Because snowboarding is younger than skateboarding and surfing, Descent lacks the poignancy of past surfer/skateboarder portraits that have shown participants reaching middle age.

There is some lovely cinematography by Shelly Johnson in the classic David Lean style and plenty of excitement. Taken just for that, Hidalgo delivers.

Slap Happy. [16 February 1996, p.D4]

Despite dashes of droll dialogue from screenwriter Ted Griffin, the remake aims for cool but instead gets chilly.

Kidman gets kudos for giving the enterprise a touch of class, while the film gives the studio's library a rare pedigreed addition.

Thornton is excellent and now seems genetically incapable of being anything less than great in any role he takes.

The werewolves have it all over the blood-suckers in The Twilight Saga: New Moon. When these oversize, hirsute creatures burst onto the screen, they inject life into a rather inert story.

An intermittently exciting action film anchored by a strong performance by Jackman, who embodies Wolverine like no one else could.

The cinematography is gorgeous and the makeup amazing, but the story lines are too disconnected.

After a string of iffy Transformers movies, Bay reminds that he can do a much better action movie with humans than alien robots: 13 Hours is his best work in the genre since his 1990s hits Bad Boys and The Rock.

With an ace pop mechanic like Joel Schumacher now in charge of our hero's bruised psyche, the patient not only survives but thrives in the garishly garnished but never groaningly gruesome Batman Forever. [16 Jun 1995, Pg.01.D]

Like the fumbling around of first-time sex, The To Do List has its enjoyable moments but doesn't exactly feel like a peak experience.

Preposterous, goofy and a clear ripoff of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” Identity still manages to make off with just enough laughs to work, thanks to the wondrous McCarthy, one of the few actresses in Hollywood allowed to showcase her wit and charisma as much as her physique.

It's for people who have always wanted to see Willie Nelson ("Uncle Jesse") lob Molotov cocktails on a freeway and smoke weed with Joe Don Baker, who plays Georgia's governor.

Slither is old-school gooey, slimy, silly B-movie fun.

Lee captures the despair, self-delusion, occasional terror and frequent humor of a praised and popular novel, aided by the potent acting his direction virtually guarantees. [13 Sep 1995, p.01.D]

John Singleton's bizarre but viewable Boyz N the Hood follow-up is surprisingly gooey going. [23 Jul 1993]

It's misleading to call this a documentary — fan fodder is more like it.

Some of us look forward to Guest films the way others pine for installments of Bond or "Star Trek." This skewering of Hollywood will entertain we "Guesties," but it's not at the top of his roster of parodies.

Predictable and foolishly unsuspecting characters react in ways that make you want to shake them. But there's an undeniable sense of silly fun in this erotic thriller.

You may enjoy One Night -- but you may feel guilty about it in the morning.

While Garcia looks around for something to do, the film is making a lot of Hoffman's comic shtick. It's funny, and sometimes very funny, but ultimately as distracting as Chevy Chase's unbilled casting as Davis' boss. [02 Oct 1992, p.1D]

Heathers was such a black-comic revelation that Pump Up the Volume comes as a double surprise. What were the odds, particularly this early in his career, that Christian Slater would end up starring in two of the best high school movies ever? [22 Aug 1990, p.4D]

An enjoyable, rousing film, despite its formulaic quality.

This many-feathered animal occasionally soars before it crash-lands.

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.

For his newest starry murder mystery, based on Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” Branagh challenges Poirot’s deductive mind and supernatural belief system and surrounds him with spookiness that can only spiff up a creaky plot and thin characters so much.

Worth stumbling into on cable not all that far into next year.