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.

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.

Director Rick Famuyiwa did much better when focusing just on African-American culture in films such as "Brown Sugar" and "The Wood." Here, in bringing together two cultures, he does neither any favors.

On that vicarious-pleasure level, the movie version delivers. Yet for anyone with a sense of irony or social justice, it’s also frustratingly soft around the edges, with no real sense of the drugs-and-violence underside of show business or the spiritual cost of failure.

This mash-up movie is like a greatest-hits collection for obsessive collectors. On its own terms, Terminator Genisys makes virtually no sense.

Directed by Stiles White, whose credits lean more heavily in the special-effect arenas, Ouija is bland, safe horror for those who like their scares nonexistent.

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

That's right - this is an exorcism movie that those who actually saw "The Exorcist" in theaters can get into.

In this year's stupid sexy screamer, Sliver, [Stone] tries to reveal some of her character's mind. But there's nothing in there but cotton candy and foggy images from old soap operas. [23 May 1993, p.12C]

Every character from the original is here, navigating the dating jungle, but this time there’s no pushing of Steve Harvey’s book.

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

If cranking out this kind of mediocre, head-scratching blarney is the only option available to Hollywood veterans like Reiner, we have some friendly advice: Open a haberdashery.

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]

I can't imagine a true ''Rocky & Bullwinkle'' devotee who won't enjoy ''Boris and Natasha.'' [17 Apr 1992, p.9F]

Third Person doesn’t lack for ambition, and it’s nice to see Neeson in the kind of role that he excelled at before he morphed into an action star.

There’s a good movie to be made about the alienating effects of modern technology. In 2013, a little-seen indie called “Disconnect,” starring Jason Bateman, came closer than this well-intentioned failure, which has virtually no heart, humor, sense of place or central point of view. In trying to be a big, important movie, Men, Women & Children is about none of the above.

The dialogue is ridiculous, the plot is silly, and the acting is cartoonish. But I'll hand this to Italian horror director Lucio Fulci: He knows how to put on a show for those dead set on seeing a violent, gory, bloody, zombie-infested midnight-flick type of a movie. [03 Jul 1998, p.E3]

Don't let anyone off the hook. That's a basic rule of good satire, and on the whole Amos & Andrew follows it. The result is a generally amusing, occasionally hilarious send-up of racial posturing in America. [05 Mar 1993, p.3G]

Although the choice of interviewees skews the movie in a New Age-y direction, there's less pseudoscience and more heart than in the kindred documentary "What the Bleep Do We Know?"

The fatal flaw of this screenwriting term paper is that Cooper's character is a boring jerk we're supposed to regard as a nice guy who made an honest mistake.

The actress and the aviatrix are a match made in heaven, but surrounding the soaring performance is a movie that's mostly earthbound.

Although it’s superficially grungy, this true story isn’t much more substantive than something that star Vanessa Hudgens might have made for the Disney Channel and considerably less shocking than her career gambit in “Spring Breakers.”

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.

Considerably better looking than its predecessor, but it's spewing the same old gibberish.

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.

It's more like a shelved episode of "Touched by An Angel." The sappy script is a disservice to the naturally effervescent Efron, whose character is so mopey he makes Robert Pattinson seem like a song-and-dance man.

Strange hybrid of science lesson and Saturday-morning cartoon.

Annabelle is so lazily coat-tailing on Roman Polanski, they should have called it “Rosemary’s Barbie.”