There are scenes that may make your stomach feel uncomfortable for a moment but rarely stories that will upset your equilibrium.

The director also makes a nod to Japan's rich history of genre filmmaking by casting action legend J. J. Sonny Chiba as a cigar-smoking yakuza. Chiba's presence momentarily classes up a passable youths-ploitation flick into a transcendent piece of movie trash.

Woefully short on script, the picture ends up disappearing down the wormhole of its own premise.

Although ably directed by feature first-timer Ruairi Robinson, and gamely performed by a cast professional enough to feign alarm and surprise, The Last Days on Mars ultimately confirms what science has already spent billions of dollars establishing: There’s just no life here.

This is the one Murakami work that would seem an ideal candidate for the leap from page to screen. It should be a good movie. But it isn't.

Destined to disappear into the quicksand of time, too innocuous to be hated, too bland to be remembered, just awaiting some bright optimist in a distant future to press the do-over button.

The result is less a screenplay than a manic quote machine.

In the race to make that great rock and roll movie in the sky, Eddie and the Cruisers is a pit stop. [24 Sept 1983]

If the muddled plot and aesthetic chaos of Dolittle leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, seek the antidote – an episode of "Planet Earth."

It would be easy to dismiss Celebrity as merely a wafer-thin picture about the wafer-thinness of our narcissistic culture. But the truth is shallower and even less engaging -- this flick should have been called “Unpleasantville.”

It's really a lazy comedy that is content telling a crude and corny Hollywood story with a Mexican accent.

Euthanizer shocks from the outset, and nauseates by the conclusion. Exactly what fans of this gut-churning genre sign up for.

Crooked Arrows is no "Rocky." It lacks the emotional momentum required for that. But if it's just light, family-friendly entertainment you want, Crooked Arrows fits the bill.

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.

The only effect is to produce that most commonplace of Hollywood paradoxes -- a mood simultaneously frantic and listless.

This is one of those ludicrous, semi-offensive, semi-entertaining potboilers that feels as if the script were dragged out from someone's naughty-book stash.

Parents seeking comfort in death to stay close to a lost child, as in Don’t Look Now, or being emotionally exhausted providing care in impossible circumstances, as in The Exorcist, feel like items being checked off in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, not genuinely felt or grappled with.

Perhaps Hill simply failed in his attempt to make of The Driver something more than an action picture. The trouble is that he doesn't do enough to elevate the film above the level of the genre. [29 July 1978]

Juice takes a black director, a black cast and a black theme - ghetto youths come of age - and turns the whole exercise into a white-bread,middle-of-the-road film. You root for it to rise to the challenge, to be better than it is, but it sticks to the straight course - polished enough yet steadfastly predictable, just another sentimental slice of mean-street life. [22 Jan 1992]

The one source of relief comes from the score -- a sampling of period ditties by the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Neil Young.

Prime seems aimed at prime-time television, with endless iterations on the same theme of "frustrated relationship" that will finally get resolved during sweeps week in the season before cancellation. Call it: My Mama, the Shrink.

World-weariness is not really the energetic star's best driving gear. Nor are declarations of menace intended to identify Jack Reacher as a modern-day mythic avenger. When he tells an enemy, through his clenched choppers, "I mean to beat you to death and drink your blood from a boot," the effect is, unintentionally, popcorn-spitting funny. Talk about overreaching.

The film has its moments and some things to say about honesty and selflessness, but the plot is manipulated and the ending is not an ending. Truth be known.

Fitfully interesting, occasionally cringe-worthy, this is the sort of stagy production that mixes ribaldry and campy overacting that evokes summer theatre productions.

For the better part of this movie, Elektra appears to be a sensible, stylish young superhero.

This feeble documentary ends up perpetuating the very hypocrisy it means to probe.

Filled with lovable eccentrics, Boundaries tries too hard to avoid the commonplace as its jolts erratically down the well-travelled, heavily signposted route that is the big-hearted road-movie.

The Secret Of My Success succeeds only on its very limited terms, asking us to forget the flick and remember the star, that cute little package with the endearing Canadian stamp, the flawless comic timing, and the freshest face this side of Care Bear county. Michael J. Fox. So the script is content simply to put your basic romance-comedy through some mighty conventional paces. [04 Apr 1987]

Documentaries show us what can be seen; fiction features, to qualify as art, should visualize for us the usually unseen. Benny's Video, in which the thought processes of the characters are never delivered to the camera, is all surface. Its implicit claim is that by doing nothing, it is doing everything. But there are times, and this is one of them, when less is merely less. [27 Mar 1993]

The latest offering from the serial scribe who scripted Showgirls has another femme with an overactive libido and not much else. [13 Oct 1995]

This film’s charm – and it does have some – lies in the fun it has with Smith and Lawrence’s aging.

The premise (and the promise) here, of course, is that, as the miles pass, the two will be as chalk is to cheese, oil to vinegar, an apple to an orange. And indeed this is what happens. Unfortunately, it's about the only thing that happens.

LawAbiding Citizen smells a bit musty these days. Indeed, in an era when the debate has shifted from too little state vigilance to too damn much, this thing seems almost quaint.

Escape from L.A. is too preposterous to be a good film. But in keeping with its title, it does provide a couple of hours of entertaining escapism. [12 Aug 1996, p.C1]

Unlike "Microcosmos" (all insects) and the acclaimed nature doc "Winged Migration" (all birds), Genesis is bogged down by its intentions and too vast a "cast."

Because while Stardust covers the period of Bowie’s life just before he released his breakthrough 1972 album, the film doesn’t feature a single track from the record. Or any Bowie music at all.

Winterbottom's efficient yet prosaic approach is evident from the first grimy frame. [18 Oct 1996]

The film, shot in black-and-white at canted angles, suggests an R-rated Twilight Zone episode with a twist of Fellini-lite, in a trite film school kind of way. Mickey Mouse is unlikely to be shaking in his big yellow shoes.

The sickly feeling that Body of Lies leaves at its conclusion isn't just about the brutality of its subject; it's the realization that real-life barbarism translates so easily into adrenaline kicks for the multiplex.

Like its predecessors, Under the Sea is family-friendly viewing -- the great white shark swims by, as opposed to tearing prey to shreds. Its goal is to show biodiversity and offer information on how reefs grow, reminding us of threats to these environments.

Throughout, Wilson and Byrne play these parts straightforward and there's an undercurrent of real anguish in the struggle of parents coping with a child's long-term care.

For a screwball comedy, it takes a long time to wind up, and Kline's Frenchman is an outright cartoon. But Ryan manages to hold attention. [6 Oct 1995, p.C2]

Whatever glimmers of cleverness Martian Child offers, it all comes to Earth with a thud in the shamelessly manipulative climax.

Typical themes (redemption, forgiveness) are laid out with little imagination.

In the end, this tale of human decency fails to make you feel enough.

View the Second World War through a child's eyes and the result isn't hard to predict: a loss-of-innocence tale. Winter in Wartime is the boilerplate version, with the already dramatic facts of the era ramped up to melodramatic levels. Little wonder it rings so false.

The stunt work is top-notch; the dialogue and drama often food-spittingly funny. I can hardly wait for Extreme Ops II, perhaps set atop a South Sea island volcano, with North Korean agents and parasailing.

There's something here for everyone to dislike - the whole clan can have fun making fun of this thing.

The Miracle Season is a simple movie of straightforward sentimentalism and gung-ho, against-all-odds inspiration.

Plays it a little too safe and hackneyed with the comedy, but the characters and the talented actors who play them are a refreshing change of pace that make the movie feel like a minor buddy-comedy revolution.

Scriptwriter Allan Loeb, the man behind more than one Kevin James vehicle, attempts Christmastime magic à la "Miracle on 34th Street," but ends up conjuring Maudlin on Madison Avenue instead.

Hikari’s work is well-meaning, and Kayama delivers an affecting, but not affected, performance that almost holds the story together. Eventually, though, the film loses confidence in itself.

It uses violence as a drug, injecting it into the audience and hoping to addict it. Once the dependence is created, it is simple to feed it with formulaic films.

There must be something about the thriller/horror genre that attracts writers with exactly the same dysfunctional tendencies: They're all great at the foreplay but keep on messing up the climax.

Long, windy, diffuse in its message and blunt in its satire.

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

If plot were oats, Wicker Park would choke a horse.

Remember Pam? Lost in the Himalayas of big egos and overacting, she's the invisible character here. If they create a special Oscar for the most thankless part in an ensemble comedy, Teri Polo is a shoe-in.

Memo to screenwriters cranking out murky existential thrillers: Do not have various characters repeat on several occasions: "I know this doesn't make any sense."

At once a departure from and a follower of teen-movie form, and the fact of the former almost forgives the fate of the latter.

There are unresolved questions and puzzling detours along the way, but Bikes vs Cars does show that cars, millions and millions of stationary cars, may yet prove the bike’s best friend.

It would be nice to say the drama redeems itself with a scene of Fassbender absconding with the cutest puppy ever captured on film, but even that cannot save almost two hours’ worth of narrative dithering and four-letter conversations.

Quaid doesn't have much to work with, and so deflects the portrayal away from the mind toward the body – consistently giving the coot a hunched, pigeon-toed gait. Nice try, but that bird won't fly.

No, there isn't anything wrong with comfort entertainment. Then She Found Me could have, should have been something special - a "Knocked Up" for weary boomers. The only hitch is that it isn't all that entertaining. Nor comforting for that matter.

Unfortunately, more often than not, Ma settles into its lack of a refined generic vision and stalls out just before it’s able to hit most of its horror talking points squarely on the head.

Crystal is funny in City Slickers but the film is flat and makes the desert feel as cramped and airless as a basement nightclub. [7 June 1991]

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

With his heavy features and grimacing shyness, Dante provides the best entertainment in Swimfan.

Machete is a drinking man's "The Expendables."

If the lines in the script were as keenly etched as the ones in her face, Keaton would have had something to work with. Instead, during an especially lovelorn sequence, she's asked to indulge in a crying montage so painfully extended that it has us in tears too -- weeping from embarrassment for her.

Undeniably funny in parts, but the salacious spark and brilliant pacing of the original is off.

The tuneful melodies of their favourite band grace the soundtrack, but let's not confuse this with a rock 'n' roll movie -- the music is just the blank canvas awaiting the higher art of the gross-out.

Tideland is the easiest of Gilliam's films to follow, yet the most disturbing to watch.

By the end of the Stoked, the viewer is left with a lot of trivia about the history of skateboarding, and scant insight.

The larger budget has given Scanners a high-gloss Hollywood look, the editing is occasionally elegant and the special effects, which consist mostly of imaginative ways of turning actors into meat, provoke from the audience the desired response ("Oh, yuk]"), but he is careful to keep the violence within currently accepted boundaries. [19 Jan 1981]

The children are engaging yet the script and direction are not, which leaves the thing to get all bogged down in its own derivative mechanics.

Yes, the premise is delightful; no, the delight doesn't last.

Manic with an itch.

A ticket to terminal boredom.

There just isn't the same zingy rapport. Seth Rogen's praying mantis and Jackie Chan's monkey have no more than a dozen lines between them. Even Jack Black's Po is more subdued.

Certainly, whatever surgery the script doctors performed, it didn't take. The limp result is a picture that is epic in intention and Lilliputian everywhere else.

Gone from the glittering original are most of the charm and all of the humor, deflating a bright balloon into little more than the rubbery flatness of a Saturday-morning cartoon.

Writer-director Drew Pearce’s Hotel Artemis, however, manages to make the most intriguingly bonkers premise a boring and flat exercise.

Exasperating and goofy documentary.

Here, there's not much that's funny, there's too much that's too clever by half, and there's not a damn thing that's lively - this is a film about Life whose sin is its lifelessness.

So Dead Snow fulfills one zombie-movie prerequisite. It's different.

Epically fantastic would be a welcome change, although epically awful would at least keep the symmetry. Alas, epically bland will have to do.

We're back on the buddy-cops beat again, with Stallone emerging as a Dapper Dan this time. Sporting cerebral specs topped by an immaculate coif, he gets to wear Armani suits and speak an occasional complete sentence. Sly looks fine in the duds but seems to find those sentences a bit taxing. Guess he's just out of practice. [28 Dec 1989]

For all of its intermittent, crowd-pleasing charm, oenophiles (and cinephiles, for that matter) might be better off putting their money toward a good bottle of Robert Mondavi.

The mistake filmmakers Tucker and Epperlein (Gunner Palace) make here is assuming that fighters reveal their true characters in discussing their craft, when in fact just the opposite occurs.

This thing's got more plot than an Alliance convention. Unfortunately (to extend the comparison), not a whole lot of it makes a lick of common sense.

Ultimately, Just Cause is just middling. And that's a shame because, for two blistering acts, it promises to be a suspense thriller worthy of the name. [17 Feb 1995]

None of it is new, nor is the recycled stuff presented in a newly revealing context.

What is puzzling is how Edward Zwick has taken an extraordinary real-life story about a handful of people who defied huge odds, and turned it into an utterly conventional war movie.

Delgo is blocky and hastily coloured in. Characters are stiff; there is little variety in movement. It's a cheapo product ideally suited for a Saturday-morning pyjama vigil in front of a small screen. And the film suffers from a poverty of imagination to boot.

Costner is Coach White, in every way imaginable.

So much of Poor Things, both in its conception and maturation, feels self-satisfyingly provocative instead of imaginatively profound.

So much of its script is frustratingly trite, its perspective on grief never rising above grade-school emotions, with thin characters forced to carry its surface-level themes.