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.

The mind will be starved for subtlety, wit and substance.

If you only live twice, spend both lifetimes avoiding it.

Don't even rent the DVD, it'll only encourage them.

Unfortunately, this film’s dark premise is drowned in whimsy and a forced childlike wonder.

The movie feels more like a thriller than a drama; it's paced like a thriller, building to a murder that never happens, exciting passions that are never unleashed, waiting for a crime to occur. The only crimes, however, are of the heart. Meanwhile, the movie knows exactly what it's doing, and does exactly what it intends, without making one false move.

Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan are the nominal stars of First Sunday, but it's Katt Williams who steals the show in this by turns trite and mildly amusing B-comedy.

Olympus Has Fallen at least possesses the frisson of timeliness amid otherwise hoary action-movie cliches.

Like its own protagonists, Kick-Ass 2 can’t decide what it wants to be when it grows up: a vessel for unhinged vengeance and destruction or a meta-critique of those same impulses. In going for both, it winds up being neither.

Sometimes the material's rather too gruesome for a family-oriented film, but as one HVTV intern says to the Devil, "It isn't the blood that bothers me, so much as the lack of subtext."

The Substitute is a sour experience—bloody, ugly and exploitative.

That mind-bending, mystical business was better handled in such films as 1990's "Jacob's Ladder."

There are no real surprises here, except maybe one. It would never work, Finley warns us, and it seems she might as well be talking about this cornball movie. But thanks to something ineffable — Redgrave, leprechauns, moondust, or maybe just understated performances from two appealing protagonists — Finding You kinda, sorta does.

Unfortunately, in the filmmaker’s narrative-feature debut, she takes the theme of betrayal and turns it into fodder for a sitcom, and not a particularly funny one at that.

The title (which translates, essentially, as "burned out") is an apt description of the film itself: a hot and smoldering shell.

Attention all units: Slapstick in progress in the vicinity of Police Academy. Suspects wanted for mugging the camera and possession of night shtiks with intent to incite a laugh riot. Please respond to this blues burlesque, a uniformly funny hit sure to have a long run. Its target audience -- those who can take their T&A with a grain of assault. Its plot -- a combo of "Animal House" and "An Officer and a Gentleman." Its stars -- a rainbow coalition of hot newcomers and dependable, unexpendable pros. [23 Mar 1984, p.23]

For viewers who aren’t hostile to mysticism, vegetarianism and endless chanting, it’s a stirring story.

Has John Carpenter lost his mind or just his talent? On the heels of In the Mouth of Madness comes the director's rehash of the 1960 classic, Village of the Damned. Unfortunately, Carpenter simply makes a hash of it.

Jennifer Connelly is very easy to look at. Career Opportunities isn't. Go see the standee.

Owen Wilson phones it in with Drillbit Taylor, a by-the-numbers teen comedy.

An abominable, abdominal comedy. Aside from its tastelessness and dawdling pace, the movie’s chief problem is the lackluster chemistry between leading lummoxes Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels.