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]