Remove the comma from the title and Love, Marilyn plays like the command it is.

Once again, Candy does his slob-with-a-heart-of-gold number. He's good at it. He can be a funny fellow. He can even carry a mediocre picture all by his lonesome, squeezing a lot out of a little. What he can't do is squeeze that much out of this little. [16 Aug 1989]

A demanding blend of spectacle, drama and exposition of ideas.

Between the swash and the buckle, Reynolds comes up completely dry - the connecting scenes lack any rhythm or pace. And Costner looks every bit as uncomfortable as he sounds - the British actors, especially Rickman, blow him off the screen. [24 June 1991]

The nature of this fantasy is boringly feel-good and aspirational.

Like almost every other major studio film this summer, Fallen Kingdom plays dumb, and happily.

Poetic Justice is like that - so much worse than it should have been, and yet, for brief shining moments, so much better than any other 2-star film in sight. [23 July 1993]

Though it is shaped as a woman-in-peril thriller about obsession, Cherish is about being winningly kooky, not violently insane.

The intelligence and wit of this glass-slipper heart-of-gold fantasy are shocking.

Windtalkers is to movies what Paris is to weather -- if you don't like the show you're watching, just wait a minute and an entirely different picture will blow into view.

It is an agreeable example of how a picture conceived as "product" need not condescend to the audience it exploits. [11 Apr 1983]

Hoffman’s role is an important one, but not a big one. He’s not called upon to bring a lot to the table, and, as a pro, doesn’t muscle up his part.

There remains a nasty whiff here of a movie that is trotting out lesbian love interests and clawing cat fights for male titillation. With fashion taking the place of ballet, The Neon Demon may well prove controversial in a "Black Swan" kind of way, offering a love-it-or-hate-it debate over the appeal of its melodrama versus the politics of its social critique.

There is no acting to speak of (and to speak of Cruise's performance at all would be embarrassing) but there is a point of view. This is yet another Ramboesque instalment in the current American obsession with might making right. As a movie, Top Gun is negligible and near ridiculous; as a cultural phenomenon, it is sobering and faintly frightening. [16 May 1986, p.C5]

If the title is half-familiar, the contents are wholly surprising. Happily, all of the bitterness is gone. Sadly, so has most of the humor. What remains is a conclusion startling but unmistakable - Woody Allen has grown bland. [16 July 1982]

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]

There is one egregious misstep: the photographs of mutilated Vietnamese bodies which appear on the screen during the song, Time Is On My Side, which is grotesque and fundamentally dishonest. No major band has been less interested in politics than The Rolling Stones, and that's what makes Let's Spend The Night Together so infuriating. It purports to be about something momentous, but has absolutely nothing to say. In that, at least, Ashby's film captures perfectly the spirit of the Stones' 1981 tour. [11 March 1993]

The stellar cast manages to dignify some of it. And it’s the grizzled war veterans’ experiences that stay with you afterwards, the personal demons they keep on fighting.

Playing a blonde with her roots showing, Beckinsale seems up for a scrap, but the film gives her nothing to do but get clobbered.

Serkis achieves a careful balance with a film that tastefully covers some delicate territory (their sex life; his right to die), avoids the maudlin and injects some surprising if not entirely successful comedy into the mix.

A pharmaceutical-industry satire so flaccid that it’s in desperate need of Cialis, Death of a Unicorn is destined to fade into the mythical margins of cinematic history, with future moviegoers convinced that – like its title creature – the film never really existed at all.

Sorry, but the real Grimms did a whole lot more with a great deal less.

Once again, a first-rate cast helps slightly elevate this sentimental Britcom.

The follow-up to Three Men and a Baby offers more of the same. Mixed in among the cliches and stereotypes, there's a genial chuckle or two to be found Laughs that are strictly low-cal. [24 Nov 1990]

Handled by veteran Scottish director Michael Caton-Jones, Urban Hymn is an unimaginative drama, carried by solid acting – Isabella Laughland is chilling as the possessive, menacing Leanne – but let down by an unspectacular script.

The movie begins to feel more like a buffet of contrivance than a feast of love.

Three words: Late Woody Allen. In the autumn of his career, toiling exclusively in Europe, Woody is like an aging cabinet maker still blessed with craft but grown erratic in design.

Manic with an itch.