Isn't really a movie, it's only impersonating one.

This character was an abusive swine. Perhaps it would be best to let his art stand on its own.

The result is a script so needlessly complicated that it defies comprehension.

It just isn't a Meg Ryan movie unless she's got male.

A slight, disingenuous script that robs the characters of their histories.

Mark Childress, who wrote the screenplay based upon his book of the same name, would have been better off leaving this Southern Gothic between two covers.

Solemn, earnest and as laboriously paced as a fat Sicilian's funeral procession.

A pooped, poorly executed buddy-cop comedy with more cliches than expletives.

Aficionados of movies in the so-bad-they're-good category might just revel in this overheated costume melodrama.

In the translation from page to film, the life seems to have gone out of the story

Frankly, scarier critters have checked into Roach Motels. [13 June 1987, Style, g1]

Hardly out of the driveway before director Penny Marshall loses control.

About as persuasively ethnic as an episode of "Friends."

This sloppily made, poky, extra cheesy adventure is virtually a remake of "Armageddon."

So solemnly paced and deliberately performed that it seems to solidify before your very eyes.

Schmaltzy.

There's only one thing to do with this "Bottle": Put a cork in it.

The sparks don't fly -- they fall down and they can't get up.

The only thing that's truly scary about the movie is the escalating vulgarity of the latest in a string of skanky comedies by filmmakers determined to out-gross the other.

There's the scene in which Jacques, the French Canadian proprietor of the Power and Glory, tells Laura, "I am the Great Went," to which she responds, "I am the muffin." Jacques returns, "I'm as blank as a fart." Maybe all Jacques is saying is "I am full of gas." Certainly Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me seems to be.

Relentless formulaic fodder for the explosion-starved; it's loud, shallow, sexist and a complete waste of time.

A tarted-up but tedious reprise of the '70s TV series.

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

Well-intentioned but ludicrous tale.

Strictly a vanity vehicle with a mess of star babies on board. That would be just fine if it didn't take us down the same old cul-de-sac. But it does, and with a vengeance.

A vulgar attempt to revamp the undead genre by introducing computer-generated splatter and a casketful of themes from genetic tinkering to conspiracy theories.

The premise is tragically flawed and politically incorrect. In fact, it is blatantly cat-ist.

It's saying something when Tom Arnold's performance is among the movie's highlights.

Though the comedy falls short of a debacle -- which is what such egocentric projects tend to be -- it isn't as sharp, fast or funny as Rock's stand-up routines.

The insane casting: When was the last time Julianne Moore cracked you up?

The result is cutesy but harsh, a hybrid of saucer-eyed anime and square-jawed angularity that brings to mind an edgier "Pokemon."

Many of the visual effects are stunning, but others are downright cheesy -- especially an attempt to fuse the Rock's head onto a scorpion's body.

The ultimate in deja viewing:an overfamiliar and exasperating game of cat-and-mousie.

Ironically, the filmmakers don't seem to realize that their movie is even shallower and sillier than its targets.

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

The Other Sister is sanctimonious, sanitized fare primarily preoccupied with patting its own back and plucking our heartstrings.

Adolescents are too grown-up for this blasted nonsense.

Mr. Whipple squeezing his Charmin is scarier than this phony baloney computer effects-driven anaconda.

An overgrown hybrid of disaster epic, can-do combat adventure and '50s sci-fi movie, this craft has visited our world many times before. And while she's a beaut, the sticker on her titanium bumper reads: "Been There, Done That, Beam Me Up, Scotty."

If laughter is the best medicine, Patch Adams is but a sugary, fitfully amusing placebo.

Sphere, an unfathomable chowder of recycled science fiction and undersea thrillers, briefly bubbles with promise only to plummet into the murky depths. Weighed down by inconsistencies and pretensions, the tale founders like a stinky beluga.

A glittery but dunderheaded murder mystery.

Not only dense, dark and deeply introspective, it's also as remote as it's chilly.

Movies don't come much lamer than Fools Rush In.

The story isn’t bright enough or grand enough to contain all of Roberts’s star power.

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

Obstreperous, male-bashing pain in the patoot.

Annoying.

A more kid-friendly version of "Dumb and Dumber." And there's even a moral: "Yahoo for education," though the movie doesn't really put any muscle behind it.

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

The script boasts more writers than the computerized menagerie's got megabytes, but they haven't come up with much variety or humor in what is essentially a string of catastrophes.

There's a sense of mystery in this purply palette and one of majesty in the landscapes, but the drama of the drawings is never really echoed by the skimpy and predictable story.

For all their sass, brass and bewitchery, the starring troika can't breathe life into these characters, much less transform them from women scorned into hellbent furies.

Passionately anticipated and much ballyhooed, the film, alas, is little more than a foppish, fang de siecle costume drama. Its pulse barely registers.

Writer Alan Sharp gets so caught up in the legend and the lush language that he doesn't seem to know he's written "Death Wish" in kilts.

Sans emotional depth or narrative drive, Lee's latest flick is little more than a profane litany punctuated by Oscar-caliber orgasms.

This preposterous stalker flick, in fact, has less to do with America's favorite pastime or Gil's psychosis than with Hollywood's own obsession with blood sport. And for all British director Tony Scott knows about baseball, the thing might as well have been set in a cabbage patch.

My Blue Heaven puts you in a stupor comparable to the one that comes on after Thanksgiving turkey. Written by Nora Ephron, it makes you long for the awful "Heartburn."

A punky, futuristic effort by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, it is a tasteless variation on "Sweeney Todd" set geographically near the border of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil."

Pytka's marginally successful at setting this gambler's fantasy against the Damon Runyonesque aspects of the horsy life.

The characters are as thin as the air at 26,000 feet, and the story as silly as anyone willing to assault K2 in a punishing blizzard.

A moldy teenage tear-jerker.

Fast Food Fast Women is "Sex and the City" in Payless shoes. An incoherent jumble of characters and situations.

Piddling spoof.

An insufferable, self-important, sloppily made bore.

Smits can't wrench free of this tangle of cliches.

Your own final destination just might be the box office, to demand your money back.

Bland as a fortune cookie and as trite as the message inside.

As dull as the decor in a Motel 6.

Nothing could save this movie. These guys make a fortune off the comedy of cruelty. How dare they climb on a soapbox?

Relentlessly offensive.

A cynical, sexist and shallow work from cinema's premier misanthrope, Robert Altman, who here shows neither compassion for -- nor insight into -- the human condition.

What we have here is a movie with not just one, but a family pack of psychos.

Schlocky, sluggish shoot-'em-up.

A bungled screen version of Louis de Bernieres' cult novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin was doomed from the moment Nicolas Cage was cast as the "life-devouring," Puccini-loving hero.

It's sheer piffle, a disingenuous romance with Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino that's all sap and no sizzle.

A typical student film with its arty angles, bad lighting and pretentious observations.

Ought to be called "Hook, Line and Stinker."

The Fast and the Furious is "Rebel Without a Cause" without a cause. The young and the restless with gas fumes. The quick and the dead with skid marks.

A trite, bantamweight "Bull Durham," hasn't a single line, gibe, gesture or twist that hasn't already been chewed up and spat out in many a movie baseball dugout.

This film is just a coarser, dumber, smuttier remake of the 1983 Eszterhas-penned "Flashdance," throbbing music, working-class Cinderella and all.

These folks are so blase, you'd think that scientists had predicted pennies from Heaven instead of world's end within the year.

Promises to speed up the pacemakers of grumpy old Republicans with its ruthless indictment of the unzipped presidency.

It's exactly like "Star Wars" -- if you subtract a good story, sympathetic characters, intelligence, wit and moral purpose.

Director Griffin Dunne lacks a clear vision, torn between blithe spirits and brimstone, between madcap and macabre. But then what does it matter when there's so little magic on screen anyhow? That is unless you count making audiences disappear.

The current Bat cycle was already tired when Schumacher replaced Tim Burton behind the camera on "Batman Forever." This chapter -- so action-packed, yet so insufferably dull -- makes it clear that there's nowhere else to go.

Director-star Kevin Costner falls head over heels in love with himself in this nihilistic, post-apocalyptic clunker about a loner who becomes a reluctant sperm donor, role model and inevitably a godsend to what's left of America.

Ought to have been called "The Sap Also Rises."

Without a doubt, mainstream moviegoers will be revolted by the nastiness of it all.

Ford's earthy Everyman and Pitt's vengeful youth are probably more interesting than they have any right to be inside these tired macho roles. Of course, Rory and Tom could be bursting with blarney and the movie still wouldn't gather any momentum.

In short, Carrey's got nothing to bounce all that energy off of, not even a solid story line.

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener's earnest first feature is a low-budget comedy drawn from the pages of her own dear diary. Most women have sense enough to burn theirs.

Arthur Hiller, who last directed the sour "The Babe" -- not the one about that sweet pig -- finds even less to work with in TV veteran Don Rhymer's stupid screenplay.

With its callow cast and playful tone, there is nothing dangerous about Forman's variation on the novelist's schemes.

Wyatt Earp, a bio-pic that lasts more than three hours and moves with the urgency of a grazing buffalo, lacks everything from a coherent dramatic structure to a clearly articulated point of view.

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.

Cruise is walking in the footsteps of Troy Donahue and John Travolta here. He does what comes easy. He bumps and grinds and grins till his lips ache. It's a performance with all the integrity of wax fruit. And Cocktail is mud in your eye.

It's not that Wayans lacks wit, it's that he's stomped it to death. A sweet-natured performance -- and the fact that he and Tom Cruise probably have the same orthodontist -- doesn't quite make up for the muddle. Don't be a sucka.