Misbegotten mess.

A hostage drama that oscillates between soap opera and action flick.

Eventually, Angela comes to understand that it is she who is being reborn. Dare we call it a "grow-mance"?

House of Spoils suffers most from genre hybridization. The more explicit horror moments feel grafted on to what is essentially a character study with mystery elements. But as “Speak No Evil” recently demonstrated, Blumhouse no longer signifies low-budget, terrifying horror. The brand has become shorthand for movies lacking clear identities.

Murphy seems committed to pushing his hostile vision, and that in itself is interesting. [01 Jul 1992]

Connects on a gut level in two ways, political and existential.

A film so self-centered that even the director's most dedicated stalkers might find it a bit too narcissistic.

The fact that Grandma is played by Jane Fonda, flouncing around in natural fabrics, should tell you something. It should tell you there is no casting decision or character nuance or plot turn too obvious to indulge.

DogMan won’t appeal to everybody, but there’s something to be said for a movie that makes you wonder if the filmmaker has gone crazy.

Brosnan has never been so opened up, so emotional and yet so precise in his work. It's a lovely performance in a film that only sometimes deserves him.

One of the most enjoyable pictures of the season.

The worst action movies, and this is one of them, are all about stretching out the action.

About as loony and soapy as a movie can get. In other words, it's about as loony and soapy as the novel, and I say this as one who obsessively consumed all four installments in Stephenie Meyer's mega-selling series.

Missing a purpose.

I like it for the thing it is, a reasonably solid B movie, and I like it as one in the continuum of bizarre Ford vehicles that combine high-stakes action with household horror.

Campbell's admirers will probably enjoy the documentary, but I don't think it will do much for anyone else.

The appeal of Mr. Brooks is as obvious as it is hard to resist: Kevin Costner as a serial killer.

It's a classy but downbeat spin on the most familiar of TV-movie formulas.

The results are predictable and only mildly entertaining.

A Cinderella story with star appeal going for it and everything else against it.

Kline, in particular, has the spark and know-how to overcome some awfully belabored writing and situations.

This tale of tortured love between a Mormon missionary and a West Hollywood tomcat renders its gay and religious characters so stereotypical that neither lifestyle appears attractive.

Has to be one of the least charming French romances to find American distribution in recent years.

As drama it's thin stuff. Aiming for simplicity, it ends up simplistic.

Despite a decent cast of mostly British voice actors and better-than-average computer animation, the movie seems rushed at 76 minutes and is only marginally funny.

The rare case of a movie that gets better as it goes along.

Bornedal invests so much time in the characters - Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick play the split parents of the girls - that there are times you will forget this is a horror movie. It's Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Lucifer.

Rendered nearly unwatchable by overblown close-ups and an unrelenting shaky-cam.

This isn't absurdity. This is nonsense - and it's as boring as nonsense.

In this her third feature as a director, Jolie once again shows a marked talent for the visual aspects of storytelling. Her shot selection is impeccable and her compositions are artful without being self-consciousness.

Once the fleeting novelty wears off, what remains is a movie caught in tonal limbo. It’s too convoluted for kids, too slight for adults and too self-aware to be taken seriously.

There’s the sense here that living in a tiny community can either make you bigger or smaller, and in 23 Blast we see both types, from the petty to the stoic and self-reliant.

Unforgettable may have a generic title, and it may be a train wreck, but it’s a watchable train wreck throughout.

A throwback to all those guilty pleasure action movies.

Has that title going for it, which might annoy or provoke you. It makes me suspicious. It's the kind of flashy, meaningless title that's usually given to drab, pointless films.

Sniper is the Tom Berenger film that'll be forgotten by this time next week. [30 Jan 1993, p.C3]

One of the best American films of the year so far.

At times almost unbearably ugly, but by the time you walk out of the theater, you know you've seen something.

There’s beauty here — Virzi is too humane to make a movie without beautiful moments. But a scattered eight or 10 minutes of splendor just isn’t worth an almost two-hour investment of time.

An enticingly risque saga of the 16th century monarch.

A single 125-minute monstrosity of a cop movie.

There's a certain formulaic and familiar quality about Sweet Home Alabama, but it doesn't matter.

Jefferson in Paris is dull, sluggish and unfocused.

All Upside Down has is its love story, which despite the undeniable appeal of Sturgess and Dunst, never ignites. So the movie is like a huge package, wrapped in gold leaf, but containing a 10-dollar toaster. Fine. It's a toaster. It works. It's not garbage. But who can pretend it's not a disappointment?

Taken 2 is like a textbook on how to make beautiful, successful and highly satisfying junk-food cinema. When it's just a plot point, the information gets tossed out as fast and as forcefully as possible. Time is lavished only on the things that matter.

If you don't guess the big twist in the first 30 minutes, Intruders is half of a good movie. If you do, it's about a third of a good movie. Either way, there's a whole lot of bad movie to contend with.

The Olsens' precociousness and sitcom-style mugging grate at first, but I found myself warming to their movie in its last half - thanks mostly to Alley, a crackerjack physical comic who's incapable of a flat or colorless note.

Wonder Park, frankly, isn’t very much fun. It becomes so enslaved with its nonsensical plot that it forgets this is supposed to be about coming to terms with the possible loss of a loved one. It gets lost in its own Rube Goldberg machine.

The high school comedy/drama morphs into a slasher movie, then morphs into a time-traveling/body-switching/world's-about-to-end science fiction story. Everyone on the set must have been chugging Mountain Dew between takes. I suspect that the editor was hooked up to an IV of the beverage.

The Distinguished Gentleman isn't much of a movie - it's a mess, in fact. [04 Dec 1992]

In Step Up 3D, what's going on is: nothing.

Hall Pass attempts to take the Farrellys' harsh humor and bring it into harmony with what has become the modern comic style, which is to be coarse but not absurd, to be brutally honest but real.

Lucas Black, who looks as much like a high school kid as George Bernard Shaw, speaks in a thick Southern accent that hasn't been heard on any leading man since the second act of "Our American Cousin."

A mediocre college comedy that blends bits of "Revenge of the Nerds," "Mean Girls" and "Legally Blonde" and doesn't have much to show for it.

Doesn’t have a dull frame in it, thanks mainly to the star-making performance of Zoey Deutch, who dazzles the screen as Erica with her mix of humor, sensuality, volatility and vulnerability.

That gift doesn't desert him [Crowe] in Elizabethtown, but he clutters his movie with plot elements that confuse the focus, the central character and, ultimately, I suspect, Crowe himself.

Mediocre-TV-drama-load of formulas.

One of those comedies in which almost everything good about it is extraneous. There are funny lines and quirky bits, but in terms of story and character, the movie is empty and pointless.

As depicted here, the political story becomes convoluted and dramatically inert.

The film's aim -- to dazzle and inspire -- is sapped by Cruise's vein-popping, running-the-marathon performance.

As for the story, it's in some ways inevitable, but it has enough barbs and curves to keep it new. The smartest touch is that the young lawyer is, as a moral entity, a work in progress.

Compelling and deeply disturbing.

The film simply wouldn’t be much, however, without Cooke’s quick-witted performance. She’s formidable and disarming at the same time, all the time. The character’s always got a line and, usually, a good move for any situation.

A delightful, witty picture that's short and sweet and presents one of the most accurate depictions of the behavior of teenage boys you're ever going to see on screen. [22 Mar 1991, p.E1]

With The 15:17 to Paris, director Clint Eastwood overwhelms the extraordinary with the mundane, turning the true story of three Americans who helped subdue a gunman aboard a European train into a tedious film.

Two Night Stand has its moments. But moments are all this movie has — and all its characters are likely to get.

Compared with other Jane Austen movies, it isn’t much, but compared with other zombie apocalypse movies, it’s an intelligent, literate effort.

But to be fair, Stone doesn't seem even to think he's offering the last word here. Rather, he's trying to offer the first word, or at least a first opportunity to hear the other side, unfiltered by television media.

Better than its promotional description: "A stir-fried journey of self-discovery" - but not by much.

Uninspired and only faintly funny.

It’s Lively’s movie, and it’s she who kicks this superior thriller up an extra notch, to the point that it’s not only worth seeing for the excitement and thrills, but for her.

The main drawbacks of The Burning Plain are its intentionally coy narrative and a zero-hour revelation that's ill-thought-out and generates some pretty chintzy psychobabble. It's the wobbliest element in an admirable, complex and frustrating movie.

She-Devil is a witty picture that's not afraid to stoop for a punch line. [8 Dec 1989, p.E1]

It’s a funny movie, but it’s also one in which Schumer becomes truly legible, as someone who could be headlining comedies for the next decade or more.

Hawke has created a standard-issue, Sundance-friendly indie film that's full of the predictable angst suffered by Manhattan artistic types, but unfortunately the lead characters are both so callow that you finally don't care much about them.

It isn't smart or even very scary.

Delivers laughs most of the way through.

There are a few laughs and some touching moments, but nothing you couldn't get by watching episodes of "Good Times" and "Little House on the Prairie" back to back.

Pleasant, ultimately sweet but never quite inspired.

Spins an unconvincing, miscast noir tale.

Viewers need only a willingness to have fun and not mind when they realize the movie was never intended to be profound. Full Frontal is merely human, funny and unusual -- and that's enough.

It's too much feel-good movie to take in one sitting, but Stroke of Genius captures just enough detail from the greatest sportsman you've never heard of to keep the historical drama interesting.

Teen sex comedies always have more homoerotic moments than you can shake a ... whatever ... at, but Eurotrip seems overly concerned with penises and predatory men. This brand of humor, a time-honored crutch for comedy writers, is both lazy and unseemly.

The film follows its own winding path and covers a lot of emotional ground in 96 minutes, with Michaela Watkins lovely in a key role as Carl’s former lover and colleague. Some movies are more than just a story, they’re a world — and Paint is a world worth visiting.

Not only not funny, it's unfunny. It kills humor. Sit in a room by yourself, look at a blank screen for 90 minutes, and you'll have more of a chance of laughing at your own thoughts than you will at this movie.

Hesher is about as awful as independent films get, a mix of ugliness and unearned sentiment, with a flat story, repellent and pathetic characters and dialogue that consists of lots of stammering and cursing.

A disappointing sequel to the far funnier "Diary of a Mad Black Woman."

The original Ghostbusters was a singular experience that will never be replicated. But Afterlife does take us back into a beloved world and offers the opportunity to hang out with old friends we thought we’d never see again.

It’s entertaining enough, but you wish it had something quirkier, more messily human, more imaginatively drawn outside the lines to it.

Even more nihilistic and confused than "Narc," and yet a lot better. It's better for some specific and interesting reasons.

Takes a long time getting started and doesn't hit its stride until Danny starts coaching a team of fellow cons -- think "Bad News Bears," just nastier.

Oliver Twist" meets "A Clockwork Orange" meets a reckless abandonment of credibility.

It's enjoyable enough, but how much you like it will depend on how much you like skateboarding and extreme sports.

What we’re left with is a movie that has good moments for all the actors, but which, through a series of tonal imprecisions, ends up seeming sour and pointless.

It’s rather amazing that Sophie Cookson, who has most of the screen time as young Joan, isn’t detestable in the role. It tells you that she’d be perfectly charming in another movie. Actually, Dench is more off-putting here, if only because destructive naivete is more forgivable in the young.

It's all rather haphazard, and fans will wait in vain for Sheriff Harry S Truman, rich girl sexbomb Audrey Horne and the rest, or for more Cooper. Brief bits that avid viewers can understand will render the film incomprehensible to the new viewer. [29 Aug 1992]

In fact, none of the performances here are phoned in. Freeman shows great aptitude for the presidency and should consider running — then he could play the president onscreen and off. And as the vice president, Tim Blake Nelson finally gets a role worthy of his depth.

Lacking the velocity and excitement of an action movie and the reality of good drama, The Mother is the worst of both worlds.