Like its main character, I Don't Know How She Does It tries to do everything, but it doesn't quite succeed.

Nocturnal Animals is far less imaginative than even your most banal nightmare.

It's classic sitcom shtick, and The Dilemma is a painful reminder that director Ron Howard was trained in television.

Struggles heroically, but unsuccessfully, to strike a balance between whimsy and pathos.

A movie with no surprises at all, a streamlined chase flick that is running on the fumes from recycled fuel.

ROMEO Is Bleeding is an interesting mess. A very self-conscious contemporary take on the film noir genre, it is so dark (both photographically and psychologically) and derivative that at times it seems like a parody. [2 March 1994, p.6F]

Here's a riddle: What's Alice in Wonderland without wonder? It's a beloved character landing in the rubble of wrong-headed revisionism.

It's eerie rather than wondrous.

If being seated at Table 19 is a drag, watching the film of the same name is worse.

This is another one of those phony movies in which a character burrows into someone else's life without telling them she's an axe murderer, a man or a vampire. Not only that, we're supposed to hope that they get it on. I was hoping that everyone involved would get hit by an asteroid.

We were promised desolation, but “The Hobbit” just keeps dragon on.

McAvoy and Fassbender appealingly reprise their frenemy chemistry. But Lawrence has little to do but look perplexed.

If Repo Men could have sustained its ghoulish humor, it might have been a guilty pleasure.

THIS odd, anachronistic movie is the story of a couple of white guys (Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas) messing around in 19th-century Africa, and a couple of lions who want to eat them. I kept rooting for the lions. The Ghost and The Darkness is not a bad movie, and the scenes with the lions are fearsome. But it is so old-fashioned in its view of British Colonial Africa that you keep expecting Stewart Granger to wander in out of "King Solomon's Mines" (1950). [11 Oct 1996, p.3E]

Although the ratio of comedy to drama becomes increasingly weighted toward tearjerking, few of the emotional moments are realistic or effective.

OK, the musical ode to Doby the shark elicits a grin, but the low-percentage script is loaded with buckshot, not harpoons, and Anchorman 2 ends up sinking.

How you feel about Fast & Furious 6 is a matter of perspective. While a middle-age egghead might note that a series that started out as a harmless cars-and-girls fantasy has devolved into a full-blown assault on human intelligence.

Written, directed and acted by Hollywood pros, Heaven Is For Real is a polished little movie with a hopeful message, but when it literalizes the divine mysteries, it opens the door to a Doubting Thomas.

One small step for action movies, one giant leap into the abyss of mindlessness.

A documentary that clearly aspires to the highest standards of cinematic muckraking but makes for a frustrating experience.

Out of the Furnace is hot air.

As a sex-education comedy, Hysteria is flaccid, forced and unfunny.

Given the mood of so many of today's movies, it might be a pleasure to see an old-fashioned love story. But I think movie-goers have changed, and the peculiar coincidences, the large plot holes and the absurdity of so much of the story line combine to make the story more silly than sentimental, more ridiculous than riveting, more foolish than fulfilling, more maudlin than anything else. [21 Oct 1994, p.3G]

With its nonsensical, confounding story, it might not be for anyone, even if its heart is in the right place.

Reaching for meaning in The Nun II is as fruitful as a wander down a dark and dusty old hall. You’ll find things that go bump in the night but not much else underneath all the doom and gloom.

Christmas Vacation reminds me of a golden retriever I used to know: dumb and sloppy but kind of likable as long as you don't expect any new tricks. [1 Dec 1989, p.3F]

Keeping Up With the Joneses is hardly worth the effort.

Kevin Hart hits the vicinity of humor with a few of his drive-by wisecracks, but the movie itself has nothing under the hood.

After watching Post Grad, you may wonder whether Hollywood will ever stop making generic comedies with zero tolerance for originality.

The clichéd script doesn't develop the secondary characters or the critical theme of the mutants' alienation.

Disney serves up a warmed-over tale that was never one of its best to begin with and mistakenly tries to substitute teen-angst-ridden Christina Ricci for the totally adorable Hayley Mills. It's a serious mistake. [14 Feb 1997, p.03E]

The delivery pouch for Premium Rush promises a white-hot thriller from the bike-messenger subculture. But what's inside the package seems like a lukewarm action-comedy from the pile of scripts that Matthew Broderick rejected after "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

There's nothing cinematic about this turgid tearjerker except the slumming presence of movie star Harrison Ford.

TAKEN AS a Hollywood remake of Japanese movies based on Westerns, Road House assumes a certain style that makes the film not half bad. Of course, that leaves it still not half good. Without provenance, the film becomes just a way to provide work for the man who produces the sound of fist hitting flesh. Given its lineage, however, Road House makes sense. Everything is here but the dog at the end of "Yojimbo" walking out of town with a bloody arm gripped in its canines. [19 May 1989, p.3E]

In the Mouth of Madness is not a bad movie, and it maintains a fair amount of suspense for an hour or so. Then it sags, mainly because it has no real payoff, neither dramatic or visual. [03 Feb 1995, p.3F]

It's clear that Phillips is betting heavily on funnymen Jeong and Galifianakis to hide his creative bankruptcy.

A handsome movie with a handsome leading man. Christian Bale is widely considered the finest actor of his generation. Yet here he’s adrift in the bulrushes. This might be the most indifferent performance of Bale’s career.

J. Edgar is the kind of prestige production that apologists will call polished, but even the technical attributes are tinny. In the gay-geezers scenes, Hammer wears terrible old-age makeup, and the entire film is bathed in sepia tones as weak as its convictions.

An Australian horror yarn that builds occasional tension and brings occasional gasps. The problem is that with the space limitations of a boat and the fact that there are just three characters, it's impossible to have enough tension to make the film work. [07 Apr 1989, p.3G]

The screenplay is such a mess that the cast cannot overcome it, and the result is a major disappointment. [18 Dec 1989, p.3D]

Fitfully, someone will say or do something very funny, but much of the time passes in a rather laborious way. This movie should have been a lot better than it is. [27 Nov 1994, p.9C]

The special effects remain good, but the jokes are creaky, the sentiments are forced and the pop-historical lessons are obligatory.

This movie, which was made by an animation studio in Spain, isn't trying to make a social statement; it speaks in the international language of lightweight comedy.

Mars Needs Moms is dark for a Disney movie.

It's moderately entertaining until about halfway through, when it gets totally out of control. [16 Mar 1990, p.3F]

Ronald Bass' predictable screenplay gives Roberts no brains at all, which is an injustice. [08 Feb 1991, p.3F]

The so-so film isn't nearly as good as any of the movies that may have inspired it, or even its own knockout trailer.

With all due respect to Poitier as a dramatic actor, "Buck and the Preacher" is as bad a Western as many of the routine white-made Westerns. Its only redeeming feature is Belafonte, who steals the picture from the stone-faced Poitier with an engaging clever comic performance of the likable scraggly bearded rapscallion. [05 May 1972, p.51]

A medical drama that pays lip service to the healing power of music but never finds the rhythm.

Taking Care of Business gives little but doesn't take much away, either. It's not a film where you fret about whether everything is going to work out, and you know all the dangling strings are going to be tied in fancy bows by the end. [22 Aug 1990, p.5E]

The Big Year puts the focus on people who aren't inherently interesting - or funny.

Offbeat and unpredictable, Demolition takes a wrecking ball to audience expectations.

Starved of sufficient comedy or drama, The Age of Adaline is a pipsqueak.

Minions is product, pure and simple. Little kids will love it, but grown-ups will feel like they’re being held hostage in a Fisher-Price test laboratory.

The most grievous sins here are sins of omission.

Kevin Kline roars through The January Man as a character who is a mirror image of the one he played in A Fish Called Wanda. This time, he's uncommonly bright but still marches to a very different drummer. But while Wanda was bright and slick and very funny, January is as leaden as the month, and not very funny. [13 Jan 1989, p.5G]

This halftime walk is more like a long slog.

Hot Tub Time Machine isn't a good movie, but like a bubbling bath it keeps pounding at us until our resistance wears down.

Lovely to look at, and Vikander does nothing to derail her inevitable ascension to the A-list. But as a story, it evokes a word that no battlefield nurse would ever apply to her experiences: sterile.

Working from a screenplay that he co-wrote with McCarthy, director Ben Falcone (who happens to be her husband) keeps things moving but without much of a spark.

Only when there’s an opportunity to blow things up does Fuqua seem fully engaged. Another Western bites the dust.

One can’t help but feel that the man himself — grill and all — is so much more fascinating than this rote representation.

The setting and offbeat tone may remind some viewers of another recent comedy, but whereas “The Descendants” was a substantive meal, Aloha is a pu pu platter.

Has a welcome message of personal growth and racial tolerance. And it's ably made, with evocative Memphis locations. But in the final sermon, it proffers some plot twists that are supposed to be miraculous but may strike a doubting Thomas as lame.

Despite a solid cast and a few interesting visual moments, Surviving the Game is just a routine action picture. [21 Apr 1994, p.5G]

This convoluted tale of a U.S. Treasury agent (Wesley Snipes) looking for the rats who killed one of his partners simmers along fairly well for about 45 minutes and then gets all lukewarm and fuzzy. [21 Apr 1993, p.6F]

Although it has a great look and offers a few thrills, the animated film 9 is one of this year's biggest disappointments.

In getting so many of the Midwestern details wrong, worldly director Bahrani (“Chop Shop”) teaches an inadvertent lesson to aspiring filmmakers who want to follow his footsteps to the festival circuit: Grow where you’re planted.

To stand out in a crowded marketplace, a sequel can’t just kick ass — it has to blow minds.

Instead of entertaining us, director Robert Redford offers us a handsome history lesson that's as dry as a hardtack biscuit.

To me, an ordinary - but often exciting - adventure tale became a sordid look at American society and the American military, with a sickening defense of the-end-justifies-the-means philosophy. [20 July 1990, p.3F]

The few Jewish characters are cartoonishly evil, but even the Palestinians are sketchily dramatized or, in the case of a terrorist, clumsily legitimized.

Except for the dynamite finale, The Long Ranger feels like a long, slow ride to the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump.

Although The November Man shows us some attractive people in motion, the cumulative effect leaves us neither shaken nor stirred.

The diabolical sadist of the team was director Joe Carnahan.

It's a worthy cause and an honorable film, the first full-length Disney cartoon with an African-American heroine. But without a strong story, it's a case of one step forward and two steps back.

It’s unashamedly of the B-movie variety — a quick and easy time-killer.

Even by the standards of light entertainment, This Means War is meaningless.

Manages to waste the talents of its strong supporting cast, which includes Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell and Stanley Tucci.

Twenty or 25 minutes of good air-action sequences, otherwise dull. [17 Jun 1990, p.7F]

In Hollywood, it’s all about the concept, and some studio executive must have thought it would be fun to watch Adams slogging around in the Irish mud. Unfortunately, there’s no accounting for taste.

In a way, Stonewall is proof that the gay community has fully made the transition to the mainstream. It’s now subject to the kind of Hollywood nonsense that was previously reserved for heterosexuals.

The result is a movie with a lot of hysterically funny lines (including a nod to St. Louis) shooting through the banal, timeworn plot, relieved occasionally by a well-wrought sketch. Director Steven Spielberg tries to stir this mixture, but it's just too flour-y. [22 Dec. 1989, p3F]

Once we've quickly digested the fortune-cookie message that modern women are as bound by obligations as their grandmothers were, all we can savor is the scenery.

Spurlock teases the baby sitter contingent with a brief scene where a scientist discusses the neuro-chemical appeal of pop music, but thereafter the film is aimed squarely at face-value fans of the Pre-Fab Five.

It would have been nice if Cowboys & Aliens had come come up with the right equation to balance originality and homage. But in the end, it all turned into trigonometry.

There are some laughs in The Bronze, but more time in which we might wish it would end already. When it does, just like on Hallmark, lessons are learned. Perhaps for Rauch, the lesson is to write herself a better movie next time.

One Day fails to make us care about the young couple at its center.

Colin Firth is an Academy Award winner, so perhaps his lack of chemistry with fellow honoree Nicole Kidman is a carefully laid clue that his middle-aged newlywed Eric Lomax is damaged goods. Yet to the drama’s detriment, Lomax is about as poisonous as a week-old crumpet.

The more suitably antic Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp were considered for the part before Franco wandered into the picture with his stoner grin.

Toy Soldiers is strictly formula writing, and rather ordinary formula at that, director Daniel Petrie Jr. gets generally good acting from the cast, and the script is guaranteed not to test them too much. [26 Apr 1991, p.3F]

We're the Millers is nothing but stems and seeds, with less buzz than a bag of oregano.

Moves along quite entertainingly for a while and then begins to get swallowed up by its own high (and high-tech) concepts. By the end, what had been a rather amusing, zany chase comedy starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn has turned into a bizarre and totally ridiculous free-for-all in a zoo, with crocodiles slithering and tigers roaring and piranhas chewing up people. [18 May 1990, p.3F]

A would-be light thriller that's so deficient in the genre's essentials - such as witty dialogue, intriguing characters and surprising yet credible plot turns - that you're embarrassed for everyone involved.

Despite the oddly literate title, Vincent Wants to Sea never deviates from the predictable bonding-through-misadventure script, and it has little to teach us about the nature and treatment of the traveler's respective maladies.

Twilight fans who have followed the series will want to see "Breaking Dawn," and like Bella and Edward may find brief moments of pleasure.

Weaver is a natural as the imperious Ramona, but the rest of the cast is flattened by the script, particularly White, who is just window-dressing in a movie that could use the rude humor she's displayed elsewhere.