Pretentious and show-offy, the noirish drama fairly reeks of film-student overkill.

Worse, the story is so thin and clichéd, it seems as if a computer wrote the screenplay and a robot directed it.

Far from being a run-of-the-mill slasher pic.

If grossness gives you the giggles, at least a couple of the movie's effects indeed put a little "wow" in this cinematic bowwow.

The uneven humor, half-baked plot and generic action scenes keep RED from being much fun.

Robert De Niro has made several unwise choices in roles recently, and his belligerent wannabe writer in Being Flynn definitely adds to that list.

It's an extravaganza worth seeing once -- and maybe later on DVD.

Nothing but attitude.

Only those with paranoid fantasies of an en masse invasion on American soil will find Red Dawn remotely powerful. The concept should have been updated to allow for more complex and surreptitious kinds of warfare.

Nothing is etched in anything remotely resembling a hard surface in Stone.

There's a fun retro camp to Hercules, with nods to classics such as Ben-Hur and Spartacus, as Hercules finds himself rowing slave ships and crossing desert expanses.

Maybe Affleck was drawn to this movie because it involves the loss of memory. Who wouldn't want to forget "Gigli," and now this?

As a gritty thriller, Dead Man Down doesn't stand out among its bullet-riddled brethren.

With director Harmony Korine's visual overload and somnolent voice-overs — the same sentences are repeated ad nauseum — it manages to be both mind-numbingly dull and off-putting.

May be dull, but the familiarity of it all makes it feel ceremonial, a reassuring ritual.

The material is so solid and Thornton so tailor-made that the movie almost gets by.

But there are kicks a-plenty besides the times J-C flings his tootsies of terror at opponents. [14 Jan 1991, p.6D]

The script is so bereft of real surprises that it's best to keep the lid on what few there are.

Savage Grace is a thoroughly disturbing story, told in a detached style rendering the overall experience an unsettling blend of lurid and vacuous.

Thackeray said that he wanted "to leave everybody dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the story." Nair may have had other intentions, but by film's end, audiences are bound to be left dissatisfied with the choppy and confusing storytelling style and unhappy about the missed opportunity.

Game Plan plays like an average sitcom that drags on. This sort of film shouldn't clock in at more than 90 minutes. There are worse ways to spend a few hours, but expect more predictability than laughs in this good-hearted, mindless entertainment.

Chris Rock was busy directing, producing, co-writing and starring in this light comedy. Given his hilarious stand-up routines, one wishes he had spent a little more time on the script.

Hunter is far too talented to waste her time with such mediocre material, as is co-star Kathy Bates, who plays Kippie Kann, an overbearing talk-show host.

If this is indeed the end, Dark Phoenix finishes off the X-Men movie saga in frustratingly middling fashion, however fitting for a superhero franchise that only just a few times actually reached its cinematic potential.

If this is Dumas, there's a "b" in the middle and an extra "s" at the end.

Borderline ponderous in hour one, Wyatt Earp picks up once it reaches Dodge, thanks in part to drolly delivered guffaw lines from sunken-cheeked Dennis Quaid, who lost 43 pounds to play tubercular Doc Holliday. [24 Jun 1994, p.1D]

Resembles an enthusiastic but undisciplined child running amok through an exhibit.

For a movie about dancing, Step Up is pretty clumsy on its feet.

Too distinctive-looking to dismiss out of hand, but it would help to be able to look through a magic viewfinder (or maybe magic eraser) and make its script disappear.

In dashing Indiana Jones style, Eckhart gets to be a hero.

Maze Runner feels only partially formed.

Genial and well-intentioned, but tepid.

The only death at this funeral was that of a good movie.

A badly constructed, blood-spattered caper that comes unglued early on.

While it looks great with its gorgeous computer-generated foliage and realistic animals, the story focuses too much on its stiff hero and a one-note villain rather than the big-picture ideas it raises in passing.

It may sound like a Peter Pan spinoff, and Dear Wendy does involve lost boys in a stagey setting, but the film is closer to "A Clockwork Orange" than a tale of lasting youth.

This is Johnson’s baby, a film spotlighting a complicated antihero he has championed for years. It wins some battles and packs plenty of punch, yet it just can’t get past familiar tropes and flaws.

When it comes to comedies about pregnancy, "Knocked Up" and "Baby Mama" delivered more. This sitcom style exercise in planned parenthood is blandly predictable. If it were a cheese, it would be Velveeta.

Those who feel a kinship to this brand of corn, dig in. The rest should head for the hills. [15 Oct 1993, p.5D]

In the canon of comic-book movies, it's not as campy bad as the "Batman" starring George Clooney, but nowhere near the caliber of the Spider-Man movies or "The Dark Knight." It may have more style, but it's only a jot more entertaining than "Catwoman."

The ending stinks.

It's tough to think of another child-adult pairing in a long screen tradition with so little emotional kick.

Casting, in fact, is Rob Roy's dominant virtue, a hedge against its overlong 2 1/4-hour running time and some initial reluctance to get rolling. [7 Apr 1995, p.01.D]

Has less substance and depth than its title.

True-blue Ford keeps 'Clear' out of danger. [3 August 1994, p.D1]

This B-list thriller portrays air crews as inept, at best, and callous and cruel at worst.

A little bit of charm is precisely what this movie has to offer. A small dose is better than none, but you can't help wishing there was more to go around.

Circle has a wit and warmth that makes something as glibly contemporary as Reality Bites seem trite and toothless. [15 Mar 1995, Pg.06.D]

Turns out to be a tepid thriller that promises more than it delivers.

A soulless spectacle.

Dumas' perennial story demands stars of stature or wit - components missing from this candy-bar wrapper of a movie. [12 Nov 1993, p.4D]

The dialogue is clichéd and laughable. It's a film far more concerned with style - architectural, vehicular and wardrobe-related - than substance.

White Boy Rick works better as a working-class father/son drama than a cautionary tale about the American judicial system, though it never comes together satisfactorily as either.

A darkly disturbing melodrama anchored by some powerful performances.

The flashbacks, functional at best, aren't really the problem. Interminable one-on-one dialogues between the two male leads are. [7 Apr 1995, p.03.D]

Moviegoers are stuck with this sci-fi thriller's bland story, murky cinematography and frenetic special effects.

The movie is a by-the-numbers action film that's not nearly as strong as its Damon-led predecessors.

It's made expressly for fans of unmitigated gore.

Proudly stupid, silly and gory.

After "Chocolat" and this, how about a moratorium on candy-centered comedies?

The film is fine, familiar fare for gamers and children: Sonic sprints, Carrey mugs, but the creative juices run out quickly.

Dr. Dolittle does do a lot of stuff right. [ 26 June 1998, p. 12 E]

Nothing better than boys with really big toys. Especially when the boys are men like Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, top talents who duke it out among the nukes in the propulsively pulse-pounding undersea thriller Crimson Tide. [12May1995 Pg.01.D]

Anything but cutting-edge. [28 Jul 2003]

Pee-wee Herman may still look good in his ill-fitting suit, but more than 30 years after first hitting the big screen, his antics haven’t aged well.

Even with a wealth of talent involved, Inferno is missing some serious heat.

Next Day Air can't decide whether it's a broad stoner comedy or a gritty Tarantino-esque action flick. The humor is there, but violence brings the laughter to an abrupt halt.

The Power of One plays like a plot-heavy South African fairy tale with one too many big, bad wolves. [27 March 1992, p.4D]

A B-movie at its heart with big-budget ambitions. Full of rampant goofiness, extreme gore, a jumbled narrative and hyperactive pacing, The Predator is also funnier and more clever than you would expect, though at the same time it’s an '80s film that doesn’t realize it’s 2018 in terms of political correctness.

An occasionally entertaining, always fluffy teen romantic comedy with some moderately funny physical comedy by gadabout star Lindsay Lohan.

Kapur's stodgy style halts the momentum of young actors who have impressed in other movies.

Some moments in XX/XY ring true, and the honesty exposed is revelatory. But, like some relationships, this drama can be tough to endure.

Skirts dangerously close to being the thing it parodies: a second-rate space opera.

For a story that centers on intrigue in high places, the few even halfway-grabbing scenes come from the mild if unexplored sexual tension between co-Caine sleuthers Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Northam.

The fantasy segments, played up in trailers, get bogged down amid the ho-hum tale of a loser making good.

Arthur Newman is an old story and chronically, consistently uninvolving.

Instead of drawing the audience in, the action scenes merely blur together. And the intriguing, thoughtful concepts at the story's core are glossed over.

It dips into the timely satire of mid-20th century suburbia, with inherent racism and white privilege hiding in plain sight next to picket fences and well-trimmed lawns, but rather than embracing it wholeheartedly, the narrative defaults to a lackluster murder mystery and a violent example of men and woman behaving badly.

Smoochy, like the cuddly character, tries to be loved and ends on an unrealistically upbeat note. But it's in better, wittier form just being vicious and biting.

An instant merit barometer of any farce this contrived is the creativity in and conviction of the exposition. It takes an empty half-hour just to get Goldberg into the convent, and even then the payoff is mild. [29 May 1992, p.5D]

Silly action sequences grow tedious and rarely blend with the wannabe madcap comedy.

At least Van Damme parodies himself just enough to avoid an all-out battle of the blands . At least director Roland Emmerich slyly allows supermarket Muzak to play during Lundgren's one big emoting scene. [10 July 1992, p.5D]

Dull and unpleasant.

The movie starts out cleverly enough but grows insipid as the girls' antics become more predictable.

Scoundrels isn't rock-bottom. That a more sturdy vehicle couldn't be found for such stellar leads, though, is a dirty rotten shame. [14 Dec 1988, p. 4D]

Squanders the opportunity to give us a telling glimpse of the woman behind the ruff. Instead, the costume drama is all gilt and opulence.

Madonna's directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, feels more like a collection of scenes than a fully drawn film.

Even within the most formulaic of genres, this Cinderella tale is uncommonly predictable.

A wisp of ghost story that promises insight but is strictly soft focus.

Likely one-week box office wonder.

Glum and preachy.

Not so much a movie as an amusement park ride.

The cinematic equivalent of an elaborate and poetically constructed non sequitur.

Love Happens is an oddly upbeat title for a movie that is surprisingly sad.

Too langorously European for slasher fans, and too dopey for others, Vanishing 2 may fall between the cracks. See it to savor Bridges playing a heavy. [05 Feb 1993, p.5D]

Mirren is about the only reason this slow-moving revenge tale tingles at all.

Instead of being an intriguing look at an emotional breakdown, “Lucy” is more interested in being a sporadically trippy (and ultimately forgettable) soap opera that by the end has the camp factor of your average Lifetime revenge thriller.

The bone-crunchingly violent film has luridly entertaining moments. But by its resolution, this sleazy Southern Gothic nightmare has simply gone off the rails.