Had a chance to be not just OK, not just fluff, but something special, and it's a shame that the people making it either didn't realize it or didn't have the guts to take this movie where it wanted to go.

Highlander: The Final Dimension is no more compelling than the average pile of bricks.

If only the projectionist could be persuaded to play the first 10 minutes over and over for two hours, this might be a satisfying movie. Unfortunately, the middle and the end feature a weak lead character, choppy fight choreography, humorless dialogue and computer-generated effects that look as if they came from the "Ghostbusters II" era.

Director Q. Allan Brocka loads up the screen with eye-candy for every preference -- no one keeps a shirt on for long. Think Skinemax with a gay twist. But his script overdoses on pop culture references and bitchy wisecracks that his trying-too-hard cast can't quite pull off.

The movie isn't up to much either, but it has a certain eccentric energy, nicely stitched to rock-and-roll songs and a music track by ex-Police drummer Stewart Copeland. And it draws you in for an agreeably empty-headed ride and thrilling skating scenes. [18 Sept 1993, p.F1]

As light entertainment goes, CHiPs is fairly accomplished, and Pena and Shepard make a good team. If someone wants to turn CHiPs into a franchise of some kind, worse things have happened.

Although it isn’t a top-flight horror movie — too slow for thrill-chasers, too ridiculously fictionalized for historians — the film serves as a proper 99-minute commercial for that San Jose tourist spot.

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

"Steel" plays like a Saturday morning cartoon -- overdone stunts and hokey chase sequences with the hero on a motorcycle, dodging heavily armed gangsters as well as cops who think he's a bad guy.

Most of this huge-cast extravaganza is a botched farce. When that doesn't work, it turns sentimental. The presence of liked and familiar actors helps make it watchable, but there is no disguising that this is a weak, badly constructed comedy. At least it's short.

Any good will built up during the decent first half hour is quickly vaporized.

One of the year's funniest acts of malice.

Feels like an extended TV cartoon segment.

The best that can be said of this charmless animated picture is that whether or not it ends happily -- an outcome you're unlikely to give a hoot about -- it does, happily, end.

The kind of horror movie that's not a bit scary and quite a bit gross.

That was probably writer-director Roman Coppola's main responsibility in "Charles Swan," to give the audience a character worth watching. Get that right, and everything else falls into place. Get that wrong, and the audience finds out just how long 84 minutes can be. The answer: really long.

The story, a dystopian tale with heroes and villains and lots of triumphs and reversals, is so busy and so inherently interesting that the movie is entertaining until the finish - or the sort of finish. As only the first part of the story, Atlas Shrugged doesn't end, it stops.

Funny though it is - is it could have been a whole lot funnier.

Belongs in the holiday hall of shame.

Setting out to make a cult movie is almost as strange as setting out to make a camp movie. Or setting out to make a movie that's so bad it's good. If you know you're doing it, you're not really doing it.

With a novel idea at its center and some good jokes scattered throughout, Pixels is a relief from the self-serious action films that invade movie theaters at this time of year. For most of the way, it’s good enough to enjoy, and for the rest of the way, it’s good enough to root for. But ultimately, it’s not quite good enough ... to be good enough.

It's as close to nothing as anything could be while still being something.

A powerful and disturbing political drama.

Better for several reasons. First, they've jazzed up the animation. The backgrounds appear to be digital, and they are striking. The story is also less violent and combative.

An unflinching -- yet overlong and overindulgent -- film.

The biggest mystery of all is why director Marc Rosenbush, whose background is in theater, bothered putting this story on film when it's so obviously meant for a stage.

Cage’s latest film, Jiu Jitsu must represent his career worst — and keep in mind, this is the man who made 1989’s “Vampire’s Kiss,” in which he ate a cockroach.

There's just the matter of facing it: that The Perfect Man is just something slapped together -- by people who don't care, for an audience they figure will care even less.