Although there are enough zany antics and puppet slapstick to keep the younger kids amused, there is little of the charm and intelligent humor that made both grown-ups and children love Muppets in the first place. [11 Dec 1992, p.8]

Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is superb, casting gauzy glows and sensual silhouettes against impressively designed sets. Allen drops a few philo-cynical lines worthy of his reputation but not nearly enough.

A near-flawless thriller. [28 Aug 1987, p.1D]

Carnahan didn't make a movie unfit for mankind but it certainly isn't worth mankind's money.

Turner cuts a hilarious swath across the screen in a courageously over-the-top performance that perfectly fits Waters' twisted vision. [15 Apr 1994, p.6]

Full of gratuitous sexual innuendoes and death-defying closeups of Playboy covergirl Anna Nicole Smith's anatomy, the film lacks most of the zest that made the original so tasty. [18 Mar 1994, p.6]

Kids isn't a cure, it's a symptom of mercenary moviemaking. Some will call it heroic, but that's just a smug synonym for exploitation. [25 Aug 1995, p.9]

It's the nicest Mother's Day gift available at the movies this weekend.

Woo's film has an exciting look and visceral feel that is unique in Western filmmaking. If nothing else, it should increase video rentals of Woo's foreign films and make a ton of money for those happy capitalists at Universal Pictures.

Roger Michell's revival of My Cousin Rachel is a graceful note amid summer's movie din, adapting Daphne du Maurier's black widow mystery with class bordering on defiance.

The next step in Matthew McConaughey's inevitable march to network television is The Lincoln Lawyer, a pilot disguised as a feature-length movie, with an entire season's arc crammed into two hours.

David Hare's screenplay based on Lipstadt's book is intrinsically stacked toward her eventual triumph, with each familiar step worth watching.

It's all more extravagant yet less charming then before.

Co-writer and director Barry Primus knows his characters well, but his scenarios are stilted and pretentious. So is Landisman's screenplay, which everyone wants to change.

Atomic Blonde is a rare case of a woman toplining an action flick, but it hardly feels revolutionary.

It's an audacious mashup that Baz Luhrmann would approve, lending freshness to Tolstoy's too-often-told tale.

This movie is one of the biggest surprises of the new year: a tense suspense thriller, with darkly comic elements, that celebrates American excess while ridiculing it. [09 Mar 1990, p.23]

It works because Timberlake and Kunis are totally in control of their damaged characters without winking at the audience, as if to say: "Aren't we cute, behaving so naughty?" Their sex is amusingly awkward, and their repressed longings more so. It's the kind of chemistry that comes along once in a generation.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids pulls some familiar plot - and emotional strings. It's a tad too predictable. But it's resourceful and well-crafted. It's the type of movie that works on one level for parents and another for kids. Both will be pleased. [23 June 1989, p.12]

The wise viewer will avoid any serious consideration of subtext here. Internal Affairs isn't that deep. Working from a screenplay by Henry Bean, Figgis takes these early scenes and does nothing with them. After a while, the film simply loses its direction and stalls in a morass of formulaic cliches. [13 Jan 1990, p.1D]

The River Wild is simply a terrific nail biter, with the same constant, misleadingly tranquil jeopardy that give whitewater rafters such a charge. [30 Sep 1994, p.6]

The Jungle Book is rich with stunning sights and impossibly lush features. [23 Dec 1994, p.16]

Single White Female is simply Fatal Attraction or Final Analysis in a new locale. Superbly crafted, yet unremittingly violent, it's the cinematic equivalent of being bludgeoned for two hours. [14 Aug 1992, p.21]

Tampa Bay wears fringe nihilism well, including wet-fever dreams of trigger-happy angels floating on cannabis clouds and dusted with cocaine like beignets waiting to be licked clean. Or drug gangstas sporting cornrows and gold-grill teeth, living large and thinking three-ways. Film as a fetish tool, that's what Spring Breakers is all about, y'all.

Bursting with color and rippling with samba rhythms, Rio makes you wonder why animated films haven't spent more time in Brazil.

If only lead actors Johnny Depp and Amy Locane could sustain the perverse pleasures Waters envisions. [6 Apr 1990, p.7]

World War Z presents an abundance of relatively plausible action, smart solutions and one useful piece of information: When the zombiepocalypse comes, the undead are flying coach.

Field's eager-to-please performance makes [Showalter's] shovelfuls of sugar go down easier.

Split is a tidy example of lurid understatement, its themes ripe for nastier treatment than Shyamalan offers, grindhouse stuff served with vegan restraint.

Keanu is raucous enough to satisfy the Hangover crowd, yet when compared to Key and Peele's trenchant tomfoolery on television, it needs focused anger, funnier tension. Or perhaps simply more kitty cat.

Megamind's Kryptonite is a common weakness for any comedy so fast out of the blocks: It simply runs out of surprises.

Iron Man 3 is missing that old Tony Stark spark. Not from Robert Downey Jr., who is still the best thing about this overblown show.

Set It Off doesn't say anything especially original, but it says it loud and proud. [06 Nov 1996, p.1D]

One of the all-time great sports movies — primarily because it's one of the all-time great sports stories.

At some juncture — much earlier than director Gareth Edwards intends — Godzilla needs to stop being an extra in his own movie.

Prelude to a Kiss lacked a sense of flow on stage; the problem is compounded on film. [10 Jul 1992, p.5]

It's a simple and obvious story, to be sure, but it's moving. Jed, the dog who plays White Fang, has agate eyes and a face as expressive as a human's. He is beautiful to watch and very well-trained. [21 Jan 1991, p.3D]

Big Eyes is an entertaining take on a pop culture footnote, short on the bizarre flourishes Burton typically employs.

Henry & June is a sumptuous film, more deeply shaded and richly appointed than Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. While it fails to capture the lovers' emotional evolution, it does project their individual concerns. [05 Oct 1990, p.6]

Kong: Skull Island strips the beauty from a legendary beast, reducing a classic movie star to soulless monster mechanics. Kong smashes, but not much else. Whoever dies doesn't matter. Whoever lives has a sequel promised by the end credits.

Pacino, Cusack and Aiello are fascinating to observe, playing three sides of the same political coin, but the whole thing winds up as meaningless as a concession speech by Phil Gramm. [16 Feb 1996, p.5]

Veronica Mars, the movie, plays like a two-parter without commercials. Its uninspired framing and static action suits a TV screen better than a multiplex's.

That epilogue suspiciously looks tacked-on by Warner Bros., who did the same thing with Roberts in The Pelican Brief when the climax was too downbeat. Just one more anti-climactic chance to see Roberts flash that halogen-bulb smile, even though it thoroughly contradicts what preceded it. It leaves a bad taste, and one realizes that it's the same old tainted salmon Hollywood has been serving for years. Somewhere, Thelma and Louise are gagging. [4 Aug 1995, p.8]

The appeal of The Rugrats Movie sits squarely on the shoulders of its vast cast of characters, each of whom has one characteristic, but collectively sketch an amusing perspective of childhood. [20 Nov 1998, p.3]

Miraculously, Chances Are has some engaging moments despite its saccharine script and Emile Ardolino's (Dirty Dancing) sluggish direction. [10 March 1989, p.10]

Maverick has everything going for it except a sense of cinematic adventure and a stopwatch. [20 May 1994, p.6]

There's enough here for a nice little movie, anyway, even if Al Pacino didn't think so. He was hired to voice the movie's arch villain but dropped out due to "creative differences."

It's often convulsively funny.

Despite its haunted house setting, the movie's most visible cobwebs are found in Jane Goldman's screenplay, adapted from Susan Hill's novel.

Apatow hates leaving anything on the cutting room floor. You could excise entire chunks of The Five-Year Engagement - the donut experiments at college, a couple of wise soliloquies, most of the stuff involving Violet's sister (Alison Brie) - and never miss a beat.

If this was December, Kevin Hart might be in the Oscar mix, he's that good in About Last Night. Explosively good, a comedy nova who won't shut up and never should.

Spielberg's Empire of the Sun dispels with the sugar coating that turned Alice Walker's searing novel about racial and sexual subjugation into "The Color Purple: The Coffee Table Edition." Yet, Spielberg retains a sense of innocence in this ambitious, visionary tale. [10 Dec 1987, p.6]

Quirky to the brink of exhaustion, the latest from Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a live-action Looney Tune complete with Acme contraptions and wily coyotes.

It's a movie of terrific performances and rousing comeuppances, with a side order of corn pone for the soul.

Back To The Beach, starring the early '60s most popular teen-agers, Frankie and Annette, combines the campiness of a college reunion, the corniness of a high school musical, and the values of Mister Rogers. The film's only redeeming quality is that it knows it … and manages to laugh at itself occasionally. [10 Aug 1987, p.1D]

Despite its commercial leanings, Dragnet is consistently entertaining. Its acting is flawless and its tone is refreshingly reverent toward the old Dragnet series. [26 June 1987, p.1D]

Director John Madden and an ensemble of polished actors in their second primes make this a constant amusement and a nice alternative at the movies.

The junk in Lucy doesn't entirely eclipse the moments when weird is fun.

There are too many convenient romances, trumped-up crises and reversals of conscience to clear up while those poor whales suffer. Big Miracle isn't an entirely bad movie but a wholly misguided one.

Vice Versa shouldn't be happening to Judge Reinhold. He's too wonderful to be squandered on a movie plot that could have been shaped by a roomful of third graders with magic markers and lined paper. [11 Mar 1988, p.6]

The Boxtrolls is a visually repellent pile of stop-motion animation, populated by grotesques and filmed in the palette of an exhumed casket's interior. It can frighten small children and bore anyone, with its cracked, cackled British wit.

The most gratifying takeaway from He Named Me Malala is how ordinary Malala is shown to be, when she isn't lobbying the United Nations and visiting beleaguered countries.

Every fallen-star cliche director/co-writer Brett Haley employs goes down smoother with Elliott's baritone and unforced cool. He has deserved a spotlight role for years and now deserves a finer one.

Despite sharp humor and bravura performances - including a cameo by Regis Philbin as the epitome of Harry's dream of success - Night and the City is not a pleasant experience. While anything less would betray its bracing dose of true grit, Night and the City is so downbeat that it ultimately seems like an exercise in self-flagellatio.

Imagination is the key element that Conviction lacks.

The Secret Life of Pets is funnier than Zootopia and fresher than Finding Dory. Bonus points for a genuinely touching finale that had me crying behind my 3-D glasses.

McKay and Ferrell keep the jokes naughty not dirty and flying for shrapnel accuracy; many miss, but when one hits it counts.

Finally though, it is Van Peebles who runs New Jack City aground. The film ends up being slightly long, both in terms of time and self-righteousness. Van Peebles is to be commended for making such a hip morality lesson, but New Jack City's finale, which is predictable and trite, could have been handled more creatively by a more daring director. [12 Mar 1991, p.1D]

It will mightily preach to the choirs of concerned citizens, and be ignored by anyone else.

Anything men can do women can do dirtier, funnier, fresher, since distaff raunchiness shows no signs of going stale and isn't contained to Melissa McCarthy.

A solid, ultimately uplifting comedy that questions what we require of our heroes and our popular notions of bravery. [02 Oct 1992, p.5]

Broadbent carries the movie with signature ease, making Tony easy to dislike while wishing him an overdue peace. Despite its time-flip fixation, The Sense of an Ending finds emotional focus in Broadbent's wilting gaze and discoveries in character with the simplest line deliveries.

Magic Mike XXL is darker, and between money-rain showers, duller. It's the movie many feared the original would be.

Project X is a predictable, sappy Save The Monkeys movie. [17 Apr 1987, p.1D]

Hot Shots is consistently funny, but it produces more guffaws than laughs. Its jokes read better than they play on screen. It's not The Naked Gun, though considerably better than The Naked Gun 2 It suffers a bit from its underdeveloped plot: a bunch of greedy industrialists want Harley's squadron to crash and burn so they can sell the Navy a new, super-expensive warplane model. [2 Aug 1991, p.6]

Addams Family Values is a rare sequel that surpasses the original, primarily for the same reason that Superman II topped the Man of Steel's first outing. This time, Sonnenfeld doesn't bury the jokes in exposition about characters we already know. [19 Nov 1993, p.7]

Has something for everyone, if everyone is looking for young nuns taking showers, a department store Santa dealing weed, a coked-up infant crawling on the ceiling and Danny Trejo as the father-in-law-to-be from Hell. I didn't think I was looking for that but found it. And heaven help me, it wasn't bad.

The actors are so good that you wish Collyer offered them a richer arc to play, rather than just a topic.

It's Lane who's saddled with dragging this nag over the finish line, with her cliched portrayal of another single-minded woman beating men at their own game.

Nick Cassavetes, like his father, works out his movies through the instincts of the actors, not the camera lens. It's a fitting, and occasionally fitful, eulogy to an unheralded legend. [29 Aug 1997, p.3]

This franchise that won't die began in 2001 as The Fast and the Furious and has pretty much run through every title permutation, so the inevitable next chapter might be called only "The & The 7."

This Must Be the Place is a movie existing in a zonked-out realm where reality smashes head-on with a train-wreck hero too strange to be real, unless you're the love child of Ozzy Osbourne and the Cure's Robert Smith.

Muppets Most Wanted is pleasant enough to recommend as family entertainment. But the movie falls short of what immediately preceded it, musically and emotionally.

Three elements rescue Three Men and a Baby from its inherent shallowness: its casting, pacing and its infant. Nimoy capitalizes on parental instincts without being cloying or cute, so after viewing Three Men and a Baby's tender moments, it's practically impossible to dismiss the movie as mere fluff. [27 Nov 1987, p.7]

What does cut it, for action fans, is Kaplan's direction. Kaplan can spook audiences with the best of them. His movie is like a giant capacitor, storing tension, then releasing it at prescribed junctures in massive jolts. [26 June 1992, p.5]

Carnage gives Polanski the best opportunity to express his devilish sense of humor in decades, proving again that comedy really is tragedy happening to someone else.

Efron makes hay with his richest role post-High School Musical, making Dean a rural rake with conflicting charisma.

The globetrotting is reined in, the mayhem at each stop just as exciting. Renner is a sturdy action hero, with an interesting face that unlike Damon's appears to have taken a punch or two.

Elysium proves better at social polemics than escapism, a balancing act Blomkamp managed well in District 9, with its allegory of South Africa's apartheid era.

Biloxi Blues is sweet, nostalgic and readily forgettable. But it is entertaining. And in this case, that's all that is required. [25 Mar 1988, p.7]

Dekker's notion of pouring comedy and horror into the cinematic Cuisinart and leaning on the starter switch doesn't work here. [14 Aug 1987, p.D1]

If comic book movies are the last place you look for a soulful, serious performance, The Wolverine should be your first.

What's fun is how the new Karate Kid embraces and vastly improves the cliches, keeping the plot cleverly updated for a generation that never heard of Ralph Macchio.

Mo' Better Blues is not only about artistry unfulfilled. It is artistry unfulfilled. It is perfection without a meaningful plot. It lopes along, pleasantly, never reaching fruition. [03 Aug 1990, p.18]

Kingsman is as violently kinetic as anything Vaughn has made, a list including Kick-Ass (the good one) and Craig's U.S. breakthrough, Layer Cake. But Kingsman is also wildly uneven, often slowing its roll to stiff-upper-lip pacing necessary (or not) to create a new British secret agent movie mythology.

Director Derek Cianfrance attempts to bring the emotional rawness of his previous films and influences to the melodrama genre with The Light Between Oceans, but he never quite pulls off the feat.

The Man Who Invented Christmas is good at its feel-iest, a beloved but stale tale retold with novelty while revealing an interesting rest of the story. Let’s hope it becomes a perennial like so many versions before, with Plummer’s Scrooge as a yearly gift.

For the initiated, however, Alfredson weaves a tidy web from loose ends left dangling.