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]

A surprisingly gripping experience.

Comes across less as a fully realized work of storytelling than as a commercial for a corporation whose goal of entertainment has been replaced by that of making money.

Petersen leaves out, largely, character, back story, anecdote and warm personal relations. Poseidon isn't cute, funny, warm, nice, inspirational or uplifting. It's about the incredible labor of survival in a world turned totally sociopathic in an instant.

The problem is that, in focusing on what makes a good caper, director Louis Leterrier forgot about what makes a good movie: character development, carefully constructed tension and believable plot points.

INDULGE me for a moment: Funny Farm, the latest lame critter from the Chevy Chase stable, is hogwash. A real turkey. A load of horse manure. There. Now that I have the farm puns out of my system, I can calmly urge you to avoid Funny Farm. [3 June 1988, p.N37]

All of the supporting characters -- notably tubby Richard Griffiths as Tess's nurse and mousy Austin Pendleton as her chauffeur -- are thinly drawn, but neither MacLaine nor Cage leaves much room for anyone to overact.

Even by its own standards, the movie becomes increasingly macabre and ludicrous as Anne's machinations get the better of her, and everyone, including the audience, is left feeling shattered, shaken and vaguely unclean for having participated in all this.

Director John H. Lee isn’t big on John Le Carré-style intrigue and introspection. (The dialogue comes in only two flavors: blustering and sentimental.) He’s better at the shootouts and chase scenes, which are loud, lively and well-choreographed, if sometimes outlandish.

An energetic if empty-headed adventure based on the popular video game.

The movie builds a moderate, if less than monumental, level of spookiness, regardless of your ignorance. It’s a workmanlike piece of suspense.

The lightweight nature of the plot is, arguably, appropriate to the film’s gentle comedy, which elicits chuckles here and there, but rarely stings or draws blood.

Obliged to launch the hero on an effective counterattack down the stretch, Wallace goes through the motions proficiently enough for exploitation thriller purposes. He should have quit while he was ahead, but Halloween III demonstrates a reasonable ability to control comic-horror effects on his first derivative try. [27 Oct 1982, p.D9]

Sugar Hill is often more unflinching in its detailing of the death trip drugs provoke -- a pair of overdoses are particularly harrowing and the gun-violence is sufficiently sudden and shocking -- but much of its message feels as if it's being delivered by Western Union.

The acting by Binoche and her two young co-stars is more nuanced than the film deserves. They bring a rich expressiveness and sense of complex inner life to their characters. It's the movie - and its placard-sized message - that is more two-dimensional.

A loving throwback to the classic westerns and sci-fi adventures of yore, this celebration of two of cinema's most revered genres doesn't stint in lavishing their most cherished conventions with even-handed affection and respect.

You know how a pop song from a moment in your past can bring that moment back to life in colors, smells, memories and emotions? “The Greatest Hits” takes that idea and literalizes it right into the ground.

The film defies one of the fundamental rules of capitalism: Exploitation of the proletariat may be well and good, but don’t execute them all. At the same time, “The Purge: Anarchy” obeys a cardinal law of Hollywood: Shoot first and ask questions later.

Reductive, ghoulish and surpassingly boring, “Blonde” might have invented a new cinematic genre: necro-fiction.

About as funny as digging your own grave in an unmarked part of New Jersey.

The bad news? The story, which rumbles along like an unattended wheelchair on a gently sloping sidewalk.

The movie's deeper problem and its primary disappointment: its unwillingness to deal directly with the issue of colonialism.

The French now proudly prove they can make a big stupid violent cop movie, just like our gifted Hollywood professionals.

The documentary never gets more than skin deep. It rarely delves into the troubling regions that are the very orchards of documentary.

Occasionally amusing, technically lovely but ultimately dated.

War is hellishly entertaining, especially in Behind Enemy Lines, a 21-gun salute to the commitment and preparedness of the U.S. military.

Another product from Industrial Light & Magic, this fire-breathing, soaring creature is a technical wonder to behold. But they've skimped on everything else. The script douses the movie's fiery potential and director Rob Cohen soaks all remaining embers with his cheap, made-for-TV direction.

In short, Magic is unworthy of its name. It's frightfully feeble and obvious. [11 Nov 1978, p.F11]

It all amounts to a missed opportunity considering how many female athletes and sports fans would probably flock to the first film that targets their demographic since "A League of Their Own" nearly 20 years ago. The people behind The Mighty Macs could learn a lot from that film, especially that following formula is fine, as long as you don't skimp on the details that complete the portrait.

There are a few cheap thrills in Elm Street 3, but there are also plenty of effective effects, including mirrors-as-drowning-pools, Ray Harryhausen skeletal work and Freddy's body as a living frieze from hell. The film's major weakness can be summed up in two words: Craig Wasson. Wasson, who has the charisma of a bowl of wet chow mein, plays the sympathetic doctor who must try to outwit Freddy.

Instead of offering a perspective that, at the very least, laments a world where the flow of money hurts otherwise good people, Allen simply pushes the movie into an uncertain sinkhole between morality play and black comedy.

There’s a story here, all right, but it’s a heartless and bitter one.

Don’t Let Go manages, at times, to generate a nicely weird “Twilight Zone” vibe, but fails to sustain it, as it also runs into some of the same problems that plague movies of this ilk: If you tear the fabric of time by altering what has already happened, it can be difficult to sew it back up straight.

Humanoids is a clever combination of Jaws and Alien. [09 Jun 1980, p.B1]

The plot itself is predictably divorced from reality, containing more holes — and smelling staler — than month-old Swiss cheese. All of which means that Stallone and Schwarzenegger end up having to do all the heavy lifting.

Recalls those corny Warner Bros. movies about Dead End Kids.

Might provide a much-needed fix for Mac's most ardent fans, but they'll have to wait for a star vehicle that fully exploits the range of his comic gifts.

The movie is pulled along mostly by James Marsden's cheerfully over-the-top performance as Ian's homophobic older brother, but Josh Zuckerman does a nice job of keeping Ian likable.

Like a cute version of Jekyll and Hyde.

The movie comes across as a political science course videotape rather than a movie to fully engage a general audience.

Each plot twist trumps its predecessor into ludicrousness.

It’s silly and a bit sappy, but it works, in a crowd-pleasing way.

As skillful an artist as Range clearly is, he has gone to an awful lot of trouble to make a painfully obvious point about threats to civil liberties in a post-9/11 world.

Far and Away is such a doddering, bloated bit of corn, and its characters and situations so obviously hackneyed, that we can't give in to the story and allow ourselves to be swept away.

The movie's too slick and obvious about its intentions.

The movie's sweet, gentle nature may lack the subtle irony of the "Toy Storys" and "Shreks" of the world, but parents won't be bored.

Of The Good German, it can be said that the operation was a brilliant success, even if the patient is not merely dead but most sincerely dead. The movie, in other words, lies there as if on a slab in a morgue, while you admire the corpse for its beauty.

Brad Silberling, a TV director (Brooklyn Bridge, NYPD Blue) making his feature debut, obviously is out of his element in this grandiose extravaganza of sets and effects. Still, that doesn't explain the inert performances of Moriarty and her henchman, Eric Idle, and sundry other supporting characters. Much of the blame belongs to Sherri Stoner, Deanna Oliver and the many ghost writers who created this ghoulish hash of teen romance, father-and-child reunion and monster mash.

Marie Noelle fills the story with passion, debate and human contradiction. If the material ultimately eludes the director’s grasp, wandering off on unfocused tangents, it’s because of its ambition.

The oddball grief drama Demolition proves that an actor who could easily be dismissed as just another watchable face is actually possessed of subtle, fascinatingly protean chops.

2012 takes the disaster movie -- once content simply to threaten the Earth with a comet, or blow up the White House -- to its natural conclusion, the literal end of the world.

Great Balls of Fire, like "La Bamba," is thin on the meaning of the life in question, but big on '50s Billboard nostalgia. It's lightweight archaeology, a bent American Bandstand biography. Something has slipped away from McBride, Quaid and Fields: the truth, the heart, the soul. All that's left is the hip.

Writer-director Garth Jennings’s script hits the usual sequel plot points: No one over the age of 10 will ever accuse the film of originality, or wonder for very long whether this plucky zoo will ultimately manage to put on a solid performance.

Everything is utterly unbelievable; it's Blackboard Jungle without a moral intelligence, Rock and Roll High School without a soundtrack. Sitting through it is like paying for detention on a sunny day. [14 Oct 1982, p.D15]

We know the story will conclude with a crescendo of frozen-north hallelujahs. Cheering is endemic to Disney. They can't help themselves.

The direction has a fluid, no-nonsense authority, and the performances by Harris, Phifer and Cam'ron seal the deal.

Although the acting is committed and sometimes stirring, most of the characters are about as one-note as the biblical archetypes Martin wants to get away from in the first place. "The Name of the Rose" this ain't.

Nobody hits the jackpot here, certainly not filmmakers Michael and Mark Polish, whose audacious, empathic first film, "Twin Falls Idaho," showed such promise.

Out to Sea is out to brunch: It's got too much on the table, but if you look carefully and show some patience, you can pick out the odd treat. [02 July 1997, p.C10]

Not content with simply stoking rage and self-righteous superiority, McKay dares to infuse Don’t Look Up with an authentic, unironic sense of grief.

Sketchy but often entertaining.

I’m on to you, Spurlock. There are holes in your story about five lads who don’t appear to ever drink, smoke, fight, curse or partake in romantic dalliances of any kind. At least, not on screen.

Shakur is superb, as I said, but so is Belushi. Initially a kind of glowering Bozo whose very sleaze is seductive and whose efficiency is attractive -- he's very Dirty Harry-like in his solutions to criminal problems -- he drifts off, almost banally, into the most repellent of all evils, the criminal sociopath masquerading under the flag of authority and using the system to hide his tracks. He stops being funny and merely becomes horrifying.

Pereira goes in for lots of time shifts and split screens, piling on the contrivances like so many costume baubles when a single string of pearls would do.

What Men Want avoids some of the pitfalls of gender-flipping, given how loose its connection to “What Women Want” is. But that doesn’t mean it’s good. It would make a perfectly fine airplane movie. Or maybe save it for the bachelorette party.

There are worse things than being trapped inside a computer game with Olivia Wilde. In Tron: Legacy, the loud, long and less than wholly satisfying sequel to "Tron," that's the bittersweet fate of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the computer-nerd hero of both the 1982 sci-fi cult classic and its high-tech, 3-D update.

Dramatically and conceptually, the movie sits there, flat, naked and trying too hard with too little.

Neither smart nor exciting enough to justify the effort.

The movie covers too much ground with too little detail. It manages to be convoluted, complicated, incomprehensible and maddeningly thin all at the same time.

Nicotina skitters between dull and forced, this despite the use of split screens, jaunty music and the personable Luna.

As monotonous as Muzak, and when it comes to the plot, both bewildering and trite.

Here's the thing about the new The Thing. It isn't as satisfying as the old "The Thing." And it's nowhere near as enthralling as the vintage "Thing," which inspired every other "Thing" to follow.

Silly and slapsticky, Love in Space is too busy devising absurd set pieces to develop the characters or make their mutual attractions plausible. That makes it much like recent Hollywood rom-coms. It seems Chinese filmmakers have learned more than just a few phrases from American movies.

As a piece of filmed entertainment, The Fifth Estate shows why things like authorial point of view and visual sensibility are so essential in bringing such stories to life. Unlike its most obvious predecessor, “The Social Network,” this film doesn’t have much of either, and the weakness shows.

The script is well stocked with snappy put-down humor, including on-target jabs at Dan Quayle, Jerry Ford and George Bush. But director Peter Segal loses his light-comedy touch after the first hour and makes an unfunny mess of the final, crackpot chase sequence.

Steve Barron, who directed "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Electric Dreams" and a mess of music videos, understandably can't seem to whip up any enthusiasm for the project. Nor is he able to inspire this large, listless cast of zombies.

The mediocre screenplay (by Tom S. Parker and Jim Jennewein of The Flintstones) is a more sober version of Arthur, with elements from Our Gang, North by Northwest and TV's Gilligan's Island. The filmmakers seem to think of their movie as a fiduciary fable, but they're not quite sure about its moral.

At best, the filmmakers are guilty of wholesale confusion. For lamentable example, the plot degenerates into a hopeless tangle of loose threads and discarded hooks, beginning with the initial vicious teaser, which identifies Pam Grier as a drug-crazed prostitute who guns down a pair of unwary young patrolmen in their squad car. [7 Feb 1981, p.C1]

A cut above the usual hack 'em up, and perhaps even a hack above the usual cut 'em up.

An aggressively crass - and not especially funny - trip down memory lane, an attempt to recapture the sweetly ribald magic of the earlier film. As anyone who's ever attended a class reunion can tell you, it almost never works.

Sentinel is a medium-dumb thriller that starts out with momentary promise but gets progressively sillier.

The Money Pit is Richard Benjamin's attempt to make a '30s comedy through the lens of Steven Spielberg -- there are contraptions and "smart" dialogue and, unfortunately, nothing to hold them together. [28 Mar 1986, p.D2]

A light but enjoyable souffle of erotic vignettes.

A beautiful and sometimes affecting film that (appropriately, some would say) has as much difficulty connecting with the world before it as its protagonist does.

It's the flaws that Kurtzman builds into People Like Us that make it interesting.

It's just gunfights strung together, without a whisper of coherence or meaning. The fights are staged so that they all look the same, and the principle is always the same: The gunman's multiple antagonists never hit, and he never misses. John Woo at least had fun with this sort of thing 20 years ago. And Giamatti? What the heck is he doing here?

Between the gang's patois and Seagal's soft speaking, Marked for Death almost begs for subtitles; the breaking of bones, however, comes through loud and clear.

Overall, this is an entertaining diversion.

It’s a sterling cast, capably guided through the motions by director Thaddeus O’Sullivan — no relation to the author of this review, at least none that I know of — in this at times gently amusing and at other times modestly touching dramedy.

Surprisingly nimble and fun to watch, mostly thanks to the magnificent dogs Hoffman has found to portray his lead characters, and thanks to the actors he cast as the animals' voices.

It's good fun for bad boys.

It's effectively frightening. It's just not the kind of frightening that stays with you very long, unless of course someone decides to make the same movie . . . yet again.

The overall unevenness of tone is the movie's biggest flaw, but the slo-mo scenes of doggie derring-do are quite funny.

The result is a movie that takes itself far more seriously than the "Hasta la vista, baby" tone of previous installments.

Fast and furious, shallow, empty, casually racist, merry, jaunty, silly and utterly weightless.

Winds up being giddily entertaining, first as an exercise in so-bad-it’s-funny kitsch, and ultimately as something far more meaningful and thrilling. Every now and then, a film comes along that defies the demands of taste, formal sophistication, even artistic honesty to succeed simply on the level of pure, inexplicable pleasure. Bohemian Rhapsody is just that cinematic unicorn: the bad movie that works, even when it shouldn’t.

The fourth Ice Age freshens up the 10-year-old franchise by shunning easy ­pop-culture jokes and embracing its weird side.

The screenplay, contrived to suit the genre, is likewise replete with stock characters. Still, many of the actors manage to bring dignity, humor and even finesse to these tired roles. Gooding has the angelic good looks of Isiah Thomas and invests Lincoln with courageous sweetness. It's too bad the part isn't better developed.

The problem is that director Peter Berg, aided and abetted by Smith and Theron and third banana Jason Bateman, seem to have made it literally, not realizing its out-of-whack tonalities and grotesque plot twists were meant to be played for laughs.

Far from insipid, it's one of the funniest, and most affecting, movies to come around in a long time. The acting is polished, the writing superb. The jokes make you laugh. That's no small feat. [10 Mar 1978, p.15]

Mack & Rita feels, paradoxically, both too short and overlong. It could have examined the theme of aging much more deeply. Alternatively, it might have made a nice short film about a young person who becomes a senior citizen for a night. As it is, it’s a story that doesn’t need to be told and isn’t told very well.

Antichrist finally embodies the contradiction of von Trier: He's a gifted, even visionary, artist mired in his own pulp pretentiousness.

You find yourself chewing over Laura Mars after the lights come up. Unfortunately, it's the kind of chew that leaves your jaw feeling tired and your mouth tasting sour. [03 Aug 1978, p.B6]

What starts out as a slick, streamlined delivery system for mayhem, carnage and quippery finally finds its inner Agatha Christie. For all its supercool posturing, casual cruelty and lurid overcompensation, “Bullet Train” was a cozy all along.

Loud, stupid, unrealistic, overdone, without a thought in its ugly little head and kind of enjoyable.

Little more than a sleek, stylish stunt.

It’s all diverting, if not ultimately sustained. Although the cast is thoroughly committed, as “Amsterdam” wends its way to its hysterically pitched climax, it sometimes feels like it’s two very different movies.

Too long winded and dull.

Ricochet, the latest explosive, cynical thriller from Joel Silver, best known for engineering the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard blockbusters, should keep action freaks overstimulated for the next few weeks. [08 Oct 1991, p.E5]

A majestic musical score by the great composer John Powell somehow makes everything old feel fresh and wondrous again.

The two main characters are so shallow and self-involved -- not to mention the friends, family members and sundry apparatchiks they lug around with them -- that the two hours of Flannel Pajamas begin to feel like real time.

The movie is so beautifully filmed by Bojan Bazelli, and so skillfully edited, that its art house surface belies its exploitation content, making this a trip through a cool world rather than a cruel one.

It isn’t great. It’s a watered-down version of the original, but it’s still pretty good: neither wise nor profound, yet sometimes smart and with sharp elbows — especially if you have nothing with which to compare it.

Never better than fair to middling pleasant.

It's part travelogue in Hell, part ineffectual weepie.

A mite sluggish.

None of the movie’s faults can undo the power of Binoche and Owen. Their interactions look so naturalistic that they seem unscripted.

There are movies that make you want to mince words, and then there's Poltergeist II: The Other Side, a movie so ineffably bad, you can't even find the words to mince. [23 May 1986, p.D2]

All too faithfully adapted by Kenneth Branagh, the film is the last thing that one would expect of a contemporary highbrow version of this ageless horror classic. It is, in a word, dullsville.

Ironically, the film is conspicuous not for its brio but its blandness.

A case study in how Hollywood can make a complete mess out of what was previously a marvelous film.

The movie is so flimsy that people might wonder how it could possibly have been made.

If I had to sum up Tristan & Isolde for a term paper, I'd say it's like "Braveheart" without the face paint, "Shrek," except the Lord Farquaad character is a sweetheart, and "Freaks and Geeks" because James Franco is so hot, even in Orlando Bloom-y ringlets.

The gory and grotesque V/H/S/2 marks such a drastic improvement over its predecessor, though, that I’m actually eager to see who signs up for the inevitable third endeavor. With the right people in p

The scenery of wind-and water-eroded mesas and stone archways is lovely, but the voice performances are largely inert and unremarkable. Other than the risky shenanigans of the PALs, which ought to give any parent pause, so is the film.

Bogdanovich, who worked with McMurtry on the Last Picture Show screenplay, adapted this one on his own. It's kinda like he tried to pare down the big ol' Encyclopaedia Britannica and couldn't bear to leave out nothin' -- a lot of Billy Joe Bob types talking guff and hogwash and settin' round the Burger King eating fried eggs. This is purty near the worst movie of the whole year.

A farce founded on a mix-up at a sperm bank, Made in America is a simplistic but amiable dip in the nation's multicultural fondue pot.

Languidly paced and prettily crafted, it's certainly a scenic adaptation of Golding's novel. But while it's been brought up to date, there's certainly nothing new under this tropical sun. [16 Mar 1990, p.B7]

Clever enough to keep adults entertained, even if the story is something of an antique.

The movie doesn’t offer much more than fleeting and superficial pleasures.

The movie is hilarious...there's Rock's encounter with Viagra, which I can't describe but has to be one of the funniest scenes of the decade.

Riddick can be cheesy and silly, not to mention excessively violent, but it’s also fun.

It’s Rainn Wilson who steals the show as the cocky physical education teacher who takes charge when the pint-size monsters corner him and his fellow educators.

Written and produced by John Hughes, it's a kiddie action comedy much indebted to Hughes's "Home Alone," but with much less of its meanness.

Smith and Jones seem like superannuated company men: They're going through the motions, but the zip is gone.

The gags are physical but rarely funny.

Miller is key to the film's success, with his earnest, sweet-faced looks and evident dark side. He plays Obree with just the right understated intensity, a believable competitor who fights back fiercely with his wits and a few tight-lipped words.

Father of the Bride, Part II is a virtual avalanche of cheap emotion. Short on comedy but long on maudlin sentiment, this sequel stumps so hard for the traditional values of home, hearth and family that any possible entertainment value is canceled out.