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]