Sloppy writing, inconsistent tone and gaping plotholes make this film look more like instant video product. [1 May 1992, p.34]

It’s Honeyglue, a romantic drama, which fittingly, given that title, is sticky with sentimentality.

Many decisions...make “Batman v Superman” a joyless slog.

Although it is as harmless as its predecessor - and harmless should not be mistaken for a compliment - there is only one sad conclusion to be drawn from this kind of profiteering kiddie fodder: We owe our children better than this.

The worst thing about Life Itself is not that it is emotionally sadistic. It's just how much it wants to be emotionally sadistic, while missing the mark by a mile.

Time-travel movies don't come much dopier than Freejack. [18 Jan 1982, p.C5]

Much of the time, for all the leering effort she puts into portraying this demonic tease, Barrymore just seems to be playing dress-up. She also needs a more responsive co-star than Gilbert, who gives a one-note performance in the part that should be at the story's center. [29 May 1992, p.18]

In trying to do too much, Halloween Kills ends up doing nothing at all, other than tarnishing this franchise’s good name.

Nowhere to Run isn't the worst of its kind - it's just painfully uninspired. Perhaps that partially accounts for Van Damme's apparent disinterest. With one expression at his command, it's surprising that he actually musters three distinct acting styles: concrete, steel, and petrified wood. [15 Jan 1993, p.18]

Sadly, Friend Request is not even the first movie to travel that harrowing Dead Girl Who Still Maintains an Active Facebook Presence road.

It's no more obnoxious than the original, and in several ways it's more interesting. [08 Apr 1995, p.C7]

Elba, always a powerful presence in whatever role he takes on, does the best he can in Beast, but the threadbare nature of the plotting and dialogue ultimately defeats him.

Toy Story approached toy frenzy from the toys' point of view while craftily exploring the media-driven delusions of that Turbo Man-like doll, Buzz Lightyear. Jingle All the Way had that kind of potential, but somewhere along the way the filmmakers lost all perspective. [22 Nov 1996, p.F7]

A more disagreeable collection of cynical, backstabbing, self-aggrandizing, shallow, vicious and vile specimens of humanity gathered together in a single motion picture would be difficult to conceive of.

Once it gets going, Black Adam feels like a continuous closed loop of destruction where the moments of mayhem blend darn near seamlessly one into the other. And those special effects look incredibly cheesy.

When words fail in The Last Knight, the crunching and crashing and KLANKing of the special-effects scenes take up the slack. Punishingly overwrought in every aspect, Last Knight is a KLANK! KLANK! KLUNKER.

It’s a mishmash in which characters are thrown from dimension to dimension and from dream to dream. The main character, played by Bannister, is forever baffled as to what his actual reality is. His bafflement is shared by the viewer.

Cute and daffy enough to make your molars ache, Bakery in Brooklyn is the kind of romantic comedy that lacks all conviction.

Every scene in this film, which stars Robert De Niro as the washed-up title character, is dragged out — kicking and screaming — far longer than it needs to be.

A joyless experience.

Amsterdam is not entirely without small pleasures: Emmanuel Lubezki’s sepia-toned cinematography is lovely to look at, and it’s fun to play spot-the-movie-star with the talented cast, and to note with pleasure how Washington’s scratched-velvet voice sounds so much like that of his father Denzel. But ultimately it’s a big disappointment.

I was hoping to miss the preview of Encino Man by scheduling some other, more entertaining diversion like, say, a few hours of unnecessary oral surgery. No such luck...There is a special annex of hell for movies like this, where sinners and simpletons are sent to atone for watching too much MTV. [22 May 1992, p.22]

We can see everything that Manhattan Night has in store from a mile off. Every step of the way it’s predictable. And that predictability makes it tedious.

Child's Play 2 is perfunctory, disagreeable and patience-trying. [09 Nov 1990, p.24]

Sometimes, all the pieces are there, but it just isn’t worth putting the puzzle together. Such is the case with Tomas Alfredson’s The Snowman.

The movie’s unrelenting sensory onslaught is exhausting. It’s torture to sit through.

It quickly becomes apparent that the narrative content of “Kingsglaive” is a barely coherent muddle.

There are some fleeting moments of inspiration — the music by Rob Simonsen is a master class in sudsy melodrama, and Nixon turns in a great performance — but The Only Living Boy in New York is rotten to its Big Apple core.