Benjamin provides just the right balance of sincerity and snark to hold this dark action-comedy together. When combined with bloody good action choreography, the film mostly knocks any flaws aside.

There are some genuinely funny bits but, alas, far too few.

This $80 million disaster epic takes us back to the simple, tacky pleasures of Irwin Allen's "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "The Towering Inferno" (1974), although Allen's blockbusters had more of a feeling for character and mythic resonance than "Daylight" ever demonstrates. [6 Dec 1996]

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.

The CGI is off the leash. The manufactured chaos is unrelenting. Monsters punching monsters. The pyramids are peril. Awesome deconstruction there.

This curio of a film could have gone deeper into what it means to be a gangster, but its core themes resonate all the same.

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.

As it is, Only the Lonely offers a passable evening's entertainment, complete with teary-eyed moments and clever touches of bittersweet comedy. [24 May 1991, p.24]

With scenes of epic destruction uncorked with numbing frequency, the picture drags. It’s two hours and 10 minutes long and you feel every last second.

This one will likely only appeal to fans of the genre who appreciate reverence and twists on this kind of material, but it’s bloody — if lightweight — fun for those who enjoy this kind of good old-fashioned romp in the woods.

Love Potion No. 9 is no great shakes, but far worse comedies are routinely released without a second thought. [13 Nov 1992, p.28]

Unfortunately, the script is so hopelessly superficial that very little of this registers. It's the work of Eric Roth, who wrote the unspeakable Billy Crystal comedy, "Memories of Me," and Michael Cristofer, a playwright whose most prominent previous screen credit was the disastrous "Bonfire of the Vanities."

The dumbest, goriest bone-cruncher of the season: an unnecessary and Arnold-less sequel to the Schwarzenegger science-fiction hit of three years ago. [21 Nov 1990, p.C3]

In the middle of their mainstream pandering, Hughes and Columbus have an uncanny knack for developing cleancut sentiment that is calculated yet sweetly sincere. The key to their success lies in having it both ways: Kevin is smarter than all the adults, but he's still just a cute, frightened little boy who wants his mom. [20 Nov 1992, p.3]

A not-bad entry in the Pinhead series Clive Barker started. [29 Oct 2002, p.E1]

Watching Phoenix in his last film, I couldn't help thinking of James Dean's final performance, as the cranky loner, Jett Rink, in "Giant." [12 Nov 1993, p.D3]

Gringo has no spark, no fizz. Its scenes sag like overstretched taffy. Flavorless taffy.

It’s just a bad movie; a flat melodrama in which some lovely camerawork and a ferocious central performance from Winslet can’t conceal the rote tiredness of it all.

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

With its boyhood-to-manhood tropes (growing up means getting a girl’s attention and winning an idol’s respect), London Town can’t be taken too seriously. But it’s nice to see part of the Clash’s populist legacy in a fan’s journey.

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.

Although the sense of being inside a video game is strong, one critical element is lacking: interactivity. Players are always working their controllers to send characters on their complicated journeys. They’re participants. A movie, by its very nature, turns everyone into spectators. We watch, but have no control over what we see. And what we see in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is nothing more than empty-calorie visuals.

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]

The Addams Family suffers from an acute case of the cutes.

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.

As it is, Tommy Boy is funny enough, but with Farley in the spotlight you shouldn't settle on playing it safe. [31 Mar 1995, p.G25]

It may be treacly and unrealistic, but “Book Club: The Next Chapter” has heart and soul, and it’s as sweet and quaffable as an Aperol spritz on a hot day.

Even if the weave is loose and the big final reveal takes such a hard-left turn it could cause another traffic fatality, Honey Don’t! is a bleak and breezy good time. Don’t overthink it.