Mary Reilly, a perversely courageous disaster that audiences will simply hate. [23 Feb 1996]

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.