A stylish slasher of a movie, a monster flick that does its vampires right, if not their real-life counterparts.

It's a cut above most spooky-kid movies, with a twist that sets it apart.

If you can imagine a relatively solemn take on this theme, RoboCop 2 is it. Though Irvin Kershner's direction is competent, there's not a whole lot of eye-twinkling in evidence. [22 June 1990, p.2D]

Vincente Minnelli and Pat Boone didn't work together every day, which is only one of the factors here to titillate fanciers of oddball cinema. There's also a dreadful but thoroughly offbeat script (from George Axelrod's play) about a male screenwriter who's shot by a jealous husband, only to be reincarnated as a woman. [07 May 1999]

Not only is it plodding and completely predictable, the carnage is rendered slowly and quasi-reverentially, making the whole brutal experience come off like torture porn.

This implausible action thriller also stars Julianne Moore as an FBI agent who sees Cage's two-bit Vegas act and decides he can single-handedly save the world.

But purely as an exercise in style, this movie has its moments.

As a raunchy romantic comedy or an homage to the 1980s, Take Me Home Tonight is hardly worth a one-night stand.

Hollywood, never one to let a retro idea die, has entrusted the premise to Carlo Carlei, a young Italian filmmaker whose stylistical flourishes in 1992's Flight of the Innocent seem doubly grotesque when employed toward such flea-laden material. [02 Jun 1995, p.2D]

Heavyweights is like staring into a void, a vacuum of pure nothingness that induces a kind of semi-coma as it virtually sucks the life out of the motion-picture medium. [17 Feb 1995, p.D3]

There's some heavy-duty Oedipal stuff going on underneath all the running gags about Hooters restaurants. [25 June 1999, Life, p.8E]

The movie meanders when they're not all together. Hahn, however, singlehandedly keeps the second Bad Moms — as she also did for the first — entertaining with her crass, over-the-top Carla.

In picking up exactly where the last one left off three years ago, Kills separates its two key main characters, and not for the better. It just seems like a filler chapter before another main event, albeit with nasty kills, mythos building and cool references.

It's a sweet and mildly funny movie that will entertain young audiences, but one aspect is utterly mystifying: The two main characters, father and son bovine creatures, have large, distracting udders.

Arthur Newman is an old story and chronically, consistently uninvolving.

PCU is less a blatant ripoff of Animal House than a fond homage. This '90s update on campus life never reaches that landmark comedy's inspired heights (or depths, as it were) of anarchy. It also could use a waggle or two of John Belushi's bushily subversive eyebrows....But actor Hart Bochner's directing debut - aided by zippy camerawork - still offers a laugh-propelled good time while tweaking political correctness gone amok at Port Chester University (PCU). [29 Apr 1994, p.5D]

Though the film is not terribly original (and features a jarringly miscast Alicia Silverstone as Alex's nanny), the action scenes are diverting, the veteran cast is amusing and the engaging Pettyfer makes a solid debut.

It dips into the timely satire of mid-20th century suburbia, with inherent racism and white privilege hiding in plain sight next to picket fences and well-trimmed lawns, but rather than embracing it wholeheartedly, the narrative defaults to a lackluster murder mystery and a violent example of men and woman behaving badly.

Despite its patina of stylishness, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death is sorely lacking in thrills.

Legend of the Sword’s overemphasis on the supernatural and the visually spectacular mortally wounds an often-rollicking adventure.

Though there are some funny sequences, the frothy Bubble Boy evaporates without delivering enough belly laughs.

But there are kicks a-plenty besides the times J-C flings his tootsies of terror at opponents. [14 Jan 1991, p.6D]

If you're of a mind to believe a dreary and far-fetched thriller about numerology-crazed alien life forms, then you may find the movie mildly diverting.

It's a thoroughly family-friendly film, with a subtle message about the importance of father figures. Don't expect anything resembling believability, but enjoy the blend of strikingly colorful visuals and banter between odd couple Johnson and Caine, which combine for a mild escapist treat.

Alpo is served with a burrito chaser in Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Disney's fish-out-of-water comedy in which the fish is … well, read the title.

Hanks directs with assurance. Perhaps if he had teamed with a more agile writer, less given to cheesy yuck-fests, Larry Crowne would be the nuanced adult love story it aims to be.

The movie starts out cleverly enough but grows insipid as the girls' antics become more predictable.

Moviegoers will come up empty with Mad Money. This lifeless comedy and uninventive caper feels as if it were cobbled together at a studio's obligatory consciousness-raising diversity seminar.