Tough guys snarl at each other or dive out of the way before some explosion reduces their biceps to gymboy tuna. Van Damme still talks like a Belgian choirboy. But he’s physically awesome, of course. He can do things with his body that it hurts to even contemplate. If nature intended for men to do the splits or high kicks, boxer shorts would not have been invented. As for Rourke, I am convinced he’s made entirely of leather. He is essentially a boxing glove with a heartbeat.

Director James McTeigue was much more successful capturing graphic novelist Alan Moore's mood in "V for Vendetta" than he is conjuring the bone-chilling suspense of Poe. But viewed as simply another Hollywood thriller, The Raven builds up a decent head of steam as time runs out for our hero's imperiled fiancee.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a pointless and untimely lampoon of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from the increasingly creaky spoofmeister Mel Brooks. A predictable onslaught of bad taste and worse jokes, it mostly targets not the conventions of action-adventures but the sexual preferences of the merry men, who are variously referred to as pansies, fagalas and fruits. Brooks fills in the spaces with broadsides derogatory to women and the one interest group you can readily afford to offend on film -- blind folks.

In the hands of a less amateurish director, The Philadelphia Experiment, now at area theaters, might have emerged as an ingratiating sleeper. [09 Aug 1984, p.D6]

Girl 6 is such a mundane, flat comedy.

It would be dishonest to claim it isn’t funny. The laughs may come in fits and starts, usually by way of sight gags and set pieces, but they do come. And then they go.

The movie was nicely shot with flashy graphics to explain the data that does exist. But in the end, this film will persuade only those who already believe.

Where the movie sabotages her, though, is by insisting that all she really wants is to be like everyone else.

The Hangover Part II offers absolutely nothing new to fans of the first film. In fact, once the comfort of familiarity has worn off, they may well feel as baited-and-switched as the patrons of one of the sketchier clubs the boys visit.

Follows familiar formulas and characters, both brightened by a bit of wit and good performances from the two leads.

Firmly ensconced among the forgettables in Stiller's career, a generic romantic comedy of the one-from-column-A, one-from-column-B variety.

Adapted from Valerie Martin's psychosexual novel, this maudlin film transforms the legend of Jekyll and Hyde into a talky romantic love triangle. [23 Feb 1996]

Illustrates the law of returning diminishments.

If anyone can sell the idea of ... some psycho "Sherlock Holmes," it's Samuel L. Jackson.

Directed by Vincent ("A Map of the Human Heart") Ward, who is either a genius or a crackpot, and derived from a long-ago novel by Richard Matheson, the film is overproduced and underpopulated, with either characters or ideas.

Better than the ubiquitous PBS show in some places, not as good in others. [03 Apr 1998, p.N53]

Music video director Simon Brand makes an impressively taut debut with Unknown, a nifty little psychological crime thriller that suggests a "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" for the postindustrial age.

Like a dream you’ve half forgotten by the time you get to the breakfast table, it’s neither good enough to make much of an impression or bad enough to completely forget.

Firefox may sound bright, hot and racy, but it browns out. Eastwood has an energy crisis as director, producer and star. [18 June 1982, p.15]

Strip away the trite character beats, rote plot points, random dream sequences and other narrative padding, and “Batman v Superman” comes down to the actors, their characters and whether they can sustain interest over the long haul. The answer is yes, if they wind up in the hands of filmmakers blessed with authentic imagination rather than serviceable technical chops.

With a bench this deep, This Is Where I Leave You should have been a comedy of contemporary manners as wickedly funny as it is poignant. In the hands of Levy, it’s become just another forgettable example of low-stakes Hollywood hackwork at its most bland, banal and snipingly belligerent.

It's a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon that lasts 154 minutes rather than just five, and it's as exhausting as it sounds.

The humor is rigorously unoriginal and it all feels a bit like minstrelsy, a freakish, ritualistic nod to things your grandfather might have found funny.

For the most part, the film's a bewildering disappointment.

One singularly unbecoming character, who should, by rights, forever remain a "singleton."

"Nerds" is erratic -- more gags work than don't, but more situations don't work than do. There are some great throwaway lines. [10 Aug. 1984, p.23]

Though the actor (Walken) does little more than stroll through the film, he creates such an immediate sense of electricity that everyone else seems dim by comparison. Angels, devils or cops, they just aren't in his league.

On the whole, Deadly Friend is a routine horror movie, poorly photographed (by old-time cinematographer Philip Lathrop) and poorly performed (with the exception of New York stage actress Anne Twomey, as Paul's mother).

Cadence might once have been pertinent, revolutionary or politically correct, but it's definitely out of step with the times

The Bronze is just another movie about overcoming arrested development. It’s not as funny as it tries to be, but, for a few, fleeting minutes, it leaves an impression.

The mawkishness is ultimately too formidable.

The movie is presented as the story of a man who hasn’t figured out who he is yet. But that’s not quite right. Instead, it’s a movie that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up.

A mostly tedious, cheaply made shoot-'em-up from the always classy Dino De Laurentiis. [07 June 1986, p.D5]

The film is so thick with Jobs’s career highlights and lowlights that there’s little room for insights.

It doesn't help matters that The Libertine seems to unload every olde English cliche on file.

The first dumb-fun action movie of the summer season has arrived early with The Losers, a loud, loving homage to guns and testosterone based on a series of comic books about a renegade band of CIA operatives. How dumb is it? You might actually kill a few million brain cells just watching it.

May be ambitious in its genre-defying abandon, sideswiping science fiction, satire, film noir and melodrama along the way, but it's also exasperatingly convoluted, self-amused and politically sophomoric.

It doesn't take extra-sensory perspiration, as Ernest would say, to realize this undertaking is dumber than jaywalking at the Indy 500.

Every composite shot in Superman III appears to be a careless affront to the willing suspension of disbelief. The flying sequences are a letdown, the cataclysms are a cheat, and even the settings are often exposed as a chintzy hoot. [17 June 1983, p.C1]

Never transports you to another place and time, as it intends to.

The sparks don't fly -- they fall down and they can't get up.

I've got another portmanteau word for the movie: unbelievaballistic.

Performances feel too manufactured to be charming.

This is a modest documentary, actually made in 2002 but only now gaining national release, which celebrates Attucks and that particular team, but most important Coach Crowe, by all accounts a remarkable man.

The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers is hampered by a static structure that relies too heavily on a single voice.

Firehouse Dog goes into the marginally watchable category, aimed as it is toward the middlebrow family trade, preferably dog owners with their own Sparky slopping up the station wagon windows.

Although this film about a zebra who aspires to win horse races has a marvelous premise, it slows to a mediocre canter right out of the starting gate.

A sometimes entertaining flick that makes a lot of noise but doesn't have much to say.

Palmetto, directed by the German genius Schlondorff, who memorably brought "The Tin Drum" to the screen, somehow never quite finds the right line through the materials.

Wanted isn't quite the real Slim Shady of hip-hop comedies. But you might lose yourself in a few of its amusing moments.

It’s not a bad movie. It’s like several pretty good ones.

Slickers II is grounds for a stampede -- away from the theater.

The elephant, whose last film was Operation Dumbo Drop, steals the three-ring circus with its charming personality and an amazing 50-command repertoire.

The biggest problem, then, is the characters who populate the film. For the most part, they're one-dimensional caricatures.

Considering the clichd storyline and lackluster acting, maybe it's South Beach that deserves top billing on the "Revolution" poster.

The result doesn't really work. The music videos don't seem connected to anything, and there's not nearly enough about the actual victims of the trade. But it's a documentary with its heart and its outrage in the right place.

"Star Trek V" is a shambles, a space plodessy, a snoozola of astronomic proportions. The story is uneventful, the effects warmed over from "Star Wars."

The dialogue in San Andreas is lame, its plot both predictable and implausible, and the character development beside the point. Even Dwayne Johnson, that force of cinematic nature and rock-ribbed charisma, doesn’t have enough charm to dig this mess of a movie out of the rubble of cliche it’s buried in.

American Pastoral may tell the heartbreaking story of Swede Levov, but a firm grasp of who he is and what he means remains maddeningly elusive.

Throughout, Garner retains a permanent grimace, as if persuasive acting can be achieved by contorting cheek muscles and pouting lips. It's not just depressing to watch; it's tiring. We want to tell her to relax -- for our own relief.

Boasting a plot that's heavy on the magical shenanigans, this pretty and poetic adaptation of Shakespeare's play is a fantasia for the smart set, a literary novelty for anyone who wants to have fun without giving up food for thought. On that score, at least, it delivers, in spades.

The remake is directed by another slickster, the Irishman John Moore, who is no deep thinker (as his "Behind Enemy Lines" confirmed) but, like Donner, he's an able hack -- smooth, stylish, clever, soulless and a hoot. And so's his damned movie. And it is damned.

Nothing in Dad moves below the surface. When the inevitable tragedies come, they take their expected forms. And because we have at least some susceptibility and human feeling, we give the expected response. What we are responding to, though, is not so much the film as the issues it raises.

The mixture of tension, yuks and horrific violence at times reminds one of nothing more than a poor man's "Pulp Fiction."

Feels patently inauthentic.

Let's face it, some people find butt and bathroom comedy funny. And some don't.

The film oozes sentimentality, soap-opera bathos and clumsy cribbings from the Frank Capra book of small-town values. Those are its good points.

According to the press kit, "Producer Daniel Melnick's personal stamp on films has always been to avoid the obvious, the cliche'." Uh, Dan . . . you lost your stamp.

This is a movie you can like a lot if you accept that it's not going to approach things in a conventional manner. [22 Jan 1998, p.B7]

A lamebrained American remake of the classic, bitter French farce "Les Comperes," Fathers' Day offers sporadic laughs of the lowest kind -- the old outhouse-bites-man thing -- but some conspicuous idiocy as well.

9 Songs inadvertently proves just how limited experimentation for its own sake can be.

The romantic drama The Vow looks like the kind of annual Valentine's Day staple that arrives just as calls start flooding flower shops and chocolate bonbon displays invade your local CVS.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green, who co-wrote the screenplay with Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers and Zach Baylin, has constructed a work that suffers from the same tunnel vision as other movies of this ilk.

Only fitfully amusing. More often, it feels like a mediocre attempt to reprise the central elements of the infinitely funnier "Napoleon Dynamite."

Even Monáe’s magnetism can't elevate Antebellum above roots that are firmly planted in the blood and soil of pulp exploitation, shaky liberal earnestness and rank opportunism.

After paying good money to take your family to see this film, you may be dealing with some anger-management issues of your own.

After evoking only warm smiles in its first half, Le Chef ultimately veers into farce.

More mood piece than drama, Equals ultimately benefits from the scarcity of exposition, because the story’s details make little sense.

Plodding and predictable, and a big disappointment.

“Spider’s Web” may have its flaws, including a bit of villainous motivation so oversimplified it makes Dr. Evil’s thought processes look like Einstein’s. And yet despite Lisbeth’s makeover, there’s still something cool, complicated and compelling about this “Girl.” Lisbeth may be stuck in a silly movie, but she’s nobody’s victim.

For all the wacky, taboo, parodic situations that MacGruber plunges into, the film seems content to simply point at its hero, yell "What a schmuck!" and leave it at that.

As a comic actor, Allen's palette is limited to varying degrees of beige. He is not only boring, he's obnoxious and narcissistic. Where's the ASPCA -- the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Audiences -- when you need 'em?

Think twice about taking very young children — or even some susceptible adults — to this at-times shocking, if less than graphic, gloom-and-doom fest. But the worse sin is: It’s boring.

For a quick ticket into the world of extreme sports, the sky-high, adrenaline-gorged stunts captured in X Games will make any spectator gasp, wince and brace with fear.

Benefits from affecting performances from a gifted cast headed by R&B heartthrob Usher Raymond.

This film isn't so much a sequel to the original "American Pie" as a reduction of it.

The movie doesn't have the energy to be truly horrible. It's too muted and enervated. But it's a somewhat tedious thing to sit through.

Relentlessly beautiful and wholly annoying.

Plays like an empty but diverting beach read. Your brain recognizes that the dialogue, for example, doesn't come from any place that remotely resembles relationship reality.

The problem with this movie is the problem with most Renny Harlin movies: There's an excessive amount of excess -- a mind-numbing plurality of firearm battles, vehicular explosions and brutally frank sexual talk.

The secrets that are revealed, to the extent that a viewer is able to make out what they are, remain murky, even to the end of the movie.

Instead of a hearty chowder of emotional highs and lows, first-time director Alexander Janko, who also adapted the script, settles for a diluted, Campbell’s-Soup version of getting one’s groove back.

The pleasure we take from Medicine Man comes not only from the actors or the engrossing progress of the narrative, but from every aspect, including Donald McAlpine's ravishing cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith's luscious score.

The movie gives some depth to its misfits, and ultimately sends the valuable message that nobody should be ashamed of who they are.

Wish I Was Here touches on some timely themes and does so with an artistic vulnerability.

So what makes this 2012 Total Recall superior to the Arnie model? For starters, there's an actual actor in the starring role.

Hardly out of the driveway before director Penny Marshall loses control.

Robert Redford does everything but wear a crown of thorns as the selfless war hero of The Last Castle, a heavy-handed military prison melodrama.