A mix of the powerful and the ridiculous, and eventually the ridiculous wins. The movie deals with a big subject that has received scant treatment in movies - the genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s - giving voice and testimony to what happened there. But the ill-conceived fictional elements take the picture right off the rails.

If Monster occasionally shows its YA roots with flashes of simplicity, it also tells a lean, propulsive story with style and grace.

This flawed drama about a self-destructive young actress and her reclusive novelist father has its rewards, mainly in some good performances.

Tag isn’t interesting at all, but its failure is. It’s the kind of movie that makes the viewer ask questions, such as, why isn’t this working? Why is this bombing? Why is this dying the death? Why am I shifting in my seat just to stay conscious? The movie seems like it should be funny, but it’s not, so why?

Heart and Souls stands up beautifully as a heart- tugging testament to the importance of taking care of the sometimes complicated business of being a decent, loving person before some fateful bus crash robs you of the chance. [13 Aug 1993, p.C1]

The weakness of “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” aside from the fact that at 136 minutes it’s a little too long, is that it follows the less interesting character of Baranov. But this isn’t Dano’s fault. He can’t make this fictional fellow more interesting than Putin.

The character moments here resonate, and there are enough stakes to make the final scenes feel meaningful.

While the songs are recycled, Across the Universe stands out just by existing.

All along, you know something terrible is going to happen, and when it does, you leave the theater shaken and deeply moved.

Jackass 3D has its moments, but it lacks the ingenuity and hilarity of the previous films - no doubt in large part because of the aging process.

More often than not, it's fun.

The result is a satisfying and original picture.

I'm not denying that a 40-year- old woman might be self-conscious about going around with someone this young. But the subject isn't interesting or provocative enough to sustain an entire movie.

Squanders its comic capital on redundant bits about her perplexed family and secret society of fellow sex addicts.

The Two Jakes is an interesting movie and audiences are predisposed to warm up to Nicholson the actor, but they may not be so charitable to Nicholson the director. [10 Aug 1990]

A few times every year, Hollywood makes a mistake, violates formula and actually makes a great picture. Falling Down is one of the great mistakes of 1993, a film too good and too original to win any Oscars but one bound to be remembered in years to come as a true and ironic statement about life in our time. [26 Feb 1993, p.D1]

It's really not bad... It's a genuine vault at greatness that misses the mark -- but survives.

A potential problem with the movie is that it can be a challenge watching people hand-wringing over moral decisions. But the acting is so good that it makes it worth sticking with during the slow patches.

If you can get past the impossibilities it is a fun time at the movies.

How could a little story like this get stretched to 124 minutes? It's at least 30 minutes too long.

In Mimic, director Guillermo Del Toro has created a dark, grotesque world that's hard to look at, and impossible to stop looking at.

An ideal movie for an ideal time in America.

Much of what we see is revealing, but I was unable to quell an occasional sense that the dice were being loaded, that the subjects were being given just enough rope to hang themselves.

At no point during the movie does it strike him that mass extermination might be classified as "rude." No, Frank has the courage of his convictions, which include the belief that most of America has already flushed itself down the toilet.

Maher makes Michael Moore look incredibly likable in comparison.

In style and structure, it mimics an old-style studio effort, a culture-clashing comedy of manners that's tinged with melodrama and filmed in a smart progression of medium shots.

Bezucha made something perverse, a feel-bad holiday film about a repellent family, with a milquetoast dad and a smug, devious harpy of a mom.

Still the spectacle of this, of beautiful, sensitive children at the mercy of damaged adults — this is what we take from The Glass Castle. It’s a universal awfulness rendered with truth and detail, and somehow that’s enough.