The movie has a sharper and more acerbic screenplay than you normally find in bargain-basement, D-list teen comedies.

The only memorable facet of The Blue Lagoon (at the York) is the visual prowess of the great cinematographer Nestor Almendros - but here the photography, unlike his work in Days of Heaven or Kramer Vs. Kramer, is too great. It's all there is, and its monumental beauty overwhelms the fragile orchids-and-jockstraps pastoral of the narrative, with its faux naif philosophy. [12 July 1980]

Max Payne, game or movie, has precious little to say.

Given Waller's experience and budget, one might expect he could upgrade the B-movie acting and stock situations. He doesn't. The pay-off comes not in the story or acting, but the camera play and movement.

Although director John Berry equips him with a bottle at every opportunity in an effort to recreate the bumbling but lovable charm of Matthau's performance, Curtis is never a sympathetic character. Curtis is by nature far too slick and suave a character ever to be a lovable curmudgeon. [04 July 1978]

Whether madcap parody – the "American Psycho" of G-man flicks – or walk on the wild side of Lynch's obsessions, the film's a failure.

So, romance-novel boilerplate that sounded clichéd on the page becomes outright laughable as it's transferred to the screen.

So highly imitative as to strip the word “derivative” of any meaning, Rebel Moon is fan-fiction writ large, as if Snyder believes he’s outsmarting everyone from George Lucas and George R.R. Martin to the estates of Frank Herbert and H.R. Giger.

Forgettable.

All that's missing are the laughs. In their place, we get wall-to-wall predictability. [13 Aug 1983]

Though Silent Hill's shoddy dialogue and incoherent story constantly irritate, several sights and scenes possess a certain surreal grandeur...Sadly, that's not enough to compensate for Silent Hill's utter lack of tension, intrigue, character development or satisfactory explanations for what the hell's happening on the screen.

While the monster Wilde is scary enough, the directing and writing is lazy, relying on “boo!” tactics and insinuating a religious subtext by cutting to close-ups of crucifix jewellery. The ending is slapdash.

The filmmakers have also advertised that their new movie eliminates the "Pow! Right in the kisser!" threats of spousal abuse that permeated the original series. The question of audience abuse has yet to be addressed.

If you can’t Smurf anything nice, then don’t Smurf anything at all. Such is the key lesson to be taken away by discerning parents this weekend after being dragged by their children to yet another big-screen adaptation of everyone’s second-favourite blue-man group.

The problem lies with Williamson's script, which feels as if it has been torn from different places and glued back together like a ransom note.

If TMNT the franchise is going to reach the same lofty heights of blockbuster-dom, it still needs to find its own inner hero.

The only surprise here is the real star of the show, who turns out to be not Halle Berry, not even Bruce Willis, but a flat computer screen in all its hard-driven glory.

At times a bit plodding, Voyage of the Damned certainly succeeds in making its point, as did the conniving Hitler: It's harder to condemn the perpetrators of racism when you turn away their victims at your door. [17 Sep 2005, p.12]

By comparison to this effort, "Pineapple Express" seems like a model of thoughtful maturity.

Gosh, what to say about House of 1000 Corpses? That it's about 999 too many, for starters. Then again, in a picture where the body count is the whole point and the only purpose, carping about the math rather misses the mark.

Grown-ups will find it painful to watch a clearly embarrassed Arnett go through the motions, muttering his lines as he internally wonders why he never became the next Kevin Costner.

It's a colorless, poorly paced film in which the most interesting thing is McQueen's half-hearted struggle to create a saleable character. Most of the time, the calculation comes across as lukewarm Clint Eastwood, who is not a model McQueen should ever be reduced to imitating. [4 Aug 1980]

This new Garfield outing is a true feat in shoulder-shrugging nothingness.

This Means War is a Valentine's date dud: Think wilted roses, squashed chocolates and flat champagne.

Will be construed by the faithful as an embarrassment of riches and by the rest of us as cruel and unusual punishment.

This isn't a movie so much as a marketing strategy -- a moving poster loosely disguised as a motion picture.

5 Days of War feels low-budget in everything except its battle sequences.

If it had the guts to be either zany or pointed, it might have been both; instead, it's neither. It's an old copy of Mad magazine that wouldn't have been your favorite even when you were 12. [6 Jan 1986, p.C11]