At its core, Star Trek: Section 31 suffers from a kind of existential emptiness. It appropriates some of the surface-level iconography of “Trek” but fails to uphold its spirit. It nods to continuity, but the dense lore feels like a gatekeeping exercise and the breezy tone undermines the gravitas of its own premise.

Has a gutsy premise, but no guts.

The One and Only Ivan has within it a much more interesting film waiting to break out that really could have been for the whole family, but alas it is trapped within the cement walls of Disney’s cookie-cutter formula.

Numbskull cinema scrapes new depths.

This is a film that, in some ways, is too complex for the kids, yet leaves the adults feeling left out, too.

Unfortunately these characters are stuck in a picture that is little more than a gory mess, heavy on the smoke machines and thunderous sound track, but with no suspense and not much interest. Split Second is just a series of killings that come, one after the other, until the movie hits feature length, and then it's the bad guy's turn. Since these killings all consist of a heart being yanked out of a human body, Split Second isn't pretty. I've long since lost my weak stomach, but this movie is definitely not for the squeamish. [2 May 1992, p.C3]

Blackhat is pretty much nonsense, which Mann directs with such misplaced energy and with such little natural instinct for the material that, for most of the running time, the movie’s problems seem entirely his fault.

Jexi feels hopelessly out of step with the moment. Despite its subject matter, it’s a flip phone movie in a smart phone world.

Mary is a fictionalized and heavily dramatized account of the life of the Virgin Mary, but the movie’s great and only pleasure is in watching Anthony Hopkins play King Herod as a homicidal maniac.

This is just plain bad - and it's a surprise.

“Dead Men” is a jumble of half-baked impulses.

Takes its name from the king protea, the national flower of South Africa. The stunning, artichoke-like shrub may be fragrant, but the movie's pretty much a stinker.

The only performer who breathes any life into the proceedings is Vincent Perez.

A curiously downbeat, rather cold work without much passion or science that portrays a woman whose life was brimming with both.

For all the characters butting heads, all the street fights and all the explosions (there are plenty of those), Street Fighter may very well put you to sleep. [24 Dec 1994, p.E1]

The movie is made even worse with embarrassing flashbacks, painful voiceover, and inane dream sequences. It’s like a Merchant-Ivory film – on Quaaludes.

An ill-advised and severely wussified remake.

You can watch 100 movies and never see such joyless joy as in Blinded by the Light.

Needless to say, the actors are better than the material.

I can’t imagine who would want to make a movie like this, much less who would want to watch this. It says nothing real about life or death, and it’s not as though it’s telling us something we don’t already know.

Mexican filmmaker Antonio Serrano applies the fantasy device so haphazardly as to render it irritating instead of surprising.

Badly made, badly acted and badly written. [07 May 1994, p.E3]

The schmaltz is relentless in The Legend of 1900, the newest film from "Cinema Paradiso'' director Giuseppe Tornatore. It comes in waves, it leeches onto every surface and it turns decent actors into sticky-sweet fuzzballs.

A film with no theatrical core and no integrity in the writing, acting or storytelling.

Sirât is a film of impression and feeling, not logic or plot.

A purposely inane mishmash of maudlin love story, gastrointestinal gags and shredding snowboard scenes, Out Cold has a couple of laughs but mostly wipes out.

It's only January, but already we have a strong candidate for the most thunderingly stupid movie of the year.

An attempt at a beautiful film about renewal -- about past love, love lost, longing and rediscovery -- but it has no emotional truth.