Killer Elite's major problem: motion at the expense of emotion.

Not much room for controversy here, and certainly none for counterargument, this is prime-time TV history rendered as a soothing, Papa Bear bedtime story.

An entertaining family comedy full of both tricks and trickery.

So far as I can remember, no such film has ever asked its audience to experience the level of excruciating discomfort an actual fish must feel when it is gored by a sharp hook, yanked into the air, and left to flail in desperation before succumbing to an agonizing death... Until now.

The result, as a colleague once so aptly put it, is less film noir than film beige.

The movie, which is roughly as predictable as the attraction of flies to dung, is a hackneyed mix of sentimentality and anarchic comedy.

With less expensive actors, it might just have been called Chase Movie, and played for laughs.

On a thematic level, it remains wholly reprehensible and a fraudulent piece of entertainment. But at least it rips off some better films (Mad Max, Day of the Dead, The Matrix) with a good deal of energy.

Crystal has a likable screen persona, and he's gracious in sharing his stage, but the movie is essentially an expensive (if quite possibly profitable) act of self-indulgence. [10 June 1994]

Still, even Romero's staunchest fans might conclude their hero is going through the motions here. Yes, almost like a zombie.

Not much happens of comic consequence. [01 Nov 1996, p.D5]

Dance gets political in Step Up Revolution, the fourth installation of the popular movie franchise, which delivers plenty of spectacular fancy footwork in what is otherwise a flat-footed fantasy.

The action, when it does arrive, is quiet enough to send the most insomnia-plagued of audiences to sleep.

The Final Frontier is the funniest - okay, the most intentionally funny - Star Trek yet. [9 June 1989]

Between its steroidic CGI and emotionally vacant plot line, the movie is all flex, no muscle.

There is so much action in the animated feature, The Transformers: The Movie, that you can't wait to get back into one of those Chrysler products whose vocabulary is limited to "A door is ajar," and "Thank you." [12 Aug 1986, p.C10]

Despite their hackneyed characters, Smith and Lewis create a tiny spark and add a little humour. Without them, Catch and Release would be totally dead in the water.

Sad news for Bard watchers: Julie Taymor's adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest is not such stuff as dreams are made on.

Compared to Al Gore's new global-warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," The Omen makes the Apocalypse look comforting and child-friendly.

Dad, showcasing Jack Lemmon in a rubber wrinkle mask (he looks like an elderly E.T.), would no doubt have won more Emmy awards for Goldberg had it aired on the tube, but on screen, it's a tearjerking embarrassment.

Mainly bad, and a shockingly bland departure from a hitherto spunky guy.

For most of its duration, Suicide Kings turns into something like a hoary murder-mystery theatre piece in the Agatha Christie/Clue tradition.

Hollywood's big-screen answer to France's 1983 charming film Les Comperes is a wacky star vehicle wildly out of control. [9 May 1997, p.D1]

With no previous acting experience, she's (Stilley) a natural between the sheets but a rank amateur between the vowels.

While The Vow will give heart palpitations to fans of its charming co-stars Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, this amnesia-themed romance is the kind of featherweight fare that is enjoyed in the moment and forgotten soon after the end credits roll.

Although One Love is not a great music biopic, it serves as an acceptable portrait of the man.

An inferior "Napoleon Dynamite." Call it Napoleon Firecracker. The film steals one of the best laughs of Jon Heder's surprise 2004 hit, the scene where Napoleon nosedives over a bicycle jump, and stretches the gag into an 86-minute movie.

Antebellum is a film that lives smugly within its final reveal – and what’s worse, this reveal is more groan-inducing than anything else.

And, make no mistake, this is a movie that is supposed to be seen from the perspective of a small child.

The scenes between Stewart and co-star Nicholas Hoult tend to be long and lingering, even bordering on dull, and the melodramatic music grows bothersome. By the time it reaches its abrupt ending, the only emotion audiences might be left with is boredom.

Rabid is a limp satire with a lacklustre female protagonist, and this shallow remake of a cannibalistic rabies attack film barely leaves a mark.

It isn’t hard to find all the many ways in which this film exhausts both itself and Lisbeth. It is time, already, to give this Girl a rest.

Think of a really bad, uncensored Saturday Night Live comedy sketch. Then make it worse – make it longer.

The unruly pack of subplots make The Shaggy Dog much more convoluted than it needs to be. But Allen's physical comedy as man-becoming-dog, and his non-stop monologue as man-dog, are definitely worth a trip to the matinee.

Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil is a misfire, despite its wonderful title, which feels plucked straight from an Elvira movie.

Biggs, in particular, seems positively frozen by his imitative efforts -- less Woody than wooden. Ricci is a bit looser, and has the added advantage of hiding behind those saucer-eyes.

Director John McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October) is a dab hand at combining stunning scenery, fast-paced action and sharp dialogue and the film easily transcends the weaknesses of its plot. [07 Feb 1992]

So if you can get through this headache of a script and Lee’s unwavering commitment to choreographed dance numbers, there are some funny times in store.

A sweet and sloppy jumble of fantasy, sentimentality, comedy and soul-searching that feels like a sitcom that never got past the pilot stage.

Today's Total Recall does nothing to tarnish the image of yesterday's – 22 years from now, I expect it to be hailed as a classic.

Slick and slight.

This is a frustrating film that takes its cutesy title way too literally.

An ill-considered, utterly unnecessary remake of the 1941 pulp classic "The Wolf Man" starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Sappy and predictable.

How's this for a ringing endorsement: Watching Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola's first film in nearly a decade, is like taking a philosophy exam. A really tiring philosophy exam, where the questions are elegantly phrased but damn confounding and not really conducive to right answers.

Contrast this to "The Iron Lady," a film which managed to be both obnoxiously condescending and flattering to the divisive British leader Margaret Thatcher, and left those of all political stripes irritated. The Lady, devoid of either iron or irony, is merely forgettable, a much deeper insult to its subject.

This good movie could have been great if writer Akiva Goldsman had been able to -- or been permitted to -- dump the boundaries of the TV source altogether.

Heartstrings are pulled like a puppy’s leash; nothing much unpredictable happens.

It’s light research, worn heavily, and the romance that ensues feels just as about as studied and slight.

To their credit, both Meirelles and his cast infuse as much realism into the artifice as they can muster, but it's not nearly enough. The too-neat script boxes them in, and leave us out. In that sense, 360 doesn't so much connect our shrunken world as strangle the life from it – the circle feels like a noose.

While it’s not as much of a slow-burn of psychological torture as Bertino’s original, Chapter 1 sticks to the course and doesn’t let up on its lead characters once.

The plot creaks along reasonably effectively and Sellers' solo sequences - the disguises, the pratfalls and the speech mannerisms - are familiar, but fun. [18 Dec 1982]

Price has written a screenplay that may be complex and ambitious to a fault.

Yes, Final Destination 3 is a roller-coaster ride of a movie from start to -- well, only about 10 minutes later. The fun part is over and we settle down to watch a sadistic assembly line of characters making premature exits.

The film is neither heartbreaking nor thrilling, often feeling like a blown-up version of a Hallmark flick-of-the-week, its ambitions far greater than its capabilities.

Director Roger Donaldson ("Smash Palace," "No Way Out," "Species"), working from a script by Leslie Bohem ("Daylight"),does a serviceable job, wrapping his narrative around the big kabooms, but the real interest comes from the extraordinary barrage of sound and spectacle.

Actually, as Eddie Murphy PG comedies go, Meet Dave isn't bad. In fact, it's kind of sweet, innocent almost – kid-friendly in the best sense.

A low-budget American horror film that's already established itself as a fan favourite, Malevolence flaunts all the trappings of an old-school slasher flick.

The message the movie preaches? The ills of a consumer society, I guess - all those needful things needlessly bought. And the best way to put that preaching into practice? Shut your wallet and pass on this little treat. [27 Aug 1993]

Today, the 1985 novel is the No. 1-selling paperback in North America. Sadly, the movie is a bonfire where the novel was a blaze of fireworks.

Ultimately, the movie is a perfect mirror of its star -- looks great, seems empty.

Speaking personally, I wouldn't voluntarily go to this flick. But for those with a greater gross-out threshold, it's a better film than anyone should normally expect in this genre.

Frozen would get props for a novel plot, except that its storyline appears to be ski-lifted from the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry is stuck on a chairlift with an Orthodox Jewish woman who is terrified of being seen with a man after sunset.

More than anything, the film lacks a rapport with its audience.

A perverse, lame-brained thriller that is pornographic, misogynist and homophobic. If that makes it sound appealing, I should also add that it's silly, boring and intellectually insulting.

It is the cinematic equivalent of crying after sex, cathartic yet wholly awkward for everyone involved.

Why bother suffering through 90 minutes of bad company for a few moments of holiday cheer? Especially when you can still stay home alone and watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" somewhere on TV.

Kogonada fills the vacuousness in the script with knowing nods to all the performance and illusion we commit to when taking the leap – whether in love or (in its meta way) at the movies.

Skin Deep, the latest and 36th off the line, could sum up his whole checkered career - it's that good and that bad, by turns terrifically funny and terribly flawed. [3 March 1989]

Strip away the transparent moral shading, erase the buddy-picture twist, and True Colors is nothing more than a watered-down mix of Wall Street and The Candidate, a sentimental variation on a sentimental model. [15 Mar 1991]

The main interest here is the acting, which is, by turns, entertaining or just entertainingly bad, with lots of grungy seriousness and Method-trained twitching, but also some moments of real gusto.

What the film needs more than anything is Perry's alter ego, Medea – a rampaging bowling ball who might knock all these stiff, upright characters spinning.

Death Race is our unshaven Brit hero's inevitable comeuppance: The Prison Job.

At the end of these "based on a true story" flicks, it's customary to flash photos of the real people over the end credits. There, Sam Childers looks older and less handsome and awfully imposing, a scary sort of cat with raw but authentic tales to tell. I'd like to hear them.

Pardon my pulling anthropological rank, but Instinct -- a movie about an ape-man savant -- seems a quart low on common sense.

An exuberant mess of a movie. You despair at the mess, at the narrative and structural chaos; and yet you delight in the director's sheer infectious energy.

There is nothing worse than a thriller that doesn't play fair... The Forgotten is just a big, fat, obvious cheater.

The tenderest thing Taylor-Johnson does in Back to Black is remind us how very young Winehouse was when she wowed the world.

An excessively brutal adventure comic book is exactly what it has set out to be - a medieval Heavy Metal. [14 May 1982]

A botched adult romantic comedy that strands its leading player, and its audience, in a wearying, sitcom-slight battle of the sexes.

Gomez, who turns 20 next year, looks much younger than her age and has the thankless task of playing three roles...It feels like a struggle and the screenplay doesn't help.

The well-acted Clara lacks clarity, and there’s nothing worse than an out-of-focus telescope.

A film so dull, flat, and totally joyless that, in the absence of anything compelling unfolding on screen, one’s mind may be forgiven for turning to the corporate machinations grinding behind it.

One of the best things about this film is that ultimately nobody in it is attractive.

Bailey’s journey through space and time and life and death to reunite with Ethan only seems to reinforce the notion that a dog’s purpose is to be man’s best friend. And we knew that already.

Instead of funnelling his inspirations into one singular vision that he could call his own, Boone has made a Frankenstein of a franchise movie, a giant elevator pitch that leads directly to the sub-basement of originality.

Each of the actors has strong moments but the relentless intensity becomes monotonous.

The exceptional story of a low-level diplomat who had a 20-year affair with a man he thought was a woman, is, in Cronenberg's hands, turned into a beguiling masterpiece on the question of self-deception. [01 Oct 1993]

Watching Snake Eyes (full title: Snake Eyes – G.I. Joe Origins) is not a physically painful ordeal. But it is an emotionally harmful one – a soul-deadening exercise that approximates satire, minus the self-awareness.

McAvoy and Paulson fight as hard as they can against Shyamalan’s instincts – even though, as with "Split," it’s gross to watch dissociative identity disorder played for horror and laughs – but theirs' is a pointless battle. The somnambulist Willis and Jackson have the better idea, dozing through their scenes until the cheques clear. (Jackson, to be fair, has the benefit of his character being literally asleep for the film’s first hour.)

A ticket to terminal boredom.

Isn't nearly as much fun as the original. For one thing, Lara having a boyfriend wrecks everything.

Like the first movie, Princess Diaries 2 relies primarily on the chemistry and screen appeal of Andrews and Hathaway to elevate the storytelling above the level of mush.

Director Steve Oedekerk, who also wrote the script, simply provides a frame for the string of Carrey sight gags, which come fast and constantly. Some work, some fall flat, but the overall momentum is never allowed to flag seriously.

The second film, in which one teen- ager is possessed by the spirit of a murderer - this is a supernatural Jekyll and Hyde - sets horror film fans to laughing and eventually to booing.[20 Nov 1985]

For most of the feeble, unmoving 109 minutes of The Art of Racing in the Rain, a Kevin Costner-voiced golden retriever named Enzo longs for death. I felt the same way.

There are small spurts of creativity ... but everything else about the production feels more watered down than the landscape our four interchangeable leads find themselves flailing about in.

Similar to getting caught in the grip of a giant Amazonian snake, in which you have the privilege of hearing your bones break before the power of the embrace causes your veins to explode, the experience of watching Tom Gormican’s new action-comedy Anaconda is a painful one.