The Net is a scary film that could have been terrifying but for something slightly earnest and plodding in director Irwin Winkler's attack.

Action in an action comedy is supposed to be funny, too, as Jackie Chan well knows. The refitting of the crashed plane is so tedious we feel as if we're doing the work ourselves.

The Baxter is just an OK movie, but Showalter's performance is the gem to take from it.

This oddball story, written and directed by Anders Thomas Jen sen, whom Dogme followers might remember from his screenplay for the 1999 hit "Mifune," is more than a one-joke concept. Its characters are sometimes cruel, sometimes sweet, but always recognizably human.

A little more character dimension would have made these between-the-sheet sessions a lot more charged.

Mighty Joe Young is a mighty fun movie. The trick? They didn't try to out-monster those bloated King Kong and Godzilla franchises. But it's still a hoot of an adventure about an overgrown ape having trouble adjusting to life in California.

By the end, I was adding my own internal "Deadwood"-style profanities to McShane's clean dialogue. "For the sake of the (God-@#$%) kingdom, cut it (the @#$%) down!" Movies about mile-high beanstalks shouldn't require additional audience imagination.

You can get away with almost anything in a farce except failing to be funny, and that's what kills Death at a Funeral.

A movie for science fiction fans who wish every minute of “Star Wars” was the cantina scene.

The film may work best as a supplement to the underwhelming three-hour-plus extravaganza broadcast in February to celebrate “SNL’s” 40th anniversary.

In the early going "Wild Bill" looks interesting -- an audacious wallow in violence and Western legend. Then 20 minutes in, writer-director Walter Hill puts his cards on the table. It's a dead man's hand.

Mostly meets expectations.

Even the interesting parts of A Lego Brickumentary aren’t that interesting, but are rather more like the best thing you might hear while being cornered by the most boring person at a party.

The effort behind Bird Box was to make something better than a standard horror movie, but the result is dull and half-hearted. It’s not serious enough or important enough to transcend the horror genre, but neither is it visceral enough to hold up as a regulation horror movie.

This is compelling stuff, but Lilien is less successful in trying to link Pale Male's story to his own.

Black comedies are rare enough. Birthday Girl is a member of an even rarer species, the black romantic comedy.

A superficial diversion.

Captures the effervescence and playfulness of Johnson's novel, even as it attempts to shoehorn a tangle of characters and situations.

The real casting disaster is Mulroney. His blandness in the role makes it impossible to believe two beautiful women would fight over him.

An inspirational and cautionary film.

Mamma Mia! is fun, the music's terrific and the cast is appealing.

Though it is funny - at times, laugh-out-loud funny - this comedy is by and for adults.

Violent, gritty and probably too intense for very young children, but for anybody between the ages, say, of 10 and 10, it's certain to be a crowd pleaser with fascinating dark tones and menacing undercurrents that are quite a contrast from Saturday cartoon fare. [30 Mar 1990, p.E1]

Not the usual action movie. It's too odd for that. Based on a true story, it has the weirdness of real life, which is good. But also like real life, it has that funny way of not making much sense or being all that enjoyable.

About one idea short of being an excellent teenage romance. As it stands it's a pleasing but routine effort.

It’s slow getting off the ground, and never completely achieves flight, at least not in the sense of transport. It remains a series of sequences, some terrific and some less so, but at least the movie keeps finding new ways for people to fall off a building while on fire. So there’s that.

The movie has a sweetness and innocence that makes it near perfect entertainment for its target audience.

John Lennon once said that because he was an artist, if you gave him a tuba, he could get something out of it. The Face of Love presents us with Annette Bening and Ed Harris playing the tuba. They get something out of it - they get everything there is to get and more - but it's not enough.