Captain America: Brave New World doesn’t have such lofty ambitions — its makers probably just thought it was a cool title — but it is surprisingly engaging, primarily because of the people in ‘t.

Delivers plenty of laughs and succeeds on a level that recent ``SNL'' movies (``It's Pat!'' and ``A Night at the Roxbury'') didn't.

It's a knock-off of every science-gone-too-far cautionary tale since Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." The Lawnmower Man, for all of its au courant use of virtual reality, is alarmingly similar to a creepy '60s episode of TV's "The Outer Limits."

But this soggy, sentimental tour through a rural dreamworld of salt-of- the-earth versus supercharged intelligence never quite gets deep enough to touch the soul -- or to make sense.

What a waste of a great comedian. What demented casting.

The real issue is that everything about Adam’s journey feels half digested and tossed back up. We’ve seen it before. It was better the first time.

Anyone who prefers Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock to Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Lopez is bound to regard Two Weeks Notice and not "Maid in Manhattan" as the better candidate for romantic comedy of the season.

If it doesn't always come off, enough headlong energy develops to carry it through.

This is a monster movie -- 92 minutes, lots of action, lots of green legs stomping, get in, get out.

It falls short where it counts: In the final confrontation.

Sometimes the movie is a little too slick. Some of the characters, such as Sean’s girlfriend (Jacqueline Byers) and the FBI agents who begin to believe Sean’s story, are underdeveloped. But Tennant, excellent as a creep, and Sheehan, who is appealing in his helplessness, provide the necessary depth.

The gentle spirit of Wild Mountain Thyme envelops us early, to the extent that, midway through, even though there is very little left to resolve, we are in its spell.

Cave, who gained notice with much-lauded Hulu feminist horror film “Fresh” (2022), is too busy condescending to her characters to be invested in what happens to them.

If your tolerance for Branagh's shtick and Woody's narrowness of focus is as low as mine, you can take solace in the director's joke on himself.

Belushi is profoundly unfunny. Opportunities are provided for him to do shtick -- running amok in the jacuzzi, drooling over a pretty girl -- and it's like watching a form of communication from an alien civilization. What is he doing up there? [17 Aug 1990, p.E11]

Has a certain slow, mechanical quality.

Heartfelt but interminable movie.

Does what good horror movies do: It taps into the baser emotions.

Plays like the cinematic equivalent of a paperback bodice- ripper with embossed type.

The lead actors on both sides of the vampire divide are all strong personalities.

Before it degenerates into a complete mess, it's an entertaining mess, and something about its willingness to please maintains the audience's goodwill throughout.

The pleasures are intermittent but can be located: Jennifer Coolidge, as Jane's travel companion, is funny even when the script isn't, and Feild is a nice stand-in for Colin Firth in the Austen hero department.

There are barrages of fast cuts to distract us from the fact that the director is showing us no real action.

The narrative is clumsy, and the monster scenes are ridiculous, but not ridiculous enough to be funny, just ridiculous enough to be boring.

The film holds no surprises. It's strictly by the book, uninspired and only vaguely sincere. But Michael J. Fox is not by the book; he is always genuine. Fox's charm, his comic ease and his genuine good acting manage to keep this mediocre ''vehicle'' afloat, scene by scene, to the end. I believed he was in love with the girl, even though I couldn't figure out why. [1 Oct 1993, p.C3]

A Journal for Jordan...is such a sweetly, well-intentioned film — one meant to bring a Christmastime lump in the throat in a year that gave us so many lumps of coal — that it feels churlish and downright Scrooge-like to point out its flaws. But the subject matter deserves better than this overlong melodrama spiked with occasional moments of welcome humor and pathos.

It's a stoner movie all the way, with much deep thought but little active conflict.

The bloodshed is somewhat less gory than in many slasher films -- with stress on the "somewhat." [26 Sep 2004]