The picture is essentially a brief for Wise’s case. And as such, it’s as dry and uncinematic as a dusty legal document.

Ultimately, despite Nanjiani’s best efforts, it’s a disposable fast-car summer movie, neither terrible or good, for those biding their time before the next “Fast & Furious” installment.

Rose resorts too easily to the easy jolt, the gratuitous release of anxiety and, finally, the reliance on graphic bloodletting and pointless shocks (such as the ominously unsettling Todd kissing Madsen with a mouthful of bees), sacrificing whatever substance the story started out with. [17 Oct 1992, p.C5]

Ultimately, the film’s unwillingness to go deeper makes it fall flat.

The satisfaction of a cozy mystery doesn’t always come exclusively from a complex puzzle solved; it also comes from justice done and, ideally, comeuppance savored. Despite being beautifully made, this tepid, moralizing story denies us any of those pleasures. Rude.

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

No matter what its virtues are, this Satanic gobbledy-gook still tastes like gobbledy-gook. [09 Apr 1990, p.E3]

The “Dragon Tattoo” series continues with “Spider’s Web,” but it seems as though the franchise is running out of gas and fresh ideas.

Parker uses such broad strokes that he can't tease the necessary charm out of his actor. The band's backstage spats are too extreme to be convincing and as a joke they get old fast. [13 Sep 1991, p.24]

All of this is sporadically funny and cheerfully tasteless in its low-budget way, but it’s also unevenly acted, a bit overlong and never quite as daring as it seems to want to be.

The Getaway gradually devolves into just another high-polish shoot'em-up between half-baked characters. Led by Baldwin, everyone's acting so cool they're prit'near frozen. [11 Feb 1994, p.D24]

There’s a lot going on here, which leads to a whole lot of gassy exposition to explain it all.... Think of it as torture by blah-blah.

With anybody other than a superstar like Tom Cruise in the title role, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back would just be a routine potboiler. With superstar Tom Cruise in the title role, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is … a routine potboiler.

As usual, the majority of gags are strictly hit or miss, but they don't stop until the movie's completely over, so here's a fair warning: If you're one of the few who still doesn't know secret of "The Crying Game," don't watch the "Part Deux" end credits. [21 May 1993, p.23]

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.

King of New York may have its moments. But with the standard in gangster films so high right now ("GoodFellas," "The Krays," "Miller's Crossing"), there's no real way to recommend it. [12 Jan 1991, p.C3]

Long before the final battle, the movie runs out of steam. At two hours, it's just too long. But taken as a guilty pleasure, it's tolerable. [19 Apr 1996]

Motherless Brooklyn is lovely to look at — the cast, in addition to their acting talents, all look great in ’50s styles — and I enjoyed the noir-y jazz of the dialogue. (“Everybody looks like everybody to me,” a bartender tells Lionel, who’s looking for someone in the shadows of a club.) But it’s easily half an hour longer than it needs to be, and it’s full of moments that don’t go anywhere.

Betrayals, narrow escapes and much battle action ensue in the course of the picture’s paint-by-numbers plotting.

Rather than using the extended running time to dig deep into these characters, director Andy Muschietti, who also directed the original, piles on the frights in a manner that builds to an ending drenched in hysteria.

You wait and you wait, through many overamped special-effects action sequences, for the cavalry to save the day, but by the time it finally appears, the picture has been long dead.

The film doesn’t have much to say about its central questions, and its ending feels inevitable but also unearned.

What the film does have going for it is a ghostly atmosphere that leads to a few surprising developments, including some color effects and a charmingly off-the-wall musical number.

The blend of Johnson’s laid-back hero-dudeness and Hart’s whippet-fast comic timing should have been good fun. But somebody, alas, had an idea, though not a good one: Make Johnson the comedian and Hart the straight man.

In the midst of all the mayhem it’s sometimes hard to stay awake.

Whether or not you're a fan of De Jong's earlier work, Drop Dead Fred is clearly an extension of it. There's even a touch of Peter Pan and Wendy in the relationship between Mayall and Cates ("He's like my best friend, and yet I'm scared to death of him"), who has a ball with the role.

Arty examination of the nature of reality in Swinging London. [20 Feb 2004, p.H23]

Get out your handkerchiefs, but don’t expect to believe a minute of this vastly improbable tale.

Shouting and struggling, poor Pratt vainly tries to give his character dimension and some sense of sympathy. So genial and engaging in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, Pratt flails grouchily and ineffectively in Mercy.

Originality was on vacation when this picture was made.

Medieval is a film with an identity crisis, caught between its lowbrow sword-and-splatter charms and grander ambitions. As a quick and dirty 90-minute corker, it could have been a nice and nasty slice of genre filmmaking, but Jakl aims for something more epic in scope, and the film drags, easily 30 minutes too long.

Under Petrie's competent direction, the action-genre nuts and bolts are firmly in place. Machine guns are fired and bombs blow up. But the subject of real interest here - how a kid might come to terms with authority even if his boarding school weren't taken over by Colombian terrorists - gets lost in the showdown. [26 Apr 1991, p.24]

Someday, someone will pair up Johansson and Tatum in a better movie. In the meantime, watch this one with low expectations, and dream.

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]

As recent horror movies go, The Guardian isn't terrible - it's more suspenseful and coherent than Nightbreed or Leatherface, and Friedkin's flair for the genre does surface here and there. But it's hard to care about the outcome when the people are such sticks. [27 Apr 1990, p.20]

There are several ways you can watch Elle, only one of which is mildly enjoyable.

Ultimately there's more guilt than pleasure to be found in The Craft. [03 May 1996]

The action is pumped up. The destruction is extreme. The whole thing is absurd.

Well-intentioned but hulky and lumbering, "Steel" falls somewhere between the cacophony of "Batman & Robin" and the tepid Robert Townsend vehicle "Meteor Man." With a size-22 shoe, it just keeps stepping on its own feet.

This is disposable cinema for those who have an excess of time on their hands. Save it for video. Then you can do household chores while you wait for its occasional laughs. [26 Apr 1991, p.20]

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.

Part of the problem with "Fallen" is the relentless dumbing down of Nicholas Kazan's script. [16 Jan 1998]

There's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance when it comes to the material and the approach that the filmmakers take, and much that doesn't get covered in this short, 80-minute primer.

Ripped works best as a middling series of gags about being far too many tokes over the line.

The characters are so thinly sketched that the audience feels little emotional investment in them, and the handheld (or rather head-mounted) cameras produce the same jittery visuals that many viewers found so off-putting in the original.

Like Bernadette, the movie’s lost; you’ll need to read the book to truly find her.

The original ending - which Baldwin refers to early in the film - was completely cut and replaced with an 11th-hour brainstorm by Eszterhas, amounting to little more than a punchline for the shaggiest shaggy-dog story in recent memory.

The movie jerks tears shamelessly, it smugly mocks the political and fashion trends of the early 1970s, its characters make no sense at all, and it even makes fun of senility. [27 Nov 1991, p.C1]

As a creature feature, Cocaine Bear isn’t bad. Not great, mind you. But not bad.

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.

Skyscraper, which lacks the lunkheaded charm of “Rampage,” isn’t the ideal vehicle — its special effects are murky (I saw it in 2D; it’s probably even muddier in 3D), and a bit of wit wouldn’t have been unwelcome. Nobody in this film has a personality; they’re just evil, stoic, mildly badass (particularly Neve Campbell, as Will’s resourceful wife) or The Rock.

There are moments now and then that register, particularly early in the movie when we meet the regulars on the musical-impersonator circuit.

With tonal inconsistencies and poorly written characters, any awe inspired by Alita: Battle Angel is replaced with a profound sense of confusion.

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.

The movie relies rather too heavily on McAdams’ charm, sort of like a limp cheeseburger that’s saved by some really good bacon. But hey, sometimes a fast-food cheeseburger satisfies, more or less.

The plot tries too hard to incorporate elements that drift toward melodrama.

It's hard to enjoy the same joke told a hundred times over. After so many gags about the burial of live cats or putting baby Pubert on a guillotine, it's clear that the movie has little else on its mind. It's enough to make Charles Addams turn in his . . . well, you get the idea. [19 Nov 1993, p.D3]

The Wedding Guest is a thriller without thrills.

The disappointment of Breaking In is the wasted potential — there are a few plot setups that could have been further fleshed out or brought back around (why was her father being investigated by the DA?) and Union isn’t given enough opportunity to truly display her charms. This thriller could have really used some room to breathe.

The chief distinction of the picture, and what makes it more guilty pleasure than patience-tester, is Pakula's strong visual sense, which is reminiscent of his work on "The Parallax View." [16 Oct 1992, p.3]

What we have here is a standard-issue comedy-tinged crime thriller indifferently directed by Tim Story (the “Think Like a Man” and “Ride Along” movies). Its nothing-special plot, the product of writers Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow, features ill-defined villains and briefly touches on Islamophobia and military veteran PTSD and drug abuse — and never follows up on any of those issues.

Unfortunately, King Arthur is somewhat less compelling than the "Lord of the Rings" movies; there's serious intent here, but an often thudding execution.

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.

In Rudolph's own scripts there's usually a foundation of whimsy that somehow balances out his acid-edged commentary on human follies. Here, there's only a standard murder-mystery plot that cheats on its ending and an East Coast locale where funny accents and hairdos are the real victims. [19 Apr 1991, p.25]

There’s such a thing as something being too personal. James White is that thing.

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]

Weaver’s Kay is a fanatic.

Everything, Everything is watchable and not unpleasant, in its moony way, thanks to the chemistry of two leads, both of whom exude a genuine sweetness in the face of an absurd plotline.

You don’t really watch Suspiria, you endure it.

Strange movie. And despite the presence of Tina Fey playing its lead character, a cable-TV reporter named Kim Baker, it’s not a funny one.

As funny as this movie sometimes is, it could've been much funnier, ironically enough, if it had taken itself more seriously. [29 Apr 1994, p.D34]

Despite promising elements of mixed-genre thrills, the film is finally the underwhelming sum of too many plot devices.

The picture is part slapstick comedy, part tearjerker, but the mixture rarely works, and sometimes it's actively irritating.

What makes The Resurrection of Gavin Stone singular is its fresh and thoroughly modern approach to evangelical Christianity.

The uneasy marriage of clunky psychodrama and overwrought special effects along with the fact that none of these characters are particularly likable make Strange World a chore to sit through.

McTiernan may have no peers when it comes to action thrillers. But in this character-propelled story, he sorely needs a lighter touch. [07 Feb 1992, p.24]

The emphasis here is on the splashy spectacle with those insider-knowledge elements jammed together in a frenetic hodgepodge.

If you plan to build an entire movie around a whining boor, his whining should have some accuracy or wit. His boorishness should at least suggest complexity, some motivation beyond the obvious. [09 Sep 1994, p.H32]

You can see why McAvoy was drawn to the role — it’s as if he’s playing every character in a very populated if not particularly well-scripted play — and he demonstrates a shellacked creepiness that’s effective. But Shyamalan can’t find much else that’s new or appealing in this overlong girls-in-peril exercise.

This flick isn’t a masterpiece, not even a vulgar one, but it’s cheeky and entertaining enough in its giddy hyperviolence, thanks almost entirely to the star turn of Josh Hartnett, who has proved in his recent renaissance that he’s especially great in bozo mode.

There’s nothing original in the movie. Indeed, the off-screen controversy that’s been consuming social media lately over the casting of pop superstar Styles and whether Pugh and Wilde are at odds overshadows the movie itself.

You know, there was a time when “Guardians of the Galaxy” was fun. That time was 2014, when the first picture came out... Now here’s “Vol. III.” And it’s no fun at all.

Blackboard Jungle created this genre (and most of its cliches) more than 40 years ago. 187 doesn't add much more than outrage and resignation. [30 Jul 1997]

The picture’s ultimate destination is marked with an obviousness so bright it can be seen from space.

The story has its possibilities, but inauthentic detail and uncertain directorial tone undermine it. [18 Jan 1991, p.23]

The first-rate cast — right down to that infant, who displays Streep-like instincts for the camera — toils mightily. But sadly, they’re trapped in what becomes a sort of A-list Nicholas Sparks melodrama Down Under.

Try to remember this movie, a few days after seeing it, and you’ll find that — like magic — it’s disappeared.

There's so much blood, sweat and craziness that you stop laughing with first-time screenwriter Harry Bean's script and begin laughing at it. Long before it reaches the fever pitch of a hysterical finale, you may also find yourself looking at your watch. [12 Jan 1990, p.21]

As Walton, D.B. Sweeney recalls Richard Dreyfuss's UFO-obsessed family man in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He's a sweet, semi-looney dreamer who all but invites the aliens to take him, and his performance is the most appealing thing about the picture. [12 Mar 1993, p.3]

The irony and meaninglessness of the violence rankles, especially when Ulysses is presented as such a nice guy who is prone to de-escalation and community care in his day-to-day work.

A slickly contrived studio product, as insincere as it is ineffectual. [12 Oct 1990, p.28]

I don’t know about you, but this particular time in history does not seem like the moment for a movie that will leave you a) miserable and b) wondering why nobody in Gotham City seems to have heard of light bulbs. Your mileage may vary, but for me — who loved both the Tim Burton and the Christopher Nolan “Batman” universes — this one feels like an earnest but bloated misfire.

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.

Cruise and company wanted to make American Made a fun and often funny ride, but there’s something oddly joyless about the whole enterprise. Its overweening cynicism leaves a curdled aftertaste.

Its theme of white man as savior of black Africans is, to say the least, highly anachronistic in these days and times.

They've simply turned the book into an anything-goes burlesque with such a contemporary flavor that even 1990s street slang is permissible. [12 Nov 1993, p.D27]

Barney's Great Adventure may be a magical journey of emotion for the little ones, it's rather a puzzlement for uninitiated adults. [03 Apr 1998, p.G9]

Once again, Philip Glass composes one of his insistent scores -- and again the effect is pretentious, considering the circumstances. Director Bill Condon has a sense of style but a heavy hand with actors -- you can all but hear them telling themselves to hit their marks and punch out their lines. [17 Mar 1995, p.H28]