this film would be considered a highlight. But for the director who made “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Match Point” and “Blue Jasmine”? It’s right up there with “Melinda and Melinda” and “Scoop.” Good, not great.

Kwak is indeed a highly original voice, but you wouldn't know it from Typhoon. It seems as if he's constrained by the conventional material.

Your enjoyment of the movie will depend on whether you can suspend your disbelief — and confusion — and let the magic of misdirection wash over you.

An arid, uninvolving film that suffers from Burrows' miscasting as the vain Julie.

Runs out of ideas long before the projector runs out of film.

Payback has a completely different spirit from "L.A. Confidential'' -- more wild, more silly -- but it has the same attention to the fine points of plot and character.

The Dead Pool isn't much of a movie. It certainly isn't as fun, nor as compelling as its predecessors, and now and then the forced plot gets so ridiculous that it is certain to try the patience of even the most die-hard viewers. [13 Jul 1988, p.E1]

What's missing is any hint of realism. There's no grit to it anywhere.

Funny and disturbing in the best way, the comedy-drama Austin Found captures something beyond its story of a woman’s obsession with making her little daughter a beauty pageant winner.

Might be said to have pleasant echoes of "Garden State" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" -- except that they aren't echoes; this 1999 indie film was made long before those other two hits, and frankly, is just about as good.

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

[Hartley] changes the script enough so that the integrity of his experiment goes out the window. But he doesn't change enough so that the narrative can have any suspense.

The story is well-told, but what makes it interesting is that each character confronts his or her own crisis — even Tommie, the paramedic who rescued him. It also drives home the point that a seemingly small tragic event can affect an entire community.

It's got unpredictable plot twists and unexpected laughs coming out of dark corners. The sharp-edged film also looks terrific.

A not-insubstantial comedy.

There's something painful about watching Scarlett Johansson, who looks as if she never had an indecisive moment in her life, struggle to seem ineffectual.

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

Another romantic comedy about a career woman who has everything except a man, is Jennifer Aniston's attempt to break out of her TV role. But she doesn't have the magic on the big screen to make us forget where she came from.

You know what? The whole thing is harmless.

At a brisk 101 minutes, My Spy doesn’t overstay its welcome. It knows exactly what it wants to be and how to get there, and it is made more engaging than it probably has any right to be thanks to the oversize charisma of its oversize star.

Something From Tiffany’s rides the line between Hallmark cheese and the Hollywood gloss of big-screen rom-coms once headlined by its producer, Reese Witherspoon. It emerges as a top entry in the former category and a middling example of the latter, with lots of nice moments along the way.

Occasionally amusing but rarely engaging, it leaves one feeling like they’re standing to the side and watching someone else play a video game.

The movie has a saving grace in that it breaks formula. Its concerns are not the usual movie concerns, and it takes what might have been a standard plot in some unexpected directions.

Toy Soldiers is to terrorism what just say no is to the temptation of drugs: a will-o'-the-wisp notion that is either laughable or sad, depending upon how seriously one takes either solution to those problems. [26 Apr 1991, p.E7]

Were there an award for most bizarre and dispiriting comedy-horror hybrid featuring killer dolls, the latest installment in the "Child's Play" series would have it locked up.

The makers of We Are Your Friends got halfway there, and then lost the beat.

It's a far better thing to remember Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close than to watch it. Looking back, much of what is irritating, precious and tiresome about the movie recedes and drops away, while all the movie's virtues, which are considerable, rise to consciousness. There are good things here - just be prepared to blast for them.

Cube's attempts to wring humor out of the grim story don't always succeed, but he never resorts to trivializing his material, a la "Showgirls" or "Striptease." A little bit goes a long way, and "The Players Club" is more like an extended riff than a fully realized drama.

I found the sensory bombardment of Tank Girl ultimately numbing and at times had to fight to stay awake. But let's be fair: This isn't a film for people over 25. Or over 20, for that matter. Tank Girl is for teenagers, who will find something exuberant in its anarchic spirit as well as in its barrages of image. Teenagers are also sure to appreciate, probably more than adults would, the film's off-color humor. [31 March 1995, p.C3]

To be sure, Big Pharma execs make for natural movie villains these days, but this story could have used a tad more subtlety, something that was in short supply here.

Cleverness won't carry it. Nothing less than overarching vision is required; otherwise, the audience will laugh for 10 minutes and then start to check out. And that pretty much states the problem of Mirror Mirror.

Diego also lacks any nuance as a character. He is grim and humorless, like most everything else about this film.

Elusive and compelling.

Wry and sometime bitter movie about love.

The freshest thing about Breakin' All the Rules is its dropped "g.''

Mostly it seems forced, pat and didactic.

Jaw-droppingly awful.

The movie's shockingly tasteless setup is also its secret weapon. Despite many scenes in The Ringer that could individually be viewed as politically incorrect, audiences will be laughing with the athletes most of the time.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice boils down to "The Karate Kid" meets "Harry Potter," with maybe a dash of "Ghostbusters" to keep it interesting.

Yes, there are funny lines, but nearly all of them are familiar to fans; it’s almost like a greatest hits of “Addams Family” quotables.

In concept alone, Ravenous is anything but appetizing, but in execution it's worse than you'd imagine.

The laughs, including the big laughs, keep coming right up to the closing seconds.

It sounds promising, but it doesn't work. You get the feeling that Soderbergh, so early in his directing career, has exceeded his reach -- that the com- plicated logistics of making a film on location in eastern Europe, compounded with the challenge of bringing to life such a fundamentally lonely and passive figure, had stymied him. [17 Jan. 1992, p.D1]

This movie could really use an Avon Barksdale, but even actor Wood Harris, who played drug kingpin Barksdale in "The Wire," seems a bit lost.

It's just off, odd and joyless.

Rebecca has a couple of slow stretches, but James is always interesting and always sympathetic, if only because we see her struggling to do her best. After all, it’s much easier to not give up on a character when we see she hasn’t given up on herself. The movie further benefits from the absence of 1940s-style censorship, which suppressed a key plot detail that’s restored here.

It’s low-key in tone and not a splatter fest, even remotely. You Should Have Left is horror for a thinking audience.

The tone of “The Exorcism” is deadly serious, but one wonders if the premise might have worked better as a scary comedy rather than as a scary drama.

Has genuine life in it. It's an energetic comedy that consistently looks for and finds unexpected ways to be funny. [31 Mar 1995, p.C8]

The film is obvious, weak and scattered and seems more like a practical joke than a work of genuine passion. It is without exaggeration one of the most blindingly boring films I've seen in years.

Although the picture's title and promotion might lead you to expect another "Wayne's World," Airheads is something more substantial. It's a spoof of heavy-metal culture that at the same time respects the vitality and pent-up passion behind it.

Book Club was, at best, a pleasant diversion. But Book Club: The Next Chapter is something more. It’s a movie that proves that it’s possible to make an entertaining, full-length picture with practically no story.

Want a believable plot or acting? Forget it. But if you just want knockout images, unabashed eye candy and a riveting look at a complex world that seems both real and fake at the same time, "Hackers'' is one of the most intriguing movies of the year.

A teasy, cogent and funny noir spoof of dime novels and 1960s Hollywood.

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

A bigger mess than the gas crisis.

About as close to pure mall fodder as you'll see.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is still a visual buffet, but adding 102 more minutes of double crosses, slow torture and hookers with hearts of gold just exposes the tediousness of the exercise.

The Comedy, one of the most self-indulgent, pretentious and unfunny movies of the year, is a mean-spirited piece of mumblecore that tries to provoke you, but only succeeds in boring you.

The film is confusing and awkwardly timed, and it drags.

In King Arthur, everything goes wrong. The film combines the plodding sincerity of a Ph.D. dissertation with the brains of a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer- produced blockbuster (which it is), and no one benefits.

It's great to see cherished, longtime stars in big roles to which they can bring so much spontaneity and finesse; you wish only that this movie were sturdier and had aimed higher. Judging from the bloopers that unreel during Grumpier Old Men's end credits, the cast had lots of fun making this movie--more fun, it would seem, than it is to watch.

Basically torture porn.

The Nun is certainly not a terrible horror movie – the production values are stellar, and there is a decent backstory about the abbey. But the film won’t be remembered as one of the top entries in the expanding canon of the Conjuring Universe.

Moretz is an appealing young woman whose star is rising. She'll probably have an exceptional career, but If I Stay won't be a highlight.

A shamelessly dumb movie.

Half a good romantic comedy. Luke Wilson is the good half...The weak half is Natasha Henstridge.

Even if a certain glibness in the plotting deflates its impact somewhat at the finish, it remains an eerie, playful thriller and an all-around entertaining time at the movies.

An exciting thriller with good acting and a story that holds a lot of surprises and the interest of the viewer, even if it doesn't quite hold water. Or possibly because it doesn't hold water. [24 Apr 1992, p.C5]