Gang Related is a failed attempt at a kind of hip, post-Tarantino, black-comedy, crime drama. [10 Oct 1997, p.C7]

The concept of a woman being a “winner” and of being the best version of herself because she has a better understanding of “what men want”? That ain’t it. Say what you will about Nancy Meyers, but at least she knew that.

With a curiously stubborn kind of integrity, Tron: Legacy follows what did and didn't work the first time – another weak story with sub-B-movie dialogue, partly compensated for by intensely conceived geometric design and special effects.

It's no great thing, just a better Thing than expected.

Americans is unimpeachable fun. Peter Segal doesn't aim high in this lampoon of U.S. presidents, but hits the target. [20 Dec 1996, p.C8]

It is at times extremely uncomfortable, but captivating and engaging all the same.

Gudegast, a first-time director who wrote the script to Den of Thieves (and who has probably watched Michael Mann's "Heat" more than once) attempts to comment on humanity's complexities. But all he does with his soulless, hollow characters is make a solid case that men are violent sleazes.

Fort Apache, The Bronx, set primarily in a precinct house, is the S & M Barney Miller... One comes away from the film exhausted, both by the excess of incident in the script and by the reality in which the excess is so obviously grounded. [7 Feb 1981]

Director Fred Walton (When a Stranger Calls) cheats shamelessly to effect the various surprises, but has so much of that "who-is-next?" tension going for him that the movie more or less makes itself. [01 Apr 1986, p.D9]

Halfway through, everyone starts drinking heavily and the film turns into agreeably sloppy fun. (Isn't that always the way – class reunions often perk up when someone spikes the punch.)

A contrived and tepid thriller that insists on wanting to interest us in its main plot -- the usual nefarious plan to assassinate the leader of the free world.

Director Richard Benjamin has found a quintessential comic premise for young adults in the eighties: a couple purchases a house. The Money Pit is elaborately physical, but in the manner of Buster Keaton pictures, with some scenes reminiscent of those charmed moments when an entire wall would collapse on the hapless Keaton, but our beloved "stoneface" happened to be standing just where the opening for a door was. [26 Mar 1986, p.C10]

This is flat, flaccid action that makes the wan green-screenery of the MCU look like the delirious highs of Mad Max: Fury Road.

All of the participating directors – save Balsmeyer and actor Natalie Portman – are known for features. So part of the interest is seeing how the short form puts their strengths, weaknesses, thematic interests or styles into sharp focus.

This is the sort of movie that ends up awash in sincere revelations, and not a moment of it feels remotely believable.

Awkward in ways both intended and not, the fourth feature from author and director Rebecca Miller is an attempt at a comic change of pace for the usually earnest Miller.

A furious 90-minute trailer of a movie that exceeds the speed limit for action films established by Quentin Tarantino's recent "Grindhouse."

Performances, over all, are a mixed bag; Zeta-Jones does a fair, if incongruous, impersonation of a forties vamp, while Chandler and Pepper do well with limited screen time. As usual, Wright, as a Machiavellian police commissioner, transcends so-so-material to establish himself as the most complex character in the film.

The cast is so oddly interesting you wish you could see them doing something less wasteful

In the right hands, Good Boy! might have been a ripe bit of mischief. But except for an endless drum roll of fart jokes, what we get is stuffy liberal humanism that would bore the Oshkoshes off Al Gore's littlest nieces and nephews.

There are so many events here but no real story. Perhaps that is what's making the drowned kabuki ghost so irate: She's desperate to find a coherent script.

Though competent in its B-movie way, Terminator Salvation lacks the humour, heart-tugging moments and visual pleasure that made the first two movies of the series modern pop masterpieces.

Big, lavish and dumb as camel spit -- is proof that sometimes it's better to let sleeping genres lie.

For a film insistent upon getting the dramaturgically correct 1985 Pepsi logo into the frame, very little effort seems to have been applied to exactitude elsewhere. Freddie Mercury deserves better.

The promise is dangled yet never developed. Rather, the narrative slips into a backstory that alternates between confusing and contradictory.

The film is somewhat amusing – especially Tom Sturridge, who turns Lord Byron into poetry’s version of Jack Sparrow – but immediately forgettable.

The trouble is that Antichrist feels progressively symptomatic of a director losing heart.

It is a paint-by-numbers Holocaust movie, scrupulously balanced, always cautious, occasionally clichéd, often sentimental.