Hyperactive, incredibly gory, gratingly sentimental, The Killer is pure cinematic junk food for those who are into blood-and-guts highs.

That’s a lot for a viewer to take in, and as pleasing as some aspects of Your Name can be, there’s no question Shinkai’s overstuffed movie often trips over itself.

Board games, threats from Howard and desperate escape planning by Michelle take up most the picture. And then, first-time feature director Dan Trachtenberg and the screenwriters, apparently realizing that not much has been going on so far, ramp up to a full-bore CG explosion extravaganza finale...Too little. Too late.

Childhood: courtesy of Mr. King. Filtered through the pedestrian sensibilities of director Andy Muschietti, who seemingly never met a horror-movie cliché he couldn’t incorporate into his adaptation of King’s thousand-page-plus mega-opus.

There’s a problem with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. It’s attempting to mock something that is beyond mockery.

Nyong’o’s prodigious talents are sadly wasted in this noisy, pointless movie, which never approaches the cleverness — or the genuine scariness — of the first two in the franchise.

This wildly overpraised Belgian mock-documentary might have been a lacerating 10-minute Swiftian satire of the media's never-ending thirst for blood. Instead, it's a 95-minute reiteration of the obvious that manages simultaneously to offend and bore. [11 June 1993, p.24]

It’s a rare misstep for the usually sure-footed folks behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

You loved “The Conjuring” in 2013. Now here’s “2,” with more, more, more of what you adored the first time around.

The movie’s unrelenting sensory onslaught is exhausting. It’s torture to sit through.

Writer-director Ti West brings not an iota of originality to his handling of this material. Plods, the picture does, through its predictable paces.

It wants to make a joke at its source material’s expense, but all it ever accomplishes is making you want to watch those classics instead.

If The Black Phone dabbles in crimes that are taboo, even unforgivable in its depiction of brutality against innocent children, Black Phone 2 commits its own unforgivable crime of being dreadfully boring. This movie is a snooze — and not just because all of the action takes place entirely during Gwen’s dreams.

Zombies. Nazis. Clichés. Insane violence. Overlord delivers a whole lot of much too much.

The basics of Draper’s story hold promise, but the film derails because Jack and Oliver just aren’t charming as social pariahs.

You expect lots of fight scenes in a Wick movie, and Ballerina certainly delivers on that score. Overdelivers, in fact. It’s one damn dust-up after another.

Mark this one down as a sequel that should never have been made.

Eastwood is known for his ruthless efficiency as a filmmaker, but The Mule feels dashed off at best, barely even a movie. It’s a strange rough draft, poorly executed and disastrously performed, despite the starry cast.

The best thing about The Greasy Strangler: that title. The worst thing about The Greasy Strangler: everything that follows that title.

The picture’s real weakness is that the reanimated dead display a great deal more vitality than the characters in their pre-killed state.

A more self-impressed movie than Dicks: The Musical would be hard to imagine.

Maybe there's a serious movie to be made about professional soldiers who can't thaw out now that the Cold War is melting. But The Fourth War plays like Laurel and Hardy's Tit For Tat in slow motion. [23 Mar 1990, p.24]

I wished I was actually watching “Batman and Robin” or “Superman IV,” because for all their camp, those movies felt less pointless and more human than “Thor 4,” a cheap corporate commercial for upcoming Marvel content.

Maybe the Arthurian legend is unfilmable. There has never been a successful cinematic adaptation. There still isn't. Bad films are forgivable. First Knight is not. [07 Jul 1995, p.H3]

Unfortunately, Craven's constant emphasis on cannibalism, child abuse and incest adds up to more unpleasantness than thrills. [02 Nov 1991, p.C3]

[Neeson's] impressive physicality, (a tower among men), his rumbly basso-profundo voice and his impressive demeanor give him a natural gravity that allows him to rise above the most absurd material. And he does exactly that in The Commuter.

Despite claims to the contrary, Van Peebles has no apparent desire to accurately reflect history. Instead, he caters, with an ugly lack of integrity, to a twisted perception of "popular taste," spinning an ego-trip that steals a numbing variety of Western cliches while betraying them with contemporary flavoring. [14 May 1993, p.20]

So consistently unexciting, so monumentally unconvincing, so silly. [28 Sept 1990, p.22]