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

So while director Evgeny Afineevsky practically makes the case for Francis’ sainthood — immersing the viewer in a nonstop barrage of swelling violins and inspirational music, featuring interview after interview of people who have been touched personally by the pope — his bloated two-hour film leaves many unanswered questions.

Caught in the Web is of little interest as entertainment, and if it were set in an unimportant or overly familiar country, it would be entirely forgettable.

Ugly, gore-strewn and, ultimately, ridiculous.

Nearly unbearable.

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.

It’s bigger, vibrantly colorful and slightly more ambitious, with glimpses of an interesting movie trying to break through, but it keeps snapping back to what’s safe.

The movie's most inexcusable failing is that, despite all the flashbacks, we never get a sense of what this relationship was like when it worked.

Crush is that strange mixed bag -- an otherwise wretched movie in which an actress gets to do some of her best work.

A street-dance film that's lively and silly and about as "street" as a Britney Spears video.

It's a swashbuckling extravaganza, but Davis is not convincing. And before anyone objects, it's not because she's a woman. Get out already! This is the '90s, and women can do anything. But they can't escape from a lousy movie any better than a man can.

If this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future.

Whatever else W.E. may be (lousy, a waste of time, tin-eared, sleep-inducing, occasionally laughable, etc.), it's sincere and ambitious.

The Out-Laws is dead on arrival.

A spiritual successor to "The Pursuit of Happyness," but darker and more oblique.

Perry is at his best playing frenetic confusion.

So quick that the flat moments are rapidly, inevitably chased by a new gag.

Won't work until the film comes out on video.

An awkward and aggressively unfunny film.

Directed by Mark Waters, cast members seem to operate on the belief that they can best deal with the plot’s improbabilities by grimacing their way through and not giving anyone time to react to them. Pesky details brushed aside, the film can play to its strength, which is the charm of its leads.

Don’t expect surprises or something to ideologically critique. This is kooky carnage. You came for Dave Bautista stomping a motorcycle into submission, and damn it, that’s what you’re gonna get.

Even without surprises, or drama, or clever dialogue, or even a single scene of any merit, Rebound goes along pleasantly.

So many horror conventions are at work in After.Life that either the filmmakers are parodying them or couldn't come up with anything better. I'm betting on the second choice.

Somewhere along the line, someone seems to have thought this was ''Last Tango in Paris'' all over again. It ain't. [19 Aug 1994, p.C3]

Tooth Fairy would be substantially less likable without Johnson's native-born flair for self-abasement.

It's hard to sit all the way through Aeon Flux while fully awake.

The movie lacks joy. It has poignancy and intelligence, and it holds interest, but it never opens up into happiness and fantasy. Maybe it's the recession.

By the end, everything that was initially serious about the film becomes silly and everything appealing about it turns sour.