The best scenes are the ones that Fox shares with Tamala Jones, Wendy Raquel Robinson and the full-figured Monique as her sassy girlfriends. There's a ripe, crackling spontaneity when these women get together.

A little too corny to endorse fully, but no one should be discouraged from seeing it.

Come Away is an idea that never takes flight.

A pleasant enough "Crimes of the Heart" rip-off about three young women bumbling, stumbling and fumbling through life, looking for answers, smiling through tears, blah, blah, blah. [21 Oct 1988]

Shyamalan doesn’t reach “The Sixth Sense” or “Unbreakable” heights, but his scriptwriting is livelier than we’ve seen in years, and there’s a sense of humor that was missing in even his best work. At times, he seems to be poking good-natured fun at his own reputation.

Well intentioned, but only occasionally creepy.

It's difficult to ignore the fact that they've created a romantic comedy that has almost no romance and even less comedy.

Knowing what Powell is capable of, it’s not unreasonable to go into this expecting a bigger payoff.

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

The cluttered, surreal, claustrophobic sets and gooey alien creatures look intriguing, sometimes shocking. But the story tries so hard to be imaginative that it congeals and sinks like lead.

This is the best disappointing movie you will see all year.

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.

The movie makes a point, but it doesn’t build on it. And so the movie becomes as dull and depressing for us as it must be for the central character.

This dark and seedy follow-up to 2009's blockbuster comedy has a quite a retro message - suggesting that civilized men carry inside them a monster, a "demon" within, that requires constant taming.

Dark Places isn’t a disaster of a film. Instead, it’s the definition of average, and we wish it could have taken us to some more interesting places.

Uninvolving. Even the sex is boring. Are these scenes supposed to be wildly erotic? If they are, they don't work. [20 Mar 1992, Daily Notebook, p.D1]

Occasionally, this film is funny and cute. When the family's little girl narrates, it reaches a level of humor that is ironic and endearing.

The flashy skate-level camera techniques that conceal the actors' inadequacies on ice can't compare with a full-figure view of a championship-quality long program. An ''undoable'' medal-winning move that is pivotal to the plot is never clearly explained or depicted. And movie histrionics can't approximate the drama of real competition. [27 March 1992, p.D7]

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.

It’s a flat, forlorn movie with occasional sparks of life.

The fighting in the “Karate Kid” movies and its Netflix series offshoot, “Cobra Kai,” has always been quality, but in “Legends” it’s too quick-cutting and chaotic, hard to follow and over much too quickly.

John Lennon once said that because he was an artist, if you gave him a tuba, he could get something out of it. The Face of Love presents us with Annette Bening and Ed Harris playing the tuba. They get something out of it - they get everything there is to get and more - but it's not enough.

This ambitious and sometimes entertaining Brazilian feature tries to pull off a tricky maneuver but doesn't quite get it done.

The message is muddled.

The biggest mystery of all is why director Marc Rosenbush, whose background is in theater, bothered putting this story on film when it's so obviously meant for a stage.

It is a great story, but it hasn't been translated to the screen. It is never a good sign when the biographical notes have more emotional wallop than the movie.

There is a great deal of movie-backlot sleight of hand that looks fine while you’re watching, but when you think about it comes off as mostly façade. In that way, at least, Rodriguez successfully links form to content.

Obvious, but at least it's clean.

An almost successful comedy.

Forget the sometimes stilted acting. Forget the occasional scenes that are borderline cliched. Instead, focus on the message and the raw emotion.

Homefront has craft and humor behind it, but not much in the way of inspiration. Think of a dessert with lots of calories and no nutrition.

Superman is a mess, but it’s a colorful one. It’s either a terrible superhero movie or an OK parody, take your pick.

It is a boilerplate action comedy.

The Great Raid tells its story without irony, perspective or any leavening that would make it something other than an ordinary military-action caper.

July also narrates the film, in voiceover, as the cat, and every time she does, it's a white-knuckle thing. You have to hold on until she stops.

Good looks and brutal action can’t hide the fact that the film traffics in Italian stereotypes with the same impunity as simplistic notions of good and evil.

Black Nativity is a just-OK feature film that, as an hour-long television special, could have had the makings of a classic.

Saw X is “Saw 1.5” chronologically, taking place between the first and second films in this granddaddy of torture porn franchises. Quality-wise, though, it is closer to a 10 than a zero, which cannot be said about most of the other nine movies in this distressingly popular series.

Too much of what we see feels contrived and ham-handed.

If you like this sort of movie - and actually, cards on the table, I like this kind of movie - you will not be sorry you saw it. But you will not come away from the experience feeling that you've seen Victoria, young or otherwise.

It tries too hard, but at least it's trying.

The real magic of “School” resides in its stars. Caruso loses Sophie’s moral direction in deliciously fun yet behaviorally alarming ways. Wylie finds Aggie’s righteousness without damaging the character’s cunning intellect; a scene involving “wish fish” has no business being as moving as Wylie makes it. Together, the young actors take this project beyond good and evil, into the realm of something real.

Instead of slavishly appending cliched horror tropes onto his otherwise worthy script, Franco should have at least taken the horror genre seriously enough to investigate how he might stretch it and make it better. That was within his reach, if only he’d reached for it. Maybe next time he will.

The film has a good cast, and is competently made in a plain-vanilla way, but its greatest appeal will be to those who share its endorsement of traditional religious values.

An adaptation not firing on all cylinders.

Wild Reeds is a sober, heartfelt piece of work, sensitively directed and lovingly photographed -- though slightly dull, if we're going to be perfectly honest.

Moderately engaging tale.

Down Periscope makes a surprisingly successful launch, with plenty of brisk one-liners and a promising set-up. But after that auspicious opening, it sinks.

A big fizzle.

It’s as if the film itself is suffering from a pandemic hangover and can’t believe there’s a reason to feel better, even when describing one of the greatest scientific and manufacturing achievements in human history.

The Invisible is, at its core, a character study, albeit one with a Patrick Swayze-in-"Ghost" paranormal edge. But it's definitely not mindless trash. If anything, the movie is too introspective, to the point that it doesn't build enough conflict or tension.

The movie is reasonably entertaining, though it helps to be 6 years old.

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

All this is interesting, or interesting enough, depending on how you feel about Elaine Stritch. If you're a particular fan, this documentary is a must-see. But for everyone else, a little of Elaine's personality goes a long way.

Pet Sematary Two' follows the usual horror movie pattern: The first half is a pleasure, because you know what has to happen and you can't wait. And the second half is a bore, because you know what still has to happen and you can't wait for it to end. [01 Sept 1992, p.E3]

The movie takes on a somber, fitful atmosphere of straining epic proportions. But it strays into an episodic bog that leaves it gasping for dramatic life.

Kingpin has nastiness going for it. There are prosthesis jokes, bad-teeth jokes, ugly-women jokes, sight gags involving vomiting, etc.

The movie drags.

The movie makes something of a case for him, in that he is quite a good piano player, with absolute command of the blues, country and rock idioms, but there isn’t enough here to make someone a fan who isn’t already interested.

A merry, wistful, tear-and-a-smile romp about the Holocaust, of all things.

In Amigo, a story of the Philippine-American War, veteran filmmaker John Sayles allows his political convictions to get the better of him. The movie is a heavy-handed attack on U.S. imperialism with little to compensate in the way of character interest and genuine drama.

Difficult to watch, and the film is sabotaged by an impossibly naive lead character and the repetitive auditions that become gratuitously depressing.

An ambitious attempt at cinematic poetry, and how much they have succeeded depends on how well you can sort out its surrealistic meanings.

Anderson almost brings off a picture worthy of his grandiose ambition.

Two decades after its predecessor, Disney’s “Freakier Friday” plunges back into “legacy sequel” waters — where nostalgia keeps storylines afloat and originality barely treads water.

Halfway through, the humans recede into the background, with Dr. Andrews and crew reduced to narrating monster shenanigans instead of participating in the action. Unlike “Godzilla Minus One,” humans are expendable in gargantuan Hollywood creature features.

It’s slow getting off the ground, and never completely achieves flight, at least not in the sense of transport. It remains a series of sequences, some terrific and some less so, but at least the movie keeps finding new ways for people to fall off a building while on fire. So there’s that.

A movie that has two good ideas. It needed three.

The film version is gorgeous to look at and contains amusing performances from Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett in the title roles. But it fails to get inside the minds of gamblers as Peter Carey so admirably did in his Booker Prize-winning novel.

Before it runs off track--it does have some spectacular moments.

As a sports drama -- a genre that's gotten entirely too much play lately -- "Dreamer" is singularly unexciting.

Strives for an airy, merry amorality, but it never quite achieves liftoff, though at times it comes close.

Most of the bits and performances have a hard time making the transition from stage to screen.

Somewhere in the translation from stage to screen, The History Boys has become an intelligent misfire. What's left is a literate but listless film.

The writing, by Adam Mansbach, and direction, by Vikram Gandhi, are competent without being terribly sophisticated or daring. Terrell’s performance elevates the film, though.

The movie's shift into an implausible thriller magnifies its lack of character development. But Gosling gives an impassioned performance throughout.

If we're going to be honest, we need to look inside and ask ourselves: Do we really want to see a listless movie about a woman whose dream is to move into a double-wide trailer?

Therapy for a Vampire has nothing to say. It just has stuff happening, none of it repulsive and all of it performed by competent actors, but that’s just not enough.

A film that defies lowered expectations — if not the tired adolescent mind-set and poor joke-writing — and emerges as the best in the series.

Describing this makes it sound like there’s more plot than there actually is, but “The Carpenter’s Son” isn’t a conventional story. It’s more of a mood piece, with a true run time of just barely 90 minutes. But it’s got Cage, and that’s the difference maker.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength is the performance by Kwanten, who appears in HBO's "True Blood" and may be familiar from his lead role in the big-screen Aussie thriller "Red Hill." Dermody also does well.

For all its drive and passion, Favela Rising is an uneven, spasmodic film.

The movie itself is just a routine showcase, modest in its aspiration and effective within its limits, entertaining in the moment but, in the end, faintly silly. On the plus side, it's only 86 minutes long.

For all the deadpan laughs it delivers, Careful is too self-conscious, too stoned on its own invention and technique to merit sustained attention. It's a marvelous conceit, but ultimately a thin one. [08 Oct 1993, p.C3]

Beautiful but hollow.

In the end, Venom exists in what may end up being regarded as a no-man’s land — too much like a superhero movie to appeal to people who despise the genre, and yet too deliberately silly to be taken seriously by superhero fans. There’s nothing memorable in Venom, nothing to talk about the next day. But if it happens to hit you right, its lightness is refreshing.

This is an ugly film, but with an undeniable allure.

Flipped succeeds when it backs off the gluey nostalgia and focuses instead on the subtler pitfalls of adolescence - the tough stuff, the moral stuff, the constant tacking between fear and courage.

Goes south as a sci-fi film.

Lust on the Grand Prix circuit. [30 Sep 2007, p.N34]

An entertaining film for kids and young teens. It's also a product of the era in which we're living, and weird times make for weird movies.

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

A perfect example of an Intelligent Bad Movie.

It works primarily because of the chemistry between Chan and Tucker, which is at its combustible best this time out.

A dark, unsettling drama from Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone.

After sitting through Takers with my stomach rearranged by hyperactive camera spazzing, I hereby formally request all directors and cinematographers to just get a grip already and STOP. WIGGLING. THE CAMERA.

Even though the movie’s engine sputters at the end, it’s beautifully shot, the actors are fun to watch, and the story is decent in fits and starts.

Even as it stands, Fish Tank is a valuable movie, though it aspires to a social insight it doesn't attain and a psychological penetration it won't maintain.