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]

Fans of J-horror (for Japan, where the genre was born; its conventions have since spread to South Korea and Thailand) will find Shutter familiar; others may just doze.

A forced, tedious but stupidly amusing police action comedy starring Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell as undercover cops who dislike one another but are forced to do some male bonding to save their hides. High-minded people who eschew violence, harsh language and meatball humor just might want to skip this one. [22 Dec 1989, p.22]

If this is the best we can do in terms of movies - if something like this can speak to the soul of audiences - maybe we should just turn over the cameras and the equipment to the alien dinosaurs and see what they come up with.

It's one of those self-consciously cute pictures, about as hard to take as a person who stands in front of a mirror and preens all day. [23 Mar 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Tolerable for undiscriminating horror fans but should be shunned by everybody else.

A useless film in every possible way.

Jumbled and stupid plot, bad acting and a few predictable gags that fall flat.

A Tale of Love and Darkness is a dead film, an eminently worthy corpse.

It's just off, odd and joyless.

Moretz is an appealing young woman whose star is rising. She'll probably have an exceptional career, but If I Stay won't be a highlight.

The result is a frustrating, boring mess.

Stevens, Fisher, Mann and Dench are all fine. All have good moments. The problem is the script, the script, the script.

The Bye Bye Man is the kind of mess that happened by committee.

The Island of Dr. Moreau ought to have been a great film in these times of gene splicing and DNA research and all the moral, ethical and practical questions those developments raise. But director John Frankenheimer and screenwriters Richard Stanley and Ron Hutchinson's attempt to update Wells yields only a maddening mess of empty gestures.

This disappointing new film from director Michael Winterbottom ("24 Hour Party People") suffers from a similar malaise: It's poetic and pretty, strives for profundity without attaining it, and finally ends up saying nothing.

Pretentious drama.

No target is too obvious for Salvation Boulevard, a farrago of cheap shots aimed at Christian fundamentalism. It's a blunderbuss satire that criminally wastes a talented cast.

RocknRolla attempts to depict a world of ever-expanding chaos. But the chaos is only in the way the story is told. The actual vision Ritchie offers is pedestrian and tame.

The temptation arises to say something nice about Grown Ups 2 just because it doesn't cause injury. But no, it's a bad movie, too, just old-school bad, the kind that's merely lousy and not an occasion for migraines or night sweats.

A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas.

Children will enjoy the physical humor, but discerning adults are advised to pawn their sons and daughters off on some other unsuspecting chaperone -- preferably one who doesn't read movie reviews.

At 2 hours, 21 minutes, feels like a slow death by a thousand cuts.

The obvious idea is to stage a motorcycle version of "The Fast and the Furious." Instead we get the flat and the tedious.

The goal here was to be absurdist, relentless and light. Well, Barb & Star is light — so light it floats off and vaporizes.

Safe House is an idea for a movie. It's a few blustery gestures in the direction of a story, with five good actors doing their best, trying to hold up the barest frame of an idea, while investing the surrounding emptiness with all the truth they can muster.

The dragging pace is one of several agonizing defects in this bloated sci-fi action drama.

Things happen in a flat, deadpan way.