By most standards of conventional film narrative, this movie is a mess. [25 June, 1987, p.22(E)]

Ordinary moviegoers, on the other hand, may wonder what they're supposed to feel, apart from bored.

Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill inflicts intolerable cruelty on its characters, and on its audience -- though I'd like to believe that there is no mainstream audience for what has already been described, quite correctly, as the most violent movie ever released by an American studio.

I found it insufferably fatuous and damned near interminable. [26 Jun 1998]

This nasty little bottom-feeder of a film is too condescending to be trusted, too manipulative to be believed, too turgid to be enjoyed, too shameless to be endured and, before and after everything else, too inept to make its misanthropic case.

Mr. Jarecki undercuts his own case -- not just undercuts but carpet-bombs it -- by using the same propaganda techniques he professes to abhor.

The only reason to see it is Riz Ahmed's performance as Omar, the supposed brains of the operation. Mr. Ahmed reminded me a bit of Robert Carlyle. He's dynamic, quick-tongued and intense. And much too classy for this tatty room.

In The Hunger Games it's both a feast of cheesy spectacle and a famine of genuine feeling, except for the powerful - and touchingly vulnerable - presence of Jennifer Lawrence.

Only Le Carre fans with tin ears and clouded eyes will fail to note the film's sour tone, crude performances and drab look.

The worst part of Ms. Zellweger's plight is that she, along with others in the cast, has fallen victim to a first-time feature director whose vocabulary doesn't seem to include the word "simplicity."

Bring Zoloft and a tank of oxygen to Closer, an airless, ultimately joyless drama of sexual politics.

A grim disappointment for grown-ups, and far too violent for young kids. I found it to be clumsy, misanthropic and intractably lifeless.

When bad movies happen to good people, the first place to look for an explanation is the basic idea. That certainly applies to My Week With Marilyn, a dubious idea done in by Adrian Hodges's shallow script and Simon Curtis's clumsy direction.

What's worse, some mysterious movie curse has turned the three once-lively adventurers into wood.

A slow and lugubrious film about the impact of adoption on the lives of three women.

The video-game sequences are impressive, but you know that a 'toon is in big trouble when its most powerful theme is planned obsolescence.

A good subject has been ill-served by Ms. Greenwald's cliched script and clumsy direction.

J. Michael Straczynski's disjointed script manages to ring false at almost every significant turn (Collins' psychiatric-hospital stay has grown into a latter-day version of "The Snake Pit") and Clint Eastwood's ponderous direction -- a disheartening departure from his sure touch in "Letters From Iwo Jima" and "The Bridges of Madison County" -- magnifies the flaws.

The script is dead in the water, and most of the misanthropic repartee rings resoundingly false.

Maybe the worst part (there's so much to choose from) is the sight of a good actor like Edward Herrmann parading around looking like a demented quarterback, the shoulders of his suit jacket grotesquely padded. Mr. Schumacher has dressed the adorable Corey Haim in even weirder getups, jackets with pastel stripes and little outfits that resemble dresses. The vampires aren't nearly as creepy as those clothes. [6 Aug 1987, p.1]

A snapshot, to be sure, but scattershot as well.

Killer Joe is, at bottom - and I mean bottom - ugly and vile, not to mention dumb and clumsy.

Sometime around what I guessed to be the one-hour mark in The Five-Year Engagement, I checked my watch and honestly thought the battery had given out. Five years doesn't begin to tell the interminable tale.

A train wreck of mind-numbing proportions.

Everything that was modest, soundly grounded and therefore horrifying about the 1971 rodentarama that starred Bruce Davison is now insistent, Grand-Guignol-intense and therefore shrug-offable when it isn't downright awful.

A guaranteed downer that's devoid of any upside, and free of dangerously entertaining side effects.

Secretariat stumbles along beneath the weight of leaden life lessons. They're dispensed at frequent intervals by Diane Lane, who does better than anyone had a right to expect, since she is saddled with dialogue of exceptional dreadfulness.

As juxtapositions go, regressed Goth rock star and Holocaust could hardly be more bizarre, and bizarre can be good when it's done deftly. In this case, however, it's done ponderously and sententiously.