Moviegoers may be happy to hum along with the jaunty soundtrack — and maybe even sympathize with the movie’s unlikely couple — but it’s unlikely to hold anyone entirely in its thrall.

While it’s gratifying — and occasionally gripping — to see that story told in 12 Strong, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film contains few genuine surprises, at least from a cinematic standpoint.

Give Woody Allen credit for ambition. Failing at one movie wasn't enough. Nearly anyone can do that; it happens all the time. He's chosen to fail at two simultaneously.

What's strangest, though, about Die Mommie Die! is how material that was obviously so giddily irreverent in origin became so inert, so joyless and dull.

In his [Ice Cube's] dramatic roles, Cube's raised eyebrows usually unleashed a fearsome glare and a hint of danger; here, his expressions are more quizzical, amused or confused. He plays against type, just as the movie itself plays against hype.

The nice thing about Nice Dreams is that, if you can live with a little raunchiness, it's fun, and it's funnier than C&C's "Next Movie," their second movie after "Up in Smoke": the humor doesn't rely so completely on old jokes about the drug culture. Cheech and Chong are bawdy, they're unself-consciously irreverent, and if any idiocy can happen, it will happen to them. So naturally people enjoy watching them. [5 June 1981, p.17]

Director Caroline Link (Nowhere in Africa) brings handsome period production values and a lyrical, restrained sensibility to a narrative that might not qualify as riveting, but exerts its own unmistakable emotional pull.

The Treatment gets this year's Rip van Winkle award.

Count me among those who would be perfectly happy if they never saw another movie in which a big-city cop, fueled by the death of his partner, seeks revenge against a corrupt small-town sheriff, a wily and ruthless pillar of the Establishment, a psychotic killer or (as here) all three. While you're at it, count me among those who would be happy never to see another starring role for Gere, except maybe as Felix in a remake of "The Odd Couple."

There are no gambles in this crossbreed of sports movie and doggy drama that dutifully — and lazily — stays on course from beginning to end. Heartstrings are tugged, dogs are adored and it’s all inoffensively inspirational.

It really captures what it feels like to be a kid.

Aside from Danner and Ivey, who's also miscast, performances are steady if uninspired. Silverman is engaging but hasn't yet learned to work the camera like the crowd. But all their efforts hardly matter given the surprisingly unsteady pace set by Tony award-winning director Gene Saks, who collaborated with Simon on the successful film versions of "The Odd Couple" and "Barefoot in the Park." Caught between the strictures of stage and the freedoms of film, Saks and Simon (and producer Ray Stark) compromise with an amorphous hybrid that's stagey and forced. [26 Dec 1986]

James Earl Jones, James Caan and D.B. Sweeney turn in superior performances in "Gardens of Stone," but it's all for naught. Francis Coppola sabotages their efforts with a handsome but fragmentary film that can't decide which story to tell.

Something is missing, and you feel that its absence prevents both the characterization and movie from going decisively over the top.

Seems fatally out of tune, with every staged encounter falling as flat as the protagonist's hot-ironed bob.

The camera is more athletic than anyone on-screen, muscling between bullets and smashing through walls. Heyvaert shoots action so well that you forgive how little physical action there actually is.

There are laughs to be had here, yes, but your mileage will vary depending on your tolerance for sophomoric bathroom humor and gratuitous vulgarity.

But when mechanical plots are a drama's main engine, we look for something else to divert us, preferably good comedy. That's in short supply, unfortunately. And it's no fun to sit through the movie's retread Woody Allenisms.

As for Hathaway, she's a revelation. Those eyes are still as big as Beamer hubcaps, but she's able to show more edge than her previous goody-goody roles have allowed.

A kind of satisfaction ultimately arrives, but it is not one for purists, or even lovers of speculative history. It feels tacked on: too little, too late, too ludicrous — the past rewritten as a form of wishful thinking.

One of the great strengths of CSNY is how skillfully it deflects criticism of "four balding hippie millionaires" taking to the stage to criticize American politics; the film is peppered with excerpts from some of the tour's earliest and nastiest critics.

The stranger and more unusual the characters, and the less they're explained, the better.

So phony it makes your gums ache.

Feels razor thin. None of the characters is particularly noteworthy. And the revelations of deep-seated conspiracy in the usual privileged, closed circles are hackneyed and tired.

The outspoken congressman is just as entertaining as his liberal fans already know him to be.

The film would be insufferable if it weren't for the total sincerity and commitment of its players.

Heckerling seems lost and distracted here -- the framing is careless, and the film moves with a stuttering pace. Why is this talented director being channeled into projects like this?

I suspect that none of these actors had as much fun bringing to life the cagey and colorful political vulgarian as his fellow Texan, Woody Harrelson, seems to be having in LBJ, crudely and rudely drawling his lines behind a wall of latex makeup, plus-size prosthetic ears and horn-rimmed glasses that obscure his own facial features.