While the cast is filled with award winners, writer-director Daniel Barnz is a dunce who can't construct an argument without employing flimsy logic and cardboard characters.

As in the mindless Man on a Ledge, the hero is never really in danger, we're the ones who are trapped.

In the end, the movie is still a poetic injustice.

For his complex portrayal, Day-Lewis is likely to have roses thrown at his feet, but for the dreadful film in which he's enslaved, emancipated onlookers will reach for the grapes of wrath.

It’s downright depressing to see Oscar winners Hunt and Hurt struggling to make something meaningful out of their superficially written characters.

Red 2 is not just a bad movie, it’s bad karma. And the target audience of adult moviegoers who respect the names in its once-vital cast have a bull’s-eye on their collective cranium.

Laggies is the kind of indie film that gives the genre a bad name.

Strick and Joanou have made this one so convoluted that interest falters, and the lack of a truly sympathetic character doesn't help. [7 Feb 1992, p.3F]

There’s a sharp comedy to be made about America’s misadventures in Afghanistan. This isn’t it.

The wrinkles between reality and illusion soon become irritating.

Land Ho! is a tepid little movie that goes almost nowhere, and if I had to sit in that rental car for one more boob joke, I’d rather jump into a volcano.

It requires a mild suspension of disbelief to accept that slacker David would suddenly intervene in so many lives, pretending to be a good Samaritan.

Sure, the movie causes a few jumps. But they are the cinematic equivalent of having someone jump out from behind a door and yell boo. [23 July 1999, p.E1]

Shakespeare’s play evokes the poetry of undying love, but this Romeo and Juliet is prosaic.

Savvy filmgoers will know they are getting a stale product as soon as they see the wrapper: one of those vintage muscle cars that screams “stakeout.”

A road-trip comedy that somehow renders both promiscuity and racism harmless. While we're soaking up the sunny surroundings, we're getting nowhere.

WATCHING Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis is disconcerting, to say the least. Quaid mimics Lewis' piano playing in superior style, struts across the stage like the ''petty player'' of ''Macbeth,'' and shows all the right amount of arrogance, but his wide-eyed stare becomes extremely irritating. Great Balls of Fire, which looks at a small part of Lewis' life, offers a slightly uncomplimentary view, but it tends to trivialize his shortcomings, almost excuse them as boyish pranks. [30 June 1989, p.3E]

Admission is one film you may not want to get into.

Skyscraper clearly aspires to be a 21st-century update of “Die Hard” (1988), one of the best action thrillers ever made. Instead, it’s just another film that squanders the movie-star charisma of Johnson, who should consider lending his box-office clout to more worthy projects.

Wingfield's attempts to bring the movie to a smooth conclusion fail completely, and the weakness of the story undermines the smooth, careful direction of Robert Mulligan, a veteran with 40 years of movies like To Kill a Mockingbird to his credit. [15 Nov 1991, p.3G]

Amid other wedding movies crowding screens these days, not to mention Perry's "Madea's Big Happy Family," Jumping the Broom feels instantly familiar. And tired.

Its mean-spiritedness, stupidity and squandering of talent is uniquely Hollywood.

In Couples Retreat, it's Favreau, not Vaughn, who is wound up, and this vacation comedy goes nowhere.

There Be Dragons is tethered to the earth by a tangled plot, wooden acting and the heavy burden of healing old wounds.

Don’t get burned by Inferno.

This is a brutal and stupid movie.

The best indicator of whether you’ll like the film version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul is whether you think flying vomit is funny.

Whose story is this? There’s an old saying that history is written by the winners. The screenplay for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies must have been written by elves.