The flames sure look real, but everything else in Backdraft, director Ron Howard's inflatable ode to firefighters, seems about as genuine as a plastic log in an electric hearth. Howard's particular type of schmaltz works well enough in small dabs on comic canvases (Splash, Cocoon, even Parenthood), but pumped up to heroic proportions, the sentimentality is just plain silly - in this case, cheap melodrama on a two-hour jag.

At times, the film is more fun than it deserves to be, and it's probably a lot more fun if you're a 13-year-old with an addiction to "Bully: Scholarship Edition."

Even if your idea of a good time is watching a man dressed as a malevolent oak tree extend his branches and literally tear a woman's heart from her chest, I think you ought to pass on The Sword and the Sorcerer. [26 Apr 1982]

Even though the latest horror-franchise resurrection from intellectual-property gravedigger David Gordon Green (Halloween) isn’t sullying a spotless brand, The Exorcist: Believer still reeks of sulfur-scented soullessness. The moviegoing body may be willing, but the cinematic flesh is weak.

The Wraith reveals itself as little more than formula teen-audience lure. Of some merit to the whole enterprise are two things: the lovingly photographed desert scenery and the hip and lively music score that drowns out most of the turgid dialogue. As far as the acting goes, it's a pity there are no blinds on the screen. [25 Nov 1986, p.D7]

Thanks to a tight script and brisk pacing from director Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care, Dr. Doolittle 2), there's little fat in Mall Cop, save the a yawn-inducing parade of fat-guy jokes.

The storytelling is bald and the logistics remain vague. The adult characters, especially a sadistic prison guard, are laughably overblown and the simplistic dialogue betrays the script’s YA roots.

The new animated film UglyDolls is a lazy flip, its main intention to foster the toy-aisle bond between kids and its quasi-hideous title characters.

Virtuosity never lacks for energy, its pacing is appropriately breakneck, its bangs are as big as Nagasaki - but finally it can't escape its limitations as a genre picture. [5 Aug 1995, p.C11]

A few striking images keep our attention – like evil warrior Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) seated menacingly with an assault rifle on a playground swing in the 'burbs. But the film's title promises payback, without offering ample compensation.

Sean Penn smokes, glowers and shows off his knotty naked torso in this vain, risible misfire of a thriller about a reformed killer, from "Taken" director Pierre Morel.

Full of poop and pratfalls, Daddy Day Care's abrasive marketing campaign promises a fresh slice of hell. So for it not to cause physical pain to any viewer over the age of five is a considerable achievement.

As beautiful to look at and as emotionally disconnected as its central character.

Like the nasty comic books of many a misspent youth, Creepshow 2 is, deliberately, a sometimes lurid and overdrawn anthology. It consists of three unconnected tales of modern American death, a Creepshow comic book come to life. It is as if Romero and director Michael Gornick are determined to spare grownups the embarrassment of taking horror seriously. [01 June 1987]

Inflated production numbers come lumbering ludicrously onto the screen like so many boozy pink elephants from a demented circus. [26 Nov 1980]

After the first five minutes of Down Periscope, though, you'll be more likely be thinking Voyage to the Bottom of the Dregs. As with Ellen DeGeneres's Mr. Wrong, this is the sort of film you expect a big TV star to do before he's successful, not after. [01 Mar 1996]

Apparently intended as a blend of "Bridesmaids" and "The First Wives Club," it’s often oddly engrossing, almost despite itself, largely thanks to the performances and the free rein the director gives his stars.

Most refreshingly, Johnny English Strikes Again is the rare secret-agent film that feels wholly unself-conscious.

Other than a few gratuitous montage sequences, plus a patently clumsy echo of the shopping scene in "Pretty Woman," Marshall refuses to pull his share of the load, forcing his beleaguered cast to fend for themselves.

Add up these three intentions – the down-and-dirty tone, the tender and uplifting message, the starring vehicle – and the math ain't funny. Bottom line: This movie is a whole lot less than the sum of its parts.

As a script it is uneven and tonally inconsistent – best as a brainless, gross-out comedy, less successful when striving for emotional poignancy.

Ella McCay, the movie, feels like we’re being bear hugged by a lovable, slightly boozy old grand-uncle who genuinely hopes to find common ground with a new generation, but also can’t help being a little patronizing.

Arthur and the Invisibles may be a tale for children, but it's got the bad habits of a profligate adult -- the thing borrows shamelessly from its betters and then pretends to be self-sustaining.

This sappy thing is a two-hour cheat that never plays fair for a nanosecond.

In the end, this musical is not a disgrace - Huston has too much experience to let the thing die. But he cannot summon the magic required to let it live. Watching Annie is like being buried alive in balloons. [21 May 1982]

The most engaging performance is Javier Bardem’s solidly nasty Captain Salazar, the undead commander of a ghost ship. His disintegrating skin and holey crew are fabulously rendered as evaporating digitizations: It’s the special effects and swelling action sequences that make the movie palatable.

The songs are clever; the actors dig in (especially Amy Adams and Julianne Moore as Connor and Evan’s moms, respectively). And Ben Platt’s voice is undeniable, a thing of wonder, a pure emotion-delivery system. You will be moved.

The result plays like an extended Pepsi commercial without the Pepsi.

What could have been a layered, insightful portrait of the most complicated, significant figure in pop-culture history has been reduced to a supersized music video slash concert documentary, the man in its mirror more of a faded reflection than anything else.

Reign of Fire never comes close to recovering from its demented premise, but it does sustain an enjoyable level of ridiculousness.

To watch Charlie as merely a character in a film is maybe not enough. His overwhelming encroachment on the lives of the Russell family is, however repetitive on screen, a physical embodiment of the agony of knowing something that other people refuse to see, of knowing too much and not being believed.

Woodshock is a sensuous, visual tone poem of human consciousness. It works even when the languid pace, disorienting shifts and Theresa's elastic perception of time stretch a little too thin.

Packed with stilted performances and hackneyed jokes from the road-movie playbook, it doesn’t work unless you’ve never seen another film in your life.

A mere action suspense adventure lacking the depths of the original. [14 July 1989]

Bursting with potential that never gets realized.

And before anyone pulls out the “guilty pleasure” card – no. There is zero pleasure here, no matter how low your bar is currently set. Only pain. So much pain.

Despite gorgeous visuals from an army of Disney animators, the film is one of the weakest the studio has produced in years and deserved a bargain-bin DVD release.

Nevertheless, in mid-reverie, there's no denying the pleasure in falling under its little spell -- till human voices wake us, and we frown.

Another Nicholas Sparks novel, another cinematic brush with insulin shock.

Rock 'n’ roll biopics can be mindless fun, but they never deserve to be this empty-headed.

As the middle part of a proposed trilogy, Tai Chi Hero may ultimately look better in light of its own sequel (which, based on the evidence here, will double-down on the steampunk stuff), but now, its pitched battle between silliness and solemnity feels like a split decision.

The best way to approach it is not as a comedy but as a straight pirate movie with exceedingly odd twists. Certainly it makes better use of its sterling actors than The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978), also co-written by and co-starring Cook, made of its sultans-of-comedy cast. [30 Jun 2006, p.R25]

Though there are a few annoying moments when the actors get in the way of the scenery, mostly it succeeds.

Whoopi (a beleaguered figure these days) single-handedly cranks up the volume now and again, earning a chuckle or two, but then settles lazily back, apparently content to bank on the formula and imagine the box- office. [10 Dec 1993]

While HIM’s visual and cinematographic landscapes might be stylistically evocative at times, they lack in narrative substance and a discerning formal logic, reducing images and themes rife with narrative potential into a series of hollowly aestheticized surfaces that squander the film’s own potential as well as the talent of its actors.

Remember the final page of Gatsby, a real American tragedy, when the green light beckons us into an ever-receding future? Now that was a mystery. This is, well, Pittsburgh.

Somehow, Mile 22 devolved from what Berg promised STX would be – “the new wave of combat cinema” – to exactly the kind of generic late-summer garbage any studio could, and has, released for Augusts immemorial.

Just how dumb is Senseless? So dumb it even takes the fun out of stupid.

We know to a certainty what will happen. More to the point, the writers know that we know. But here’s the intriguing bit: They don’t care. Rather, their job as diligent Tinseltown hacks is simply to devise ways of filling up the remaining 90 minutes.

Had the film version of Pet Sematary, adapted straightforwardly by King himself from the novel, and directed with horrifying ineptitude by Mary Lambert (Siesta), been any good, it would have been a sizzling shockeroonie, in that it deals, to borrow King's italicized style, with things best left undealt with, notably resurrected murderous children and the terrors instilled by terminal illness. [24 Apr 1989]

Gruesome enough; what it lacks is a distinctive revolting personality of its own.

If only Taking Lives had given Jolie a greater foil than Ethan Hawke -- a young Kevin Spacey or Jack Nicholson say -- the film might have been a B-movie classic.

The script is terrible - a confounding mish-mash of action-thriller chases, sci-fi travelogue and phony political intrigue.

But wouldn't it be heavenly if a like proportion of Tinseltown producers believed in an existing need for a good script. Because this one ain't good; in fact, it's hellishly mediocre, the kind that aims for holiday charm and settles for workaday torpor.

The audience is left, then, submerged in two very different movies where the protagonists are going to sink or swim – but unsatisfyingly – not together.

Even the emotional foundations of the Entourage franchise, those oaths of fealty, family and friendship, have rotted, hollowed out by the characters’ tendencies toward flippant sexism, homophobia and straight obnoxiousness.

What’s remarkable is that this fifth Terminator is worthwhile precisely because of its franchise cash-in excessiveness. It’s at once an eminently satisfying actioner, jackknifing tractor-trailers and vertiginous helicopter chases and all, as it is a passably thought-provoking comment on memory – headily engaging with the very nostalgia it intends to evoke.

Viewers less charmed by spectacle may find the story lacking and as a result, Gemini Man can feel like the best-case scenario of watching someone else play a video game.

An exercise in competence guaranteed neither to offend the initiated nor to charm anyone else.

If Corman productions are lacking originality, ideas and expertise, they are at least devoted to the proposition that the attention span of the modern audience is shorter than the time it takes to soft boil an egg, and they are paced accordingly. Galaxy of Terror is one of the few films in existence that actually moves faster than its trailer. [26 Apr 1982]

Empire is just too intent on living up to its imperial name -- colonizing other defenceless movies, plundering their rich natural resources, and leaving us all to feel rather cruelly violated. A postscript: Somebody here -- I'm not saying who -- dies. And still keeps on talking.

Lame and disrespectful sequel.

Smith and Lawrence enjoyed some amusing chemistry in the '95 original, but their molecules sure aren't jibing here. It's a full hour into this behemoth before there's anything resembling a belly laugh.

The Green Inferno offers up extreme gore, unlikable characters and seriously confused themes (is it a pro-environment film, an ode to imperialism, a satire of social-justice warriors or a poorly sketched combination of all three?).

Though Candy greatly underplays Jack Chester, a beet-red seer-sucker summer renter, his genial humor and collaboration with Reiner make Summer Rental a small pleasure. [12 Aug 1985]

Fat and sassless Champ a loser on all counts. [09 Apr 1979]

Who needs original stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones when you have, um ... well, what does this new Men in Black Cinematic Universe offer, exactly? As evidenced by MiB:I, absolutely nothing of value.

A cheap, lazy exercise in myth-making. The goods, as it were, will have to be found elsewhere.

Stupendously silly but viciously funny.

A feel-good flick that doesn't make you feel too bad -- in this genre, that almost qualifies as a ringing endorsement.

Ironically, the only good thing about Never Die Alone is its rap-retro soundtrack (God bless Curtis Mayfield!). Otherwise the film is so full of crap they should name a Port-a-San after it.

It is harmless, frighty fun for teenage audiences, but adults will leave theatres with their bejeebers intact.

Whatever seeds of social justice and emotional nuance No Escape may be attempting to sow are undercut by the film’s melodramatic valorization of family values.

I think that the perfect name for the chick in a chick flick is Rebecca Bloomwood. I know that if Charles Dickens had possessed the good sense to write chick flicks, he could not have done better than Rebecca Bloomwood.

The November Man is one of those thrillers that grows progressively more incoherent, and it simply isn’t fast enough to glide over its gaping narrative holes.

A C-grade thriller that is further dumbed down to dunce-cap calibre, Flight Risk might have worked as an enjoyably grimy piece of genre trash had Gibson not made every single wrong directorial decision along the way.

Some of the most memorable performances from great actors are also their worst: Add to that list Anthony Hopkins's turn as a sinister old Jesuit.

What with two women sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, you'd think that Hollywood would have graduated past the idea of a female lawyer being a "cute concept," but apparently not. Laws of Attraction is stuck in a time warp that pre-dates Doris Day and Sandra Day O'Conner.

The actors are all better than the material, just as the script's occasionally amusing tangents are far superior to its mundane narrative arc.

There is no energy here. No sense of movie invention or fun.

Whether you fully embrace the Harry Potter phenomenon or simply live with it, there's no question that J. K. Rowling is an imaginative story-spinner. The trouble is that she has ruined the field for the legions of the second-rate.

Chaos Walking is, in its own way, a masterclass in everything that contemporary filmmakers should avoid doing.

Willie may not have a heart of gold. But he’s got a heart of bloody, barely thumping meat, same as the rest of us. And in this bitter season of unceasing, frostbitten darkness, it’s heart enough.

Apparently, the faith that can move mountains is detectable in the microscopes that can track electrons. If so, the metaphoric is real and, to me, that thought is as scary as it is thrilling -- but what the bleep do I know?

For a stylish thriller that hinges on the titillating theme of voyeurism, this movie is surprisingly innocuos. [22 May 1993]

The pop-culture answer to a murder-suicide, the kind of flick that serves itself up as the object of its own satire.

A sickly sweet family drama.

Well-intended but maladroit, with a clever premise and cute animation that are undermined by the trite sci-fi parody plot and manic, unfunny banter.

Occasionally, the cast rises above the material.

The “new” film is firmly an artifact of the past. More specifically the imaginary era of Gotham that Allen has become a permanently unstuck-in-time guest of since "Annie Hall."

A movie with a confident sense of its own worthlessness, it speeds by in a flurry of candy-coloured cars, bare midriffs, screaming engines and a pulsing rap soundtrack.

It's a going-through-the-motions domestic comedy that makes, say, "Cheaper By The Dozen" look like a heart-warming, cutting-edge laugh riot.

It’s a story where sex and being over 60 aren’t treated as mutual exclusives, which is pretty great in its own way.

Mediocre movie.

In Scrooged, a sub-Saturday Night Live re-make parody of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Ghostbuster Bill Murray busts up two of the festive ghosts (Christmas Past and Future) and mugs more than Mr. Magoo. [24 Nov 1988, p.C19]

As for the old and graceful Jackie, he's completely missing in action, his supple talents sacrificed on the high altar of movie technology -- that frenetic place where superheroes are a colossal bore and real ones are sadly impotent.

Sporadically funny, twisted for sure, it risks becoming as repetitive and shrill as the kinds of programs it satirizes.

Too wildly ambitious in its goal to unite two powerful TV tribes to serve a common goal, but its unsentimental music (hip songs by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh) and visual delights will capture the imagination of young and old.