Ice Harvest's plot sounds like an antidote to the season's holiday sweetness. And it's being touted as this year's Bad Santa. But the only similarities are the holiday season, the criminal milieu and Thornton.

John Mellencamp's screen debut showcases his acting and directing, then limits his singing to off-camera filler. [05 Mar 1992, p.6D]

The movie tries to capture the crushing weight of loss, but between the insipid pop tunes and the repetitive shots cutting away to a lighthouse on a scenic outcropping, it feels more like a film version of a condolence card.

It tries to be a moody thriller, but cliched dialogue and too many coincidences make for a predictable and hackneyed film.

Never recovers from its failure to grip or engage in the early going.

This is the kind of movie in which even the sex scenes are soulless.

The focus is limited to Young's longtime Crazy Horse colleagues -- in other words, forget Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- but even on this level, there's a lot of rambling and disinclination to answer questions. A substantial number of viewers will likely be ground down, and certainly there's nothing here to make Young's 1979 concert film, Rust Never Sleeps, an obsolete view. [07 Oct 1997, p.3D]

Wilts under a weak, formulaic story.

Makes one long for Martin's edgy work in films such as "The Spanish Prisoner."

Bites may have a bit more on its mind, but it never equals even the weakest scene in Cameron Crowe's "Singles". [18 Feb 1994, p.5D]

Yet, when it all clicks, Ephron is able to make the familiar sparkle anew. [25 Jun 1993 Pg. 01.D]

Hollywood's oddest movie in a while, which means that however insignificant this primer in flight-attendant training is, causing boredom isn't one of its transgressions.

Between the dogged efforts of the kids to save strays and the antics of the dogs, it's hard to resist this lively, though predictable, family movie.

Regrettably, it's the movie version of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a book still thumping its chest on the hardback best-seller list after more than three years.

Ridiculously attractive spies fall hard for each other in Allied, but don’t expect "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" with Nazis.

Quvenzhané Wallis is adorably plucky as the lead in Annie. She and Jamie Foxx as the newfangled Daddy Warbucks character have an appealing chemistry and their songs together are the best moments in the movie. But the rest of Annie is banal, shallow and markedly cynical.

It feels like a wan version of the show -- one that has lost its otherworldly edge.

This Baywatch has its share of hilarious moments but never fully commits to the absurd, and even the cleverest jokes get so many callbacks, they’re beating a dead seahorse.

Audiences could use a wise and probing movie about the meaning of our increasingly digital, techno-juiced lives.Men, Women & Children is about half that movie.

Each twist and turn is so telegraphed and expected that the story feels wan and the comedy feeble.

Never enough goodies to keep the two-hour running time from seeming like three.

Freeman (no directing natural) gets acting help, and his film earns points for being told from the black perspective, but isn't even up to the modest standards of A Dry White Season, Cry Freedom or A World Apart. [24 Sept 1993, p10D]

Seems like a work in progress.

Despite an unlikely setting and a moderately intriguing premise, Chernobyl Diaries proves to be a generic horror flick where young tourists are systematically victimized in unoriginal and not terribly scary ways.

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]

You can have a better time title-scanning "Johnny" pics in an alphabetical video guide than you can enduring the latest Blade Runner knockoff. [26 May 1995, p.3D]

Annabelle invites unflattering comparisons with scary movies that came before, but its disparate parts never coalesce into a genuinely fearsome thriller.

It’s a bizarrely off-kilter affair that’s forcibly heartfelt and sentimental in one scene and overly mean-spirited in the next, and not even a few choice moments and some enjoyable surrounding weirdos can help two A-listers in way over their heads.