“The Last Dance” brings nothing new to the series. In fact, it brings less than the previous two movies

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.

The funniest element of what vaguely gestures toward dark comedy is how poorly written this story about writers is.

Linda Blair and Leslie Nielsen deserve better than the scattershot script for Repossessed, a desperate spoof of The Exorcist that generates perhaps two belly laughs, three well-earned smiles and about 287 groaners. [29 Sep 1990, p.B7]

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.

It wants to make a joke at its source material’s expense, but all it ever accomplishes is making you want to watch those classics instead.

Nothing But Trouble is nothing but dismal. [16 Feb 1991, p.C5]

You watch hoping that the always-splendid Condon, an Oscar nominee last year for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” is getting a really good paycheck, and wondering why writer/director Bryce McGuire saw fit to expand his very effective four-minute 2014 film “Night Swim” into this soggy mess. Don’t go in the water, indeed.

Collateral Beauty is a pretty terrible movie, but it left me with one overarching thought: My life, and surely yours, too, would be vastly improved if only Helen Mirren were perpetually lurking nearby, offering advice.

Production values could not be cheaper for a major-studio film. An extended woodsy scene with a collapsing cabin, supposedly set in the Wenatchee National Forest, so obviously makes use of tiny models that you expect the artifice to become part of the joke. It never does. Like so much of Black Sheep, it's a missed opportunity.

Rob Reiner's "North" is a modest, uneven satire about parents and children. It stars the ingratiating Elijah Wood and generates its share of laughs, but the film never moves beyond its obvious point: Kids deserve parents who aren't self-serving imbeciles. [22 Jul 1994, p.D25]

The travelogue-style photography is soothing, the bodies are pretty and the music isn't offensive, but feature-length movies can't survive on the ingredients for a standard airline commercial.

This stupefyingly unfunny attempt to create a midnight cult movie stars Judd Nelson as a talentless stand-up comic who becomes a celebrity when he grows a third arm out of the middle of his back. [26 Mar 1992, p.E2]

Car 54, Where are You? is an insult to the popular late-1950's TV show that inspired it.

At the risk of confessing a breech of duties, I "watched" much of the film with my eyes closed, isolating the soundtrack only because I could always accurately guess what was happening on the screen . . . which wasn't much, believe me. [20 Mar 1993, p.C6]

Eastwood is known for his ruthless efficiency as a filmmaker, but The Mule feels dashed off at best, barely even a movie. It’s a strange rough draft, poorly executed and disastrously performed, despite the starry cast.

Mortal Engines hasn’t much in the way of originality, other than its rolling city, to distinguish it from other, better post-apocalyptic tales.

The nonstop silliness of this picture leaves one choking on stifled laughter.

I wished I was actually watching “Batman and Robin” or “Superman IV,” because for all their camp, those movies felt less pointless and more human than “Thor 4,” a cheap corporate commercial for upcoming Marvel content.

Stone Cold may be the morally bankrupt nadir of what is so far one of Hollywood's worst years. [17 May 1991, p.3]

There's not much any actor can do with material as woeful as this. Pierce seems as charmless at the end of First Kid as he is in the early scenes, while Sinbad seems lost without a stand-up shtick. [30 Aug 1996]

There is real passion in DeBose’s vocal performance as she tries to elevate the rote music. I just wish she were in a better movie.

Greetings from Moldova. Where surly locals stare sullenly at stupid strangers. Where the traditional regional greeting extended to said strangers is a hatchet in the forehead.

The script by David Stenn (21 Jump Street), which also includes a hoary subplot involving blackmail, a kidnapping and a guilty family secret, is essentially a way of tying together a collection of familiar-looking music videos that are so loosely connected to the story that they have about the same impact as commercials. [19 Oct 1991, p.C7]

It’s frustrating, because a couponing crime lord (crime lady?) being pursued by an obsessed grocery store employee is a story that has so much potential, but the lazy storytelling and on-the-nose direction suck all of the laughs that could come out of the situation.

It seems director James Wan had one overarching goal in making “Aquaman.” His prime directive? Crush the audience into submission.

In the end, The Rookie winds up looking like a poor relation of Lethal Weapon or Tango & Cash. And that's mighty poor. [07 Dec 1990, p.29]

It’s not a terribly good idea to base a movie on a book in which almost nothing happens for 500 pages, but that’s what we have here.