Kwak is indeed a highly original voice, but you wouldn't know it from Typhoon. It seems as if he's constrained by the conventional material.

Your enjoyment of the movie will depend on whether you can suspend your disbelief — and confusion — and let the magic of misdirection wash over you.

An arid, uninvolving film that suffers from Burrows' miscasting as the vain Julie.

Runs out of ideas long before the projector runs out of film.

Payback has a completely different spirit from "L.A. Confidential'' -- more wild, more silly -- but it has the same attention to the fine points of plot and character.

The Dead Pool isn't much of a movie. It certainly isn't as fun, nor as compelling as its predecessors, and now and then the forced plot gets so ridiculous that it is certain to try the patience of even the most die-hard viewers. [13 Jul 1988, p.E1]

What's missing is any hint of realism. There's no grit to it anywhere.

Funny and disturbing in the best way, the comedy-drama Austin Found captures something beyond its story of a woman’s obsession with making her little daughter a beauty pageant winner.

Might be said to have pleasant echoes of "Garden State" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" -- except that they aren't echoes; this 1999 indie film was made long before those other two hits, and frankly, is just about as good.

Affecting at times, but finally feels overblown and heavy-handed.

[Hartley] changes the script enough so that the integrity of his experiment goes out the window. But he doesn't change enough so that the narrative can have any suspense.

The story is well-told, but what makes it interesting is that each character confronts his or her own crisis — even Tommie, the paramedic who rescued him. It also drives home the point that a seemingly small tragic event can affect an entire community.

It's got unpredictable plot twists and unexpected laughs coming out of dark corners. The sharp-edged film also looks terrific.

A not-insubstantial comedy.

There's something painful about watching Scarlett Johansson, who looks as if she never had an indecisive moment in her life, struggle to seem ineffectual.

Despite some solid acting, the film is lacking in surprises. For all the suffering that these characters endure, there's very little payoff.

Another romantic comedy about a career woman who has everything except a man, is Jennifer Aniston's attempt to break out of her TV role. But she doesn't have the magic on the big screen to make us forget where she came from.

You know what? The whole thing is harmless.

At a brisk 101 minutes, My Spy doesn’t overstay its welcome. It knows exactly what it wants to be and how to get there, and it is made more engaging than it probably has any right to be thanks to the oversize charisma of its oversize star.

Something From Tiffany’s rides the line between Hallmark cheese and the Hollywood gloss of big-screen rom-coms once headlined by its producer, Reese Witherspoon. It emerges as a top entry in the former category and a middling example of the latter, with lots of nice moments along the way.

Occasionally amusing but rarely engaging, it leaves one feeling like they’re standing to the side and watching someone else play a video game.

The movie has a saving grace in that it breaks formula. Its concerns are not the usual movie concerns, and it takes what might have been a standard plot in some unexpected directions.

Toy Soldiers is to terrorism what just say no is to the temptation of drugs: a will-o'-the-wisp notion that is either laughable or sad, depending upon how seriously one takes either solution to those problems. [26 Apr 1991, p.E7]

Were there an award for most bizarre and dispiriting comedy-horror hybrid featuring killer dolls, the latest installment in the "Child's Play" series would have it locked up.

The makers of We Are Your Friends got halfway there, and then lost the beat.

It's a far better thing to remember Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close than to watch it. Looking back, much of what is irritating, precious and tiresome about the movie recedes and drops away, while all the movie's virtues, which are considerable, rise to consciousness. There are good things here - just be prepared to blast for them.

Cube's attempts to wring humor out of the grim story don't always succeed, but he never resorts to trivializing his material, a la "Showgirls" or "Striptease." A little bit goes a long way, and "The Players Club" is more like an extended riff than a fully realized drama.

I found the sensory bombardment of Tank Girl ultimately numbing and at times had to fight to stay awake. But let's be fair: This isn't a film for people over 25. Or over 20, for that matter. Tank Girl is for teenagers, who will find something exuberant in its anarchic spirit as well as in its barrages of image. Teenagers are also sure to appreciate, probably more than adults would, the film's off-color humor. [31 March 1995, p.C3]