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

Steer clear of Freedomland, the movie. Your time would be better spent reading Richard Price's much more compelling 1998 novel.

Movies of this genre don't often engage fresh concepts, but you have to give Wong major points for dreaming up "tan-line flambé."

Older youngsters not threatened by PG-13 levels of intensity might pester Mom and Dad to let them see this cinematic fluff-head. For everyone else, it simply is what it is -- which, despite a budget that could feed Star Wars' Jabba the Hutt for life, isn't very much. [07Feb1997 Pg 04.D]

If only the movie had heeded its own advice and tried to be different from the standard formula.

Even by King-movie standards (and there are none lower), the misanthropy, grotesque humor, and all-out ugliness is itself in maximum overdrive. [27 Aug 1993, p.3D]

Newell's rendering of the iconic novel is dull and creatively off-kilter, lacking the surreal magic and robust passion of Márquez's signature magical realism style and never fully engaging the viewer.

Tested my own love of the game more than anything since the time Roseanne screeched the national anthem.

Close your eyes during this miserable romantic comedy.

Spotty and uneven, Wedding shouldn't even have the embarrassed guffaws it has, and it probably wouldn't were it not for a robust cast.

Don't be too quick to turn down The Uninvited. A stylish horror thriller in the vein of "The Ring," it's well-acted, frightening and handsomely produced

It's creepy but tinged with sarcasm and infused with silly fun.

The film never makes total sense, but at its best (the first half-hour), it comes closer to solidly junky titillation than the hapless Final Analysis. [20 Mar 1992, Life, p.1D]

It’s the kind of thing you’d bet would be emotionally manipulative – if only, because that'd be welcome compared to this emotionally disconnecting, sporadically nuanced narrative.

There's the germ of a sexy idea in True Colors, which serves up a duplicitous friendship, Capitol Hill intrigue and even attractive scenery (indoors and out). Too bad some folks have disinfected it. [15 Mar 1991, p.4D]

Becomes a little more compelling as it progresses because Lisa Kudrow (as the straight-arrow first Mrs. Holmes, who halfway stood with him despite her disgust) ends up being surprisingly well cast. She engages in some very un-Friends-like fiery exchanges that also give Kilmer his best scenes.

Well-acted and involving.

Machine Gun Preacher has a lot more wrong with it than a bullet-riddled premise. It is yet another iteration of the big, strong white man who comes to save legions of poor anonymous black Africans.

All this dreary movie has is a terrible whodunit payoff.

The Romantics is a misnomer. "The Spoiled Melodramatics" would be more accurate. Or better yet, "The Pretentious Ones."

It exists somewhere between serious character study and satirical fish-out-of-water story, never figuring out which it wants to be.

Trust-- and the genre itself -- needs to dump the stale formula and embrace reality and reinvention.

Monte Carlo is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. (What luck! The heiress' clothes fit all three girls like a glove!)

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.

It is a measure of the movie's lack of inspiration that William Shatner is the funniest thing in it.

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.

One hesitates to call David Cronenberg's movie of David Henry Hwang's Tony-winning play conventional or tame, but certainly it is zestless given a filmmaker whose last three outings have been "The Fly," "Dead Ringers" and "Naked Lunch." [01 Oct 1993]

Pretty much everybody is kung fu fighting in “Snake Eyes,” a satisfying martial-arts action-adventure with two magnetic leads, a heap of lightning-quick swordplay and the best argument yet for a G.I. Joe cinematic universe.