If it were the last videotape available in the only video store in the remotest corner of Alaska, I'd take one last slug of Jack Daniels and start walking directly into the howling snows.

They made a movie without one basic ingredient: the story.

Nothing if not monumentally obsessed, Mann seems to be volunteering himself as the American film industry's answer to the cinema of ultraportentous imagery and crackpot visionary affectation. One imagines him entering the unofficial competition trailing swirls of smoke or ground fog and radiating backlit shafts of light, like half the characters in his movie. [17 Dec 1983, p.B3]

Clan's greatest fault, however, is simply that it is an epic bore. [28 Feb 1986, p.11]

This one's for Silverstone fans only.

The nonsensical screenplay can barely stand-up to the hellzapoppin, Beelzebubbin effects mustered by first-time director Mark Dippe.

One part Joseph Campbell hero quest, one part multi-culti morality tale, one part live-action "Flintstones" cartoon, 10,000 B.C. is finally every part just plain nuts, from a hike featuring more ecosystems than an Al Gore documentary to a wacky climax set amid pyramids that -- you'll e-mail me if I'm wrong -- wouldn't have been built for another 7,000 years or so.

Lazily written by Stiller and three collaborators (including Justin Theroux), this is the kind of lame, warmed-over movie that gives sequels a bad name. For “Zoolander” fans, however, it resembles a betrayal of public trust.

Largely relies on stale gender stereotypes and tired comedy routines that don't elicit much laughter.

There's little here to offend anyone, and even less here to excite anyone.

It's painful watching a talented thespian diminish himself so. It's clear he did it for the Benjamins.

Safe Haven is one of those Valentine’s Day confections that satisfy your sweet tooth until you get to their weird, off-putting center. The problem with movies is that you can’t put them back in the box.

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]

Lazy, scattershot and excruciatingly unfunny, the movie is a hazard to the very young, who might come away with the erroneous impression that movies don’t get any better than this.

1941 represents an appalling waste of filmmaking and performing resources. As one would expect, Spielberg, who directed "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," sustains a high energy level. But the energy is expended on material that is pointless at best and occasionally hateful. [15 Dec 1979, p.C1]

A 90-minute confessathon minus the bleeped-out cuss words and pixelated breasts.

About as awful and shamelessly pandering as a fanzine movie could dare to be.

It takes a very special director to make scenes of sky-diving, free climbing, big-wave surfing and BASE jumping something to yawn at. Yet Ericson Core must be that kind of miracle worker, because Point Break, his update of the 1991 cult classic, is basically a cavalcade of extreme sports, but with less drama than a highlight reel.

The story is more undead than all of these revenant shufflers. And the orgy of gore and home-engineered special effects doesn't make up for the shortfall.

There's something scuzzy about the whole exercise.

The plot feels arbitrary and seems driven to invent new places for its protagonists to go, as if to justify a budget on which Woody Allen could have made six much better films.

What it suffers from most is the sense of offhand storytelling that lies halfway between creative laziness and cost-cutting sloppiness.

There isn't anything here you haven't seen already in It's a Wonderful Life and a thousand other wish-list movies. Writer/director James Orr doesn't even do you the favor of speeding through the unoriginality.

The big thrills and few laughs are no match for the cumbersome, convoluted story, not to mention the nonexistent chemistry between Cruise and Wallis.

For the most part, Vacation is a sad, cynical rip-off of writer John Hughes’s source material. No one expects originality, but the new movie may end up making history: It’s already looking like the worst movie of the year.

With Love Hurts, 87North has gone farther south than ever, churning out a muddled, mean-spirited action comedy that manages to feel slack and listless despite a flyweight run time of only 83 minutes.

Because of the square, lackluster way that director Michael Gottleib has staged his material, the whole production seems sort of limp and perfunctory.

Jonah Hex may not be the longest 81 minutes you ever spend, but it might well be the most tedious.