There is a specific tone to films scheduled for a holiday release – in short, they’re corny. And while that’s not always a bad thing, this year’s yuletide flick, A Journal for Jordan, feels particularly dated and often times emotionally cloying.

The film is too slapdash and self-serving to take seriously (it’s release is timed to the precede thesame-named album’s release next month), but it’s a casually entertaining trip, aimed at fans of the charismatic rapper and his recreational substance of choice.

The premise - a crazed killer abused years before returns to wreak vengeance on the young - is so familiar that the audience can predict (and does: loudly) every "shock." [15 Oct 1980]

Director Rob Reiner is betting that their star power alone will blind us to the holes in this cheesecloth of a script. It proves a fool's bet – no star shines that brightly.

There isn’t a single genuinely sharp sequence in the entire movie. The casting of Robert De Niro as an ex-Mafioso hiding in witness protection is witty in only the silliest, most superficial way. It’s a joke with its own tinny, built-in laugh track.

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.

As for Vaughn, he seems exhausted by his strenuous efforts to bring a few sparks of spontaneity to such an overcalculated Christmas product.

Unfortunately, Opus isn’t able to keep up the tension of its cult-horror mystery, speeding through its reveals with a surprising laziness that feels counter to the care it initially took in building out its story.

The one thing that’s briefly enjoyable about From Paris with Love is John Travolta’s appearance. In a black leather jacket, with a shaved bald head and a goatee and a perpetual scarf to hide his jowls, he looks like a well-fed pimp or a gay bear.

There is no pleasure in watching a child suffer. Just embarrassment and a vague sense of shame. Watching Trapped simply makes us feel guilty.

All of this is accomplished with buckets of blood, but almost no sense of flesh: It's hard to recall a more sexless vampire flick.

As the teenage new-waver in a land of corn-fed farmers, Bacon has an aggressive, nervous edginess, but is ultimately too limited an actor, or too poorly directed, to carry the leaden weight of the script. [20 Feb 1984]

But don't worry about remembering the characters - the movie certainly doesn't.

Eerie and unpredictable, Strangerland holds attention, even if traditional suspense tricks are avoided like they were dingos at the daycare.

The script by Stephanie Fabrizi is full of oddly terse interchanges that Krill and Linder deliver with a lifeless cool that feels more under-rehearsed than erotic.

All in all, the new movie version of Leave It To Beaver is faithful to the genial instructive spirit of the TV show, as well as to a recurring theme, Ward's constant adjustments to the Beav's underachieving ways. [22 Aug 1997, p.C5]

For his part, Allen spends much of his time falling -- out of hammocks, off of logs, down from balconies, a geometric progression of comic ingenuity guaranteed to delight the child in all of us. Occasionally, he's joined by fellow tumbler Martin Short, who appears to be making a lucrative career of playing in the very movies he once so wickedly parodied. [07 Mar 1997, p.D6]

In time, we may look back at Lost River as a fascinating mess or a misunderstood miss. As for his promise, I’d be fine if Gosling promises to never make a film like this again.

There is a familiarity to its characters and story, which doesn’t do much at all in terms of reinventing the genre, but very much meets its own expectations.

Well-intentioned but emotionally straitjacketed.

Considering that the original story managed to be scarier without people's hair spontaneously restyling itself into dragons, it's worth asking why this kind of film has become the norm. Is it because filmgoers demand it, or is it because filmmakers leaning on technological crutches can't be bothered to learn their craft? More and more, I'm leaning to the latter. [23 July 1999, p.C3]

If there is a one-word skeleton key to unlocking Guns Akimbo, it might simply be: “sloppy.”

As the title loudly hints, ultimate victory assumes the flawless shape of the star pitcher’s perfect game, a rarity anywhere yet especially at the Little League level. In getting to that climax, the recreated game action is a bit tepid and the child actors too precociously cute, but the true tale in the midst of the fabrication remains a guaranteed heart-warmer.

Unfortunately, once these creatures do come to life for a second outing, the promise soon evaporates and the clever comedy, built largely on crisscrossing anachronisms and various sly cultural references, is not enough to sustain a romp that is all rather predictable.

The biggest high comes from the images evoked by the title alone, or the title in tandem with the movie poster, doesn't it?

Orphan descends into a formulaic bloodbath that barely registers a pulse.

For fans of violent but clever action films, RoboCop 2 may be the sultry season's best bet: you get the gore of Total Recall and the satiric smarts of Gremlins 2 The New Batch in one high-tech package held together by modest B-movie strings. [22 June 1990]

One of the gorier and more witless horror films in recent memory. [19 Apr 1982]