Teamed again after Midnight Cowboy, writer Waldo Salt and director John Schlesinger make a costly flop of Nathanael West's great novella about underbelly '30s Hollywood. Karen Black is just OK as craven screen wannabe Fay Greener, but, along with M*A*S*H, this is Donald Sutherland's greatest lead (as a dweeb named Homer Simpson). [08 Jun 2004]

The time might be right for the Scary movies to quit on top, even though, alas, there are no term limits for sequels.

Far-fetched is fine in most action flicks. And it would work here if Days were a straightforward police story.

The original was a Midol moment, this is a Prozac exercise. [12 March 1999, Life, p.8E]

Where once Waters was brilliantly polluted, now he comes off diluted.

Murphy's breathy, high voice as Kitten feels forced, but not nearly as much as the film's efforts to be both whimsical and weighty.

Two years after the release of “Orient Express,” “Knives Out” reinvented the all-star murder mystery in a fun and refreshing fashion, and Branagh’s latest just seems stale in comparison, with no new life in this “Death.”

Writer/director Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled showcases good manners and bad deeds, though it lacks the necessary edge to make it a satisfying revenge thriller.

Funny how Madonna borrows Everett, Julia Roberts' gay pal from "My Best Friend's Wedding," and Bratt, Roberts' real-life beau, to be her co-stars. If only she could borrow her talent.

It’s a denouement that ventures too far afield from familiarity, a good-vs.-evil slugfest more complicated than it needs to be, and a “Halloween” flick that should go out with a roar but instead closes with a masked wheeze.

But once the updated story - now about an unwed mom who sacrifices all for her child rather than a divorcee who married above her class - starts clinging to the original's plot machinations, Stella turns into one helluva maudlin mess. [2 Feb 1990, p.4D]

Yes is more of a maybe. Or even a hmmm.

After a tense, terrific, stomach-turning opening that may have moviegoing acrophobes recalling Vertigo, the film soon becomes the latest screen variation on cat-and-Mighty Mouse. [28May1993 Pg.04.D]

It's a hoary Chinatown knock-off wrapped in a seductively novel black-culture veneer, with a dash of Laura added for bad measure. [29 Sept 1995, p.01.D]

Good spirits are worth something, and the movie has them, as well as scattershot chuckles.

Rather than being a fascinating exploration of a much more constrained time in our social history, the film simply feels anachronistic.

It's Complicated is vacuous overall, although attractively packaged.

Melodramatic and laden with cop-thriller clichés, the story, set in one of New York's toughest precincts, is contrived and inauthentic -- and also grisly.

Evil's one strong presence is lead Milla Jovovich -- and not because the script gives her supercop/soldier anything interesting to say.

The much-publicized collaboration between producer Peter Jackson and Spielberg sets high expectations. But while the technical artistry is there, the film lacks a sense of magic, intrigue and mystery.

At times Dracula Untold flirts with dullness so much that it might as well just stick a stake in the heart of Bram Stoker's legacy.

What Atlantis gains in chills and thrills, it loses in pure emotion.

Once fresh, the story is now buried under a hoary coating.

Like Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury in “Rhapsody,” Ackie’s own voice is heard at times though mainly she’s performing to Houston’s own signature vocals. And the actress does an exceptional job capturing the pop singer’s mannerisms and performance style in those moments. It’s everything else in between that’s the real problem.

The sentiments here are thoroughly semper fi, but the result occasionally works at cross-purposes.

Only slightly more slick and slightly less edgy than past John Grisham adaptations.

It isn't good and it isn't bad – it is, to borrow a fitting adjective, "all right." But the film might as well be called “Matthew McConaughey: The Movie,” as it casts McConaughey in a role seemingly tailor-made for his famous style and yet, like the actor himself, also upends those same expectations.

One doesn't put Roberts and Clooney together on screen without conjuring at least a little magic. But dusting off an old copy of her "America's Sweethearts" or his "One Fine Day" is more likely to scratch that rom-com itch.