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.

Good but not legendary.

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

The overwritten script and the ridiculous plot combine to make The Counselor a frustrating experience.

Gruesome, garish and smutty in a very juvenile way, Knight - the first of a promised trilogy - nonetheless is often frightfully engaging, thanks to a game group of performers and visually electric direction from Ernest Dickerson (Juice). [13 Jan 1995, p.4D]

Ragged but with an appealing comic edge, the movie is certainly funnier than most of the other comedies that studios have tried to keep from critics until opening day.

Maybe I'm just too old to appreciate the startling sight of a phallus jammed into someone's ear.

Except for its muddier than necessary photography, there aren't any surprises, which probably won't matter to the target audience.

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]

With the lackluster quality of its characters — aircraft, a smattering of trucks, RVs and motorcycles — the movie makes Pixar's Cars and its sequel look like masterpieces.

Some of the film's most illuminating scenes involve Aya's uncle, General Kajima (Toshiyuki Nishida), who schools Fellers on the sense of duty that is ingrained in Japanese culture.

Alicia Vikander worked herself into hardbody shape for Tomb Raider, which by contrast is a flabby, lazy mess.

With one of the year's busiest scripts, Little launches 76 zippy minutes.

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

Exhale and enjoy Keenen Ivory Wayans' culturally disreputable I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, a sendup of black street comedy that's equally crude, funny - and sentimental. [26 Jan 1989, p.2D]

The action scenes in Vertical Limit take cliffhanging to the highest peaks of excitement. It's a shame the story keeps dragging us down to sea level.

If you value your time and money, find an escape clause and avoid seeing this trite, predictable rehash. The 90 minutes could be better spent doing holiday shopping.

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

Every performer puts vigor into an otherwise limp exercise, as if word were out that this would be the last comedy ever made about late-adolescent concerns.

Stunningly shot and stupidly written.

A putrid film that comes dead-weighted with hammy one-liners and a plot so silly it borders on comedy?

Director John Carpenter (Halloween) draws the best out of a Topper-esque script that's surprisingly sophisticated. [28 Feb 1992, p.8D]

On paper, this sounded like a winner. In reality? We have met the Enemy at the multiplex, and he's silly. [08 Feb 1991, p.4D]

Alas, shell casings, switchblades and severed limbs are all that's offered in this vile film, whose sole redeeming quality is that it ends. Eventually.

The movie just gets by on heart and a conversation-stopping finale. [28 Jul 1995, p.5D]

It's really not much fun - in fact it's painful - to watch an actor on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It almost doesn't matter if the psyche in question is imploding artificially - as in staged - or organically.

The major whodunit here is who made a best-selling thriller so darn boring.

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.