There must be dozens of film buffs out there with an unsatisfied hankering for Cinemascope Westerns. It's too bad, then, that Quigley Down Under fits the label, but doesn't deliver the goods.

Overall, the film is sweet but often loses impact in its most serious moments by blasting a happy pop soundtrack.

The premise of accountant as action hero might seem absurd, but The Accountant makes it credible and fascinating.

This isn't a B-movie, a C-movie or even a Z-movie. In fact, there isn't a letter far enough down in the alphabet to cover Popcorn. [01 Feb 1991, p.22]

Only Omar Epps ("Juice") locates substance in his role as the freshman underachiever who must fight for his starting position, but even he's in service to the uninspired "Program." If someone wanted to make a good, exciting, serious film about the ups and downs of college football, why didn't they just make a documentary about the Huskies? [24 Sept 1983, p.D19]

It's an easy-going respite for the audience, thanks to the familiar and instantly likeable cast - also including "Darkman" director Sam Raimi as the camp's slow-witted handyman - who slip into their roles with effortless charm. Writer-director Mike Binder is generous to each character, and the ensemble occasionally clicks with the casual comfort of enduring friendships...But the film is ultimately too sentimental, sluggishly paced and naggingly insubstantial, with cute, jokey dialogue that betrays Binder's background as a stand-up comedian, setting up scenes that exist only to arrive at a punchline. [24 Apr 1993, p.C8]

Every once in a while a simple, formulaic plot is elevated by a good cast and energetic direction, and Sister Act is an irresistibly entertaining case in point. [29 May 1992, p.18]

The dialogue, the violence, the humor (largely provided by Grant’s character) and the intricacy of the storytelling make for a picture in which most everyone in it seems to be having a great deal of chatty, bloody fun.

No previous screen rendering of the Rudyard Kipling classic — not the 2016 Disney live-action epic and certainly not the jaunty, tuneful 1967 Disney animated version beloved by generations — has been so very dark and wild and, surprisingly, thoughtful.

You’ve seen this cheery, slapdash blend of raunch, cocktails and summer dresses before.

As you have probably seen a movie or two before, you know where this is going. But Lopez’s glossy sweetness and Wilson’s dad-jokes charm blend amiably together, and Marry Me glides along smoothly, full of pop songs and earnestness and very expensive-looking hair.

The whole picture is an exercise in obvious effort, try, try, trying really hard to win the audience’s affection. However it only succeeds in trying the audience’s patience. It’s a trial.

But they all end up spinning their wheels under Deran Sarafian, whose action-movie credentials include Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Death Warrant." He tries to establish a tongue-in-cheek attitude that seems as borrowed and clueless as Stephen Sommers' script. [4 Feb 1994, p.D28]

Adams, six Academy Award nominations later, still sings and dances like a Technicolor dream, and this time around she gets to have some fun as not only the ultra-sweet Giselle, whose voice sounds like butterflies and sunrises, but an evil alter ego.

If you’re partial to the Northwest outdoors, co-writer and director Alex Simmons (best known for documentaries) makes the long trip a visual treat, too. Indeed it is time for fresh air.

Studio 666 is good B-movie fun! Time will tell if it deserves the same cult status as heavy-metal horror classics like “Trick or Treat” (1986) or “Black Roses” (1988), but there are still plenty of midnight thrills to be had.

It's the kind of movie that one quickly forgets after the credits roll. But for 90 painlessly engaging minutes, "Mikey" makes for pretty good company. [4 June 1993, p.20]

An indigestible blend of sentiment and gross-out humor, Cadillac Man is an appalling choice for Robin Williams to have made at this stage in his career. [18 May 1990, p.28]

As long as the third and, one hopes, final installment is, it feels even longer. There’s more of it, much more, yet paradoxically, much less.

Its central characters never find much chemistry — Clarke’s Kate is a one-note character, which is one note more than Golding’s character gets — and I left Last Christmas with many, many questions, none of which I can share here without giving away too much. The elf costume, though? Just right.

As written by David Koepp, this familiar and pokey plot respects the Shadow mythos while draining its vitality, until it becomes just another tiresome action flick and a further reminder that Jurassic Park, which Koepp co-wrote, was also a poorly written movie bolstered by awesome special effects. [01 Jul 1994, p.D3]

Ultimately, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is never quite as much fun as you expect it to be, particularly when Pike isn’t on screen. Despite a character intoning that we all “need magic more than ever,” this movie didn’t have enough of it.

DaCosta whisks us through the story with plenty of wit, particularly from Kamala’s family.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth demonstrates, Barker's horrific ideas can still inspire some genuinely creepy cinema. [12 Sep 1992, p.C5]

It is as if Pugh is having to push her way through narrative waters that threaten to wash away her performance. No matter how she continues to rise to the challenge, the film’s cascading of contrivances drown her out.

The bottom line, for any movie that purports to be a thrill ride, is whether the end result is thrilling — and I’d give a definite yes to that.

The animation is smooth and occasionally quite expressive, the character voices are well-chosen, and the pacing (songs aside) is confident. For young moviegoers unfamiliar with the Camelot story, this could be an option. [15 May 1998]

There’s the old cliché that says, “so-and-so is such a great actor he could read the phone book (whatever that is; as I said, it’s an old cliché) and make it interesting.” That’s pretty much what Washington pulls off in EQ2.

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

Of all the stories in all the world to remake on the big screen, why “Snow White”?

Unfortunately, director George P. Cosmatos, who took over when Jarre was fired as director, emphasizes action over character. [25 Dec 1993, p.C2]

It’s an agreeably generic mishmash of every old-guys-pull-one-last-heist movie you’ve ever seen.

Passenger 57 is so completely routine and devoid of imagination that it seems to have been directed on auto-pilot. [09 Nov 1992, p.D4]

It’s all very bizarrely, pointlessly complicated.

Is After the Wedding a great movie? No, not especially. Are these two women treasures of cinema? Absolutely.

Ticket to Paradise is all about the welcome sight of a pair of movie stars who know exactly what to do with their wattage.

Director John H. Lee keeps the action taut and often deeply felt when it comes to sacrifices and losses. But the script is often bogged down by deifying MacArthur.

Just as there can be fresh angles on the old story, there is a growing number of urban-survival cliches that lose their dramatic impact as they grow tiresomely familiar. Sugar Hill is a virtual catalog of these cliches - a serious, well-meaning film that offers no new insight into the crises it professes to understand. [25 Feb 1994, p.D21]

Great dragon, dumb script. And pity the poor actors who have to deal with that situation. [31 May 1996]

A character, even when he’s played by Woody Harrelson, is not a movie.

The film’s better than you’d expect from a late-summer offering, mostly due to a strong cast led by the great Oyelowo.

Casper is more an elaborate mechanism than a fully realized movie, and the silly plot is merely an excuse to indulge the amazing special effects. But first-time director Brad Silberling never lets the magic overwhelm his characters. Best known as Wednesday in the Addams family movies, Ricci has grown into an appealing young star who nicely complements Pullman's trademark sensitivity, and together they add the necessary touch of special to the visual effects. [26 May 1995, p.G3]

By the end, it’s falling apart under the weight of all the extraneous divergings, but thanks to Gyllenhaal’s performance, Demolition stands out as a powerful meditation on the unhinging effects of deep grief.

What a dynamite cast. What a savvy director. And what a soggy comedy they're all stuck in. [02 July 1997, p.E5]

What we have here is mostly a straight-up, mildly raunchy rom-com, where everyone learns lessons and gets a happy ending. But Shankman gives it all an agreeable bounce, and Henson (better known for dramatic roles, in “Hidden Figures,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and TV’s “Empire”) zestfully dives into the comedy.

It takes a special actor's grace to survive a script as lame as My Fellow Americans, and James Garner has it. Without appearing to break a sweat, Garner makes each grotesquely desperate attempt at humor look smooth and assured. In his hands, everything seems funnier than it is.

Director Steve Barron guides the mayhem with controlled abandon, and the script contains just enough simplistic plot to give the 88-minute comedy an adequate foundation. [23 July 1993]

This jokey fantasy-comedy is so formulaic that even its wittier lines and casting choices aren't enough to overcome a numbing sense of deja vu. [21 Dec 1994, p.E4]

Just another big dose of mindless violence. [06 Oct 1990, p.C5]

Except for its songs, Bohemian Rhapsody too quickly becomes forgettable; something the real-life man at its center, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1991 at the age of 45, never was. Watch the real footage; you’ll see.

Here's a small, well-crafted screen tale, offered with little fanfare. It has a classic B-movie appeal. Nothing flashy - but what's there is gripping and solid. [6 March 1992, p.19]

Despite this rich emotional material (not to mention some gloriously shabby drawing rooms), the film feels surprisingly dull and conventional — two things its heroine most definitely was not.

Leitch’s emphasis on excessive and nearly nonstop stunt-filled action is hardly surprising. His lack of directorial discipline, however, is. The guy apparently couldn’t help himself, piling on the action beats until they become numbing. By the end, you’re more than ready to get off this Bullet Train, feeling drained and disheartened.

Amsterdam is not entirely without small pleasures: Emmanuel Lubezki’s sepia-toned cinematography is lovely to look at, and it’s fun to play spot-the-movie-star with the talented cast, and to note with pleasure how Washington’s scratched-velvet voice sounds so much like that of his father Denzel. But ultimately it’s a big disappointment.

Ricochet is gruesome, contrived and often laughable when it's trying hardest to be thrilling. But the exaggerated antagonism between the two central characters keeps it from becoming dull. [05 Oct 1991, p.C3]

I enjoyed Downhill purely for Louis-Dreyfus’ performance; we don’t get to see the “Veep” star on the big screen very often, so why not revel in her talent when we get the chance? As an exhausted working mom unable to keep from micromanaging the vacation — and a wife suddenly questioning her choices — she’s funny and moving and utterly believable in every moment.

It’s an absorbing character study of a most intriguing man.

Even on its own merits this new Vanishing is a washout, a classic case of Hollywood studio compromise, in which almost everything that made the original effectively chilling has been tampered with and cheapened. [05 Feb 1993, p.03]

But Martin — who at age 10 came up with and pitched the idea for this movie (she’s now 14) — carries this movie on her small, resolute shoulders.

Mortality rather than morality has become the central theme, and McMurtry and Bogdanovich address it with rare grace and compassion. [28 Sep 1990, p.3]

Made In America is yet another half-hour sitcom padded to accommodate a major star - in this case, the highly bankable, post-Sister Act Whoopi Goldberg - and a 110-minute running time. [28 May 1993, p.27]

Like its predecessor, this new screen version of the book may work well enough for those happy with a simple story, simply told. But for Golding fans, it can only feel like another opportunity missed. [16 Mar 1990, p.3]

n the hands of director Adam Robitel, The Last Key hits all the haunted house markers. Lights flicker, flashlights die at inopportune moments, floors creak, and shadowy figures scuttle across the background. But mood is all the film has going for it.

Dennis the Menace is essentially a live-action, 90-minute Roadrunner movie in which Dennis is the Roadrunner and Matthau and Lloyd take turns playing Wile E. Coyote. It's a lot funnier when it's seven minutes long and the tortured Coyote is made from oils, ink and paper. [26 June 1993, p.C5]

Species doesn't scare or dazzle you. [07 July 1995, p.H25]

Neeson’s Felt is deeply conflicted about being a turncoat. He’s also deeply flawed, a man who authorized illegal activities to track down members of the terrorist Weather Underground.

Powell’s charm, along with some fun rich-person interiors (there’s a library near the end that gives a stellar performance), does a lot to get “How to Make a Killing” to the finish line. But you may well lose interest, as I did, before the murder countdown concludes; this one feels more like a rough draft than a truly well-thought-out movie.

Achingly sad and dismayingly familiar.

By any sensible standard, and from any ethnic perspective, this is juvenile trash of the lowest order. Never rising above its own crotch-obsessed level of would-be satire, it fails to examine the social issues that give rap music its aggressive vitality, and completely misses every opportunity for intelligent comedy that lies neglected beneath the surface of its imbecilic, gutter-minded excuse for a plot. [12 Mar 1993, p.3]

It’s a standard kiddie cartoon: noisy, colorful and forgettable.

The changes Bissell makes to the story are overly contrived, and the writing and editing are shaky. Most egregiously, Ann’s perspective is completely underwritten, without any personal history and the single humanizing factor of one daughter, who appears only briefly.

Throw in the striking underwater photography and Michel Legrand's big score, and I don't understand why more critics don't dig Ice Station Zebra. Even director John Carpenter calls it a guilty pleasure. [14 Jan 2005, p.H22]

The blending of the realistic elements such as the planning and preparations for the raid with the more surreal aspects of the picture feels forced and awkward. In real life, the raid was an astonishing success, but the movie is ultimately a failure.

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.

Arty slow motion, deliberately distorted photography and even bits of animation are tossed into the stew with the same abandon that Oliver Stone brought to the story Tarantino wrote for Natural Born Killers. But Avary's movie lacks the strong performances and quirky humor that made Reservoir Dogs more than just another low-budget exercise in excess. [09 Sep 1994, p.H29]

Affleck sports plenty of snappy ’20s fashions, tailored double-breasted suits, often cream-colored, and elegant Borsalino-style fedoras. He’s dressed to kill for sure. Too bad his movie is so deadly dull.

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]

It probably misses the point to complain that a movie about satanic possession gets a little ridiculous towards the end. But The Exorcist III is such a witty, chilling treat until its final sequences that the complaint stands. The problem may be that no explanation of the film's diabolical events can possibly be as convincing or scary as the events themselves. [20 Aug 1990, p.F10]

The movie’s main drawback is that its main characters are surprisingly ill-defined.... It’s a frustrating flaw in an otherwise engrossing picture.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is a pastiche of its predecessors, using this mosaic of tropes and formula familiarity as a shorthand to keep the film pared down to the basics of what exactly makes it tick: increasingly sadistic puzzles and a great cast of characters.

While Jennifer 8 won't surprise anyone who's addicted to whodunits, it's not a great disappointment either. It occupies that middle ground inhabited by so many thrillers that keep you interested only as long as they're in front of you. Out of sight, out of mind. [6 Nov 1992, p.20]

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.

Tokyo Decadence includes what may be the only near-death experience ever played for laughs in a movie. [15 Oct 1993, p.D26]

If all you want out of your Tron movie is amazing visuals, a great score and some fun action sequences with light cycles, cool weapons and even a Recognizer, “Ares” will execute that command. Anything more, though, and it all starts to get a little glitchy.

An incredibly lame attempt at '90s-style camp horror.

The Greatest Showman isn’t interested in tiny stories or character or nuance; it’s about being the biggest. In doing so, it becomes strangely small; like a magician’s rabbit, it quickly disappears.

It’s a mishmash in which characters are thrown from dimension to dimension and from dream to dream. The main character, played by Bannister, is forever baffled as to what his actual reality is. His bafflement is shared by the viewer.

It's trashy to the bone, but director Ernest Dickerson targets just the right tone for tension and comic relief, and keeps the whole thing rolling in Grand Guignol style. It may be disposable, but "Demon Knight" is never boring. It's consistently hilarious and just outrageous enough to make Gaines spin happily in his grave. [13 Jan 1995, p.H26]

Paris Can Wait isn’t exactly a feast, but it’s a snack worth having.

The first creature feature of the new decade is here, and boy is it dumb.

This stupefyingly unfunny attempt to create a midnight cult movie stars Judd Nelson as a talentless stand-up comic who becomes a celebrity when he grows a third arm out of the middle of his back. [26 Mar 1992, p.E2]

Vikander doesn’t have much to play, script-wise, but she makes a tough, appealing action star.

In all honesty, Gran Turismo isn’t much more than marketing for the video game coated with a cheer-inducing veneer. But for two hours, you, like Jann, can feel the rest of the world fall away and experience something joyful. It’s predictable yet infectious, charming if a little cheesy at times.

There's an engaging Saturday afternoon feeling to the whole enterprise. And you can tell the screenwriters (there were several of them as the picture labored in Development Hell) had fun thinking up various cool-looking visual gags, like the sight of the laboratory building perforated with random invisible sectors. [28 Feb 1992, p.22]

Generic abuser, generic victim, generic nice-guy-next-door, all going through highly predictable motions. [08 Feb 1991, p.21]

With sufficiently intelligent plotting and an A-list cast led by Sean Connery, Just Cause rises above many standard-issue thrillers with enough momentum to grab and hold your attention. [17 Feb 1995, p.I34]

Presented as a Vietnam War comedy, Operation Dumbo Drop steadfastly refuses to be funny. [28 Jul 1995, p.D3]

Girl on the Train isn’t likely to haunt its shivering viewers the way the “Gone Girl” movie did. Blunt, however, makes the ride well worth taking.