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.