The movie is showy without having any noticeably coherent style. Indeed, it might have been possible to enjoy Young Guns as a larky spree if the photogenic stars didn't carry themselves with such a smug, self-congratulatory air. But they behave as if our adoration were their birthright.

Closed Circuit is intriguing, even mildly diverting. That might have been fine for another film at another time, but in light of the here and now, this one should have been more.

As a look at the state of modern monogamy — or at least our enduring if misguided faith in it — it’s refreshingly acerbic.

Perhaps Sneakerheadz needs a sequel, one that more directly interrogates the shoe manufacturers themselves about the hazards of pumping up so much hype about their product.

The House on Sorority Row is a better-than-average sisters-in-jeopardy thriller, which might be expected from 25-year-old producer-director-writer Mark Rosman. After all, he served an apprenticeship with master of the macabre, Brian DePalma, and if Rosman's debut is a bit ragged in its bloodlines, it does as credible a job of exploring collegiate bonding as DePalma's "Carrie" did for teen-age anxiety. [10 May 1983, p.B2]

Genre fans will appreciate the blood flow and the gore, and director Anthony Hickox keeps things moving so that there's never a dull moment -- or dull blade. Consider Hell raised.

It's a clumsy, laughable alarm-ringer from Sidney Lumet, who looks at the power-lunchers and the new right, and shakes his head rather audibly. [31 Jan 1986, p.23]

It's hard to imagine that any self-respecting man would want to sit through two hours - let alone two minutes - of such caustic man-bashing.

In Hollywood, imitation is the most profitable form of flattery. That is the only plausible explanation for 101 Dalmatians, Walt Disney's disappointing live-action remake of its own 1961 classic.

It is the four young actors who play the students who truly shine, and who elevate the formulaic film above and beyond its familiar proceedings.

A soppy songfest about a tubercular pea picker who drives to Nashville, where he hemorrhages and dies. It's unfit for human consumption. [17 Dec 1982, p.20]

One is hard-pressed to isolate any feature of Now and Then that isn't stale from movie overtime and sentimentality. [20 Oct 1995, p.C17]

There's only so much an actor can do with lifeless dialogue. It's hard to blame the cast for looking less than committed; they all realized too late that Shepard created a monster.

Where the novel’s omniscient narrator provides ample insight into its protagonists’ interior thoughts and backstories, much of that is missing here: Some characters, particularly Gen, come across as flat, their motivations not deeply explored or explained.

A lugubrious cloud of mediocrity sets in early in Freeheld, a dreary dramatization of a pivotal gay rights case that paved the way for marriage equality.

Eat Pray Love finally settles into its own cinematic destiny as an attractive escapist love story, in which the romance is more with the I than with the guy.

Shaft? Not in this splashy-but-empty remake he isn't.

The longer I take to review this movie, the more the absurdities loom. So let me finish before I think about the story's stupidly plotted structure or recall how tiring it was to watch apes perpetually pushing humans to the ground or sending them pirouetting into the air.

Oddly compelling.

Smokey and the Bandit is an unexpected good time, a playful, wisecracking and curiously revealing example of All-American escapist entertainment. [29 July 1977, p.B1]

If the director, Stephen Herek, has any talent for comedy, it's not visible here.

Much of Constantine simply portends.

Puffed up with Mamet's brawny bromides and DeVito's self-indulgent direction, this bio-pic would be an altogether empty load were it not for Nicholson, all snake eyes and snarls as the Teamsters boss.

In this wildly uneven melodrama by writer-director Zach Braff, no member of the talented ensemble cast is entirely able to navigate its messy plot. That a few actors do manage to stay afloat for occasional breaths of air seems like a divine miracle.

Rebirth recycles elements of the earlier movies, and, other than the news that T. Rexes can swim, it makes no claims to originality. It just wants to leave you thoroughly, happily wrung out by the end.

A movie straining so hard to be edgily of-the-moment that it can’t help but be utterly irrelevant, strives to impress viewers with sadistic killings, oozing viscera and extravagant gushers of blood. But its most dramatic spectacle might be the sight of a facile, lazy enterprise being hoist on its own cynical petard.

Quest for Camelot, the first feature-length, fully animated film from the Warner Bros. studio, is a quasi-feminist Arthurian adventure about a young woman who wants to become a knight of the Round Table. It is also, unfortunately, a derivative rip-off.

There's already a crazy behind-the-scenes restaurant movie out this summer, and it's got a better story, and it's a cartoon, and it stars a rat.

In Short Circuit, there's nothing at stake, either emotionally or artistically or howsoever -- and I mean nothing -- but the movie's so diverting, and so giddily oblivious to its own faults, that it almost doesn't matter. Funny and paced at a gallop, it's a melt-away movie made for summer nights. [09 May 1986, p.D1]

This is fun and there are few kids who won't have a good time of it. But it's no Honey, I Shrunk . . . The first movie was more interesting and inventive, with the tiny kids facing the jungle terrors of a giant lawn and the aerial attack of a zeppelin-sized bee.

Swamp Thing isn't completely successful at banishing the old corkers and stereotypes, but it's a harmless, watchable comic-book thriller, refreshingly suitable for kids of almost any age.[10 May 1982, p.C2]

Little Nikita would be nothing without River Phoenix's hair. It's the most engaging, the most watchable thing in the film. It has body. It has character. It even has drama. In other words, it has everything that's missing from the rest of the picture.

It’s purely unintentional, but the little numeral dangling, like a broken, mangled finger, from the end of the title of The Equalizer 2 signals more than the fact that this is a sequel to the 2014 action thriller about a violent vigilante. It also lets you know that there are two, and only two, pleasures to be had here.

The promise of its premise is squandered all too soon in what becomes yet another tiresome exercise in the way-overworked zombie genre.

Amusing only for its performances, including those of Chittenden and Wilson. The cast cannot hide the movie's derivative shortcomings, which only remind us that we've seen better and funnier elsewhere.

Scrat's annoying ubiquity -- is just one piece of evidence that Dawn of the Dinosaurs has been focus-grouped and is now trying to please its presumed young audience a little more than is healthy.

Theroux and company could be said to be "Garden State"-ing, or trying to. Instead of that film's sheen of the touchingly weird, Dedication finds a whole lot of the coldly dumb.

Boiling Point is a bad cable movie -- USA as opposed to HBO -- temporarily masquerading as a theatrical release; even the presence of one hot actor, Wesley Snipes, can't elevate it past lukewarm status. Dennis Hopper, here reduced to an unamusing caricature of himself, further cools things down. The end result, if truth-in-titling were in effect: "Tepid Point."

True, the CGI dwarves (not “dwarfs,” thank you) are a pox upon the eyeballs, but other than that? It’s pretty good.

A lively, affectionate and well-acted romantic comedy, takes a raunchy look at relationships from the black male perspective.

A coy seriocomedy distantly related to--but missing the sting of--"Kiss of the Spider Woman."

For a quicker and more startling survey of Hong Kong stunts gone wrong, just check out the blooper clips that conclude any '80s Chan flick.

The movie’s a mixed bag, but Hahn makes the most of her opportunities. Casting directors would be wise to take note.

William Shakespeare would need a sense of humor to view Jean-Luc Godard's "King Lear" without getting steamed up in his bodkins.

Highly stylized fashion-wise but awkwardly unfocused in its plotlines, it aims for the western iconography of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone but never gets past its own directorial hurdles.

Fat Man seems unsure of which human story to concentrate on.

It is stylistically breezy but deeply sincere, as Tickell offers a thoughtful, well-researched argument for alternative energy.

Lolo presents a sympathetic take on the ways that midlife romance can push us to reevaluate our relationships, even — maybe especially — the ones we think we know best.

At heart, “Eurovison” seems content to be more dumb rom-com than sharp music satire.

When I say this movie's a charm, I'm really talking about Irwin.

This is a one-note deal, and it doesn't take long before you want to, well, just move out and leave these characters in their rent-controlled limbo.

The screenplay, by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby, is just one long passage of exposition: someone blows up or dries up or whatever, you wonder why that's happening, and then someone explains it. This they call suspense. [25 June 1985, p.C8]

It’s the chemistry among these three fine actors that keeps Going in Style afloat, lifting it from the formulaic and forgettable — which, essentially, it is — and making it genuinely, if modestly, enjoyable.

It's a kung-fu Die Hard picture, and, frankly, just plain silly.

There are only so many ways to photograph black starry space and the under-bellies of spaceships, and the films that got there first used them all up.

Nor will you find much excitement, tension or resemblance to actual teen culture in this whitewash of the quintessential rite of passage.

The Zero Theorem doesn’t fully earn the elaborately conceived scaffolding on which its relatively tame ideas are hoisted.

Setting the film in the punk heyday underscores the film’s themes of personal freedom and defying authority. And there are heartwarming touches, despite a plot that is muddied by sci-fi mumbo-jumbo about cannibalism.

Anne Fletcher's lifeless comedy about an overbearing mother and her exasperated adult son, has no flawlessly delivered punch lines. It doesn't even have a hangnail.

With 10 writers gnawing on it, there is little originality left in the story.

American Ultra has a clever premise. But it misses several opportunities to at least comment on, if not skewer, the spy movies that it only halfheartedly pokes fun at. As it is, it’s content to generate a low-grade buzz, rather than deliver a true high.

Neither triumph nor fiasco, Strange Brew leaves plenty of room for improvement, but I hope Thomas and Moranis get the chance to demonstrate that they've learned a lot from the mixed assortment of nuttiness in their first movie comedy. [30 Aug 1983, p.B4]

The fight between good and evil feels fixed in favor of Hollywood redemption.

This is an untaxing, big-budget summer popcorn movie for the whole family. Like the ride itself, it requires no more mental engagement than you would devote to any theme park visit (excluding the thrill rides, which actually raise a pulse.)

Zahn is the single biggest reason why Management is a delightfully screwball romantic comedy and not a crazed-stalker film. And why it works. Like watching a puppy chase its own tail, it's a pleasure watching Mike try to win Sue over.

The Boss Baby (adapted from the 2010 book by author and illustrator Marla Frazee) is a sweet adventure tale about sibling rivalry that ultimately becomes a moving tribute to family and brotherhood.

The ensemble cast boasts some of the finest actors in the business. They do their best to breathe life into the stereotypes, but they simply don't have enough to work with.

Isn't a great movie, but it's a perfectly acceptable widget.

The trouble is, we don't really much care about this philandering billionaire glamour puss, who seems perfectly capable of taking care of herself. We don't care about her husband or lover either.

Refreshingly free of hot air.

Funner, biggerer, brighterer, bolderer, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is not only okay, it may even be close to good. A lavish spectacle illuminated by Johnny Depp's swishing pirate captain, the movie has its dull moments, but not many.

Both slapstick and social drama, and it is certainly the most confident mix of the two that Perry has managed to achieve with this particular part of his vast media franchise.

Plummer is particularly good, delivering every line of dialogue as if it’s improvised, and with an astringent snort that only partially hides the fact that Jack really does care about people. Farmiga, for her part, never strays into histrionics, although she comes close after allowing herself to be seduced by her caddish ex.

This month’s Statham movie is titled “Shelter.” And as these things go, “Shelter” is more Shake Shack than it is McDonald’s. It resembles his other genre movies in the basic form and idea, but it’s a much more high-end and satisfying version.

Iranian American director Cyrus Nowrasteh, co-writing with wife Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, has amplified the basic elements of Suraya's story into the worst kind of exploitive Hollywood melodrama, presented under the virtuous guise of moral outrage.

This sets up a mesmerizing double master class in acting — by Moore, to be sure, but also by Williams.

It’s just charming enough, just exciting enough and just funny enough to not be a flop, but DreamWorks — the studio that has shown it can challenge Pixar when it comes to pushing the animation envelope — has chosen to play it safe here, rather than try to win the summer family film sweepstakes.

Purists will howl at the liberties Shainberg has taken with the facts, but there's a bravery to Fur, an uncompromising commitment to its narrow focus -- of one woman's creative birth -- that rhymes with Arbus's own artistic courage.

Quotation forthcoming.

It is one of those soap bubbles of a film, fleeting, ephemeral, seemingly there when it is not. As you leave the theater, it diminishes with each step, collapsing into shards of imagery and sensations of movement. It's the film that never was.

Tends toward the broadest possible takes on slapstick, sophomoric sexuality and post-"Hangover" raunch.

Styles’s flat performance delivers the fatal blow to the film’s uninspired depiction of mid-century homophobia, forbidden love and long-simmering resentment.

Though lacking in the script department, this cinematic wonderland delivers on one promise: escape, to a place of such natural beauty that even these affluent characters, however cardboard, are forced to take stock of the important things in life.

The lower your expectations, the more you'll enjoy it.

A star vehicle from its onset, this peculiar, mediocre comedy strains to accommodate the talents of both Mutt and Jeff, Terminator and troll. It's a Frankensteinian thing, an unsettling combination of two-fisted beefcake and mean-spirited shtick.

Save yourself 10 bucks, and an hour and 45 minutes of your precious time.

If you find yourself at "The Island" I have only three words of advice: Vote yourself off.

Things really slow down during the movie's ill-advised forays into drama.

An uneven, sophomoric and only fitfully funny omnibus of skits, The Ten is one of those silly-on-purpose ensemble exercises that must have been wildly fun to make.

You People sounds preachy, doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s not. What it really is is a master class on wedge issues and our shared humanity, delivered by comedians who know that laughter can be at once a bitter pill and the best medicine.

A mediocre comic romance.

Franco’s hand-held camerawork draws the story forward as unfussily as a shepherd leads a sheep, and yet with a kind of ghastly grandeur. This is functional filmmaking more than it is flashy. But there is, at its heart, a single virtuosic performance.

The two starring performances are spot on. Wilson gets the tone that screenwriter Don Payne so expertly evokes: It's a weird sort of self-aware despicability...Thurman is beautiful, fearless and perfectly believable as a superhero.

Let's wait for a movie where they do get it all right: story, acting and dancing. It'll happen, just not this time.

"Welcome to the Rileys"? Thanks, but no thanks.

It’s a yarn that’s made for a great storyteller, with thrills and chills to burn. But the way Tulis spins the thread is wonkier and clunkier than it could, or should, be.

Carpenter being Carpenter, he vacillates between overexplanation -- his are the most verbose horror films -- and cheap shocks.

An entertaining, light-hearted cops and robots action adventure decked out in high-tech finery. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]