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.

Yes, it's Meet the Parents time again but flipped and filthier, in a good way. Why Him? had me laughing louder, more often than most smutcoms do, a NSFW blusher delivered by a keenly comical cast.

Billed as an action comedy, The Green Hornet isn't funny, and the action is often too frenetic to make any impression.

A sitcom pilot idea stretched to feature length boredom.

Some of the more tender moments - Farmer and Marron dancing at a country bar and gently probing each other's secrets - are particularly affecting. Less successful is a sequence purportedly set at the Academy Awards that wreaks of artificiality. The utter fecklessness of the segment is so jarring that it isn't until the climax that The Bodyguard pulls itself together.

It only took one sequel for 3 Ninjas to learn what four mutant turtles discovered the third time around: The best way to liven a dull, repetitive premise is to take it on the road. [06 May 1994, p.6]

The Gunman becomes a highly capable shoot-em-up but not much else.

Big Stone Gap isn't everyone's cup of sweet tea. It's a homespun tale populated by broadly drawn characters and solid actors — Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia — sounding like they gulped hush puppy batter.

If anyone could harness McCarthy's dynamo presence while protecting her from looking bad, it should be Falcone. Instead, Tammy suggests no one had the heart to tell this hot Hollywood couple that it wasn't working.

Calling Dead Men Tell No Tales the most entertaining Pirates of the Caribbean movie since the original is a backhanded compliment with all the bilge water under the bridge since then. Time to deep six Capt. Jack Sparrow. This franchise should tell no more tales.

Move along, guys. Nothing to see in The Lucky One, unless you're in the doghouse at home and need to make nice.

Sister Act 2's other saving grace comes from its positive messages of hard work and responsibility, and a thoughtful, though underwritten, subplot about a talented student (Lauryn Hill) and her strict mother (Sheryl Lee Ralph). [10 Dec 1993, p.7]

Our Family Wedding should embarrass Whitaker and each of his co-stars, perhaps except Carlos Mencia, whose chief attribute as an actor is that he's a so-so standup comedian.

Entourage the movie operates like Vince's pals, making itself feel important solely through who's famous nearby.

Someone describes the T-800 as "nothing but a relic from a deleted timeline." Too harsh to lay on Schwarzenegger yet, but certainly it applies to the Terminator franchise.

Yes, there is a hell, and this movie is showing at its local multiplex.

What happens in Vegas happens a lot in movies. Think Like a Man Too goes to the same casinos, strip clubs and pleasure pools with a fistful of jokers and an ace up its sleeve, the irrepressible Kevin Hart.

If the first 90 minutes of Girl Most Likely grate and disappoint, wait until the final 10 or so, when directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini try covering their maniacally depressive tracks like cats in a litter box.

Lewis' performance is a spectacle of ego and last-chance craft that could only be possible for a legend near the end.

The SEALs remain as elusive in the movie as they are in real life. They don't offer much information about the secret force, nor do they show us what it's like to be in it. The script sounds as if it has been declassified with all the juicy stuff taken out for security reasons...What it's left with is a series of explosive action scenes, music videos and scant dialogue tied loosely together around a weak plot. [20 July 1990, p.6]

Let's cut to the chariot chase. The latest screen version of Ben-Hur would be little more than a condensed miniseries without it, framed for small television screens, with performances to fit.