It is a singularly irritating semi-comedy, colorfully wrapped but with batteries definitely not included. [18 Dec 1992, p.28]

Judgment Night is almost completely lacking in conviction and originality. But Leary does a fair Dennis Hopper imitation, Gooding does his best with an insulting role, and the ending is witty enough not to give us the undying villain it leads us to expect. [15 Oct 1993, p.D27]

Seagal's "best" movie to date, handled with slick blandness by director Andrew Davis (reteaming with Seagal after the star's 1988 debut in "Above the Law). It's depraved and bloodthirsty stuff, which of course means that audiences will flock to this junk (to borrow a line from bone-snappin' Steve) like puppets in some sick play. [09 Oct 1992, p.22]

The picture has an undeniable rough stylishness...but in terms of coherence of storytelling it leaves the audience choking on all that swirling dust.

Unfortunately, Shapiro borrows from too many movies (his climax vaguely recalls "Stranger on a Train") to let his story's potential shine through, and so "The Crush" remains an exercise in diminishing returns. [3 Apr 1993, p.C5]

The problem with Miles Ahead isn’t the playful, broad license it takes with Davis’ story, but that it’s so silly.

There’s gunplay aplenty here, but nothing about “The Kid” sets it apart from the many Billy the Kid movies that have preceded it.

Class Act doesn't even try to live up to its title, so if your taste in movies runs to the juvenile, you've come to the right place. [05 Jun 1992, p.28]

The picture’s time shifts are smoothly handled by Kwak. But eventually confusion sets in.

The romance falls dismally flat - Hannah and Moore often appear in the same frame, but there's nothing going on between them. [12 Apr 1990, p.F6]

That Unforgettable is watchable, at least before it disintegrates into generic violence near the end, is due to the touches of wit in the directing, and to the two lead performances.

Maudlin, schematic and surely scientifically unsound, Regarding Henry is a by-the-book tearjerker that has only one thing going for it: Ford's performance. But that's not enough to make up for Jeffrey Abrams' colorless script and Mike Nichols' uninspired direction. [10 July 1991, p.E7]

For most of its length, Stillwater goes along as a meticulous examination of its central characters. And then suddenly near the end it jumps the tracks.

We can’t travel these days, so it’s fun to wallow in the scenery and its vivid colors. Want a great movie? Go watch the original Rebecca instead, but you probably knew that already.

The chase, chase, chase pace is tiring, not least because it’s not clear who many of these people are and what agendas they’re following. Mixed-up confusion is the result.

The performances are more interesting than the convoluted plot. [24 Apr 1992, p.26]

The gunplay is primary though there are some obligatory scenes of martial arts fights.

This may be the easiest installment in the series for parents to sit through.

It carries the stale odor of something that was stuck in a drawer long ago and could easily have gathered more dust. Worst of all, there's something inauthentic and phony about the way Gale and Zemeckis crank out racial taunts and four-letter-word dialogue. The result is a movie that isn't just a throwaway but borderline offensive. [26 Dec 1992, p.C7]

The dour environment doesn’t help, the humor doesn’t pop and, disappointingly, the scares just don’t land. There are a few jumps and bumps, but there’s no real sense of dread or unease or questioning.

In between all of these delights is an awful lot of filler

Even if you're judging by quantity, not quality, Fatal Instinct is merely comatose on arrival. [29 Oct 1993, p.D31]

Woodley and Claflin make an attractive pair, but they’re not particularly convincing playing people deeply, deeply in love. There’s something lacking in the conviction department there.

Smith, on the other hand, throws himself avidly into his work, communicating a, uh, biting malevolence and sick glee in his portrayal. The picture only truly comes alive when he’s masticating his scenes. Otherwise, “Morbius” is dead at its center.

There’s exactly one good jump-scare, which probably would have caused me to drop my popcorn if I hadn’t finished it already; otherwise it’s fairly uninspired. But something about Quaid’s delivery had me giggling throughout — or, at least, until things got rather too dark in the final minutes.

Story II does feature some of the creatures from the first film (the luckdragon, the rockbiter), and Miller almost pulls off the finale, which suggests the emotional impact of the original film. But there's a lot of dawdling on the way.[09 Feb 1991, p.C10]

Beatty directed and wrote the script, but from a man who made the weighty epic “Reds” and the corrosively funny “Bulworth,” Rules Don’t Apply feels curiously weightless and as forgettable as its title.

If it weren't for a delicious performance by Max Von Sydow as the suavely genteel Satan incarnate, Needful Things would be merely another Stephen King novel turned into trash for indiscriminate moviegoers. [27 Aug 1993, p.D12]

Ultimately, her run and Roseanne for President! meet the same fate: not quite entertaining enough to qualify as comedy, nor quite thoughtful enough to take seriously.

So it goes, with Sonic, fleet of foot and quick of tongue, racing from one dire situation to another. It’s exhausting, but the makers knew exactly how to tailor it to its game-mad audience.

You wish Perkins would have shown up with his red pencil during the screenwriting stage, when he might have done some good.

Depp, who has never looked so angelic, is covering familiar ground here, playing another Gilbert Grape type who's involved with an older woman. [9 Sept 1994, p.H34]

None of this has any real reason for being; even the tiniest bit of drama that Vardalos’ screenplay scares up...gets wrapped up by the hour mark. But Vardalos has created a community of characters and players so likable, it seems almost mean to criticize.

You get a sense [Eli Roth]'s struggling to rein in his penchant for gory frights, and for that reason “Clock” feels like a movie at war with itself.

In the matter of searching for work in a difficult economy, Get a Job traffics in fairy tales that come complete with happily-ever-after endings.

Its take-no-prisoners pacing [takes] it up a notch from the average low-budget shoot ’em up.

Even the heavenly chorus that’s working overtime on the soundtrack can’t drown out the lack of chemistry between Howard and Pratt. And the movie too often defaults to people running around screaming — which is, to be fair, the backbone of this franchise, but it gets awfully old here.

The idea may have sounded great in film school. As written and directed by B.W.L. Norton, that's where it should have stayed. Still, the music of the period is well-used, and Charlie Martin Smith, Candy Clark and Cindy Williams rise above the script problems. [05 Dec 1991, p.F3]

It doesn’t hold a candle to the game, but there’s enough here to warrant another visit to this tragic little town.

Pathetically uninspired. [10 Dec 1993, p.G3]

Passengers turns out to be a very strange journey indeed; here’s hoping these two team up again, in something more worthy of them.

Every plot twist is easily anticipated...The ending hints at the possibility of a sequel, but that’s a prospect that leaves one cold. As far as “Demeter” is concerned, enough is enough.

If “golden retriever voiced by Kevin Costner” rings any alarm bells for you, steer clear.

Freighted with symbolism and beautifully mounted, Youth is dreamlike and at the same time stultifying.

Lesser actors would have drowned in the muck, but these two almost sell it.

Humongous undersea cities, enormous herds of aquatic creatures and a superabundance of monsters are laid before the viewer. The goal: Make people go, “Wow!” Pardon me, but the overall effect is more like, “eh.”

The script, attributed to four writers, is based on stories of cats who roamed the Warners back lot, begging for food among the discarded sets of "Casablanca" and "East of Eden." Imagine any storyline designed around that studio legend and you're likely to come up with a more auspicious plot than the one this team has created. [26 Mar 1997]

The Mummy starts off light and very quickly goes dark — fading rapidly, along with our hopes that this latest monster mash might possibly be any good.

Trimmed from 164 to 140 minutes after playing the international festival circuit, "Faraway, So Close!" is not without its enticing qualities, and if nothing else it will provoke some interesting coffehouse discussion. But when held to the light of its predecessor, one can't help but think it's pointlessly redundant. [23 Dec 1993, p.E5]

The cast is a likable bunch, and I can see how Tag might go down nicely with a couple of beers beforehand; it’s definitely funny in spots, in a we’re-making-this-up-as-we-go-along sort of way.

Danny Strong’s film, which stars Nicholas Hoult as Salinger...isn’t terrible; it’s just one of those period films that never catches a spark — you find yourself admiring the elegantly lit rooms and the meticulous 1940s costumes, rather than becoming immersed in the drama.

It’s all big action. Big colorful visuals. Outsized vocal performances.

Miscast and nervously directed. [11 Oct 1996]

Themes exploring redemption and forgiveness fall flat because it’s impossible to empathize with these characters. Mostly, this is an exercise in style; a slick tribute to righteous trash that promises a lot more fun than it actually delivers.

None of this is especially promising or, frankly, funny. In fact, for much of its length, “Despicable Me” is painfully unfunny.

Ultimately, it’s a wild experiment that mostly falls flat.

There is advocacy. And then there is propaganda. The Trolley, with its overcooked rhetoric, falls into the latter category.

Pushing three hours, American Honey feels every bit its length, often luxuriating in extended scenes inside the van, pot smoke swirling and hip-hop thumping. Like most of the film, these scenes are vividly rendered but increasingly repetitive and aimless.

The Book of Henry launches itself into cloud cuckooland and never returns to Earth.

Greenland 2: Migration offers up a proudly, even defiantly, optimistic view of what comes after disaster, which can serve for the viewer as either cathartic fictional balm, or Pollyanna-ish fantasy — pick your poison.

Ultimately, Haunted Mansion feels like the ghost of a movie — just a fleeting shadow, one you can barely remember in the morning.

A mostly agreeable but empty-headed mess. It’s sort of the movie equivalent of Derek Zoolander himself.

Nadja is a one-way ticket to a visual paradise that unearths nothing more substantial than splendid Gothic atmosphere. In opting for artiness, it strands its cast in lifelessness, an anemic exercise in desperate need of a blood transfusion. [15 Sept 1995, p.F5]

An entertaining movie that, while lacking real substance or stellar acting, hints at themes to which we can definitely all relate.

The film feels long and slow, and the subject matter familiar. We never quite get caught up in it, despite the appealing cast; a thriller directed at a snail's pace simply isn't very thrilling.

The plot’s a mess, the run time is overlong and ultimately the movie feels like a slew of good actors trapped in a gorgeous place, wearing beautiful clothes and gazing at the impossibly blue water.

Neither the sophisticated teen comedy it wants to be nor the routine Disney slapstick number it sometimes becomes, it doesn't know what it is. [14 Feb 1997]

Unfortunately as festivities in the building turn violent and/or orgiastic, Wheatley keeps resorting to high-speed montages rather than slyly crafted scenes.

Indeed, if it didn't rely so much on brawls and shootouts to interrupt a serviceable story line, this might have been a noteworthy screen addition to the Batman legacy. But the requisite outbursts of action are only secondary to the movie's nearly fatal shortcoming: the animation itself. [28 Dec 1993, p.E1]

Happy anniversary, Little Women, but I think I prefer you back in the 19th century; dreamy professors aside.

Forster gets decent performances from Lively and Clarke, but the overall impression “All I See” leaves is of a picture that fails to live up to its filmmaker’s ambitions.

While it’s often great fun to look at, “Crimes of Grindelwald” fails at what should be Rowling’s great strength: storytelling. Three more to go, and an infusion of magic is desperately needed.

It is routine but watchable fare (set in Portland, partially filmed in Olympia), steeped in movie tradition and executed with admirable craftsmanship . . . and enough naked Madonna to make everything else a trivial distraction. [15 Jan 1993, p.3]

Greta is a disappointment from Jordan, who’s made far better movies (“The Crying Game,” “The End of the Affair” and, more recently, the elegant vampire film “Byzantium”), but Huppert seizes hold of the film and chills it, in a way that’s both shiver-inducing and bracing.

There's not much to save this formulaic suspense film from seeming both ridiculous and predictable, but if you can get past the groaner dialogue and hysteria that follow the opening credits, the midsection of "Extreme Measures" does generate some tension. [27 Sept 1996]

Political satire is one of the trickiest of genres; this one, running out of steam and nerve, ultimately becomes a too-familiar example of another genre: the 93-minute movie that feels way, way too long.

Angel Has Fallen plays out exactly as you would expect from a potboiler of this type. No surprises here, other than that it exists at all. It’s the kind of movie one expects to be released at the shank end of summer. Time to turn the page to fall.

Similar to the scenario of the original picture, it’s a band of grizzled soldier types who battle the alien menaces. Missing, however, is a formidable leading-man presence in the Schwarzenegger mold.

Curiously though, director Michael Dougherty and his filmmaking team obscure the battle footage in darkness, smoke and downpours, making murky much of the imagery.

With all of Shults’ dark-night-of-the-soul mood manipulations, the film promises more than it delivers. Its buildups are impressive, but in the end its frights are mild.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers — busily splashing the film in crayon-colored light, vaguely sinister pop music and jittery camerawork — forgot to give Vee and Handsome Stranger (his name’s Ian) much personality.

The Goldfinch feels like a series of often-elegant moments, in service to a story that never quite comes into focus.

It’s somehow only fitting that with Scarlett Johansson in the lead role, Ghost in the Shell leaves you with the feeling that something has been lost in translation.

The script’s weaknesses are difficult to ignore.

Handsomer and funnier than the original, Young Guns II is still a mediocre brat-pack western. It lacks the attention-getting novelty of the first film. [01 Aug 1990, p.E1]

Neither the actress nor her director disgrace themselves, and Curtis does suggest a commitment to her character that goes above and beyond the limitations of the script, but they've both done more interesting work. [16 Mar 1990, p.26]

Slick, chummy and with a palatable message - Don't work too hard - Taking Care of Business is easy to swallow and just as easy to forget. [17 Aug 1990, p.24]

Daddy’s Home is a movie with a one-joke premise: Will Ferrell, he’s a pincushion of punishment. Make him screech. Watch him squirm.

Snatched is one of those movies that feels like a rough draft of itself. A few more rewrites, a few more laughs, a little (well, a lot) more attention, and maybe it would have been an amusing summer comedy.

So yes: Wow! Gasp! There are some really pretty pictures here. But wow! Gasp! The story is really pretty … stupid.

It's a pointless, $30 million mediocrity with a disengaged star-director at its center. [15 Jun 1990, p.3]

Yep, we’re in Tarantino territory for sure: way too self-indulgently long, and way, way overboard with that N-word.

Cage proves his versatility as the reluctant hero (designed by way of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan character), bringing his comic timing and droll face into perfect pitch. His first scene with Connery is giddy fun. He steals the entire picture.

This is a picture whose subject, loudly and frequently proclaimed, is magic. But there is precious little of the genuine article to be found in it.

It’s not terrible, but it’s an elegantly filmed stumble.

After a sprightly credits sequence in which the animated Pink Panther takes over conducting duties for Henry Mancini, while helping Bobby McFerrin doodle with the Panther theme Mancini composed 30 years ago, it's mostly downhill. It's been 10 years since the last Panther installment, yet Edwards seems exhausted.

The entire film feels like an exercise in dashing expectations, for both our heroine and the audience.

The assembly of fine talent is largely wasted, but you can still sense Harris staying true to his roots. [17 Apr 1993, p.C7]