The Rookie is Clint Eastwood's ultimate cops 'n' robbers fantasy, where all the cars are sex machines, all the guns shoot loud and hard, and real men say things like, ''Wanna guarantee? Buy a toaster.'' [07 Dec 1990, p.4D]

First-time director/writer Richard Stanley hammers together chunks from films past to form a clunky horror show that never rises to the level of its source material. [14 Sep 1990, p.4D]

Post Grad is a collection of unfunny, insipid and predictable vignettes in search of a movie.

The scariest thing about this appalling and seemingly endless movie is that you paid for your ticket and now have to sit through it.

Talented actors are wasted in a film that induces more cringes than chuckles as women old enough to know better act like horny sailors on leave, absorb mass quantities of alcohol and drugs, and generally behave horribly.

The film aims to be a Gen Z/millennial “This Is Spinal Tap” but with much less clever wit and way more vocal fry.

John Wick serves up a noxious, clashing blend of hyper-realistic and cartoonish violence. Too bad there's no cinema decontaminating service that can wash our memories clean of such useless gore.

The dialogue is beyond clichéd, and performances feel cobbled together from other movies.

Fighting seriously lacks punch.

A quagmire that reportedly has undergone multiple edits to reach its current incomprehensible state.

For all its faults, Justice is never boring. But it's such a battering experience, you may find yourself checking your own body for bruises before leaving the theater. [16 Apr 1991, p.6D]

The jewels in the buried treasure, once sighted, look fake. But the bigger problem is how artificial the whole story feels.

Blue Steel is unpleasant and wearily predictable, a near-unbearable 103 minutes even for fanciers of urban cop films. Its one distinction, lead Jamie Lee Curtis aside, is its backhanded bone-toss to feminists: Now we know that women, too, can direct serial-killer crumminess. [16 Mar 1990, p.4D]

If Gooding can't get another "Boyz N the Hood" or "Jerry Maguire" soon, his career will need its own cork.

On paper, this sounded like a winner. In reality? We have met the Enemy at the multiplex, and he's silly. [08 Feb 1991, p.4D]

The Wal-Mart of cinematic soap operas. One-stop shopping for your emotional movie needs.

Really just an update of the kind of hapless grade-Z effort that once played the bottom half of a drive-in double bill.

So leaden and obnoxious that it actually makes you long for the John Travolta of "Old Dogs."

Vile, violent and less hip than it thinks it is.

Its use of trite "Win one for the Gipper" dialogue, overbearing soaring music and conventional plot devices makes it far too formulaic to truly move us.

Rain pours, snow flies, the sky is cloudy all day. Every corridor is steeped in shadow. But the artful atmosphere goes to waste as Robinson (best known for the quirky Withnail & I) skimps on character, drags out the action and stacks up overly convenient clues like dirty dishes. [6 Nov 1992, p.8D]

By the time the movie reaches its protracted conclusion, it feels like a slog. Pacino has a few funny lines, as does Leguizamo, but not nearly enough to save the film from collapsing under the weight of its own self-righteous tedium.

You're bound to have more fun working overtime than watching Employee of the Month.

Is this a comedy, action pic or sensitive Belushi-Harris romance? Director Rod Daniel never establishes a definitive tone, though he comes close in the scene where James Brown's I Feel Good hits the sound track after some canine fornication. You don't need a dog to smell this. [28 Apr 1989, p.4D]

Mowing the lawn might be more involving than watching this subpar sci-fi sequel, which manages to be complicated and witless at the same time. [15 Jan 1996, p.4D]

Director Steve Buscemi is not to be faulted for his filmmaking or acting skills, but as co-writer he could have done better than the false-sounding dialogue.

Inventing the Abbotts would be a lot more fun were it a trashy Troy Donahue-Diane McBain vehicle ground out by Warner Bros. in 1960, the year this hormonally motivated high school-college romance mercifully concludes. [4 April 1997, p. 4D]

For a movie that touts the importance of humanity, Green Lantern is a strangely lifeless spectacle.