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]