Pathetically uninspired. [10 Dec 1993, p.G3]

Him is a bit like the red-faced drunk next to you at the Seahawks game: loud, fun at first, wearing thin after a few drives — asleep by the end.

Mile 22 is one nasty piece of work. It’s an action picture that’s hard-core to the core, populated entirely by killers with nary a truly sympathetic figure among them. But it does deliver.

Gemini Man is full of the expected action and bullets, none of which is especially thrilling, but you leave thinking about those two faces — and about how movie magic keeps finding new tricks.

You feel for the actors, who you know are better than this stuff, and you wonder if director F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”) just threw up his hands. And you wonder if, somewhere, Smith and Jones are chuckling. At least somebody was.

If ever there was a movie that should never have been made, Bad Santa 2 is that movie. It’s vile, like something written by a pen dipped in bile.

The original ending - which Baldwin refers to early in the film - was completely cut and replaced with an 11th-hour brainstorm by Eszterhas, amounting to little more than a punchline for the shaggiest shaggy-dog story in recent memory.

Pali Road — an engrossing psychological thriller with a trapped damsel’s very sanity on the line — demonstrates how an enigmatic story can unabashedly overflow with disorienting puzzles and perverse twists, all for the sake of blurring the line between reality and illusion.

While it's no breakthrough, this may be the best of Disney's popular Ernest comedies starring Jim Varney as an amiable moron in the Jerry Lewis tradition. [11 Oct 1991, p.23]

Fascinating at certain moments, especially when Lewis is exploring his character’s grief and bitterness, it still feels like a work in progress.

Unfortunately, he's working from a cliche-choked, insensitive script, written by Gary Goldman (``Big Trouble in Little China'') and Chuck Pfaffer (``Dark Man''), that makes a point of stirring up old prejudices.

The jokes are labored and rarely clever, the narration is self-consciously cute and the pace, under director Charles Martin Smith, is that of the snail. "Boris and Natasha" should have been as fast, funny and clever as "SCTV" once was. Instead, "Boris and Natasha" looks more like a Saturday morning kiddie cartoon than a comedy show for grown-ups. [16 Apr 1992, p.E6]

This is the movie that Steven Spielberg's Money Pit should have been. The mind-blowing ending makes it a must-see. [31 Oct 1999]

The special effects are quite impressive for a low-budget production, although the classiest thing about it is the voice of Welles, whose verbal dramatization of the Martian invasion still chills. [27 Apr 1990, p.20]

Cheap and cheesy at every level, this Ben-Hur barely qualifies as an epic. It’s a wholly unnecessary addition to the venerable franchise.

When the two groups meet, the movie becomes incredibly disjointed, as if Trevorrow met his heroes and wasn’t sure what to say. He peppers the movie with callbacks to his first “Jurassic World” movie and the original “Jurassic Park,” but it feels like he wants us to acknowledge that his “World” is as iconic as Spielberg’s “Park.” He’s doing fan service, but he doesn’t fully commit.

It’s all instantly forgettable. Except for the tulips — which, for the record, look stellar.

Although its lofty ambitions as a "social comedy" are never fully realized, Amos & Andrew is a refreshingly intelligent, character-driven comedy that attempts to tackle a timely and serious issue - racism - and still manages to be consistently funny. [05 Mar 1993, p.24]

Then it raids "GoodFellas" and "The Godfather" for most of its material, before winding up as the same old ultraviolent schlock. [13 Apr 1991, p.C5]

The Addams Family 2 feels as if it’s lost the spark of the first one. The jokes that felt fresh in the first film are stale here, with the story’s twists glaringly predictable.

Get out your handkerchiefs, but don’t expect to believe a minute of this vastly improbable tale.

Although it drags for 105 lugubrious minutes, Striptease is not the embarrassment that Showgirls was - not by a long shot.

We don’t even see that much of Cuba. Most of the action takes place at Hemingway’s estate there — the actual house, a vanilla-ice-cream-colored mansion (now a Hemingway museum), which gives a restrained, elegant performance. Pity the rest of the movie doesn’t rise to its standard.

It’s all just a day at the beach, harmlessly fun and instantly forgettable.

In more careless hands, Middle Man’s deranged farce could have resulted in an unchecked, undisciplined movie with nothing to say. But beneath the roller-coaster madness here is an earthbound terror that art is meant to reveal.

None of this has any real reason for being; even the tiniest bit of drama that Vardalos’ screenplay scares up...gets wrapped up by the hour mark. But Vardalos has created a community of characters and players so likable, it seems almost mean to criticize.

Let’s just say that things aren’t always what they seem, and that there is not enough popcorn in the world to make this particular twist go down.

What you've got here is nothing more (or less) than a smartly recast 90-minute episode of the old show, and that, as longtime fans of the Hillbillies will tell you, can be more fun than a swim in the ce-ment pond. [15 Oct 1993, p.D18]