Let's Spend the Night Together is a disappointing souvenir, at best a sweet substitute for the many who couldn't catch the Stones live. The Stones' status has always excused their shortcomings, so this film won't shake the believers. But it won't convince the skeptics, either. [12 Feb 1983, p.C1]

High Road to China suggests "Raiders of the Lost Ark" slowed to a crawl. [18 March 1983, p.D3]

Critters 2 is flat, lacking the kinetic energy, tight pacing and generally better acting of its predecessor.

Exorcist II seems to have evolved out of delusions of cinematic grandeur shared by Boorman and writer William Goodhart. It's obvious that they wanted to contrive a metaphysical thriller that would be astonishing and spiritually inspiring, but their thought processes are so muddled that the movie degenerates almost instantly into a confounded shambles. [18 June 1977, p.B1]

If a movie can be said to snore before your eyes, Damien sustains an ungodly, unstimulating buzz. [13 June 1978, p.B1]

There's sure nothing purgative about the kind of anxiety the filmmakers are exploiting. If anything, it condemns them to strictly degenerate company. [24 Mar 1981, p.B8]

Romero and his original partners apparently made no money from the original, and Romero admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the reasons for remaking the film were "purely financial." It shows...This Night of the Living Dead is resurrected, but it's never brought to life.

Blue Steel is a mean and unsavory celebration of misplaced misogyny milked for dollars, a mindless soup of urban neurosis and sexual loathing. It's a case of slam, bam, no thankee ma'am.

Talk Radio, despite its collective intensity, is itself just another unenlightening late-night call-in session.

The level of unintentional mirth in Silent Rage is convulsive enough to endear it to connoisseurs of the preposterous. Still, the movie may be too much of a dumb delight to retain a shred of credibility. As an exercise in brawling action combined with blood-curdling terror, it represents a botched experiment. [2 Apr 1982, p.C6]

Silent Night, Deadly Night takes off from the notion that Santa Claus is an ax murderer, but it never quite lives up to the delicious perversity of its premise. An idea this shocking has to be earned; instead, director Charles Sellier Jr. ("The Boogens") gives us another casually constructed splatter flick that has more to do with morbid arithmetic (the body count continues!) than movies.

An unholy union of dark comedy, spectral effects and splattered gore that few filmgoers will dare embrace. [19 July 1996, p.B07]

The one bright spot in this film is Modine's performance as Louden. Modine is so earnest and likable that even the oft-seen "big match" climax holds your attention. But a fine leading performance and a muscle-bound villain can't rescue this trite tale.ick. [15 Feb 1985, p.30]

The movie is full of half-witted Hollywood satire (the Devil's an agent -- get it?), lame wordplay, and easy moralism about family being more important than career blah blah blah. [09 Nov 1984, p.F8]

Oh, God! Book II revives that excruciating game of false piety in which Hollywood humorists grovel for brownie points in eternity by presuming to be God's chummiest press agents. [03 Oct 1980, p.C1]

Invasion USA might actually be fun in a campy way if it weren't so dourly exploitative.

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]

Sounds hard to mess up, but Death Hunt is so unconvincing that you never once stop asking yourself, "Why is this manhunt necessary?" [27 May 1981, p.B6]

Crudely made and in your face, The Living End is mostly annoying.

An uncoordinated tear jerker certain to double up cynics and touch only those fans who prefer their favorites lost in a narcissistic fog. [26 Oct 1977, p.B1]

If the movie had any pace or energy, or even if the music were something other than tepid covers of songs, most of which were written before anybody in the cast was in rompers, then it might have been fun just to watch the actors strut around sexily onstage, living the rock life. But the thing just lies there. [15 Feb 1988, p.D4]

Barker the filmmaker resorts to most of the horror cliches he chillingly sidesteps in his writing.

The conventions that worked for High Noon break down in the high-tech atmosphere of Outland and the story seems trite and dinky. [23 May 1981, p.C6]

One imagines that Bigelow's story conferences with ex-husband Cameron (maker of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "True Lies") and Cocks were free of such apparently anti-entertainment concepts as "character development," "predictability" and "believability." [13 Oct 1995, p.N44]

Though it boasts a big budget and is indeed busier and more densely populated than Seagal's previous efforts, Out for Justice feels cheap, not only in its production but in its content. It's "Scarface" without a point of view; it's shallow plot cluttered with extreme violence, both verbal and physical.

A kind of landmark of exquisite bad timing. And that's the most intriguing thing about it. [6 June 1986, p.D3]

The plot of The Glimmer Man involves not only the Family Man but Our Evil Secret Government, the Russian Mafia and Rich Powerful Politicians -- the three stooges of action cinema in the '90s.

And the person who seems least convinced of the validity of the passion is Brooke Shields, who looks ravishing but is most charming when she's childishly affectionate or aloof -- thus blithely making her partner, with his burning eyes, look demented. One begins to feel that making her forgive arson and worse in the name of true love is forcing the naivete of adults on a sensible child. [17 July 1981, p.17]