This schlocky period piece doesn't do the pioneering Northern Californians justice. The script is overwritten to the point of parody.

Story problems tank the new Tomb Raider — small, essential things like lack of motivation, lack of reasons for people to do the things they do, and lack of any reason for the audience to keep watching.

[Brody's] mannered performance helps downgrade this picture from a middling sci-fi film to a bad, borderline-camp sci-fi film.

Earnest, but a work in progress.

A 2-hour, 20-minute bore-de-force of virtually dialogue-free angst.

Perhaps worst of all, the movie is painfully long.

This is a half-hearted, derivative action film with not a single honest artistic impulse behind it.

This sequel goes beyond disappointment into a sublime realm of embarrassment that's beyond and yet better than merely bad, because it fascinates: What on Earth were they thinking?

Every key plot turn is telegraphed at least twice, just in case you missed it the first time. Every emotional moment in the movie is foreshadowed a few beats in advance by the manipulative musical score.

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 ghastly sequel to a charming animated film.

Almost so bad it's good. Almost.

Trust never lives up to its snappy opening. Everything is tongue-in-cheek here - yet it's never remotely clear what the point is or what's getting satirized. [16 Aug 1991]

If anything keeps “Red Door” going, it’s Autumn Eakin’s exquisite cinematography. The Further looks like a shadow reflection of the real world, and she and Wilson never fail to come up with aesthetically interesting and sometimes ingenious light sources to illuminate portions of it.

Anyone wondering what 1960s TV show Ironside would have been like if Raymond Burr had been a dirty cop gets their answer courtesy of Morgan Freeman in the dreadful new thriller Vanquish.

Cave, who gained notice with much-lauded Hulu feminist horror film “Fresh” (2022), is too busy condescending to her characters to be invested in what happens to them.

It's a movie you want to like, but its sometimes laughably bad execution makes that difficult.

There was an interesting idea at the heart of Judy & Punch, but the execution is disappointing. This feminist visit to the world of the old “Punch and Judy” puppet shows is tonally off, shifting and swerving when it should be precise and then turning earnest and explicit when it needs to be subtle.

Shanley tries to make something courageous and symbolic out of the notion of jumping into a volcano, but his philosophizing is sentimental, heavy-handed and forced. The idea of doing something reckless and adventurous even becomes a bit depressing when it dawns on you that Shanley may have been taking his own advice with this movie, for less than glorious results. [9 Mar 1990, p.E3]

So The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a misfire, and what a shame, because Andra Day had it in her to be great in this. The movie just didn’t let her bring it out.

It's off in many directions - false in its details, false in its relationships, false in its emotions - but probably the first and worst thing that needs to be said about it is that it's also overlong and dull.

The narrative is clumsy, and the monster scenes are ridiculous, but not ridiculous enough to be funny, just ridiculous enough to be boring.

If you loved the earlier films, these are moments you will hold on to, but they're very few, and they're not enough.

Seems more appropriate for a science museum than the Metreon, but that's not the film's problem. The problem is that oceanic movies in actual science museums are far more interesting and nuanced than this documentary.

The update is a different kind of failure, too much endless and not enough love.

The good news is you can bring the kids. When it comes time for swimming lessons next summer, there’s nothing they’ll remember from this that’ll make them afraid of the water.

All that said, this movie is likely review-proof. The franchise is doing just fine without critical approval. This one is less of a slog, but there is precious little interesting or new in Jurassic World Rebirth. It’ll likely earn a billion dollars anyway.

It's astonishing what little impact even the most imaginatively choreographed and well-filmed aerial escapades can have when they're presented as neither an expression of a character's personality, nor in the context of a compelling mission.

An action movie has to be taken on its own terms, and on its own terms The Perfect Weapon still amounts to a 90-minute bore. [16 Mar 1991, p.C3]

I hated this film. I hated every minute of it, and at times it even made me angry.

It's a plodding, episodic film, reverent and sanctimonious, and its pro-Southern viewpoint -- a time-honored Hollywood tendency -- makes "Gone With the Wind" look like a Northern polemic.

It's standard slasher fare but has its moments.

Unfortunately, Stuart Baird's direction is so sluggish and Jim and John Thomas' script so padded that Executive Decision has no build. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of suspense, the film concentrates to a boyish extent on mechanics, period.

The movie’s overall aura of cheapness, the cast of unknowns and the half-baked theology all call to mind the low-budget horror of the 1980s.

The only thing good to say for The Forest is that Dormer is interesting, that she creates a different vibe and essence for each sister, and that it would be nice to see her in a better movie.

The film is a plodding 2 ½ hours long, with an abundance of livestock gore, endless dental trauma and a violent sex scene.

So there’s nothing here to see, except maybe the white dress that Vergara wears in her first scene.

Feels so moldy and out of date.

This clumsy, self-indulgent film veers from comedy to tragedy and is told in flashbacks, with treacly diary entries and unconvincing "testimonies" from friends providing a window into the past.

So many horror conventions are at work in After.Life that either the filmmakers are parodying them or couldn't come up with anything better. I'm betting on the second choice.

Director Stephen Chbosky needed to bring this stage musical into greater balance with the film medium. He needed to make Dear Evan Hansen less grandiose. He needed to pick up the pace and chop 10 minutes from the running time. It’s still possible that wouldn’t have saved it, but it might have made it less awful.

One reason why “The Conjuring: Last Rites” is so uninteresting is it takes one hour, 21 minutes for the Warrens to agree to enter the haunted house that we all know they’re going to enter from minute one.

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 exception is Willis as Spike. He's got more energy than the rest of the cast combined.

If The Creator were any more slanted, any more in the tank for the coming AI onslaught, you would think it was produced, written and directed by AI.

The best thing in the movie is Peter MacNicol as Dana's boss at the museum, a slippery character with an incomprehensible accent. [16 Jun 1989, p. E1]

For all its hip, rat-a-tat dialogue and a sharp photographic look that give Wall Street a feeling that something exciting is happening, the movie's a bankrupt deal. [11 Dec 1987, p.E1]

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.

The film is a failure in just about every way, save for its acting, which is adequate.

This so-called comedy is so not funny, it makes "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" look like Chaplin.

There’s no apparent human feeling on display here, just scene after scene of protracted martial arts combat that goes on and on, while providing no rooting interest.

No matter how guilty our knucklehead-protagonist's victims supposedly are, it's difficult to maintain a rooting interest.

Fatal Instinct isn't funny, which in a comedy is a slight problem. The movie isn't funny for several reasons, but the most important reason is that the jokes aren't any good. [29 Oct 1993, p.C3]

A dull, boring, poorly acted, limply written and thoroughly unappealing fantasy, featuring bland characters locked in a struggle of no interest.

Achingly long and pointless, "Runs" is a movie about family that's dishonest in its presentation of every relationship.

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

Throwing your $10.25 down a storm drain is a better idea; at least that way you won't feel the added self-loathing of wasting more than an hour and a half of your life watching Eva Mendes in the worst acting job of her career.

Watching Inside is like being stuck inside a house, unable to escape. No, it’s worse than that. It’s like being stuck inside a house, unable to escape, and Willem Dafoe is there with you.

A graceless, embarrassing effort.

Gerry is ragingly bad art that contributes to a definition of independent film as something no one would want to sit through.

What garbage. Seriously. What absolute, bereft, witless, unoriginal, unrewarding, soulless garbage that’s 40 years past scaring anybody. The only power this formula retains is the power to make you feel a little sad — at the ugliness, at the cynicism, and at the pathetic waste of your own mind as you watch it.

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez had their fun with From Dusk Till Dawn, and now they need to stay away from each other. For their own good. Forever.

Best of the Best is the wrong title. Worst of the worst would be more like it for this movie. [Nov 13 1989, p.F4]

No more than a minute into this, and it becomes obvious that the next 98 are going to be trouble.

It is possible to watch 90 minutes of this comedy without once cracking a smile. [12 Jan 1994]

It's just not enough to say that The Three Stooges is the death of comedy. Rather, it's the death, burial, putrefaction and decomposition of comedy. It is where comedy, once alive, ends up as dust blowing in the wind, like something out of a really bad Kansas song.

Dumb but also unrelentingly dark and ugly, thereby depriving the viewer of any camp value.

A poorly acted, colossal bore of a film that strikes wrong notes from beginning to end.

Belongs in the holiday hall of shame.

Snoop has obviously made a real-life impact in his community. Too bad he couldn’t make one in reel life as well.

This is a terrible movie. It has no business being as terrible as it is, because it boasts a perfectly acceptable horror premise and a perfectly acceptable cast.

Proves that it's possible to make a movie so tasteless and so crude that audiences don't laugh. This is worthwhile information. It means there's a limit.

It's so low it scrapes through the barrel and deep into the earth's core. It's the lowest piece of garbage to hit screens in months.

The only people to feel sorry for in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts are Anthony Ramos (“In the Heights”) and Dominique Fishback (“Swarm”) who play actual humans trying to save the planet, when in real life they’re just humans trying to save a movie. They’re fine, but they can’t make a dent in the awfulness.

The result is embarrassing: quick cuts and shaky, hand- held camera work, bad acting and lots of attitude.

Remarkably empty, remarkably noisy, remarkably pleasureless. It's unwatchable.

How bad does it get? How far past the basement can one elevator go?

Gives stupid, vulgar comedy a bad name.

But who cares what grumpy old grown-ups think? This reviewer watched with two movie-loving kids, and they did each laugh. Twice.

That the movie becomes silly isn't necessarily a problem, but it also becomes tiresome, degenerating into a series of martial arts interludes -- everyone unaccountably leaves his guns at home.

A truly awful mix of bad direction, nonsensical story line and dialogue that appears to have been made up on the spot.

In trouble from its first minutes.

Gods of Egypt is an epic — an epic disaster.

Directed by Danny Boyle, it lacks even a single moment of charm or interest.

Insidious: Chapter 3 is simply not scary. Not a bit, not a whit. Except that the audience will be terrified of the next stabbing of their eardrums, at generally predictable intervals.

There's nothing here but wreckage. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is so ineptly made that the story is advanced solely through announcements.

Nasty to women, cruel to old people and tosses in a cardboard gay couple for gratuitous laughs. It's also got one of those annoying soundtracks that lays rock music right over the dialogue -- as if it wanted to distract us from it.

Only a complete idiot could think Epic Movie is remotely funny.

It's a dishonest satire that manages to be (disingenuously) contemptuous of white people and (unintentionally) condescending toward black people, without ever being funny.

Unreconstructed fans of Chevy Chas, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight or Bill Murray might find something to guffaw at in this lamebrained movie that purports to be a satire on country club life but makes everybody look like slobs. Except - perhaps - a little Irish wench named Sarah Holcomb and the gopher who tears up the golf course. Should have put the gopher to work on the script.

The movie can barely muster the bravery to be even "Dude, Where's My Car" stoopid.

You'll feel so much better just sending your $9.50 to the Red Cross then catching "I Know What You Did Last Summer" one more time on television.

This movie is so horrible that it actually spends some time in "so bad it's good" territory, before getting significantly worse.

In UHF we get 90 minutes of Al Yankovic, and that's 85 minutes too much. The problem isn't that he's weird, but that he isn't weird at all. The premises for his gags are commonplace and predictable, and his follow-throughs lack imagination. He seems incapable of spinning more than one tired joke from each set-up. [21 Jul 1989, p.E1]

What is bloody and full of holes?

So mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality.

It's impossible to imagine why Lions Gate, the indie distributor that released "Monster's Ball," would bother with this garbage.

The equivalent of a full-course meal with no calories. It is a mirage of a movie, 100 minutes of nothing.