The big-screen series has smartly keyed into the character’s long-running (and fast-running) appeal. Like its predecessor, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 knows when to go big, but more important, it knows when to stay small. Go ahead, put a ring on it.

Wildly uneven, with long stretches as dull as Dickie.

It's a kids' movie from a better time, with a few small concessions to modern audiences.

The Nun II has some interesting ideas and some thrilling sequences.

Halfway through, the humans recede into the background, with Dr. Andrews and crew reduced to narrating monster shenanigans instead of participating in the action. Unlike “Godzilla Minus One,” humans are expendable in gargantuan Hollywood creature features.

Disappointingly mediocre.

The acting is fine. The ensemble is strong. The story moves along. Yet a coating of sleaze clings to the film, like bread dipped in batter.

The images of heaven somehow diminish the impact of the boy's experience, perhaps because heaven is just too profound for anyone to film.

Just in the last few months, we've seen "Snowpiercer" and "Divergent," which also deal with what happens after a civil collapse. The Giver, the latest in this weird trend, approaches a now-familiar topic from a new angle, and, of the three, it's the most visually arresting.

Not only a step back in time - to 1431 - but a step back in this martial artist's international film career.

Every hair is in place in writer-director Lawrence Kasdan's epic-length Wyatt Earp. What's missing is a heart. Yet if this large-scale western is a bore, at least it's a beautiful one. [24 Jun 1994, p.C1]

In retrospect, Levinson might secretly wonder if the bizarre casting was the right move after all. But at least he got strong performances from his lead actor, and he took a good script by Pileggi (“Goodfellas”) and made a good movie out of it. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Its examination of identity and loneliness begins to feel like a soap opera season boiled down into one very long episode with too much happening.

This time, it seems as if there’s a little less magic in the woods.

A well-intentioned horror film that is weighted down by stellar cast members who for the most part act as if they don't want to be there.

The cutest darn thing in Hotel Transylvania is the way Count Dracula spazzes into a brilliant red devil-face when provoked. The second-cutest thing is his annoyed response to being misquoted by idiot humans.

Doesn't require anyone to love metal, or even like it. It only requires us to laugh at it - and other exemplars of bloated '80s pop, from Starship to Journey - and it does so with a campy and attitudinous spirit that's hard to resist.

Knowing nothing about "X-Files" is no impediment to appreciating this for the well-acted, adult piece of work that it is.

Appealing movie, one of the summer's pleasant surprises.

Like all Shelton's movies, Hollywood Homicide rambles and shambles, and like most of them, it ultimately settles into its own appealing rhythm.

Going after one innocent man was bad enough. Going after another constitutes a pattern. This marshal isn't a hero. He's a menace.

It is never less than interesting. But who wants interesting from a movie called Cats & Dogs? It needs to grab the audience by the scruff of the neck and shake it.

It seems naive, almost delusional.

The brave men who fought and perished at the Alamo believed fervently in their cause. For The Alamo to work, the audience must believe as well. That never really happens.

Norman Bates is alive and well, and just a tad kinkier than you remember him.

The kid is a charmer, the message is heartfelt - love your kids while you can - and, OK, the ending might jerk a few tears, even from a crank like me. OK, it did.

The laughs do come, but not as readily, not as heartily and not as joyfully as you might expect.

When it’s not repulsive, The Witches drags, but for one brief yet gripping sequence, in which the boy and his friends sneak into the head witch’s hotel suite.