Miserly on food porn but not on prefab characters, it's well short of a cinematic feast.

Catherine Hardwicke's prettified movie is a strange adaptation because it supplants the woodsy horror of the original fairy tale with two new elements: a romantic triangle and a witch hunt.

Levinson is careful not to make the Afghan people into buffoons, which is good, but it doesn’t change the fact that these folks are cardboard characters.

“Avoiding unhappiness is not the road to happiness,” Hector writes in his book. But avoiding this movie might be a good start.

The picture gives us two protagonists and sets up a situation in which only one of them can have a decent life. Then, having devised this sour souffle, the screenwriters find no adjustment to make it palatable. The resolution is flip, at best.

Don't let this dog out -- please.

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

Still, it's almost impossible to entirely wreck this great chestnut of Broadway and film. Thanks mostly to the terrific songs, the new version has transporting moments. [20 March 1999, Daily Notebook, p.B1]

Like “Chinatown” with no stakes or “The Big Lebowski” minus the laughs, Poolman is a neo-noir comedy that shares just one quality with its superior influences: a palpable love for Los Angeles in all its corrupt, cruddy glory.

Has maybe a half-dozen moderately frightening scenes.

The film is an improvement on previous Sparks moody-doomed-love opuses such as “The Last Song” and “Dear John.” If that is damning with faint praise, the cogs here are the same as in his previous love machines

It's the lightest of the Batman movies, the most cartoony, the dumbest and the least ambitious. But it holds the audience's attention, brings on a few laughs and never really gets boring.

Writers David Bryan and Joe DiPietro are somehow always generous yet trenchant with their rich source material. It’s a fairy tale with a “a pretty, pretty girl in a pretty, pretty dress,” but one with a rotten foundation — a royal marriage less built on love than strategized by cold pragmatism.

Among the slapstick, there are musical numbers and a few surprise cameo appearances. In the end, the film leaves you in a dance-happy mood.

Could have used more dramatic energy, maybe at the expense of some of that gorgeous scenery.

Not about the justice or injustice of the legal system. Rather it's about the tragedy of Sam's predicament.

What is bloody and full of holes?

Hitman: Agent 47 takes an austere European aesthetic and combines it with Hollywood mindlessness, and the result is like a guilty pleasure, minus the pleasure.

Michael can't be killed, and so a ''Halloween'' picture can never really end. It can only stop. And since it can stop anywhere, it may as well stop sooner than later. This one stops later, and by the time it does it's hard to care. [17 Oct 1989, p.E4]

To its credit, no matter how self-important and dreary Infinite gets at times, it’s never dull, and there’s always a little sparkle to it and a reason to keep watching.

Neutralizes these characters, makes them cute and one-dimensional like fluffy dolls.

Granted, you don't expect much from a movie like this: azure seas and honey-dripped sunsets, perhaps, a little titillation and a few wicked laughs. But Robert Steadman's photography lacks the imagination of Almendros' work on The Blue Lagoon, and the rare erotic moments are no match for the dumbness of Leslie Stevens' script. [03 Aug 1991, p.C3]

It has a weak story that provides no tension, feeling or interest. Its opening action sequence is just a long, drawn-out dud, filmed by director John Moore in the worst modern style of quick cuts and smeary, jittery photography.

Stupid, derivative horror film that substitutes extreme gore for suspense.

Campbell and Edwards work wonders with the rocky, wide-open Oregon landscape, but none of their periwinkle-blue skies and sparkling shots of whooping cranes in flight can compensate for a film that aims high, means well, and ultimately fails its audience. [20 May 1994]

A dreary little thriller that irritates more than it thrills.

When viewing the action thriller London Has Fallen, there’s no escaping the reality that you’ve seen everything on the screen before — many, many times. For every bullet, and you will lose count, there is a cliche.

The rat problem happens only on the graveyard shift, accounting for the title of Stephen King's all-time worst movie -- and he's got a lot of them. [27 Oct 1990, p.C3]