Buried under an avalanche of action. (1996 June 7, pg. D1)

They may call it The Last Castle, but moviegoers will ultimately feel rooked.

Though the tale may fall short on imagination, the principal actors make Over Her Dead Body livelier than one would expect.

Mediocre family fare that's simply not that much fun.

The film simply doesn't come together fluidly. Smaller parts aren't on par with the lead role, and special effects are overdone and cheesy. At times, the essence of Shakespeare's poetry is drowned out.

Some will lazily compare West to the ever-magnificent The Black Stallion, but just for starters, it hasn't the same exquisite outdoor photography. Instead, it's been shot in varying degrees of rust, with varying masses of grain floating around the image. [17 Sep 1993, p.4D]

Until its dopey coda, the film never all-out stumbles, but always exudes Pakula's trademark chilliness. [17 Dec 1993 Pg. 01.D]

Essentially Cars in midair.

Though better than most of Perry's broad comedies, The Family That Preys still suffers from excessive predictability and mawkish sentiment, which detracts from the story's believability.

Marley & Me might be easy to watch, but -- even for die-hard canine lovers -- it's as easy to forget.

The story soon devolves into a far-fetched, futuristic snooze-fest that often defies its own logic. Characters' motivations are rarely clear, and allegiances shift with no explanation.

One of the film's biggest problems is that Richie is an unsympathetic and rather dim character. The badly drawn role does the likable Timberlake no favors.

Drippy, derivative stalker flick.

They’re made women in an underworld that doesn’t want them, and while that theme is sufficiently explored, The Kitchen disappointingly fails to explore the racial politics it hints at and, aside from the main trio, is full of characters who feel paper thin. The results aren’t criminal, per se, but the movie more often finds mediocrity instead of real nuance.

Nothing really fun, scary or exceptionally gross occurs.

It's likely to be overrated by some and underrated by others, and both contingents will be wrong. One can't, however, overrate the performances, with auntie ruling the roost in more ways than one. [29 Mar 1996, p.4D]

This family entertainment hard sell lags far behind even "Dr. Dolittle 2."

Hour not only acknowledges the attacks -- they're a running theme. Lee opens his movie with a shot of the beaming blue spotlights that mark where the twin towers once stood.

The movie gets a mild boost when her escape briefly takes it from just another crummy supernatural thriller into an OK escape melodrama, albeit one dependent on a whopper of an unlikely occurrence.

Although there are insightful moments and surreal bits that pop, it’s overall a bizarre – and at nearly three hours, bloated – film that attempts to honor its subject and instead lets her down.

It's not the grand scale action-adventure it aspires to be, but this faux epic does offer family-friendly entertainment.

Firewall might be worth renting on an inclement weekend when the pickings are slim. It does have some tense moments - even if some of the technical plot points don't quite scan. But, overall, it just feels like a rehash.

The result isn't pretentious, but is the tongue-in-cheeking ever slight. The murders are treated as jokes, there's a horror-motif rock video, and Harry dodges enough bullets with Patricia Clarkson to arm Sands of Iwo Jima. [13 Jul 1988, p.1D]

Arthur Hiller's direction is competent bordering on crisp. The language, as you would expect in a Richard Pryor movie, is pretty strong. [12 May 1989, p.6D]

It doesn't help that the performances are bland (particularly those of Christensen and Bilson) and that what comes out of their mouths is uninspired. Short on imagination and anchored by a wan hero, Jumper is a flight of fancy that never fully takes off.

Simultaneously brash and dull - hardly a combustible combination.

Nothing but set pieces, snoozes between its scenes of carnage.

While the adult performances are strong, especially Jeff Bridges in the title role, youthful characterizations are not nearly as illuminating as they were on the page.

This shallow sequel to 2010's much cleverer Despicable Me — the 10th-biggest animated movie in U.S. history — seems to be merely going through the motions.

A notably undynamic treatment of Protestant Elizabeth I's ascension to the British throne.

So much luck is pressed with an absurdly overblown finale that 60 seconds will likely be Swordfish's shelf life after a couple of noisy opening weekends.

It's not dumb-good. It's dumb-stupid.

A rote variation on Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper that is marginally salvaged by those spunky Olsen twins from ABC's Full House. [17 Nov 1995]

Newsies' drag is its predictable script.... It's not a bad hook, but the treatment is uninspired, despite a fairly engaging turn by Bale. [08 Apr 1992]

If only the story that surrounds this watchable heroine were as well-stacked.

An ambitious but mind-numbingly tedious and often incomprehensible film.

From the moment he trudges through the woods in his scratched and smudged birthday suit, Paul Bettany as a saucy Geoffrey Chaucer takes command.

What it isn't ... is a particularly compelling contribution to the impressive and by now enormous collection of Holocaust movies.

If nothing else, though, the stylish and slick thriller brings sass to the secret-agent genre, and there are worse things than watching an evil Chris Evans try to murder Ryan Gosling for two hours.

Drollness on screen can sometimes be had cheaply, but a perfect cast is tougher to bankroll. Hal Hartley's new comedy has both - enough to defuse the smugness that seems to linger in its soul. [15 Aug 1991]

We had hoped for just a funny movie, but instead we get some laughs and plenty of yawns.

Jennifer's Body is not as hot as you hope it would be.

The problem here isn't grimness but a failure to make grimness wrench the heart. [18 Oct 1996]

Anything goes, though director Ronny Yu keeps the idiocy on a fast pace.

Graphically gruesome when it means to be a provocative look at vengeance.

There's a fine line between darkness and glumness, one that "Spider-Man" bounced off buildings to avoid. The Hulk lumbers across it.

Director Stephen Norrington is more keen on finding new ways to explode the fiends... than developing a credible story. So the movie flits from one gore-laden assault to another with little suspense.

Goldberg has her best role in a while, especially when she twitches and grunts her way into phony trances. Poor Demi, though, cries enough tears to drench a small drought-stricken state. [13 July 1990, Life, p.4D]

While there is a pleasantness about this faithful Shakespearean reboot, there also is some woeful miscasting and a lukewarm feeling about the straightforward production.

It's no crime the movie has one or two endings too many, given that many thrillers of the past quarter-century have had the same. But Judd's latest is too harmless to be anything but a misdemeanor.

But for an epic set up to trace two life stories, there's a lack of dramatic focus, and the leads fail to evince any particular chemistry as friends who come to have a deeper emotional connection. [31Dec1997 Pg.02.D]

Nathan Fillion is the movie's brightest spot as Hermes, re-envisioned as a UPS manager. He makes a quip about how the best TV series always get canceled, in a nod to Firefly, the iconic sci-fi show in which he starred.

There is no tension here. Actually, The Minus Man is minus a lot - intensity, a point of view, maybe even a point - and that equals an unsatisfying film.

Not since Demi Moore lived happily ever after in "The Scarlet Letter" has a filmmaker felt so free to fudge a famous plot.

Moviegoers of rarefied sensibilities will easily identify this anti-captain-of-industry as a "typical Eric Stoltz role," just as moviegoers of extremely rarefied sensibilities will pick up on Kicking's "typical Chris Eigeman role." [23 Oct 1995, Pg.06.D]

It would have worked better if the silly premise had been played for farcical satire, rather than following the cookie-cutter rules of the romantic comedy playbook.

The result is passably speedy on the level of other TV retreads that seem miscast on the big screen.

At least Harrison Ford does his grizzled best to ground a hybrid film awash in computer-generated animals and visual pizzazz.

Though better than its 2001 predecessor -- and teeming with cute creatures and fast and furious action scenes -- the movie feels excessively formulaic.

Ice Harvest's plot sounds like an antidote to the season's holiday sweetness. And it's being touted as this year's Bad Santa. But the only similarities are the holiday season, the criminal milieu and Thornton.

John Mellencamp's screen debut showcases his acting and directing, then limits his singing to off-camera filler. [05 Mar 1992, p.6D]

The movie tries to capture the crushing weight of loss, but between the insipid pop tunes and the repetitive shots cutting away to a lighthouse on a scenic outcropping, it feels more like a film version of a condolence card.

It tries to be a moody thriller, but cliched dialogue and too many coincidences make for a predictable and hackneyed film.

Never recovers from its failure to grip or engage in the early going.

This is the kind of movie in which even the sex scenes are soulless.

The focus is limited to Young's longtime Crazy Horse colleagues -- in other words, forget Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- but even on this level, there's a lot of rambling and disinclination to answer questions. A substantial number of viewers will likely be ground down, and certainly there's nothing here to make Young's 1979 concert film, Rust Never Sleeps, an obsolete view. [07 Oct 1997, p.3D]

Wilts under a weak, formulaic story.

Makes one long for Martin's edgy work in films such as "The Spanish Prisoner."

Bites may have a bit more on its mind, but it never equals even the weakest scene in Cameron Crowe's "Singles". [18 Feb 1994, p.5D]

Yet, when it all clicks, Ephron is able to make the familiar sparkle anew. [25 Jun 1993 Pg. 01.D]

Hollywood's oddest movie in a while, which means that however insignificant this primer in flight-attendant training is, causing boredom isn't one of its transgressions.

Between the dogged efforts of the kids to save strays and the antics of the dogs, it's hard to resist this lively, though predictable, family movie.

Regrettably, it's the movie version of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a book still thumping its chest on the hardback best-seller list after more than three years.

Ridiculously attractive spies fall hard for each other in Allied, but don’t expect "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" with Nazis.

Quvenzhané Wallis is adorably plucky as the lead in Annie. She and Jamie Foxx as the newfangled Daddy Warbucks character have an appealing chemistry and their songs together are the best moments in the movie. But the rest of Annie is banal, shallow and markedly cynical.

It feels like a wan version of the show -- one that has lost its otherworldly edge.

This Baywatch has its share of hilarious moments but never fully commits to the absurd, and even the cleverest jokes get so many callbacks, they’re beating a dead seahorse.

Audiences could use a wise and probing movie about the meaning of our increasingly digital, techno-juiced lives.Men, Women & Children is about half that movie.

Each twist and turn is so telegraphed and expected that the story feels wan and the comedy feeble.

Never enough goodies to keep the two-hour running time from seeming like three.

Freeman (no directing natural) gets acting help, and his film earns points for being told from the black perspective, but isn't even up to the modest standards of A Dry White Season, Cry Freedom or A World Apart. [24 Sept 1993, p10D]

Seems like a work in progress.

Despite an unlikely setting and a moderately intriguing premise, Chernobyl Diaries proves to be a generic horror flick where young tourists are systematically victimized in unoriginal and not terribly scary ways.

There are seven 13-year-old sitters in all, and Melanie Mayron (directing her first theatrical feature) doesn't always flub it when any two interact. But the film's nature and even its title peg it as an ensemble work, and Mayron's group footage looks like crude camcording of a ninth-grade picnic. [18 Aug 1995, p.11D]

You can have a better time title-scanning "Johnny" pics in an alphabetical video guide than you can enduring the latest Blade Runner knockoff. [26 May 1995, p.3D]

Annabelle invites unflattering comparisons with scary movies that came before, but its disparate parts never coalesce into a genuinely fearsome thriller.

It’s a bizarrely off-kilter affair that’s forcibly heartfelt and sentimental in one scene and overly mean-spirited in the next, and not even a few choice moments and some enjoyable surrounding weirdos can help two A-listers in way over their heads.

Do yourself a favor and rent the 1996 original from Japan instead.

Doesn't make the movie worth watching -- even if you're monstrously bored.

Long, lumbering, pretentious and for some a possible laff riot. [23 Dec 1994]

Moore and Ford rise above the hackneyed story, infusing the proceedings with their own chemistry and appeal. If only the adults responsible for this film could learn how to deal.

Someone has seen "Trainspotting" too many times, and it's writer/director Justin Kerrigan.

God may forgive you for seeing this needlessly brutal film. But you won't forgive yourself.

Overflows with pretensions and absurdity.

Manages to be both toothless and tasteless in its satire of TV news sensationalism.

Under the guise of delivering one of the most overworked of messages - adults are dolts, kids rule - North fails such basics as a compelling story, fleshed-out characters and a brisk, bright pace. [22 Jul 1994, p.5D]

A failure from start to finish.

Broken Toys is beyond repair [18 Dec 1992, p.6D]