In the humor department, Fatman’s is a scattershot but often clever affair thanks to the film’s director brothers, Ian and Eshom Nelms. Their last feature, the eccentric desert noir “Small Town Crime,” worked positive human connections into a dark, violent framework, so that seems to be a theme dear to the Tulare County-raised siblings.

A nonstop action picture with a fair amount of laughs, car chases and exploding buildings. [15 May 1992]

Vantage Point has nothing going on. There's no artistic, philosophical or even jolly entertainment reason for adopting this strategy. It's just arbitrary, a gimmick.

In a movie as hackneyed and as dull as Evolution, the small favors of Duchovny's performance stand out.

A useless film in every possible way.

This is how bad Table 19 gets: At a certain point in the movie, there is absolutely no reason that any of the characters would remain at the wedding or anywhere near it. So the movie devises a false reason to keep them in the general vicinity.

An earnest, ponderous epic that tries desperately to say Something Important about disenfranchised blacks and their Afrikaans oppressors, but never does. [27 March 1992, p.D7]

For what it is, it's well done, well filmed, well outfitted with ordnance and, well, exciting. However, in script, characters and plot, Act of Valor offers only the barest minimum.

Though Michelle’s transformation into a family-loving gal is hardly convincing, the film still moves along quickly, and McCarthy has some memorable moments in which her comic chops are on full display.

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.

Horrible Bosses 2 is harsh and tasteless, not to mention broad and shameless, but that’s not a bad thing in this case. Softness and good taste, as well as restraint and carefulness, are the enemies of comedy, and “Horrible Bosses 2” is a very funny movie.

It’s a simple, sick, ridiculous story told with relentless tension and forward thrust.

Despite lapses in the script, there is a palpable chemistry between Usher and Jackson, and the humor that sparks between the two is what carries the film through its fairly predictable paces.

It's a strange thing, this type of whimsy. Kari offers us ideas in place of characters, and yet he expects us to see through these ideas to the real-life conditions they represent - and then to respond to them in kind.

In style and tone, Igor seems more like a short from the adult-oriented "Spike & Mike's Festival of Animation."

The pure mechanics of Here Comes the Boom land it in an enjoyable, if forgettable, space.

Poor casting is compounded by a ludicrous script.

A daring, free-spirited and ultimately moving performance by Benjamin Bratt lies at the beating heart of Pinero.

It's rough when it works and rough when it doesn't. Much of the first hour is made up of slow patches, while the last 20 minutes are ugly and terrifying.

The movie is a mess.

It’s the kind of torment you can wish on your worst enemy without feeling too guilty, not something to inflict permanent damage, just two hours of soul-sickening confusion and sensory torment.

Held back by a story and script that is often silly and confusing.

It bombs, but not for lack of trying. It bombs for too much trying. [17 Feb 1990, p.C3]

Not cheesy enough to be fun/bad (the recent loss of Raquel Welch reminds us of what a hoot such junk films like her 1966 “One Million Years B.C.” could be) nor awesome enough to compete with the “Jurassic” movies of the world, this production is an in-betweener whose biggest asset is a tight, 93-minute running time.

A convoluted mess, but there have been worse.

Like its protagonist, Ceremony is as smart as it is exasperating.

A movie that is not only achingly funny but also full of serious and philosophical truisms.

A movie like this depends on clever bits and incidents, but there's little invention here to disguise the film's formulaic nature.

With Lloyd Webber onboard not just as composer but also co-screenwriter and producer, the film seemed destined to stay true to its roots rather than attempt to transcend them.

It's surprising how dated some of the humor is.

Watching The Goldfinch is like reading a novel where someone ripped out every third page from front to back. You can tell there’s a good story, with compelling characters, and maybe a strong mystery. But the connective tissue is missing to the point of constant distraction.

Twixt is fun, but fairly flimsy - it doesn't have the ambition of his previous film, the black-and-white character piece "Tetro." It's also not really scary, although there are some nice creepy visuals here and there.

Though Meg 2 is by far the biggest production he’s ever helmed, director Ben Wheatley doesn’t appear to be in over his head with this; special effects and stunts are proficiently delivered, no matter how ludicrous

Too grotesque for children and just too silly for their parents.

An exceptionally good movie in its first hour and an exceptionally bad one in its second.

Ultimately, no matter what angle you see Bliss from, the story converges on a choice and a question: Which world do you choose to live in? And what can bring a person back to reality?

Aside from Patricia Clarkson, who is practically this movie's reason for being, the great virtue of Last Weekend is that it's exactly as it presents itself.

For Tim and Eric, what's funny is what's odd, ultra-cheap, pathetic or scurvy - and what's funniest of all is that some people just don't get it.

Actually, the only truly obnoxious thing about 3 Days to Kill is that the violent scenes are more congenial than the family scenes, because the teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) here is presented as a sour, nasty brat.

Welcome to Marwen does not work as a drama of addiction, and frankly it doesn’t work as a celebration of Hogancamp’s creations, which work best as stunning still-photo images.

The studio behind Wicker Park bills it as a "romantic thriller.'' But it's actually an example of an even more unusual subgenre: the dumb, suspense- free and undersexed stalker drama.

A little like spending the holidays with strangers. The spirits are high, the relationships are warm, the personal stories have a shared history, and even though you're on the outside of things, you appreciate the people in a remote and perhaps admiring sort of way. Still, when it's time to leave, you're not sorry.

Not a bad film. I'm going to stick my neck out and call it a good one - a small, dense chamber study of unhappy people looking for hope in the darkness, often literally.

Heavy-handed dialogue, flurries of melodrama and a silly ending make the whole enterprise sink like a stone.

They take on special powers that the filmmakers are incapable of making interesting, partly because the characters are ciphers, and partly because the story is listless and uninventive.

At best, it will be remembered as "that exorcism movie with Eric Bana." More likely, "that exorcism movie where everyone has a bad New York accent."

All the movie’s finer points — of audience response, of interaction, of the dances between people — are conveyed with a specificity so expert that it seems offhand.

Salinger does what so many documentaries and biopics either fail to do or decline to attempt; it speculates convincingly on the connective tissue between the life and the work of the subject.

It's a little of this, a little of that, and in the meantime there's not a single joke to crack a smile over. [20 Mar 1993, p.C3]

A slow-moving family drama guaranteed to induce a nap if not somnambulism.

Stone tries to make us like Alexander because he's good, when he should have made us want to watch Alexander because he's amazing.

About five times as funny as "Scary Movie 3."

Gets most of the big things wrong and almost all the little things right. For two-thirds of its running time, it's a nasty little delight with an amusing and curmudgeonly central character.

It has a life and style that other buddy action movies lack

The result is mixed bag, an intermittently pleasing but mostly routine effort.

It's precisely Seagal's incongruity that has made him a great absurdist hero -- and that makes Fire Down Below a kick.

It has no ambition, little sense and false sentiment, but it does have velocity, high spirits and scale.

The plot relies heavily on pat betrayal, forced coincidences - and the sort of closure that lands, with a thud, in a tidy package of cliches. Yet some of the humor is delicious.

Biting and incisive.

Smurfs: The Lost Village has the look of a film that was rushed, and made on a tight budget. At best, it’s an adequate cinematic babysitter.

Intelligent, observant entertainment designed for an adult audience.

Aloha shows how far a movie can go on charm alone.

If Insidious 2 exists solely because Insidious 1 made a ton of money, then at least credit Wan for making quality control a priority.

There are isolated moments of humor, and even charm. The visual effects are at times outstanding. But these positives are overwhelmed by the uninspired whole.

And then there’s the real problem with Pitch Perfect 3: The best thing about the first movie — the singing — feels like an afterthought.

Remains exciting, even as we laugh at the amateur-night antics of the women.

A glossy, stiff melodrama.

Has all the elements of a satisfying movie except knowing when to stop.

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]

As for Williams, he's a warm actor in an oddly cold movie, and his presence certainly doesn't make things worse. But Toys doesn't call for anything new from him. [18 Dec 1992, p.C1]

A film very much of its moment, in ways both good and bad. But the important thing is that its virtues are extraordinary, while its flaws are easy to forget because they’re so common.

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.

The lesson here is something we already know but sometimes don’t admit: A movie doesn’t have to be any good in order to be good. Sometimes it can just be nonsense that’s easy to watch. “The 355” is a guilty pleasure, only don’t waste time feeling guilty.

Basically, this is a really good movie until the last part, where director and co-writer Darren Lynn Bousman ruins so much so fast that you'll wonder if his actions are deliberate -- or if the studio interfered.

RoboCop 3 ought to be a lot more mean and harrowing a sci- fi thriller than it is. Yet it still has a wicked humor underneath its prophetic grin. [05 Nov 1993, p.C3]

It feels both big and little, concentrating as it does on the small movements in people's lives and the huge tides of history.

The sequel might have the formula down, but it lacks everything that made "Anaconda'' fun.

Maybe there's a metaphor here, but figuring it out wouldn't make Trouble Every Day any better.

Man on a Ledge doesn't aim high, but what it aims to do, it does. It grabs the audience's attention, engages its anxieties, stokes its resentments and, at the finish, sends people out saying, "That was good."

Jack Frost starts out with sweet promise, then loses steam and gets a little too strange for its own good. It also gets cloyingly manipulative, but its heart is in the right place.

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]

To its credit, the movie eschews cheap dramatics, but at times it eschews dramatics altogether.

This new iteration may be interesting from a cultural perspective, if not particularly worthwhile on its own — unless you’re a Jack Harlow fan.

A sly variation on the buddy movie.

How can this movie not be fun?

Aside from the disgusting parts, Spiral is a fairly decent thriller.

Appealing, and ultimately moving.

Any way you slice it, it is still pointless.

An attempt at a beautiful film about renewal -- about past love, love lost, longing and rediscovery -- but it has no emotional truth.

The film is better than it has any right to be, considering the prosaic source.

Butter is a misfire. At 90 minutes it feels inflated, and though clearly intended as funny, it's difficult to locate, except in the most general terms, the focus of the movie's satire, and there's not a laugh to be had.

I liked this movie, maybe more than I should have, and would be happy to see anything this director wants to do next.

Credit the director for one thing. He could have stretched it to three hours, but he gets in and out of this mess in less than two.

Faced with a story that doesn't make much sense, the filmmakers switch gears and try for a sociological statement - something about the marginalized and the neglected. This makes for a funny last five minutes, but sad, too, because Walker was better than this, even if his movies sometimes weren't.

No campy vampire movie, and the early part of the film is well-made enough that the sadness of Vlad’s dilemma is truly felt.

Some people clearly had a good time making this film. Whether you have a good time watching it depends almost entirely on your Pony love walking in.

There are pros and cons to this Green Lantern, a half-campy, half-compelling adaptation of the superheroic DC comic books.

Angel Eyes is the rare film that presents a family dynamic as demented as ones we know from life.