It's all played for giggles, this grim anti-humanism. [21 May 1992]

The special effects are variable, but even when they're good they don't have much impact because Evolution, with its self-trashing spirit, turns moviegoers into bemused bysitters.

Why, beating the audience about the ears, eyes and brain with essentially the same sequence of events from eight characters' points of view, none of which adds much more than deafening hysteria and identically dreadful music. The filmmakers seem to have missed the point that each re-enactment in "Rashomon" provides new and conflicting information. It makes you wonder if they studied the wrong movie. Maybe they rented "Rush Hour," or a video on Rosh Hashanah.

Jennifer Aniston brings a needed liveliness to Derailed, though not enough to go around.

In a word, Suicide Squad is trash. In two words, it’s ugly trash.

An experience best likened to being battered by hurricane-force winds generated by an organ with all stops pulled permanently out.

While there’s not exactly a lot of plot in The Goldfinch there is a lot of stuff, too much for even a 2 1/2 -hour movie.

Adds up to one numbingly unfunny comedy.

Ideas being realized on screen? It’s something Mr. Cahill’s characters accomplish far more effectively than does the director himself.

The results are mind-numbingly immense, joylessly violent and utterly lifeless.

Built on such a goofy premise that your average soap-opera scriptwriter would laugh it out of a story meeting.

The result is a movie groping for a comic tone while its FX machinery spews vast clouds of visual gibberish.

Why did Mr. De Niro do it, and why would anyone pay money to see it?

There's no zest to the general depravity, no coherence to the script or the spectacle -- clarity is missing in some of the camera work -- and, most important, no character to give a Greek fig about.

After missing the film on the small screen the first time around, I recently watched it on video, and can only conclude that my screen wasn't small enough.

Disney's National Treasure is supposed to be family-friendly, a PG-rated action adventure free of hard violence and bad language. That's admirable, to be sure, but with a friend like this a family doesn't need sleeping pills.

All three sides of the love triangle are appealing, and the movie as a whole might have been winning if it weren’t for the absurdist style that was clearly dear to the filmmaker’s heart. Sometimes Aloha reminded me of John Huston’s cheerfully unfathomable “Beat the Devil.” More often than not, though, it left me yearning for simplicity and sweet clarity.

Pretty bad, and pretty funny.

Heaping derision on such a woeful debut may be tantamount to shooting fossils in a tar pit. Yet this lumbering industrial enterprise, which was written and directed by the Wachowski siblings, Andy and Lana, is bad enough to be granted landmark status.

It’s all painfully exact and true. Myself a product of exactly this kind of blue-collar New England community, I winced as I laughed at this gang of badly dressed, foul-mouthed reprobates. My people!

The ending, for instance, is so ridiculously tidy it squeaks. But en route to its kitchen-sink climax, "Man" manages to both amuse and provoke, to cleave to convention and promote ideas.

What's never explained is why anyone would do such a dumb remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic.

The film grows increasingly mirthful as the characters come into focus, and the casting is the key: Ms. Garner, who also helped produce the film, has a gift for catty roles, and Ms. Wilde is so funny she should play hookers all the time.

The movie drills itself into our skulls, which are all too vulnerable to such an assault, though I must say my brain glazed over and my heart turned adamantine while the stupidities of this action thriller played themselves out.

Ms. Barkley comes across as a kid rather than a studio creation. Mr. Momoa gives the kind of unhinged performance of which few would have thought him capable. His prancing about at moments of joy are, in fact, joyous.

Green Lantern was meant to be a sci-fi adventure, but it proves to be a genuine mystery. How could its megamoola budget have yielded a production that looks almost as tacky as "Flash Gordon" (which had the good grace to deprecate itself at every turn)?

You keep rooting for the child to get a new pair of lungs, but all of the beatings, betrayals and bitter ironies leave a bad taste in your head.

Let's give this ghastly studio comedy a Truthiness in Advertising award, if nothing else.

Mr. Carter's intelligent, straight-forward style and the good performances of the young actors prohibit hooting at the story's completely American approach to a German story. [11 Mar 1993]

The entire film feels like an exceedingly stale stand-up comedy routine, which is to say it’s exactly like one of Mr. Maniscalco’s stand-up comedy routines.

What's wrong with this sad fiasco goes far beyond its visual deficits.

The film's only unqualified success is the end title sequence-because it's genuinely stylish, because it looks like it was shot in genuine 3-D and, most of all, because it's the end.

If you go to see this sloppy sitcom, in which Mr. Martin plays a divorced, repressed lawyer named Peter Sanderson, do expect to be surprised, seduced and entertained by Queen Latifah.

Do not attempt to see this film, derived loosely from the videogame of the same name, unless you're prepared for wobbly writing, lead-footed direction and acting that must have been boosted by nitrous-oxide injectors, plus a starring performance that could have used a boost and didn't get one.

The good news is twofold. Ms. Foy, an accomplished performer, is appealing throughout. And Keira Knightley, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, gives the film several desperately needed jolts of edgy energy.

Less than the sum of its parts, which were problematic to begin with.

The movie will surely find an audience, since it speaks to young people's anxieties about marriage and parenting. But what are two particularly engaging performers doing in a dump of a comedy like this?

Mr. LaBute is not a moralizer as much as a lamenter — his people usually bring unhappiness upon themselves. In the gently joyous Dirty Weekend, though, they are capable of finding a flight path to contentment.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is far too interested in having a good time to get too heavy about a bygone American argument, but there are truths to be found in the film, by peering through its various fogs of war.

The result is a mess -- sometimes an entertaining mess, but mostly a movie that makes a perfunctory mockery of the mockery currently passing for political discourse.

The inch-deep approach to history and social issues, the high-concept device, and the trite characters all seem better suited to a different type of movie—such as one of those gee-whiz featurettes shown at the EPCOT theme park.

The film almost suffocates on overripe dialogue (“We are messing with the primal forces of nature here”) and finally loses its way in the logical contradictions — or the nonlogical implications — of time travel.

Successfully stringing together shocking, disgusting and terrifying moments counts as a solid day’s work for most horror directors, and since The Exorcist: Believer achieves all that it’s competent enough. But I expected better from Mr. Green.

His (Eddie Murphy's) performance in Daddy Day Care isn't bad. He's restrained, and even tender in some of the scenes he plays with the kids. But restraint is the last thing we want from a comic of his caliber. It's no fun at all.

The devil had taken Reagan to the mountaintop and offered a world of spoils, from peace prizes to popular acclaim and a glamorous place in history. To reject it took more than guts. It took a man who put freedom ahead of his own glory. This is not a biography but the story of a man who faced off against the 20th century's "heart of darkness" and won.

A small story, a monodrama with a hero but no antagonists.

Ella McCay is not quotable. It is not believable. It is not likable. It’s not even digestible. For an ordinary filmmaker, it would be merely a disaster. For James L. Brooks, it’s more like a tragedy.

This movie is truly unhinged — not crazed, which might be interesting, but devoid of the usual hinges that connect one sequence with another.

The film suffers from a different condition, an emotional elephantiasis that is inexorable and ultimately terminal. What was by all accounts a modestly scaled production in all of its live-theater iterations has become a ponderous movie that turns earnest into maudlin, lyrical into lugubrious.

Those too young to remember Jackson will get what they want, which is a fantastically effective introduction to the talent.

Ms. Carson is a photogenic commodity to have in your film; so is Oxford, and director Iain Morris (the rebooted “Time Bandits”) balances the visual dimension of his film upon these twin resources.

Depending on how you feel about Zac Efron, he is either a sensitive hunk or an inexpressive hunk, but definitely a hunk. Unable as I am to locate any feelings about him, I see Mr. Efron as a hunk with a problem delivering sustained dialogue in units of more than one or two sentences.

The Blue Fairy may have brought life to Pinocchio, but no one here is delivering anything particularly fresh. Or alarming. For that, we wait till Christmas.

Mr. Tipping ditches reasonable motivation to deliver a satirical haymaker aimed at those whose religion is football. Like many failed satires, the conclusion is more vehement than amusing.

Charm has curdled into smarm in the big-screen version of Entourage. The jaunty style of a hit TV series has been replaced by huge spasms of false energy and a sense of barely concealed flop sweat.

What could anyone have said of the finished film except that it was finished? Terminator Genisys plays like the worst of all outcomes.

A star once beloved for his buoyant spirit has taken another bad turn in his career, and that’s painful to behold.

The star of this fantasy adventure for young audiences is a charmer from the moment she is hatched (from a huge blue egg that starts to rock like a Mexican jumping bean). Her name is Saphira, she speaks with the voice of Rachel Weisz, and it doesn't matter that she's too young to breathe fire -- at first -- or that she waddles a bit on the ground, because she lives and breathes the joy of flight, which is exactly what was missing from most of Harry Potter's solos on a broom.

Like our two loose cannons with badges, the movie misses its target at least as often as it hits it.

The settings seem shopworn and the whole exercise feels hollow. Long ago, when the first “Men in Black” hit the screen, the most conspicuous of its many delights were Will Smith’s street-smart but sweet-spirited cop who became Agent J, and Tommy Lee Jones’s wearily imperious Agent K. Now they’re gone, and all delight has gone with them. Only weariness remains.

Mr. Gooding is out there in almost every scene, and the destruction of his once-promising career proceeds apace.

Consider this more a consumer warning than a movie review: The Life Before Her Eyes will draw you in, then intrigue you, then bore you, then bewilder you, then make you crazy with its incessant flashbacks and flash forwards, and finally leave you feeling like the victim of a fraud.

I won’t make a case for No Escape being a good film; the first half is pretty good and the second half ranges from pretty bad to truly awful. Nor will I deny having enjoyed quite a bit of it as a zombie film, never mind that it’s supposed to be an international thriller with contemporary political significance.

The production renders totally irrelevant all hopes for a well-made movie. It's one of those ragged, pandemonious studio comedies that hammers at plot points in every contrived scene.

In their engaging, fast-paced and ultimately ludicrous combo of espionage and mayhem, the makers of The November Man give us a very Putin-like villain in Arkady Federov (veteran Serbian actor Lazar Ristovski).

We live in an age choked with unfunny comedy, from winking advertisements to recycled memes to the limp quips that punctuate most superhero movies, and yet Flight Risk still stands out for the laughless void that opens up beneath its putative comic relief. It’s almost eerie.

Mr. Hopkins gives the production what he was hired for. Whenever you wonder how much longer he can trade on Hannibal Lecter's special zest, the same answer comes up-a lot.

This shabby enterprise gets so many things so wrong that it freezes your face into a cringe.

Ms. Hudson makes the most of her role, even though that's not saying so very much -- the writing is terribly thin -- while John Corbett gives an unaccountably clumsy performance as a romantic pastor. Joan Cusack gets the funniest lines as Helen's sister, a model of boring mommyhood, but she also stops the movie dead in its tracks every time she plays a scene.

Certainly trashy, but, stripped of Mr. Diesel's services and directed by John Singleton, it's a no-go Yugo in muscle-car sheet metal.

Long after lice from her children's school infested Kate's scalp, I was scratching my head about why a 91-minute movie seemed so long. The answer came from reframing the question. Why was a string of sitcom problems stretched to 91 minutes?

One of the funny things about America: The Motion Picture—not all of which is screamingly funny—is that the more you know about America’s past, the more amusing it probably is (the past and the film).

Mr. Chan proves yet again that he has the virtuosic grace -- and goofiness -- of any of the great clowns of the silent era, and a complete refusal to abide by the laws of gravity. Do let us be clear, however, that the movie's plot, minus a few roundhouse kicks, is straight out of the Scooby-Doo playbook.

This noirish, sourish thriller left me unmoving as well as unmoved.

This slapdash farce, arriving three decades after Sellers last inhabited the role, sustains a baseline of good will that often spikes into delight at Mr. Martin's beguiling nonsense.

Granted, the mayhem is inflicted mostly on zombies and other Halloween decorations that have come to life courtesy of the ancient curse unleashed by Sydney. But the casual decapitations and dismemberments transition from vaguely entertaining to annoying, mostly because there’s a lot less story than there are special effects.

Cold and clever to a fault, like the main character played by Liam Neeson, the movie is based on a fundamental miscalculation—that our desire to penetrate its mysteries will trump our need for people to care about.

Men, Women & Children touches many nerves, but then pinches and twists them with its ham-handed approach to social commentary. I worry about Mr. Reitman, a filmmaker of consequence who is still too young to be so cosmic. Time to lighten up and come back down to Earth.

The film should have been played for pure farce and is not, hence the head-scratching in which a viewer will engage before very few bodies are cold.

Wayne Kramer's interlocking saga of immigration in 21st-century America definitely crosses over, from workaday mediocrity to distinctive dreadfulness.

All of the roaring and thundering in “Dominion” carries roughly the dramatic impact of a robust sneeze, because Mr. Trevorrow has forgotten that what we human beings care about, despite our addiction to spectacle, are human beings.

Ms. Berry works hard in her role, generating some excitement in the course of her distress. But the story's convolutions can't cover a deficit of substance, or sense.

Amelia Earhart is still missing.

Quirky. Wacky. Offbeat. Outré. The words that come to mind regarding Paper Man might prompt you run in the opposite direction. And perhaps you should, except for the performances of Jeff Daniels and Emma Stone.

This time the filmmakers seem to have forgotten everything they knew, and have endeared themselves only to Ms. Moore, who walked away from this ghastly fiasco with more money than most people could earn in two lifetimes.

The movie is a minor crime, a meandering misdemeanor that’s neither soft-core nor hardcore but no core, with no consistent style and minimal content.

Manages the dubious trick of being both execrable and boring.

This woefully botched mystery-adventure-thriller-caper-romance-comedy, or whatever it was meant to be, is no fun at all.

Certainly grows in its own right, into a coarse-grained summer vaudeville that could have been much smarter and sharper without losing its target audience.

A rube's-eye view of Hollywood, but the rube is weary, and those around him seem to be suffering from terminal torpor.

You can’t say too many nice things about “Atlas.” You wouldn’t want to encourage people. And yet this cacophonous, big-budget, Jennifer Lopez-powered movie/videogame just might offer up a justification for humanity, while at the same time suggesting we need one.

Domino is a new definition of a snuff movie. It snuffs out every vestige of feeling.

Some of the action sequences, and a few of the performances, are enjoyable enough to make up for the dialogue, which has been upgraded to cheerfully absurd, and the plot, which has been simplified to the point of actual coherence.

Johnny Depp's Tonto wears a dead crow on his head in The Lone Ranger. The star himself carries a dead movie on his shoulders.

This is movie-making by and for dummies, a sappy little bible story, blissed out on its own ineptitude.

It's unlikely that a dinosaur wrote the script — the Writers Guild of America makes no provision for Cambrian membership — but this animated feature is dimwitted all the same. The title should be "Trudging With Dinosaurs" (in 2.5-D, for all the grandeur the glasses confer), because the only semblance of a plot is provided by a long migration to winter grounds.

Given the importance of that subject, the real mystery of Mr. Lee's movie is why it's so diffuse, dispirited, emotionally distanced and dramatically inert.

In under two hours, the synthetic, insufferable I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry manages to insult gays, straights, men, women, children, African-Americans, Asians, pastors, mailmen, insurance adjusters, firemen, doctors -- and fans of show music. That's championship stuff.