Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is passionless window-shop cinema, each static tableau lovingly arranged for display and easy dusting. Its centerpiece is a mannequin, albeit played by Daniel Day-Lewis, whose gift for keeping anything interesting is seldom so necessary.

Leigh's characters merely act in a goofy and irritating fashion until their dramatic pay-off scenes. This uneven style cheats fine actors out of the chance to shade their roles rather than rely upon black-and-white emotions. [6 Mar. 1992, p.10]

Withnail and I is one of those pictures that manages to be consistently amusing and grating at the same time. It stirs some good memories while pointing to the aimlessness of an era. [2 Oct 1987, p.5D]

It's unfortunate a picture as lovingly envisioned and beautifully rendered as Hope and Glory has to struggle to find a resolution. [25 Dec 1987, p.7]

Kubo and the Two Strings is lovely to behold, if viewers manage to keep their eyes open. It's an animated doozy and drowser at once, an uncomfortable mix of Miyazaki-style imagination and generic dullness.

It's a scathing, somewhat setbound movie about greed, manipulation and the depths to which some people sink to survive. It's a movie that a lot of Americans can identify with. That's what makes it so painful to endure. [02 Oct 1992, p.9]

Steven Spielberg’s The Post is a fake news movie, a true story told phony to further an agenda.

It’s so respectful that vibrancy suffers. Coco is a bright pinata of a movie that breaks and nothing falls out.

Movies like Miss Daisy purport to be humanistic or aimed at a higher consciousness, but they're as self-righteous and silly as the one-dimensional characters they depict. [12 Jan. 1990, p.7]

McKay's frustration about the financial crisis is obvious, his instinct of how to engage viewers less so. Buyer beware.

The young Tianbai, Zheng Jian, is as demonic as a flesh-and-blood Michael Myers. Yet Ju Dou is grounded in the stark reality of turn-of-the-century China, where Confucian law has governed life for generations and where adultery is punishable by ostracism or death. [19 Jul 1991, p.7]

Lifeboat is one of Alfred Hitchcock's weakest films, yet it remains a notable experiment for its ability to maintain a sense of action despite its cramped setting. [9 March 1990, p.10]

Glory ends with a flourish, although much is left unsaid. [12 Jan 1990, p.21]

It Comes at Night lays down a heavy layer of dreadful promise and doesn't follow through. Edgerton's fine performance is overshadowed by a title and ad campaign springing a bait-and-switch scam on horror fans.

Chungking Express essentially tells two muted love stories set in a bustling locale, without fully involving the audience in either. [3 May 1996, p.5]

Foley's screenplay and direction constantly require viewers to re-evaluate the trio and their relationship with one another. This works as long as the dialogue is tolerable, which isn't long enough. [07 Sep 1990, p.6]

The movie is too unwieldy and densely packed. The superb performances by Snipes, Sciorra, McKee, Turturro and Jackson can't overcome its sprawling nature. [7 June 1991, p.6]

Good intentions don't always make for good movies. Case in point: Zootopia, a Disney film with more on its mind than animated fun and fuzzies. So much, in fact, that it loses track of what audiences expect, what they're being sold.

As the story lumbers on, the noose around Farrell's neck tightens and No Way Out gets funnier. Not by design, however. [14 Aug 1987, p.1D]

Calvary becomes a lurid Agatha Christie yarn with something important to say about the church and Ireland that McDonagh can't fully articulate. Pulp keeps getting in the way.

A comedy that moves as slow and uncertain as a bill through Congress. [07 May 1993, p.8]

At least the latest movie about the financial meltdown doesn't make the same mistake as the last one. It also doesn't prove that a fictional film can explain the downturn's causes and effects better than a documentary.

Gary Oldman may finally get that Oscar he has long deserved for Darkest Hour, a movie that seems constructed to do little else.

Hanks keeps things interesting with an array of concerned expressions and distant gazes. But there's no tension in faked suffering. The actor and Eastwood's movie are limited by the goodness of their subject, the flawlessness of his actions.

Thankfully in space, no one can hear you yawn.

Dark, heavy and plodding, with imaginative sex and a strong sense of magnetism between its characters. [26 March 1988, p.1D]

The third act sustains a fevered level of absurdity and everything prior is stylish, well-acted yet off-putting.Art without any noticeable heart.

The strategy deserves to self-destruct in five seconds.

Miami Blues is reminiscent of Demme's Married to the Mob and Something Wild. It has a superb sense of place. It savages Middle American tackiness. Regrettably, Miami Blues is even more mainstream and less developed than Married to the Mob. Its characters' lapses of logic and the holes in Armitage's script require a forgiving audience. The blood-letting at its conclusion necessitates a strong stomach. [20 Apr 1990, p.19]

Egoyan's self-importance mars every frame of his film. [24 Mar 1995, p.9]

Hail, Caesar! is maddeningly hit-and-miss.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles puts on the miles without many smiles. The journey hardly seems worth the trouble. [27 Nov 1987, p.6]

While The Stepfather doesn't transcend the limitations of most slice-and-dice movies, it comes close. And has fun trying.

Shame smears the lines between daring and taunting, and art versus indulgence. When it ends there's the urge to take a shower, and not a cold one.

Everything is fine and fantastic while the children are allowed to play out their outlaw games with innocent abandon. It's when adults interfere that Into the West limps off into the sunset. [17 Sep 1993, p.8]

It is well acted bunk, led by Hugh Jackman's righteous raging as the father of a missing girl, abducting a suspect (Paul Dano) to pummel and scald a confession from him. If only solving the case and ending this movie sooner was that simple.

It's not an art film, although it's an extremely intelligent piece of filmmaking. [27 Apr 1987, p.1D]

Almodóvar dives into perversity, practically daring the audience not to follow. The Skin I Live In is a mediocre addition to his resume, yet for fans, even bad Almodóvar is better than none at all.

Like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Rafelson's Black Widow is seriously flawed despite several compelling scenes. It plods to a contrived resolution, piling implausibility upon implausibility, rarely pausing to account for the incredulous events that transpire. It is the type of movie that squanders potential at every juncture. [7 Feb 1987, p.5B]

Imagine a stuffy Merchant Ivory production blended with muted Michael Crichton sci-fi and you have Never Let Me Go, at least as it plays on screen.

Unstoppable isn't unwatchable, but it is a letdown after "Speed" and some of the Speed-on-a-(fill in the blank with a vehicle) flicks that followed. Forget missing Hopper; even Keanu Reeves might make this movie more entertaining.

Let's face it: Caine could do a lambada movie and it'd be worth seeing. His work in the new suspense thriller A Shock to the System carries us past the movie's bad direction and muddled script. [24 Mar 1990, p.2D]

A contrived finish only serves to resolve the dangling threads of a story that ought to end with a huge laugh, not a self-conscious giggle. [7 Aug 1987, p.1D]

Like its predecessor, Gremlins 2 is a fun, roller-coaster ride of fiendish pranks and spilled gremlin innards. [15 Jun 1990, p.6]

Like Hi and Ed, Raising Arizona has a few problems. The repeated slapstick chases and fights are a little wearisome, and the final showdown between Hi and the biker is badly overdrawn, and gratuitously violent in the DePalma- Cronenberg style. Still, there is something appealing about a film that lists "baby wrangler" among the credits. And little T. J. Kuhn is liable to start a "critter boom" all by his lonesome. [10 Apr 1987, p.1D]

While The Hidden never manages to meld Aliens with Blue Velvet - that appears to be Hunt's intention. It has a kinky charm that fuels it full throttle throughout. [30 Oct 1987, p.5D]

I expected, even wanted to cry at The Fault in Our Stars, or at least choke up a little. Yet the transparent eagerness of this movie to break hearts, through means not entirely justifying that end, always pulled me back.

Rocker John Mellencamp's attempt at making an honest little movie about the tribulations of a country star who tries to go home again doesn't just fall from grace. It falls flat on its, er, face. [17 Apr 1992, p.15]

The problem isn't entirely Lehane's script... It's the way Belgian director Michael R. Roskam, making his English language debut, is so visually uninspired by all this meanness.

Wright is an insanely funny filmmaker (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) yet only the front half of that description carries over to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Like its predecessors, A Dry White Season is too reserved to effectively depict the hell of South Africa. Its most powerful moments occur in the courtroom, in jail cells and morgues filled with dead black children when its starched white protagonist is safely off-screen. [06 Oct 1989, p.6]

Pig in the City is a blatant, heartless attempt to turn a surprise hit into a cash cow. That simply won't do, pig. [25 Nov 1998, p.1D]

The Homesman isn't as confident with balancing madness and dark humor as Jones' only previous directing job, 2005's border odyssey The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. This movie's switchback plotting ambles from crisis to comical, threatening to maintain a tone but not for long.

Scene by scene, Batman Returns is more outrageous, inventive and fun than the original Batman. Yet, by its apocalyptic ending, Batman Returns is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. [19 June 1992, p.22]

By all accounts, Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger was a monster. That's exactly how Johnny Depp plays him in Black Mass, a dark blob of underworld cliches and bad contact lenses.

Avalon is a crowning effort by Levinson. He could stop making movies today and be satisfied with his Baltimore trilogy. [19 Oct 1990, p.6]

Feels like half of a good movie, much of it revealed in admittedly thrilling trailers.

My Cousin Vinny is a mildly entertaining courtroom comedy that ultimately must be judged guilty of disappointment. Lynn and Launer's pop-movie mentality wastes a great idea and some terrific performances. [13 Mar 1992, p.10]

While the first half of The Rescuers Down Under is breathtakingly magnificent, the second half is slower than a sloth. [16 Nov 1990, p.7]

Soderbergh doesn't always match his pacing to Mallory's fury.

It defies convention. It breaks taboos. It isn't a pleasant experience, but it is challenging. [21 June 1991, p.7]

FernGully...The Last Rainforest is surprisingly fun for being the first politically correct, environmentally conscious full-length animated film. [10 Apr 1992, p.5]

What undercuts Deep Cover is its convoluted, talky and ultimately predictable screenplay written by Henry Bean and Michael Tolkin. [15 Apr 1992, p.1D]

Schepisi & Co. appear to have forgotten a tenet of film making: A moving picture needs to move to succeed. [21 Dec 1990, p.6]

This Cinderella is achingly old-fashioned, with scant humor, a regressive heroine and godmother effects that aren't special.

The Witches of Eastwick is a theme park without a theme. Like Nicholson and his co-stars, Miller doesn't have a lot on his mind. He just wants to have fun. His movie is organized mayhem, a strange and funny tour de force. [15 June 1987, p.1D]

Eastwood is absolutely the wrong actor to play Huston, called John Wilson in White Hunter, Black Heart. Eastwood is tense and tightly coiled, while Huston was gleefully bombastic. [12 Oct 1990, p.7]

Frantic is an engrossing character study, but as a thriller it sometimes relies on cliches. For starters, the whole mess is triggered by a case of mixed-up suitcases. A drug shipment? No, worse: a device that could give some Arab bad guys nuclear weapons. Several action scenes are lifted from the Hitchcock style, but they don't capture the master's sense of suspense. Polanski weaves in moments of dark humor amid all the intrigue. [01 Mar 1988, p.1D]

Coppola's movie has a sense of indie vitality, although the energy feels wasted by running in place.

Hoffman's eye for detail isn't matched by his jolting way with a narrative, which an extra year's preparation and editing from its original planned release didn't help. One comes away with the suspicion that Restoration should have been a longer movie, and feeling somewhat relieved that it isn't. [02 Feb 1996, p.5]

Carlito's Way isn't a bad movie, just one that could be much better with more of the subversiveness that Pacino and De Palma wrought in Scarface. [12 Nov 1993, p.8]

The material fails the execution and performances. [13 Jan 1989, p.7]

Sidewalk Stories is a comedy of forgotten pleasures. It harkens back to the purest form of cinema to silently record what passes for society today. [16 Feb 1990, p.11]

Despite another charismatic turn by Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood, Marshall gradually feels less like his movie.

Not even J.K. Rowling can say abracadabra and make a worthwhile movie franchise appear. The lightning that struck Harry Potter once merely grazes Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, turning the sorcerer's mentor into a fantasy apprentice.

Davis is the perfect empty-headed, enameled-nail airhead Valley inhabitant, and she is so sweet in whatever she does it is difficult not to like her. Expect nothing more than a few laughs and a break from the heat, and Earth Girls Are Easy will not disappoint you. [10 June 1989, p.1D]

Romances such as Frankie's and Johnny's work better in the artificial environment of the stage than the "real" world of movies. The couple's bond seems phony from the start. [11 Oct 1991, p.7]

While there isn't much mystery to this mystery - only a handful of suspects are interviewed - there is a compelling sense of helplessness underscoring the lives of all its characters. In that sense, Sea of Love is a gender bender Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a disturbing allegory for the '80s when the fear of AIDS and sexual violence only deters a percentage of the singles population from making its appointed meat-market rounds. [15 Sep 1989, p.6]

Problem is, the duo's roundball exploits are a strictly one-note grift, and Shelton gropes to give the movie some substance off the court. [27 Mar 1992, p.5]

The Conjuring 2 is serviceable horror, heavy on the audio stings yet smarter than the average gorefest.

Like Top Secret and other less inspired efforts made by Zucker, brother Jerry Zucker and pal Jim Abrahams, The Naked Gun 2 is consistently amusing without being outright funny. [28 June 1991, p.6]

Pawn Sacrifice tells a fascinating story in unspectacular fashion, resulting in a draw.

Salt is a movie constantly painting itself into corners then tromping out with arbitrary twists and action distractions.

Writer-director Luis Valdez's movie is an example of just how tedious a bio-pic can be. [24 July 1987, p.3D]

With each musical reprise and imitated frame, Condon continues a fight of comparisons he can't win. Either imitate a classic faithfully or leave out the songs and make your own version. Or just leave perfection alone.

Mortal Thoughts is limited both by its scope and its structure, a relentlessly long Q&A session that relates what happened through a series of flashbacks. It grows tedious at first, then becomes frustrating as the women bungle their alibis and the truth is revealed. [19 Apr 1991, p.6]

Bale operates in full brood throughout. Studi is a strong presence stymied by the movie’s misplaced priorities. Hostiles is another Western in which Indian characters are props for white man problems.

The Rover fascinates and frustrates in equal measure, with Michod withholding details of plot and character so thoroughly that a nihilistic fog sets in.

This is certainly the talkiest of the seven films in the series and Craven never comes close to convincing us this could all be true. [14 Oct 1994, p.10]

Alexander Payne has a great idea with Downsizing and doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

Fury reeks of self-importance, a strange arrogance for a fictional World War II drama drenched in more blood than ideas.

Chastain plows through this tangled scenario with an icy ferocity that's entertaining. You get the feeling that Miss Sloane would work better as a streaming or cable series, allowing more time to explore characters and issues, giving actors more room for dense dialogue. Maybe come up with a better way out of that corner.

It waffles. In the end, it emerges a distinctly pro-soldier, possibly anti-war movie that supports America's overseas doctrine, whether it be right or wrong. One shudders to think what they might create if asked to portray the United States' current role in Central America. Their film certainly wouldn't dare make a statement, bother to educate or entertain. And most importantly, it wouldn't take sides. [29 Aug 1987, p.1D]

Silver wrote The Hand that Rocks the Cradle as a graduate thesis at the University of Southern California film school, and the movie's derivative nature shows it. The Hand that Rocks the Cradle has the viciousness of The Stepfather. DeMornay's live-in nursemaid recalls Michael Keaton's malicious tenant in Pacific Heights. The entire picture stinks of Fatal Attraction, a movie that begins as an ethical exploration and ends as a mad slasher movie. [10 Jan 1992, p.5]

Had the writing matched their performances, Fried Green Tomatoes would be this year's Driving Miss Daisy. As it is, it's an absorbing period mystery and a hapless social comedy. Half of it works. [24 Jan 1992, p.28

More than a little has been lost in the translation. Screenwriters Richard Maxwell and A.R. Simoun have created a horrific Indiana Jones adventure with Davis being portrayed by Bill Pullman, an actor who does a poor imitation of Michael Douglas doing a poor imitation of Harrison Ford.[6 Feb 1988, p.2D]

It’s a theme park ride but not the rollercoaster Spielberg hopes. More like It’s a Small Virtual World, careening through gamer nirvana, jerking viewers to and fro among everything Gen X retro.

Buying a ticket to see It Could Happen to You is like purchasing a Lotto ticket with three matching numbers; you get back a little more than you paid for it, but the thrill is quickly replaced by nagging thoughts of what might have been.