It's a stunning, dazzling motion picture that somehow, almost unaccountably, has the magnetism of a slab of corned beef. [20 May 1988, p.6]

Lynn takes a familiar premise and makes it a small gem for 94 minutes, if not beyond. [30 Mar 1996, p.2B]

Chaplin is a screen biography of a comedy legend that takes itself much too seriously. [08 Jan 1993, p.8]

Take away the quality look of this movie and the sensitive performance of Ford (he makes Phil Donahue look brutish), and there's a plot shamelessly tugging at heartstrings. It comes complete with a beagle puppy and a freckle-faced child, raising the saccharine level. [10 July 1991, p.1D]

Anthony Hopkins, new to the franchise, is introduced in a prison cell, in stir-crazy shades of Hannibal Lecter. At 53, Catherine Zeta-Jones is nearly too young for this stuff.

The movie has all the propulsion of a trolling motor, traversing long-charted dramatic waters.

This is a comedy never proceeding beyond its idea pitch and attractive casting.

Burlesque is what happens when an irresistible sex object like Aguilera meets Cher's immovable upper lip. It isn't always pretty but on occasion it's guiltily pleasurable.

A Cure for Wellness is a repellent curiosity, rich in atmosphere yet starved for dramatic morsels a sound plot might nourish.

Tom Cruise may be an A-list action star, but the Jack Reacher films are beginning to feel like the B-movies of his career.

The movie's pageantry and visual grandeur are its most impressive elements, along with Depardieu's command as Columbus. [09 Oct 1992, p.20]

Hiding Out is a hip movie. Hip but slow. It's an adult comedy hiding in an adolescent concept, burdened by humor that can be very knowing or nauseatingly sophomoric. [06 Nov 1987, p.3D]

Director Patrick Hughes' instinct isn't to find dark humor in violence, only to graphically depict it. There's a sadistic edge to The Hitman's Bodyguard that's unbecoming to its comedy.

It isn't Grant who makes Nine Months the funniest movie in months, but a supporting cast of crazies who raise the modern art of physical comedy to new heights, while Grant's character faces unexpected fatherhood. [12 July 1995, p.2B]

It's not that the man who brought us Rocky Balboa doesn't fit into a funny movie, it's just that as the lead of rollicking Oscar, he's cast beyond his capabilities. [26 Apr 1991, p.6]

Predator has a certain comic-book quality that, combined with its parody of movies like The Magnificent Seven, is very appealing. It provides the action, suspense and technical wizardry that summertime audiences crave. [12 June 1987, p.1D]

Solid work from an actor long thought incapable of as much. [6 Dec 1996, p.5]

Heaven Is for Real works in mysterious ways for a faith-based movie. It actually leaves room for doubt, in a genre founded on Christian absolutes. Tears aren't jerked; bibles aren't thumped. Believing gets easier.

A wheel-spinning homage gone terribly awry.

Hotel Transylvania doesn't raise the bar for animation or comedy but it's fun, and nice for once to have a different reason to say "boo" after an Adam Sandler flick.

Rock of Ages is nothing but a good time and sometimes less, slogging through the knee-deep hoopla of 1980s nostalgia at a jukebox pace.

The word "sappy" comes to mind, constantly. So often that I wanted to make like a tree and leaf. Frankly I'm stumped, wondering exactly who the audience is for such a drab slab of saccharine uplift.

The title sounds like just about all you need to know: another stupid premise-heavy comedy. However, director Richard Benjamin and a sharp cast have managed to make a silly premise if not believable, then plausible and funny. [17 Dec 1988, p.1D]

At the film's beginning, each of these characters seems hopelessly dated and repressed. It's as if they walked out of a 1940s romance. Yet that's the beauty of Only the Lonely. Innocence has its virtues, as Columbus' bittersweet comedy demonstrates. [24 May 1991, p.14]

Pink Cadillac is the most amiable and mindless Eastwood comedy in years. That it's even marginally entertaining is a substantial feat, given John Eskow's predictable script, which has more pings than the Caddy's engine. [30 May 1989, p.1D]

After years of watching Hollywood portray mentally disturbed people as either psychopaths or cuddly idiots, it's refreshing to see what Figgis and screenwriters Eric Roth and Michael Cristofer have done with Mr. Jones. Some of the old cliches rise up now and then - beginning with the casting of heroic Richard Gere in the title role - but Mr. Jones mostly maintains respect for its audience and its subject. [8 Oct 1993, p.7]

The A-Team is literally a blast, from the opening credits containing more thrills than the average shoot-'em-up (and more laughs than some comedies), to a climactic orgy of CGI destruction.

Leave your taste in the car and check your mind at the door. If nothing else, Predator 2 delivers one thing: buckets of blood, which is probably why a lot of people will see it. [23 Nov 1990, p.6]

That's Home Alone 2's biggest shortcoming. Hughes merely moved his movie to a new locale and wrote a retread. [20 Nov 1992, p.5]

As a rollicking comedy, it isn't.

Wonder Wheel is one of Allen’s worst movies.

For their next act, the illusionist con artists from Now You See Me will make every ounce of goodwill that movie earned disappear.

Thankfully, much of Red Tails is spent in the skies, where fighter planes swoop and zoom in thrilling dogfights with incendiary direct hits. Executive producer George Lucas apparently gave Hemingway the keys to his CGI kingdom, creating marvelously designed in-flight action and a sappy, snappy salute to the Tuskegee Airmen.

There is nice stuff found in The Lorax - Thneedville's artificial nature is inspired - and bad, like the original songs nobody will be humming when they leave the theater. But good intentions don't trump mediocre filmmaking. If that makes me a Grinch, so be it.

Toy Soldiers is a lame-brained action-adventure casting a quintet of Tiger Beat heartthrobs as prep school pranksters battling Colombian narco-terrorists who overrun their alma mater. [26 Apr 1991, p.12]

The movie takes something primally appealing and attempts to explain it, fetishize it, turn it into something deeper and more dramatic than it is.

The terror of Sept. 11 feels like little more than a dramatic hook, an easy way to make audiences cry. Oskar and the event defining him deserve better.

Every decade needs a nonsensical sci-fi space oddity - a Barbarella or Buckaroo Banzai - to keep the underground element amused. Tank Girl should keep the Internet clicking for a while, with its imposing strangeness and violent pop-apocalyptic action. [1 Apr 1995, p.2B]

Flat and polished is a fine condition for mirrors, not movies. There is imagination galore but no genuine magic in Mirror Mirror, a Grimmly disappointing take on Snow White's fairy tale.

Baruchel aside, The Sorcerer's Apprentice contains a few minor delights. One is Cage's surprisingly low-key approach to a role that he could be expected to play over the top.

Beaches, adapted from novelist Iris Rainer Dart's hankie-wringer, is truly horrid. Its only redeeming qualities are heartfelt performances by Midler and Barbara Hershey, as pen-pal buddies since pre-adolescence. [13 Jan 1989, p.6]

Airheads is a rock 'n' roll radio comedy in which laughs come at a very low frequency. [5 Aug 1994, p.8]

Beverly Hills Cop II is practically a carbon copy of the original movie, which, at the very least, exhibited a glimmer of invention. The sequel is superior only in terms of technique. It looks slicker and sounds better; more like a music video. Its tone is fractionally more reserved. And there isn't the unsettling clash between humor and violence. [22 May 1987, p.1D]

The only memorable aspect of She's Out of My League is Eve's performance. Not that it's good, but it does possess the hypnotic quality of a flicker ring.

Despite its unsavory aspects, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is always a pleasure to observe, so artfully artificial with its green-screened backdrops and CGI props.

A terrible title for a not-much-better movie, missing a grammatically correct question mark and most of the point with romantic comedies.

Dafoe is every bit as commanding as he was in Platoon or The Last Temptation of Christ. But the essence of this movie is as difficult to grasp as its title, White Sands. [24 Apr 1992, p.9]

Fifty Shades of Grey isn't the howling pornucopia it could be, but it's sexy enough, spank you very much.

With Herbert Ross' campy direction highlighting the most juvenile aspects of Ian Abrams' script, Blues seems to be targeting an audience that considers the Ernest movies highbrow; a PG-13 movie that treats viewers like 12-year-olds. [15 Sept 1993, p.6B]

Knight and Day never makes sense from the opening credits. Heck, the title is only half-explained, and not as cleverly as the pun deserves. It's a movie that never gestated beyond the pitch: Glamorous stars in exotic locales, shooting and driving their way to safety through a gantlet of bad guys chasing a MacGuffin.

Some prime stiff-upper-lip comedy surfaces above a messy morality tale. [09 Sep 1994, p.10]

But the movie is more than just a rehashing of the tried and true jokes. All the old charm is still there, but there's also a whole new setting and a whole new look. [6 July 1990, p.6]

Director Stephen Herek (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) and screenwriter Steve Brill dreamed up these fantasies for their so-called comedy about youth hockey. They could have devoted more attention to writing decent jokes. This childish mix of slap shots and slapstick lumbers along as awkwardly as a skater on a melting ice rink. [02 Oct 1992, p.12]

The movie veers between disapproval, farce and something uncomfortably close to envy, with a trio of game performances barely holding things together.

Dante's movie is so helter-skelter, that he can't generate the uncomfortable mood the moment requires. It's the balloon principle. The 'Burbs is so full of hot air it simply blows up in its own face. [17 Feb 1989, p.6]

The movie's best performance — and worst defamation — belongs to Tony Shalhoub, playing the first victim as a conniving, egotistical jerk who deserves to be kidnapped, maimed and ruined financially.

The Little Rascals is marvelously quaint fun, proving that they can make 'em like they used to. Somewhere, Hal Roach is smiling, you betcha. [05 Aug 1994, p.16]

The only thing Black or White adds to the discussion of race relations is another one-sided argument.

The heist movie genre gets a hip-hop makeover in Takers, a movie loaded with as much style as ammunition.

Justice League does remain fun as it unravels, an upgrade from every other DC flick. Yet a movie intended as the culmination of DC lore instead feels like just another sequel set-up.

Breaking Dawn Part 1 confirms suspicions that all four books could've made a heck of a single movie.

Depp and Cruz only occasionally strike the sparks expected from two of the world's most beautiful people.

Rather than embellish the original movie, the filmmakers have merely strived to re-create it. [22 Mar 1991, p.6]

Like many sudden heroes, these lifelong friends led unremarkable lives until fate stepped in. Eastwood is committed to depicting every single unremarkable step along the way.

She-Devil is insipid. It is a hustle-bustle comic fantasy that insists on shoveling forced humor down viewers' throats. The movie is devoid of charm. [8 Dec 1989, p.6]

Snatched amuses because of who's delivering the jokes rather than what the jokes are.

The central mystery has been drastically altered to fit Julia Roberts, its most telling clue diluted, and a signature sequence that made soccer exciting now makes baseball duller.

As if these weren't enough subplots to juggle, screenwriter McPherson revives the romance between boat captain Steve Guttenberg and Antarean Tawnee Welch. This sort of interspecies romance presumably violates Florida law and certainly counters any attempts at efficient storytelling. [23 Nov 1988, p.1D]

The film, which follows homecoming queen Laura Palmer's last seven days before her murder, is dark, pointless and tortuously boring to watch. [1 Sept 1992, p.1D]

Country Strong is a country music melodrama, but I'm not sure which country.

If anyone gets a career boost from The Expendables it will be Dolph Lundgren, playing a drug-addicted loose Howitzer booted from the team and flipping to the bad side.

It is sophomoric, yet very funny. And until its weepy, reconciliatory ending, it moves with locomotive force. It's the type of movie that makes critics feel guilty about liking it, yet there's no refuting its charm. [02 Oct 1987, p.1D]

The only highlights in this farce are Wallace Shawn's brief comic turn as the killer's attorney, and Mark Margolis' portrayal of a man who'd rather fight than let Terry into his phone booth. I applaud his integrity. [16 Jan 1987, p.3D]

Above the Law is action trash. But it's great action trash, running fast and furious from the first frame to the last. It's entirely possible - in fact, advisable - to forget the movie's right-to-left-wing political swings and just watch Seagal rage. [22 Apr 1988, p.7]

Perhaps the NCAA should investigate how Necessary Roughness ever made it to the big screen. The movie-making team that fielded this fiasco would receive more sanctions than the universities of Florida, Oklahoma and Houston combined. [27 Sept 1991, p.13]

The third act of Scardino's movie is very funny, and its finale featuring the exposure of an impossibly successful illusion is flat-out brilliant. It's just too bad that the movie's opening act is so sleight of humor, damaging the movie's potential. Now you see it. Then you don't.

It took brains to create such a sumptuous fantasia with pixels and keyboard swipes. Now, if it only had a heart.

Joyful Noise is a good movie when it lifts up its heart and lets people sing.

As director and writer, MacFarlane appears to have forgotten everything about cinematic standards of pacing, characterization and meaningful smut, resulting in an encore that's slow, sketchy and dumb-dirty.

Last Man Standing can't live up to its Japanese and Italian predecessors or even its title. [20 Sep 1996, p.5]

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a tarnished sequel demolishing the original's balderdash charm in tumble-dry camera moves, CGI slosh and Elton John f-bombs.

Filmmakers simply can't make Tarzan like they used to. If someone tries, like director David Yates did with The Legend of Tarzan, he's just another superhero, swinging on vines rather than spider webs. Natives can't be restless. Lions won't be wrestled...Tarzan fans leave feeling Cheetah'd.

A shocking and outrageous comedy that gets under your skin. Landis doesn't always know the difference between a laugh and a nervous giggle, but you can't just sit there unaffected. [25 Sept 1992, p.10]

Angels in the Outfield has a lot going for it, beginning with the engaging performances of Glover and Gordon-Levitt in the lead roles. [15 July 1994, p.8]

Hark's visual style occasionally strays from standard operating procedure with an arty camera effect or an odd angle. Those flashes of inspiration only serve to make the cliches - such as a coliseum showdown complete with land mines, snipers and a tiger - clunk a little louder. In the big game of entertainment, Double Team barely gets off the bench. [5 Apr 1997, p.2B]

The Raven isn't nearly as much fun as it should be.

Perhaps if I hadn't laughed so hard at a recent revival of Blazing Saddles, then Mel Brooks' new film, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, wouldn't be such a dismal disappointment. [28 July 1993, p.6B]

The fun of watching We're the Millers is guessing how raunchily low it will go, and realizing you've sorely underestimated these writers and actors.

If the saccharine quality of movies could be translated into seismic activity, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael would level Los Angeles. [12 Oct 1990, p.13]

It's deja vu all over again in The Hangover Part II, only dirtier and more dangerous, if you can imagine that.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was supposed to settle a fanboy debate older than Adam West. Instead it raises another: Is being a superhero really this much of a drag?

This Is Where I Leave You is packed with familiar regrets and lost-time makeups but these actors make every recycled moment count for something.

It's a very funny character needing more arc than Rauch's script offers or a shorter movie.

Jobs the movie isn't as fascinating as Jobs the man, much less the myth of entrepreneurial superiority he left behind.

Without previous knowledge of Andy Diggle's comics, The Losers looks like every other globetrotting gunpowder flick in which good guy bullets never miss and bad guy bullets never hit their targets.

Life Happens still has the obligatory relationship cracks and repairs to wade through but it's finally tolerable.

The performances are spot-on, with former Tampa resident Morgan Simpson scripting a showcase for himself as Jefferson, and Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) as the enigmatic stranger, proving again that he's more than just a not-so-pretty face atop an intimidating body.

If only City Slickers II possessed the heart of the original, a quality it might have recouped at its climax. Yet, instead of a gentle lesson on the true value of life, the screenwriters tack on a Las Vegas epilogue that exists to present one more Palance zinger and a set-up for another sequel. [10 June 1994, p.8]