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]

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]

The director is Paris Barclay, a graduate of Harvard, music videos and rewrite jobs on other studios' scripts. Unfortunately, his directing debut is little more than an idea for a movie. [13 Jan 1996, p.F7]

Phoenix goes off the rails in the second half when Kinberg piles fight scene atop CG-enhanced fight scene, backed by Hans Zimmer’s oppressive pounding score, until the picture devolves into a chaotic mess.

It's easy to see why the Rangers are popular. Even before they magically morph, the kids are sky-diving, roller-blading and living without parental authority. And they kick serious butt. But it's all done quite unhumorously.

Most of the picture plays like a collection of action-movie cliches, much like the facetious catalogue that Timothy M. Gray recently compiled in Variety under the heading "Blueprints for blockbusters: Let's go, c'mon!" [2 Aug 1996]

Unfortunately, Kevin Anderson, the former Steppenwolf actor who was so impressive re-creating his stage role in Alan Pakula's film of "Orphans" and impersonating Bobby Kennedy in "Hoffa," can do absolutely nothing with the braying, sexist yuppie who rents the apartment out to Broderick and Sciorra. [1 May 1993, p.C9]

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.

Neither Spader nor Amick can get past the generic nature of the characters they're playing, nor can they make up for Kazan's timid approach to their supposedly steamy love scenes. The nude Spader is so carefully draped and arranged that he could be posing for a soft-core parody, while Amick resorts to doing an impersonation of a haughty 1940s glamour queen. [6 May 1994, p.D31]

French Exit isn’t without its pleasures; but you watch it dreaming of the movie it might have been.

Nobody’s behavior here resembles that of an actual person, and the directing is often awkward.

Director Scott Cooper really lays it on thick. He brings no modulation to the horror elements in his frightfest. Everything is gloom, gloom, gloom. And doom.

I’ll admit to a weakness for this sort of thing (which Merchant-Ivory, a couple of decades back, made into elegant art), but even I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for this one, a tepid love triangle set in the Ottoman Empire in the early days of World War I.

By the time the big reveal comes along, it’s almost beside the point. The audience, so numbed by the gore, is likely to barely care who indeed did it.

The sweet-natured rom-com I Feel Pretty has a well-meaning message, but it gets lost in the telling.

This is a production from producer Michael Bay, master of the cinema of CG run amok. And all we helpless mortals can do is cower and duck as those 3D fists fly.

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]

This “Naked Gun” tries hard, but the magic simply isn’t there.

It's a ridiculous premise, and the film works best when Badham seems in on the joke. By the time Harvey Keitel appears as a ruthless operative assigned to clean up a botched job, the film has reached its own point of no return, tipping over the edge into rib-tickling parody. Keitel is one of the few actors alive who can make you chuckle while disposing of corpses in an acid bath. [19 March 1993, p.16]

[Hillcoat’s] an expert in creating and sustaining gut-twisting tension. Good qualities all, but used here in the service of a story that is truly unappetizing.

Overlong set-piece action scenes pitched in the key of chaos, full of running and screaming and a whole lot of falling down, ultimately turn “Pikachu” into a wearying slog.