Swimming With Sharks, despite its attempt to be wicked and hiply fun, is ultimately just tiring as it pits people against one another.

Ronin eventually becomes tiresome, but the pairing of De Niro and Reno never gets old.

Unfortunately, the writing has become so bad that it becomes impossible to keep your head in the game - even as your toes continue to tap to the beat.

An otherwise passable horror film that delivers more than enough cheap thrills to forgive the plot holes.

Adam Sandler finally has a good excuse: The devil made him do it.

The film's constrained style keeps the drama from reaching a full boil.

A movie whose main virtue was its honesty ultimately lands in a place that feels canned and unsatisfying. But on the way there, Backwards isn't so bad.

Despite the terrific set design in The World to Come, the characters don’t feel at home in it; they do very little farm work, for example. Still, Waterston and Kirby do achieve an intimacy that operates as a warm fire warding off the chilliness around them. It’s too bad we were left out in the cold.

Most audience members will probably want more.

One Fine Day is no great shakes, but it avoids being tiresome thanks to the attractiveness of the stars and to a few twists that screenwriters Terrell Seltzer and Ellen Simon offer to differentiate this from other bickering-adversaries-fall-in-love comedies. Both stars also have adorable kids who figure prominently in the plot.

A movie for people who value heart and earnestness over technical filmmaking skill, and consider unpredictable plot turns a betrayal.

In every small way Heston succeeds, but Needful Things ultimately is hard to sit through. It should have been edited with a meat ax. [27 Aug 1993, p.C4]

Catherine Hardwicke's prettified movie is a strange adaptation because it supplants the woodsy horror of the original fairy tale with two new elements: a romantic triangle and a witch hunt.

It's an honest portrayal, but it leaves the audience stranded, without the emotional hook of a character we can care about.

The script is hopeless in both senses of the word, offering no hope and lacking in quality. But I enjoyed the two victims, at least until they started screaming, and appreciate the way director Renny Harlin creates a sense of menace by his choice of lenses and his placement of the camera.

The only problem with this movie, a substantial one, is that there’s a major sag in the story about halfway through. For its first hour, Moonfall is a blast.

We are left to ponder whether this nightmare might be a harbinger of America's economic prospects. And that is a scary thought indeed.

It's a movie, a goofy little movie. Not so bad, but as far as food and sensuality go, ``Like Water for Chocolate'' still has the edge.

The picture eventually collapses under the weight of its own gimmickry, but it's still an entertaining distraction for cerebral horror fans who want an appetizer before the B-horror feast that is "Diary of the Dead."

The movie's one flaw is this: The whole movie hangs on the gradual unraveling of the central mystery and is made with the expectation that the audience is fascinated and hanging on every tidbit.

Miller pulls the various threads together at the end in a rush, like a college student dashing off the final pages of a term paper in the wee hours. But until then, she hops from one plotline to another, leaving the audience scratching their heads and waiting for another visit to the opera house.

If “Stand and Deliver” struck many as a hard-hitting look at life in the urban ghetto, Spare Parts seems like a Disney after-school special by comparison.

A fascinating look at a bizarre man and a brilliant talent. But a good deal of the movie is described by its subtitle -- "A Son's Journey'' -- and to the extent it is, the movie sags.

The film is always a little bit at a distance, almost involving, always good enough to make us root for it, but rarely better than average.

Intermittently funny.

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

The narrative is hamstrung by cliché attempts to build McKay’s backstory, shamelessly changing key facts. McConaughey’s performance is just fine, as is Ferrera’s, but the personal stuff feels like a distraction.

This land of sweetness and light may appeal to many, but to some it is going to seem like living hell.