Non-existent direction, inane plot, inflated acting. [30 Sep 1987]

Bad Teacher should be a hoot. But it isn't. Love the theory here, hate the practice.

Lions for Lambs appears to have taken its inspiration from Al Gore's stolid "An Inconvenient Truth," using the stage lecture and Power Point presentation in lieu of dramatic momentum.

No clichés are avoided in the pleasant, if relentlessly adorable ensemble comedy Dog Days.

Both more and less of the same -- more of that hot-pink couture, a whole lot more of that diminutive doggie, less reason to laugh even if you're a tank-topped 16-year-old.

I like firemen just as much as the next red-blooded gal (they're big, strong, real-life heroes, what's not to like?) but something about Ladder 49, for all its slow-motion shots of burly guys in T-shirts sliding down poles and running into burning buildings with gushing hoses, made me seriously want to gag.

The countdown begins with the first negative integer — an amped-up score that overpowers the proceedings like a bad band at a high-school dance.

Falling in the pillowy cleavage between mildly awful and slightly entertaining, Burlesque is a clichéd rags-to-diva story that culminates in a series of Christina Aguilera videos.

The problem is that somewhere around the middle of the film, one begins to realize it probably isn’t going any place worthwhile.

Relentlessly twee as all this is, Wasikowska's warmth and Hopper's off-beat timing (he's the son of the late Dennis Hopper) are appealing to watch.

But hey, at least Zwick and company carve out some time for Tom Cruise to run, with Reacher dashing across a busy avenue for about 18 seconds or so. It’ll make for a great supercut one day.

The creators of Flyboys know no image too clichéd, no narrative convention too exhausted and no psychological motivation too pat that it can't do service.

Monster Hunter is all sorts of super-dumb fun. And though its middle section lags – there are only so many training montages audiences can handle – Anderson and his wife Jovovich prove that their long-running Resident Evil franchise was no fluke: this is a couple who know how to take the flimsiest of video games and turn them into self-knowing slices of cinematic ridiculousness.

An entertaining takeoff and a high-altitude ride eventually runs into some bumpy weather and a clumsy landing in Mike Newell's new comedy.

As in so many essentially childish movies, it's an actual child who's always the smartest pants in the room.

Maybe this stuff works on the page, in Chuck Palahniuk's darkly comic novel, but Choke is awfully tough to digest on the screen.

While Williams isn’t quite as adept as Cody’s other all-star collaborators, her debut film is funny, cinematic and memorable.

The animation also feels half-caught between inspired and derivative . . . Thank goodness, then, for the songs.

In past celluloid lives Eddie Murphy has been responsible for a handful of the most popular movies ever made, which explains why he has been able to bring Coming to America to your neighborhood theatre with its misogyny, technical ineptitude and witlessness intact.

1492 is a pretty good movie, but it isn't as good as you might like. Part of the problem is Roselyne Bosch's script. The screenwriter (and co-producer) seems so determined to make a hero of Columbus that she can't resist giving him every virtue and virtuous motive available, and placing him in direct opposition to every bad guy or bad idea around, including decadent aristocrats, ignorant priests, and the Church and the Inquisition in general. [12 Oct 1992]

Now, forcibly deported to Chicago and peopled with American stars, the same story is huffed and puffed and squeezed into an entirely different cultural context. Guess what? Sayonara sushi, hello turkey.

As directed by Bob Giraldi, well-known for his work in rock videos, Hiding Out manages to offer a brief catalogue of the cliches from both genres, before allowing the teen flick to take over. The film is essentially a series of comedy bits in the service of an MTV soundtrack. That soundtrack, which includes the first revelation of K.D. Lang and Roy Orbison's duet on Crying, may be the film's only creditable achievement. [10 Nov 1987]

Like kudzu vine, killer bees and herpes, we may never be rid of it.

Midway is a choppy bore, its main source of intrigue centred around whatever New Jersey-ese accent British actor Ed Skrein is attempting as dive bomber Richard Best.

There is a dearth of novelty in Young Guns II, but screenwriter Fusco proceeds as if the material were not familiar and seems to be having a hell of a time exposing it to an audience of teen-agers who wouldn't know John Ford from Ford Fairlane. [03 Aug 1990]

About 45 minutes worth of funny stuff awkwardly stretched to 84 minutes.

The lower orders seem to have been left out of The Lost City -- there just aren't any poor characters -- which for a movie about a workers' revolution seems downright slipshod.

Perhaps a better name for Marc Abraham’s well-crafted biopic would be His Cheatin’ Heart, for this motion picture concentrates on the marital distress between a philandering Williams and his flat-singing wife (played with vibrancy by Elizabeth Olsen).