Starting with a mountainside rescue setting up Ray's bravery, through cities ruined and a tsunami leveling San Francisco, San Andreas is gnaw-your-knuckle fun. Which is the roller coaster conflict that comes with the disaster movie genre, the closeness to horrific reality that attracts millions yet repels a sensitive few.

Goldberg has honorable intentions. But like Tammy Faye's make-up, it's impossible to see beneath his movie's overwrought facade. [27 Oct 1989, p.7]

The movie is unambitious and sweet and nothing more. Precisely what we expect from producer-director Ivan Reitman these days, after good-natured audacity got his career started with hits like Animal House and Stripes. [9 May 1997, p.5]

The Angry Birds Movie is simply a pointless swirl of color and motion to babysit small children on home video in a few months. Sadly, such movies aren't an endangered species.

Simply put, Reeves doesn't seem bright enough to master all of the techno-blab he struggles to recite and pantomime in Andrew Davis' return to the thriller genre, Chain Reaction. [2 Aug 1996, p.3]

Will Forte plays his pitifully deluded creation to the hilt in a penknife movie. There's a lot of material here that only occasionally succeeds on Forte's insanely focused performance.

It never digs very deep. But it's palatable and well-meaning. It's a Disneyland version of a big-issue movie. Nothing great. But we could do worse. [07 Feb 1992, p.7]

Farrell's diction is a noticeable upgrade from Schwarzenegger's but there's also his superior portrayal of sweaty apprehension and killer instinct.

Hocus Pocus is a sweet-spirited romp that could give clean-minded silliness a good name once again. [16 July 1993, p.6]

A relatively inane movie about good will and unfounded distrust. [06 Nov 1987, p.3D]

The Three Musketeers circa 1993 is diverting enough for the non-discriminating moviegoer, but for the real deal check out the '70s classics. [12 Nov 1993, p.5]

Basic Instinct has the action and gore of Verhoeven's Total Recall and the cool sheen of his equally bloody RoboCop. Verhoeven can deliver style in spades, but Eszterhas' jumble of confusing plot twists and conventional movie cliches proves fatal. [20 Mar 1992, p.29]

Machine Gun Preacher comes alive only when Sam is pulling a trigger, which is most of the second hour. You can find the same thrill from watching a grindhouse descendant like "The Expendables" on cable TV.

This is a solid, sincere affirmation of faith and forgiveness. Praise the Lord, and pass the popcorn.

Flipper is a nice movie, a safe movie for Saturday matinees, but it isn't very exciting or entertaining. [17 May 1996, p.5]

Office Christmas Party contains enough lunacy from McKinnon, Bell and Vanessa Bayer to nearly recommend, then enough lame plot threads, Rob Corddry and Olivia Munn to reconsider.

Wang's high regard for women is intact, plus a keen eye for period detail making the 19th century sequences lovely to observe. But it's nothing we haven't seen before.

Heigl is a comely newcomer, displaying convincing pouts and snits in a role designed to appeal to independent adolescent girls and dirty old men. [4 Feb 1994, p.7]

Schwentke keeps things lively and loud, with a mildly alarming body count, smashing glass and gunfire.

A movie that wouldn't get much attention if the creator of "Titanic" and "Avatar" (as the ads overhype) weren't tangentially involved.

Raising Cain is monumentally bad. It is De Palma's Howard the Duck. [07 Aug 1992, p.10]

Go see Won't Back Down and enjoy it. Just don't believe it's anything more than a stacked deck with a lot at stake.

Even Pee-wee seems subdued. The man-child whose suit cuffs are intimate with his ankles and elbows is growing up. Kids may still adore him. But adults will find his persona worn at the edges. [23 Jul 1988, p.1D]

Transcendence is a movie without villains, thrills or, after Nolan fanboys show up, much of an audience.

The humor is an underdog's fantasy, tapping the same vein Murray bled dry with self-important camp counselors and military officers; the less cool they are, the harder they'll fall.

Inferno is another docent tour dressed as an action movie, a baby boomer's fantasy of travel and intrigue.

Things are kept fast, loose and very violent. Renegades makes a grand effort not to be boring, but at the expense of believability and logic. [03 Jun 1989, p.1D]

Stargate is a time-warped implosion of baffling space mysticism, a costume budget gone mad, and too much sand for any movie short of Lawrence of Arabia. It's pretty, vacant and pointless; an interactive computer game with which we just don't feel like getting involved. [28 Oct 1994, p.10C]

Taking Care of Business is the funniest movie Charles Grodin, Jim Belushi and director Arthur Hiller have made in years. [17 Aug 1990]

What keeps Daddy's Home watchable is Wahlberg's checkmate machismo, as the intimidating foil necessary for Ferrell's namby-pambyism to register.

Russell remains one of our most adorable, underused actors, although this role lacks the emotional and comedic breadth of her turn in 2007's "Waitress."

This is a fun picture, even if it's overly sentimental and has the feeling of an extended Amazing Stories segment. Director Dear is a master Spielbergian craftsman. Now, all he has to do is demonstrate some originality to establish himself as a quality film maker. [5 June 1987, p.1D]

The Great Wall is a so-so movie with eye-popping images.

For Love or Money is a featherweight romantic comedy that barely stays afloat, thanks to the effortlessly appealing personality of Michael J. Fox. [1 Oct 1993, p.11]

Not rocket science by a moonshot but sporadically dumb fun.

Leave It to Beaver turns out to be a pleasant time-waster and a future video babysitter. [22 Aug 1997, p.8]

Jungle 2 Jungle is a culture-clash comedy based upon a French film that was roundly panned when it flopped upon our shores last year. Dumb plot. Dumb jokes. The usual. [07 Mar 1997, p.08]

Finally, a horror film that doesn't turn on the gore machine nor confuse dread with decibels. One of the most convincing members of the cast is the gloriously creaky old house that sets up the spooky action. [23 July 1999, p.03]

I seriously doubt that it happened this way, with such convenient strife and truncated solutions. The movie is about baseball but plays like T-ball, with each situation teed up for easy swings.

Other than its campy title, not much about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is fun.

RoboCop 2 moves fast and looks great. How much you like it depends on your tolerance for machine-gun mayhem. [22 June 1990, p.6]

A movie as slight as Fluke shouldn't be expected to draw gasps and cooing at the drop of a plot twist. [02 Jun 1995, p.9]

Brill's film isn't as offensive as it could be, nor as funny as it should be. Heavyweights is a case of no pain, and no gain, either. [19 Feb 1995, p.16C]

A Bad Moms Christmas is a comedy with better casting than jokes, a sequel sticking to the formula of using twice as much of whatever worked before.

George Clooney’s latest directing effort, Suburbicon, is a movie tipping off why it’s going wrong before it actually happens.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword isn't a movie as much as a feature length montage of bastardized lore and rejected Game of Thrones pitches.

Van Damme, who co-wrote the script, set out to make a punch-packed, entertaining action film, and succeeded. [18 Jan 1991, p.10]

The pleasant surprises in Larry Crowne come from its side characters.

Director John G. Avildsen and screenwriters Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue do an amiable job balancing humor and pathos while investigating the ultimate nightmare of every sexually active unmarried adolescent. [16 Jan 1988, p.1D]

The only surprise is that Garry Marshall didn't direct this jumbled, star-studded kibitz and rename it "Mothers Day."

The saddest part of the film is that Hogan, after creating an entertaining character, chose to plug the character into a cheap formula whose hoped-for solution is, I suspect, a big chunk of the $300-million the first film was able to milk worldwide. I can see at least a few interesting movies using the Dundee character and Australia: Crocodile Dundee II is not one of them. [27 May 1988, p.6]

This movie never realizes how ridiculous anything it does truly is, right up to the last-second promise of another sequel.

As hollow as it is hip. [5 Feb 1988, p.8]

Hardware runs more precisely, it crawls aimlessly as the robot, pieced together from household appliances, attempts to slice, dice, drill and saw Jill to death. There's no tension, no suspense, no climax. [14 Sep 1990, p.7]

Two flesh-and-blood performers stand out among the machinery. One is pop singer Rhianna, looking lovely as usual despite the military gear and quite comfortable with high-powered artillery. The other is Gregory D. Gadson, an Army veteran who lost his legs to a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Stallone and Russell don't bore. As verbal sparring partners, they provide plenty worth watching.

The Rookie is the most brain dead action-thriller Eastwood has ever directed or starred in. It plays well as a comedy, but that isn't its intent. [07 Dec 1990, p.6]

It's rambunctiously amusing but the laughs clot in your throat. There's a meaner streak this time to Kick-Ass and Hit Girl's exploits, or maybe Carrey's sensitivity is justified. Either way, the third act of Kick-Ass 2 is a visceral beatdown.

The Substitute is loud, dumb and sort of fun, but it'll be best viewed on your neighbor's cable TV, so you don't have to pay the bill. [19 Apr 1996, p.2B]

This is science fiction needing more work on the fiction part, an intriguing premise running its course halfway through. Passengers is too smart for starters to devolve into green screen spectacle relegating its attractive stars to unconvincing gapes.

Energetic performances plug plot holes and the most interesting villains die first, but Surviving the Game is a decent fix for action junkies before the summer blockbusters arrive. [20 Apr 1994, p.6B]

What Bay has really done is slice Beverly Hills Cop in two; Eddie Murphy's sandpaper personality in Lawrence and his silky style in Smith. [7 April 1995, p.7]

The movie's glaring problem is the design and execution of Chappie, whose look is unremarkable except for a pair of polymer rabbit ears ready for meme posterity.

Hop is harmless, which is the worst best thing to be said for any movie. It never decides whether to be a kiddie flick or a grownup lark and winds up as neither. As Roger might say: "Puh-puh-puh-puhleeze, don't waste your time."

Metro is the kind of movie an actor makes when he's either coasting on a reputation or scrambling to recover one. The kind of movie that Murphy doesn't need to make after hitting big again with The Nutty Professor, and the kind we don't need to pay theater prices to see. [17 Jan 1997, p.9]

The recurring fight scenes had a campy quality that recalled the funniest flicks from Hong Kong. [30 June 1995, p.11]

Gibson and Glover never have been more at ease. Their camaraderie and complementing comic styles grow increasingly engaging. There's too little of peroxide-dipped, gold earring-plated Pesci, who takes Lethal Weapon 3 to a higher comic plane whenever he's present. [15 May 1992, p.5]

The movie is pleasant enough thanks to Kendrick and co-stars, especially Merchant's daft mannerisms and Squibb's matronly spunk. It's solely their attention to the project holding ours.

The Power of One emerges as a broadly painted piece of rhetoric. It means well and has an undeniable dramatic pull, but its relegation of blacks to the sidelines and its creation of a white savior are unforgivable. [10 Apr 1992, p.10]

Chevy Chase only knows how to play Chevy Chase. Unless he jettisons his smug routine and learns to act, he will always be his and his movies' biggest liability. [17 March 1989, p.6]

Act of Valor will likely earn high praise from combat veterans and their families, the way movies like "Fireproof" and "Seven Days in Utopia" resonate with Christians. Civilians, movie critics and certainly pacifists won't be nearly as impressed.

The Boss feels like a fun character gradually wasted.

The sequel is merely crude for crudeness' sake, lazy as they come.

Final Analysis is overwrought, overwritten, overscored pseudo-Hitchcockian drivel. With more twists than Lombard Street has curves, this San Francisco-set psychological thriller is the biggest disappointment of the new year. [8 Feb 1992, p.3D]

It's all harmless, if not entirely fun.

It's the garish swarm of colorfully twisted action that Batman v Superman needed, the anarchic approach such timeworn superheroes deserve. Suicide Squad characters aren't nearly as familiar, so writer-director David Ayer's movie is also messy, not entirely by design.

While the movie's technical aspects are first-rate and Stallone manages more than a monosyllabic performance, Over the Top can't overcome its sense of deja vu or provide any reason for Hawk's suitability as a parent. [14 Feb 1987, p.5B]

MacLaine keeps things interesting, snapping off one-liners with precision that comes only through experience.

The Believers is the type of movie that generates shocks more successfully than it tells a story. [10 Jun 1987, p.1D]

The Comedian is a phony movie about funny people, starring a great actor understanding next to nothing about stand-up comedy.

Three Fugitives, which for all purposes is one extended chase, has a few chuckles, though nothing to justify its existence.[27 Jan 1989, p.11]

All Crowe's movie has going for it is casting, a lineup of favored actors wasted in a screenplay unsure of what it wants to be. Aloha is by turns a love quadrangle that never materializes, an ode to Hawaiian sovereignty, an opposites-attract cliche and an outer-space weapons caper, all of which is clumsily executed.

Wan in particular is pacing today's movie horror by reverting to the past. There's a touch of Hammer Films in his haunted house atmospheres, and Roger Corman in his groaning comic relief from the dread.

Pitch Perfect 3 totally eclipses the heart of a charming franchise, turning the scrappy Bellas a capella posse into needy Charlie’s Angels wannabes. It’s a movie taking popularity for granted, a finale saying goodbye with a "you’re welcome."

Envisioned as a surrealistic painting come to life, it is a delight to behold, yet it fails miserably as a compelling piece of storytelling. It is a listless, largely vapid tale, even though it has been revised over a dozen years by writer-director Barry Levinson. [18 Dec 1992, p.21]

Robert John Burke, who replaces Peter Weller as RoboCop, gives the cyborg as much personality as his character's circuits allow. [08 Nov 1993, p.6B]

Man on a Ledge makes bigger leaps of logic than Nick will if he fails a gravity test. If the transparent sting springing him from Sing Sing doesn't roll your eyes, then wait for the climax when Nick becomes a kind of plainclothes Spider-Man.

Jack Frost is loads of fun, with a warm, fuzzy message, a rare live-action movie that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. [11 Dec 1998, p.12]

Deceptions drive A Kiss Before Dying. Too bad they're too implausible to impart any sense of believability in this bloody fantasy. [26 Apr 1991, p.10]

If this is the best filmmakers can do with the video game market, we'll sit the rest out until the planned film version of Doom. [04 Nov 1994, p.7]

Wolverine is a solid start to the ever-lengthening summer movie season, when all that matters is the bang and the bucks paid for it.

Can we please get over the notion that every superhero in a skintight suit deserves a movie? Green Lantern is the latest wallet drainer emptying the comic book bench, more thudding than "Thor" and sorely incoherent.

The Change-Up is the "Human Centipede" of gag-me comedies.

That first movie was obviously a calculated grab for Harry Potter-type movie success but didn't feel like a rip-off. This one skews younger, to an easier-to-please demographic, closely resembling other fantasies since.

Its logic is so simple, its emotion is so heartfelt, its editing and composition are so fluid, it seems to be a perfectly-crafted contemporary drama. Yet, in retrospect, it's a difficult movie to stomach. The problem with Brothers' script is that he and Yates paint characters with unbelievably broad strokes. [06 Oct 1989, p.12]

Any movie that features a dramatic actor like Kurt Russell playing straight man to a goofball like Martin Short already is sailing on choppy waters. Toss in a script that leaves no cliche unturned and the result is Captain Ron, a seafaring comedy that keeps its creativity in dry dock. [18 Sep 1992, p.8]

Director Alan J. Pakula generates a degree of suspense, even though the story's implausibilities and overall stupidity of Kline's and Mastrantonio's characters are stupefying. Everyone in this movie is a prig, including a frail E.K. Marshall as Richard's defense attorney who doesn't believe his client's innocence and Forest Whitaker as a private eye who lets Richard do the investigating. [16 Oct 1992, p.5]

Clash of the Titans redefines 3-D but in the wrong way; the movie is dull, dingy and, well, let's just say dull again.