The material is ripe for black comedy, but Stewart’s screenplay, staying true to Bahari’s real-life experience, steers a middle course. It’s sometimes scary, sometimes funny, and sometimes absurd, but never any of those things fully, or effectively.

Almost all of its screen time is taken up with explosions, chases, shootouts, heads coming off, folks getting sliced in half -- and the odd thing about it is that after 40 minutes, it's not disturbing anymore. Just dull. [21 Nov 1990, p.E1]

By the end you can't help but wonder whether it was a good idea to keep the youngsters under camera scrutiny for more than 12 years.

A mostly absorbing but strangely inert espionage drama that could have been a heart-pounding thriller.

Epps is a leading man on the rise, and Cool J. is something to see.

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.

Easy Money takes its time telling us how all the fortunes of all three men intersect, and the movie's failing - or at least its significant imperfection - is that when the stories and lifelines do converge, the results just aren't satisfying.

Little rings true in The Commitments. The music, which is never lip-synched, is very good -- especially when Strong, only 16 at the time, belts Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. But the characters are shrill and two-dimensional, and the performers, most of whom had little or no prior acting experience, are made to look like pro-wrestling buffoons. [16 Aug 1991, p.F1]

Dreary.

Blue Gate Crossing is 85 minutes of wistful gloom.

As we watch these four pros in action, we find ourselves wanting fewer flashbacks and more time with all of the folks in one spot. That would have been a satisfying meal in itself.

Much about Living Out Loud is pretty far-fetched, but at least it accurately portrays the dating possibilities for newly divorced women of a certain age.

Nikolaus Leytner’s competent, watchable but uninspired adaptation of the best-selling novel by Robert Seethaler does have a few attractions, chiefly a heartwarming farewell performance as Freud, the famed psychoanalyst, by the great Bruno Ganz, who died last year not long after filming.

Even with a script that doesn’t provide much behavioral variety and goes in many wrong directions, Bullock commands the screen with little more than closed lips and wary stares.

Despite highly enjoyable moments and the welcome presence of Kate Winslet, even sympathetic viewers will be put off by the movie’s bewildering variety of genres and tones.

Things are a little off. The style is gritty 1970s-style crime thriller, but the morals are straight out of 2007, and the movie is set in 1988.

The good news is that the pace picks up — Giant Little Ones actually gets better as it goes along. And despite its lapses into self-consciousness, the movie presents us with a set of characters that we end up believing and caring about – not tremendously, but enough to keep watching to see how they all turn out.

Some of the best bits of the original movie are replayed here but lose their punch the second time around - the horse manure bit, the skate board sequence. Maybe people who never saw the first movie will get a big kick out of them. [22 Nov 1989, p.E1]

A mildly pleasing romantic comedy, a trifle held together by Drew Barrymore's charm and a decent high-concept gimmick.

A pleasant enough movie whose overt charm sometimes works against it.

The Mummy is the rare Cruise film that doesn’t quite give audiences their money’s worth.

An unfortunate casting decision, however, comes close to sabotaging a witty script.

There is a maddening sense of dislocation through much of the movie -- a feeling that genuinely fascinating questions have been squeezed out by woo-woo philosophizing and material (like Glennie's brief return to the family farm) of only minor import.

Gratuitous, yes, but Giannaris has the visual finesse to make it work.

This is the sequel to “The Craft,” folks. For what it is, the movie’s OK, except that it tried to be more than it is, and it isn’t.

In its way, the film is more concerned with the love between friends than the sex between strangers.

Considering what the filmmakers had to work with, and the fact that it has all been done before, Freddy Vs. Jason isn't bad. And sometimes not bad is almost good.

It's a film of unquestioned visual artistry, and the filmmakers' empathy and human understanding are apparent moment to moment, scene by scene. But despite sensitive performances, it's an experiment that fizzles.