Cheney remains an enigma throughout, less a character than another anonymous object for McKay to smash in his cinematic rage room.

There ain't much to You Got Served, but at least this teensploitation flick is bookended by two frenzied sequences that fully exploit the visual potential of street dancing.

All the special effects in the universe don't make up for a lame plot, though. There's something foul about a Star Trek movie so apparently slapdash: the creators know that legions of fans will show up, no matter what. [18 Nov. 1994]

Most of the time the film is simply stupid; not offensive, just silly. [03 May 1983]

Everyone here is simply a mismanaged thing to be moved around an isn’t-that-shocking storyboard as needed.

Deep inside the new Charlie’s Angels movie, there is a fun film struggling to breathe. There are momentary flashes of energy, of wit, of something sorta-kinda-maybe resembling entertainment. But every time writer-director Elizabeth Banks’s reboot threatens to come alive, it immediately falls to the floor, leaden and lifeless.

It's difficult to give a damn about this collection of whiners, autocrats and philanderers. [4 Aug 1995]

Spun is so hip it hurts.

Unfortunately, the only thing that dies harder in the movies than natural selection is careworn cliché, and Barry Cook and Neil Nightingale’s movie about a plucky, lovestruck pachyrhinosaurus named Patchi subjects our long defunct earthly ancestors to a fate arguably worse than extinction: a life lived in a world of cheese.

It's difficult to say who is more misguided here: the men (director, screenwriter and producer) who made the movie, or the women who signed on to play the parts.

Unless you are a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, or perhaps part of the Macfayden clan, you’re better off letting this particular version of history get lost in the sands of time.

There are two movies in Superman III, one a witless and obvious and often cruel comic strip, the other a blithe and subtle and often amusing exercise in middle-brow camp. Not only do the two halves never come together, they are in active opposition. [17 June 1983]

Beyond the Reach, adapted from the same Robb White Deathwatch novel that spawned the 1974 Andy Griffith-starring television movie "Savages," is a deadly, desert-set game of cat and mouse that is tired and beyond plausibility.

There are good intentions lurking here, especially in star Louis Garrel’s performance, but the film consistently fails to engage on an even basic level.

Here's a movie that tries to be a video game but is less entertaining than a vending machine.

The monster isn't very interesting (or scary) to look at: he's just an oily, overgrown gremlin.

A plot so preposterous it could only have emerged from the underground comic world.

The manipulative Star Wars-style score is the only novelty on tap in Silverado, which has a plot too drearily complicated and arid to summarize and an attitude almost unbearable in its dryly smirky assurance that it knows what you want from a Western, which is to say, action that never quits, emotion that's never felt, characters that are never real and situations that are never sensible. [10 Jul 1985, p.S7]

The film preaches the gospel of unpredictable change, of ironic metamorphosis, of a psychological ebb and flow from love to lust, hope to despair, good to evil. But if the message is fluid, the medium is static at best and chaotic at worst - there's very little controlled motion in this picture. [19 June 1992]

Why bother suffering through 90 minutes of bad company for a few moments of holiday cheer? Especially when you can still stay home alone and watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" somewhere on TV.

Stallone's sequel has almost nothing to do with the original film except that it's about dancing; otherwise, it's Rocky IV with legwarmers. [16 Jul 1983]

It’s disappointing that the film takes that well-worn trope of a big family get-together and just lazily adds a Filipino layer to it.

They are singing the jingle in the bath, in bed, in the car, ready to send you, like George, smack into a tree.

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.

The Hustle should’ve been a comedy that served equal parts wit and social commentary – otherwise, why gender-swap? It should’ve given Wilson and Hathaway a means through which to shine. These are talented, seasoned, capable women. And for their experience to be wasted in a production that is below them, below their director’s filmography and below the original material is tragic.

On the whole, the film is content to lumber awkwardly between the condemned man on death row and the intrepid reporter on his save-a-life beat -- there's about as much rhythm in the style as there is sense in the plot.

The photography is elegant, but nothing else is. With action that is standard and not at all tense, the melodrama is much higher than the reward.

Dragonfly has more plot than a figure-skating competition, and just about as much credibility.