Writer/director Julie Dash pours on sounds, music and costuming for a tone more impressionistic than dramatic - and more somnambulant than either. She might have gotten away with it for 80 minutes, but merciless Dust closes in on the two-hour mark, a structural shambles in the too-earnest American Playhouse tradition. [1 April 1992, p.6D]

Not even Bill Murray could save Garfield. Perhaps the comedian -- so pitch-perfect as the sardonic actor in "Lost in Translation" -- got too deeply into character.

The movie is repetitious in some ways and superficial in others. But though Penn doesn't always seem to know where he's going, his movie doesn't altogether miss its destination. [15 Nov 1995, Pg.05.D]

The handsome production design notwithstanding, The Awakening is not an elegant thriller. It's more like solemn drivel.

The wrap-up feels tacked-on and too good to be true, with emotions the story really hasn't earned.

Action fans -- particularly devotees of brainless '80s shoot-em-ups -- may find enough to like here, particularly the preposterous mayhem of the third act.

Hoffman stores the plane fuel in his house and even enjoys sniffing it. The movie might be a lot more fun as a suspense pic were he to take on a roommate who chained-smoked.

Young directed under his preferred nom de plume (Bernard Shakey), and you'll either want to see this or you won't. Will it influence your decision to add that Devo - yes, Devo - plays nuclear power workers who glow? [01 Sep 1995, p.12D]

As impressive as Kevin Spacey ordinarily is, this isn't the best vehicle for his considerable talents.

A handsome but riotously cluttered melodrama with maybe 145 subplots, it's the latest and least in a soulless string of preordained multiplex hits from the John Grisham warehouse. [24Jul1996 Pg. 10.B]

Let others recharge that tired Die Hard formula. Cameron invents a new kind of family therapy that saves your marriage and the world. [15 Jul 1994 Pg. 01.D]

It's still a sick kick to see the little girl (with braces, no less) sink her teeth into her own mother. But doing a Sunset of the Dead might have been a more appetizing idea. [23 Oct 1990, p.6D]

Though Walt Disney's Peter Pan once implored us never to smile at a crocodile, the Irwins' own home movie is worth a couple of chuckles. Shivers, too.

This Lynch-ian knockoff is moodily monotonal, but the sameness is wearying.

While not exactly a zero, 21 lags and fails to measure up dramatically.

It's undoubtedly a daunting role, and Morgado captures the gentle benevolence associated with the messianic figure. He doesn't, however, project the authority, gravitas or depth of a spiritual leader.

This Christmas Carol seems like a pale ghost of Dickens' magical Christmas classic.

It seems as if no professional actors were hired in the making of this motion picture.

Sometimes the most compelling real-life stories make better documentaries than dramas. Such would seem to be the case with The Children of Huang Shi.

So much effort seems to have gone into the eye-popping production design, swooping camera work and anachronistic musical score that the result is hyper-active cacophony rather than enthralling entertainment.

The film is one long Costco joke - but the punch line is never all that funny.

Déjà Vu cannot escape the weight of its murky science, action-film formula and preposterous ending.

A classic example of a second-rate courtroom drama.

A flimsy, occasionally spooky demon tale.

Lucky Numbers is anything but lucky for stars John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow.

Ryder's commitment is impressive. If her movie only had her courage.

The movie establishes good will (or even great will) in the initial scenes because it's so gorgeous, but the rest is such a slog.

Tolerably tepid.

The tone is consistent, but consistently uneventful. [06 May 1994]

What undercuts sharper than Poseidon's trident is a script that sees its characters as cardboard, not flesh and blood. For a film meant to be spectacle over substance, it's not a fatal blow. But it is a mortal wound.

As the couple stand on the bluffs overlooking San Francisco Bay, you may find yourself wishing Forlani would push Prinze in.

Even in the junky potboilers that John Travolta has persisted in making since his "Pulp Fiction" comeback (all 5,000 of them), you usually get the sense that he's acting in his bailiwick.

While the film comes to a mildly clever conclusion, it feels like a bottle of vintage champagne that never gets to pop its cork at midnight. All that fizz potential wasted. [26 Feb 1999]

Despite an 87-minute running time, the movie takes a long time to get rolling, and even fellow Leigh enthusiasts may wonder whether the payoff is worth it, though reaction could well divide along sexual lines. [7 Aug 1997, p.3D]

In its third go-round, the Lethal Weapon arsenal is running out of ammunition. [15 May 1992]

Machete Kills dulls more than anything. It's not that Robert Rodriguez's sequel lacks any of the camp or exploitative violence of the 2010 original. The mayhem has just become boring.

Pratt can do lovable rogue in his sleep at this point, and Brown’s got a spunky young woman down pat. Both of them have some good lines and emotional moments but they mostly feel plug-and-play rather than mining anything new and exciting.

Were some group to launch a rival to the Oscars called The Wackys, it could do worse than make crazed Crazy its first recipient.

Nearly everyone in this film is unlikeable, their actions inexplicable. And the pace is so lugubrious that it's hard not to succumb to Justine's glum mood.

Watching the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by E. Annie Proulx on the big screen is like being on an ocean liner stuck on a glacier.

Not only is this comedy no Bull Durham, it's just plain bull. [7 Apr 1989, p.6D]

It's all very slight and only sporadically amusing, and it makes Allen's "Celebrity" from last year look even more underrated than it already is.

Shyamalan's style is so exaggerated, with its long pauses and exacting rhythms of sound- vs.- silence, that it easily can engender eye-rolling and snickers.

Works best as a ponderous metaphor for life's uncertainties. As a lighthearted comedy, the force, alas, is not with it. [19 March 1999, Life, p.13E]

To cut Noe a break, it does become evident that he has a viable narrative concept. Told backward, á la "Memento."

SpongeBob barely rates as OK when compared with "The Incredibles."

Isn't tough to take as long as you've paid a matinee price.

It does survive its 40-minute test drive before turning into a lemon.

With heavy HIV subtext and a couple of actors who have scored in other films, this La Bohème spinoff about fatal illness, drug addiction and eviction ought to be less of a slog than it is.

Can't quite figure out what it wants to be. At times it strains to be a stately period drama about 16th-century political intrigue. Then it devolves into soap opera muck and emerges as a rather tame bodice ripper.

Savages comes off as director Oliver Stone trying to rekindle his "Natural Born Killers" mojo from 1994. But when the bigger-name stars show up here in cartoonish roles, things feel more silly than gritty.

Premonition is both dreary and absurd, suffering from a lack of intrinsic logic and terrible pacing, a one-two punch that kills off any chance of entertainment value.

Spike Lee deserved a vacation after putting himself through the grueling emotions of Clockers, but Girl 6 is too flimsy to excuse even as cinematic R&R. Frenetic but lazily conceived, it's like one of those puny low-budget toss-offs Brian De Palma used to spring on us when he thought nobody was looking. [22 Mar 1996, p.4D]

The saga is an undeniably heartwarming one about perseverance, hard work, and pride in community. And who could criticize that?

Predictably, the derivative title here is a jumping-off point for another derivative slasher-revenge pic. [17 October 1997, p.5D]

Stinting on story, dialogue or character development, Bay leaves us with little more than destruction and a hollow, clanking spectacle.

It saves its clunkiest scene for the finale. No fair telling, but the key words are "political," "propaganda," "outdoors" and "orphans."

Unfortunately, it's not one-tenth as interesting as what you can see at home during a nightly cable surf as U.S. war policy is debated.

There's nothing very wise about The Brothers Solomon. It's a moderately funny premise in search of some real laughs.

A terrorist thriller that isn't so much suspenseful as overbearing. Though it aspires to be an intriguing political cautionary tale, the movie is mostly about the feverish and jarringly choreographed chase scenes.

At least the horror premise here has a hook - a house can spread its curse like a plague to adversely affect all who enter.

But all the devices and upgrades do little to bring the poetry's meaning into clearer and more relevant focus for today's audiences.

Even so, the film's incest theme seems more symbolic than literal in what is, at heart, a comedy about escaping the womb; throwaway gags are wicked enough throughout to keep the taboo plot twist from knocking this hit-and-miss black comedy off the track. [26 Jul 1994 Pg. 08.D]

Snipes gives a looser, cooler performance this time around, though emotionally, it's closer to dead than undead. Blade II is for the horror faithful only; others will be grasping their crucifixes.

With tangy Fisher equaling the leads in a sometimes scene-stealing role as Moore's mom, the actors emerge unscathed. Brosnan's part, in fact, is among the actor's most convincing non-Bond characters.

You don't get the sense that too many enthusiasts are hanging up wanted posters for the ho-hum-ish U.S. Marshals. [6 March 1998, pg. 04.D]

Fossilized script spoils effects.

Angelina Jolie slums her way through Beyond Borders, a film that telegraphs its plot and then drags ploddingly, its humane spirit obscured by an inane script and Jolie's implausible character.

It's certainly a worthy saga. But given the abundance of one-dimensional human portrayals, it becomes apparent that a documentary on the subject might have been more powerful.

Ted 2 locks into a nice groove whenever it's just Ted and John being buds (and smoking bud), and Seyfried actually adds to the chemistry. If only the nonstop parade of craziness and lack of story coherence around them wasn't so hard to bear.

A faithful, technically brilliant, but also dramatically malnourished film of J.G. Ballard's popular World War II novel. [08 Dec 1987]

At least the models' avarice and teasing provide a chuckle or two, as their dates line up panting at the door. Purely by default, their contribution makes this a slightly better working-woman romance than "The Wedding Planner."

Must we import the rubbish we export?

A ludicrous medical thriller operating on the supposition that readers and moviegoers have forgotten about "Coma". [27 Sept 1996]

House Party has enough youthful exuberance to shake the rafters. Too bad it has enough plot to fill only a closet. [8 Mar 1990, p.4D]

The last half hour is filled with cheeseball visual effects, B-movie monsters and Banks — by far the most enjoyable aspect — hamming it up the best she can.

Just going through the motions here (and mild ones at that), both Chan and the movie should have stayed at home.

Give Dozen a slight edge to the mournful "Yours, Mine & Ours" as a holiday season bottom-feeder, because Martin and Levy are better at slapstick than Dennis Quaid.

For every really cool interaction Downey's hero has with one of his animals as a caring listener, there's either an over-the-top spit take or an eye-rolling cheesy line of dialogue.

Wenders creates an imaginative, stylized cityscape, but what's missing is the compelling story that could bring the setting to life.

There may never have been a movie whose quality mattered less than this final chapter of The Twilight Saga.

Some of the gags are stupid-funny, others are just puerile, making for a hit-or-miss experience.

Ironically, the dialogue in The Words is its chief failing.

As far as acting goes, neither Olsen is ready for Euripides' Medea, yet each projects well enough in their shared big scene.

Mostly, Battleship is a noisy, overlong and numbing military-vs.-aliens saga with laughably bad dialogue.

Robert Pattinson must be hellbent on escaping the world of sparkly-skinned undead to take on the starring role in the leaden, obtuse and ultra-pretentious Cosmopolis.

The sad truth is that Cadillac is still another of the amiably lazy efforts that Eastwood and his band of production regulars have been mass-producing for too many years. (And by now, it's decades.) [26 May 1989, p.4D]

Superstars usually avoid movies this spiritless, and it's tough to believe anyone could read this script and fail to realize the movie wouldn't end up going anywhere.

Let's just say that if you loved Dana Carvey in Opportunity Knocks, you'll thrill to Taking Care of Business. [17 Aug 1990]

50 First Dates is working awfully hard to be romantic and not hard enough to be a comedy.

Harrison Ford has obviously enrolled in the Al Pacino School of Old Man Acting. He yells, sputters and glowers his way through the ultra-ordinary and well-intentioned Extraordinary Measures.

What we get is simply another opportunity for Schwarzenegger -- who seems to be in perpetual Terminator mode -- to flex his muscles.

At its best, it's a gentle meditation on mortality. But at weaker moments it feels meandering and strangely empty.

When it isn't funny, it's embarrassingly obvious - and it's almost never funny. [24 Dec 1990, p.1D]

Essentially a one-gag film.

This sequel is what you would expect: If you liked the original, you'll probably enjoy this retread. But be warned: It bogs down in a drawn-out scene near the end. There's certainly nothing to treasure about this movie, but if a popcorn movie with moderate intrigue and occasional humor is what you're after, this is just the ticket.

The film has some amusing moments and can be intriguing when it focuses on the slow transformation of a hopeless, faithless man.

A mix of slow-burn religious mystery and old-school adventure that egregiously fails to utilize its greatest hit: Bonnie Aarons’ terrifyingly freaky villainess of the cloth.