Mindhunters is as effective as a movie can be and yet still be 100 percent forgettable.

As drama it's thin stuff. Aiming for simplicity, it ends up simplistic.

It lacks a moral center, and at times seems oblivious to the laughable things that are happening on screen. It’s also about 20 minutes too long. And yet SuperFly is entertaining, period. The dialogue is fast and fun, and the sense of fashion is so pervasive that it occasionally distracts from the movie.

Takes a long time getting started and doesn't hit its stride until Danny starts coaching a team of fellow cons -- think "Bad News Bears," just nastier.

Great trash, one of those mediocre movies that in its own crass way is more enjoyable than most things that get nominated for Oscars.

In terms of story and emotional power, Brave comes up short.

Can't sustain its narrative for a full 95 minutes.

Art School Confidential exudes confidence as long as it is satirizing a questionable, at least according to Clowes, institution of higher learning. But the film loses its way with multiple subplots, becoming a hodgepodge that isn't particularly hard to follow, but, far worse, provides no compelling reason to bother.

Rush is dour, and its danger and its spectacle of mind-melting become humdrum. Still, the film is well-acted and is painstakingly accurate in details. [10 Jan 1992, p.C3]

A sweet but curiously unfulfilling story.

Even apart from the fact that it's not nearly funny enough, Bruce Almighty is a peculiar film.

Negotiating the role of a forward-thinking woman constrained by family demands and era, Elliott elevates a picture that's lovely to look at but lacking in dramatic impact.

A forced, implausible flick that loses its energy as it tries to gain momentum.

A wish that there were more Michael Caines and fewer Muppets kept cropping up during The Muppet Christmas Carol, a movie whose mechanical cuteness becomes a too-complicated veil -- and a smothering one -- for the classic Charles Dickens story. [11 Dec 1992, p.C1]

The Shallows is a very earnest woman-versus-shark film. It delivers the requisite thrills, including a surprisingly satisfying resolution. The heroine is capable; and the writers, who trap her on a rock for half the film, find ways to make her situation seem interesting. But the most important parts, the ones involving the shark, don’t feel genuine.

The makers of Man Push Cart seem so dedicated to making a film that defies Hollywood conventions that the finished product lacks enough entertainment value to justify price of admission.

The fine cinematography by Giles Nuttgens ("Hallam Foe," "Dom Hemingway") infuses warmth and texture. It conveys the laze of summer and juxtaposes the cold of the hospital with the not-quite-real palette of waking fantasy. However, also like the music, the filmmaking habitually meanders.

Despite the shortcomings, Fire Island is a feel-good, enjoyable comedy and a celebration of queer, Asian American storytelling. Let’s hope its success paves the way for even more subversive films to come.

Perry isn't the only thing wrong with Serving Sara, but he's the thing that takes a pleasantly mediocre movie and turns it into an unpleasantly mediocre one.

There's a dignity about it, and it's only later that we come to realize that this dignity is misplaced, born of a fatal reserve and a lack of complete investment.

Amateur in the true sense of the word -- plainly, proudly homemade.

Together, the two actors build a rapport that goes beyond the dialogue and justifies where the story ultimately goes. Anyway, that’s the paradox in “The Good Nurse,” which potential viewers must sort out for themselves: The performances are worth seeing, but the movie isn’t.

Violent and nonsensical, with story elements in contradiction, it is lifted up by the efforts of the actors, who try to put a human face on the blockbuster machinery and almost succeed.

A minor but sometimes touching documentary.

The Indian in the Cupboard is such a sweet film, and so lacking in the bloodthirstiness and violence that parents dread in children's films, that its mere existence seems worthy of praise. Too bad, then, that it turned out so dull and lifeless.

The Laundromat finds director Steven Soderbergh in a playful mood, but this time he’s a little too playful, and the result is a scattered and seemingly trivial movie about a serious subject — a lighthearted, jolly expose of international money laundering.

The good ol' Jim Carrey we knew and loved is back, rude, crude and unglued.

Naked Lunch will undoubtedly bring pleasure, much of it perverse, to [David Cronenberg]'s many fans - and, simultaneously, confound and repulse a huge chunk of filmgoers. [10 Jan 1992]