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.