The Good Son is cheaply manipulative in a way that can make you angry. [24 Sep 1993, p.3EV]

A vigilante/torture-porn potpourri, is particularly toxic because it's scented with phony importance.

In addition to starring, Jolie Pitt wrote and directed By the Sea. She has given herself relatively little dialogue, but stuck her husband with lines like “Stop acting like this!” and “You resist happiness!”

When a celebrity chef like Rodriguez is just going through the motions, we can smell that the grindhouse fad is way past its expiration date. It's time to put a fork in it.

The plot of Jade is so ridiculous, its dialogue so dreary, that nothing can save it - not seriously talented actors, not a revered director, not $ 40 million worth of movie-making muscle. [13 Oct 1995, p.3E]

This stinker is only good for endless laughs.

Surprise — this bad dream is for real.

With few exceptions, the dialogue's high point is when it's only dull. [15 Apr 1989, p.4D]

FIVE WRITERS. Count 'em, five. Five men (I mourn for my gender) employed as writers of a screenplay. Five human minds. Five human imaginations. And the result is Turner and Hooch. Never have so many worked together to create so little. [1 Aug 1989, p.3D]

Is there really a need to make a 14-year-old the sexual object of adults' attention? A coming-of-age movie that tries to sympathize with a teen-ager can be enlightening. A movie that tries to tantalize us with a child is shameful. Second, the stereotype of the treacherous Lolita taking advantage of a man twice her age is not only sexist, it's misogynistic. Take The Crush and can it. [9 Apr 1993, p.3F]

Calling it "idiotic" would be unfair to all other idiotic movies. Find a word that combines moronic and malevolent. [14 July 1993, p.3F]

Comedies, in general terms, are easy to evaluate. If you laugh a lot, it's good. If you don't, then it isn't. Well I didn't and it wasn't. [02 Feb 1994, p.6F]

There is such a thing as an infinitely bad movie, and this is it.

WE ALL know we have to suspend disbelief when we go to the movies, but never has an audience been asked to suspend as much as it has been by director Alan J. Pakula in Consenting Adults, a dumb, unconvincing tale that features some of the poorest performances in history. [20 Oct 1992, p.9D]

The screenplay, by Jim Harrison and Jeffrey Fiskin, from Harrison's novella, might have made a good B movie, but Scott refused to let that happen. He was out to make another A movie, and made an F movie that also is excessively and unnecessarily violent. [19 Feb 1990, p.5D]