The Fourth War, which opened yesterday at the Alexandria, is about two knuckleheaded army officers, one American and one Russian. They deserve each other. We don't. [24 Mar 1990, p.C3]

Dirty Work was directed by Bob Saget, who always seemed slightly embarrassed by his enormous success as the host of America's Funniest Home Videos. Now he's got something else to be slightly embarrassed about.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is provocative and irritating — and intentionally so. That makes it particularly annoying, because even as you’re provoked and irritated, you are also aware that writer-director Radu Jude wanted you to feel that way.

Often frustrating and at times incomprehensible, the Bourne/Bond clone keeps the pulse racing but ultimately fails to satisfy.

Uninspired and only faintly funny.

The only surprise is that there are no surprises.

As a first-time director, Falcone has trouble maintaining a specific tone - the movie wobbles back and forth between sentimentality and silliness, sometimes even within the same scene.

A bleak, tedious enterprise, shot in earth tones and Gothic gray and blue.

Good for a few laughs but soon turns tiresome, veering incongruously between slapstick antics and mushy sentimentality.

This noir mystery is murkier than it needs to be, through no fault of Stallone's.

In between the scenes of folks being impaled, cut in half with swords and blasted with shotguns are moments of light comedy, but these moments don't succeed in lightening up the picture but rather make it seem as if it were made by Martians with only the vaguest notion of human sensibilities. [16 Mar 1990, p.E6]

Too predictable, but kids should like it.

Inside 10 minutes, at most 15, Be Kind Rewind reveals itself as an awful mess, and it only gets worse.

Not surprisingly, only Samuel L. Jackson seems fully to understand that he's in a bad movie, and he makes a virtue of it, using it as an excuse to hang loose, overact and ride the scenes for wherever they might go.

Going into Armageddon Time, I had no interest in James Gray’s childhood. But that was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was to have even less interest going out.

Despite its name, Puerto Ricans in Paris is less a fish-out-of-water comedy than a mild buddy-cop trifle: good natured and sometimes charming, but not enough for its thin premise to approach the magnifique.

To take such a subject and render it without focus, interest, or joy—to make a long, dull movie from it — qualified as some perverse sort of achievement.

Aside from being annoying, depressing and repulsive, Chaos Walking has a lot going for it. It’s directed by Doug Liman (“Go”) and takes place in a fully imagined other world. Plus, it stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, who are smart and watchable, and the movie does get better as it goes along.

A disgrace to the talents of Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy, but it's not enough just to say that. It's also a disgrace to the talents of Rene Russo and whoever drove the coffee truck to the set every day.

A resoundingly unlovable movie that almost resists being watched.

A thriller without thrills. It's also a thriller that cheats. The story is stretched to feature length only by having the film's incidents arranged in such a way as to reveal as little as possible.

An adventure in mediocrity that brings together some of the worst current techniques and trends.

Piles cliched character upon cliched character, and then doesn't give any of them very much to do.

Hoodlum is an overlong gangster movie, a bloated and often laughable attempt at an epic.

Dull and uninteresting.

It's as if there's a barrier between the viewer and the story that never comes down.

In his L.A. debut, director David Green seems to think that close-ups of Cage's big blue eyes substitute for suspense and drama. They don't. [25 May 1990, p.E5]

The verdict is sad but unavoidable. Poor Things is a 141-minute mistake.