It's depressing to see director Herbert Ross strain to fabricate an atmosphere of urgency around such perfunctory characters, events and crises. A minimal lyric can be finessed by stylish orchestration much easier than a minimal script can be finessed by streamlined composition and emphatic cutting. [18 Feb 1984, p.G1]

Dark of the Moon is capable of having a little fun with itself. In one scene, mini-Autobots watch "Star Trek'' on TV, not noticing that Spock has the same voice as Sentinel Prime, the formerly moon-stuck 'bot who's rescued and revived in order to play a major role in this installment.

It’s hard to get over the movie’s haunting atmosphere. It may be just another story of kids in peril, but this one’s particularly hard to shake.

While the frequent sex scenes are graphic, they’re also driven by vulnerability and long-buried desire. In this film, wordless encounters often reveal more about characters than conversation.

Feeble....Director Tony Bill tries to give Mitch Markowitz's script a spirit of madcap abandon but instead achieves a kind of forced hilarity that's neither funny nor liberating. [11 Apr 1990, p.D4]

Halfhearted and unsure. They want it both ways and in so doing, don't get it either way. Cute just goes so far. [22 Aug 1997, p.N37]

Disney just doesn't know when to give up on a dead project, which is the only thing that accounts for the studio's scene-for-scene remake of Little Indian, Big City, a French farce the corporation dubbed and released exactly one year ago. (It sank faster than a canoe full of Fantasia hippos.)

Eugenio Zanetti's set design is wonderful. But the movie isn't enough to make people check the shadows when they leave the theater.

There’s nothing sly about writer-director Le-Van Kiet’s scenario.

In spite of cliches as thick as stars in the sky, the price of admission to "The Mountain Men" may be worth almost as much as one 1830 beaver pelt.

The film looks handsome and expensive, building up a nice head of suspense before sputtering to a less than wholly satisfying conclusion.

A corkscrew of a thriller, has more twists than a tarantula with a permanent.

The museum sparkles, but the movie is awfully dull.

Killerman takes its influences — countless pulpy crime thrillers — and synthesizes them into an increasing rare thing: a movie that doesn’t aspire to any greater heights than where it lands: squarely in the middle of the August dumping ground.

Both terribly silly and a lot of fun.

Depraved, worthless piece of filth.

Unsullied is wholly underwhelming, with atrocious performances and plot twists so implausible that they would be funny in a film less tedious than this.

With its desensitizing blood lust, RoboCop 2 contributes yet another ugly note to this already demoralizing season of sadism. If things continue as they have until now, the body count at the movies may reach into the millions.

Eager to seem warmhearted and endearing, Author! Author! is frustrated by Pacino's conspicuous resistance. If anything, this uncharacteristic vehicle illustrates his inability to lighten up an emphatically gloomy, brooding screen presence. [19 Jun 1982, p.C1]

In the end, like virtually every other remake that has been released recently, it's polished and predictable.

Essentially, this is a film about humans as victims of alien abuse, a mediocre look at helplessness.

There's really nothing more here than you can find watching dreadful political advertisements and dreadful political talk shows.

Such a bizarre movie that it has completely occupied my thinking for days. Not because it's a good movie, mind you. It's more like the equivalent of a botched tooth extraction with a coat hanger. Some bloody shard remains stuck in an inflamed, fleshy part of my psyche, and it's going to take some serious tugging and tearing to root it out.

If director Michael Dowse took Matt and Tori out of the equation - which is to say, if he took out the main storyline - the whole event could have been a lot more fun.

It's just that Pattinson's performance is so enervated that his Georges Duroy comes across as something of a cipher. He's not quite alive, yet also clearly not dead, given the amount of sex he has. He's undead, or at least uninteresting.

This doggy flick, starring Matthew Modine, Nancy Travis, Eric Stoltz and Max Pomeranc, is one of the weirdest, most depressing family films ever made.

By the end, the film deteriorates into a combination sensitivity session and pep rally.

Dismal. Lame. Not funny.

For many, the story will pose an insurmountable challenge to even enjoy. But enjoyment it seems, is not Potter’s point. Yes, it is an unvarnished portrait of a mind breaking into fragments. Yet it is more than that, too.

A good idea and a stellar cast lost inside a sloppy script that mostly retreads last year’s laughs.

The movie is sincerely Christian in its outlook, while also a slapstick animal ’toon. It’s a mix that works only intermittently. But when it doesn’t pop, it thuds.

The repeated fake-outs even lead one to entertain the fond delusion that The Burning might be absent-minded enough to diverge into harmless farce and end up as a rehash of "Meatballs." Regrettably, once Cropsy strikes again, he can't seem to stop, and the movie keeps him company by going methodically beserk. [28 May 1981, p.D11]

Adolescents are too grown-up for this blasted nonsense.

There’s a lot of baloney — along with bodies — sliced up by the end, with Laurie bloviating about how Michael has come to “transcend” something or other. But there’s nothing transcendent, let alone new in Halloween Kills.

Will entertain the kids; not so much the grown-ups.

A film in search of a tighter edit and a stronger point of view. It meanders from scene to scene, calling to mind the images of leaking faucets and dribbling IV fluid that appear here in close-up.

Perhaps as a publishing phenomenon the concept works, but on-screen it's pretty dull, with good actors in bad roles and bad special effects.

Figgis depends on his considerable ability to evoke mood in a symphony of image, montage and music. But these scenes, watchable as some of them are (and I don't mean the Fall of Man Follies), don't accumulate into much more than abstract mush. [25 Jun 1999]

In the end, family ties are re-strung, but the morals remain annoyingly at loose ends.

A movie that possesses the stylized, lethal-Looney-Tunes slapstick we’ve come to associate with Coenesque humor, as well as the fiery, thinly disguised polemic of such past Clooney projects as “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a fun, if sacrilegious, first step in a franchise creation — one that observes the first commandment of storytelling: Thou shalt not be boring.

What a bummer! Certainly the meanest-spirited film ever associated with the Disney hallmark.

Clue is based on the popular Parker Brothers board game in which the players try to guess, well, whodunit, and where, and with what weapon. You leave it with one conviction: stick with the game.

Unless you're a Van Damme or martial arts fanatic, you're more likely to be thinking: No, merci.

The monster, an obvious HR Giger rip-off, looks completely different every time it’s onscreen; of course, it’s supposed to be continually mutating, but mostly it looks too immobile to be menacing.

Yes, Knowing is creepy, at least for the first two-thirds or so, in a moderately satisfying, if predictable, way.

The movie's flexibility with its own rules would be less noticeable if it were busy thrilling us.

Okay, the concept for the movie is admittedly lame, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with watching a passel of adorable pooches wrinkle their brows and bark while human voices come out of their mouths.

It's a light and breezy, recession-themed romantic comedy; "Up in the Air" without all the angst and introspection.

It's all as cliche'd as "A Summer Place," a better movie even if it was soap opera. For Keeps is a soapbox opera, and the slats are about to fall through. Writers Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue are as wishy-washy about their issues as they are their heroes. And they serve up the usual "you can have it all" scenario. After the teen-agers suffer with didies and postpartum depression, it's off to college to prepare for future careers. [16 Jan 1988, p.B5]

Memory is by no means a deep film. But there’s something here that lends the familiar proceedings a bittersweet aftertaste that lingers in the mind.

But despite doing its best to jiggle, giggle and ogle its way into a niche somewhere between "Heathers" and "American Pie," it becomes just another forgettable pastiche of sight gags and pop-culture references.

Possesses its share of modest laughs, many of them delivered by Ted Danson as Bridget's bemused husband. But director Callie Khouri (best known for writing "Thelma & Louise") doesn't bring the dash needed to make this a comic heist on a par with "Ocean's Eleven."

Moving without being melodramatic, War of the Buttons is a tale of the worst -- and the best -- that people of all ages are capable of.

Godzilla, go home.

Hilarious.

The movie turns out to be a little of everything yet succeeds only occasionally at anything.

The first Crocodile picture -- which went on to become the most profitable foreign film ever made -- wasn't great entertainment, but it was light, companionable and essentially inoffensive. Compared with the sequel, though, it looks like a masterpiece.

As the vengeful Candyman, Tony Todd remains both a tragic victim and a frightfully menacing supposition, enough so that you'll think twice before repeating that full Candyman mantra in front of your bathroom mirror.

It's a grim tale, and Back to 1942 doesn't pretend otherwise.

Make no mistake: Black Adam proceeds with predictable action sequences, tiresome fight scenes and the now-requisite sacrifice of a major character. But it’s that seasoning of radical politics — the theme, expressed in the film as a question of whether freedom fighters should have to play by the rules of war — that gives it a bit of spice. Whether that’s enough to set Black Adam apart in a world that already arguably has too many superhero movies, is unclear.

"Created Equal” doesn’t offer many insights, at least not in a deeply satisfying way, as to how and why he has changed.

Although “G.I. Joe” is merely a movie based on Hasbro toys, the action -- the real point of all this -- feels just as lifeless.

Cinderella, the latest of countless adaptations of the centuries-old rags-to-riches story, is far less interested in enchantment than in dismantling the entire sexist, classist racket.

A scruffy but appealing light entertainment, the movie owes its unexpected charm to the fact that comedian and dog seem to complement and humanize each other. [09 Sep 1980, p.C3]

This time, Eastwood has traded in his magnum for a Chevy pick-up truck and crime-ridden city streets for a netherworld of highways, honky tonks and trailer parks. But there are still enough bodies smashed - automotive and human - to keep his followers happy. [22 Dec 1978, p.20]

It’s a movie designed as functional entertainment, and for lack of a better word it functions.

It’s exhausting. It’s also not particularly funny or engaging.

I'm guessing even die-hard "Clerks" fans will find this only-in-America stuff only partially satisfying, like something they gorged on at the Eatery, then wished they hadn't.

The upshot is that the film is technically superb and quite enjoyable as long as you don't bang your head against the plot.

In general, if it weren't for the good will we feel toward the actors, the movie would be intolerably feeble. It's nearly intolerable as it is. The only other plus is Stewart Copeland's jaunty, percussive score. It's this sort of thing that's giving maternity a bad name.

While it's obvious that Stanley has seen a lot of genre films, he's not yet learned how to make one, though his shortcomings are less visual than dramatic and narrative; things look fast, but happen s-l-o-w. This Hardware needs a grease job.

An invigorating blast of cinematic adrenaline.

It's uninspired and insipid all the way.

The loudest, trashiest, stupidest, cheesiest celebration of ritualized male aggression of 2004.

Lacks that outrageous effrontery that might have socked it to its intended audience.

If her career as director somehow doesn’t pan out, Meyers-Shyer would make an excellent fairy godmother.

Smokey and the Bandit II -- is a premeditated embarrassment. It seems to prove that entertainers who discover a successful formula may not have the foggiest notion of how to protect, duplicate and sustain it.

Russell is an inoffensive Mel Gibson clone here. But Stallone is an unlovable lummox, preposterous because he takes himself so seriously. Even when he attempts to laugh at himself, his quips fall like clods on coffins. His bravery is braggadocio. Let's hope this will be the last of Tango.

Less intriguingly convoluted than concussed into lifelessness, “Marlowe” is the cinematic equivalent of a word salad: It parrots all the right lines while striking all the right poses, without saying much of anything at all.

Beltrn, for his part, makes a solidly believable Garca Lorca. The problem is with the man with whom he's obsessed. In Pattinson's performance, we never see what Garca Lorca sees in Dal.

The Rookie is like one of those maddening, waking dreams when you spend the whole night thrashing in bed while tediously repetitive images batter your racing brain. But at least morning comes. This movie, directed by Eastwood, never ends.

Although it frequently misfires and occasionally keeps firing away on empty satiric chambers, Student Bodies is a likably sarcastic and knowing assault on the cliche's of horror movies. [11 Aug 1981, p.C10]

The people of 2022 may “release the beast” by slaughtering their fellow Americans. In 2013, that’s still what we go to the movies for.

It's Walken who grounds every scene with the kind of watchful honesty that has become his brand in late-career.

It's sheer piffle, a disingenuous romance with Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino that's all sap and no sizzle.

Anyone who doesn't smile is probably either too adult to count or too dead to care.

The effects are generally good, and those Cenobites are definitely not the kind of folks you'd have over on New Year's Eve. Still, it's odd that the most intriguing, and threatening, items in the film are those darn puzzle boxes.

Hart is clearly working overtime; there’s nothing effortless about his histrionic delivery, but it works.

The script boasts more writers than the computerized menagerie's got megabytes, but they haven't come up with much variety or humor in what is essentially a string of catastrophes.

Mild pleasures are available in Mr. Woodcock.

This cinematic triple-decker sandwich is so overstuffed with baloney and cheese it ought to come with a pickle on the side.

Call it a Christmas miracle, albeit a minor one: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel isn't entirely awful.

A ridiculous rabble-drowser with the heart of a bully and the soul of a thief.

I suppose there's not much point at this late date to complain about how all movies look and sound alike today, how dull stretches in the story are pumped up with loud music, how handy, so-called "comic" hooks (one character has a flatulence problem, another will do anything for sex, another will do anything for money) have taken the place of characterization, how directors don't even try anymore to create a real milieu. [15 Feb 1986, p.G6]

The Christian-themed Where Hope Grows wears its heart on its sleeve, hawking its message of salvation through faith to anyone who’s in the market for cheesy uplift and saccharine sentiment. It’s a soft sell, to be sure, but it’s salesmanship all the same.

Making a scintillating feature directing debut at the age of 30, Mastroianni reveals a special knack for juxtaposing funny and frightening stimuli, recalling De Plama and Steven Spielberg at their most provocatively amusing.

Another film about . . . a cretinous, grating loser.