Edward Guthmann

The result is a sprightly, entertaining film, but one in which the satire is neutralized for laughs.

Nossiter's premise is good, and he intrigues us with stylish conceits, but he makes a crucial casting error. Alec ought to be someone we care about.

The Neon Bible is a lovely, rewarding film, but it requires some work and some faith on the part of the viewer. Davies' rhythms and camera moves are as slow and stately as ever -- the antithesis of most Hollywood films -- and the moments of crystallized emotion he achieves are sometimes separated by dull patches and self-conscious artiness.

Wong Foo is pure fantasy and sets up the cross-dressers as avenging spirits of fun, frolic and frisky style. Like samurai cleans ing a village of its criminal scum, they transform Snydersville from a drab, dusty whistle stop to a wonderland of wigs, sidewalk cafes and spontaneous dance parties.

A charming, finely nuanced romance.

Self-satisfied -- an undisciplined brat of a film.

A melodramatic yarn that transcends some of its technical and storytelling flaws through the cheery energy and sincerity of its cast.

We're left with a metallic aftertaste.

Haneke directs Benny's Video in a cool, dispassionate style that matches the austerity of his subject, but keeps us at a distinct remove. And even though he introduces a faintly optimistic note in the film's last moments -- a hint at possible redemption -- his film is mostly a grim, downbeat experience. [01 Apr 1994, p.C3]

In Hollywood, where integrity is rapidly consumed and careers defined by market value, there's trash and there's trash with a pedigree.

Myers and Carvey bring a lot of goofy, adolescent charm to the party, but not enough to save an idea that's grown stale. [10 Dec 1993, p.C3]

The film has a good heart, but its central premise -- that ignorance is an enchanted realm -- is too sentimental.

Does about as good a job of simulating that terror as it possibly could, but it's no competition for what we create in our mind's eye while reading.

Sarandon and Portman work beautifully -- together, negotiating a range of emotional keys that blend comedy and drama in the same moment.

It's a glamorous revenge romp, a "9 to 5" mixed with "Auntie Mame," and it gives each star the opportunity to do her best work in a long, long time.

Places Myers firmly on the top rung of movie comics.

Lushly entertaining, and its subjects are terrific storytellers with style to burn.

In his thrilling feature debut, Madame Sata, Brazilian filmmaker Karim Ainouz doesn't glorify dos Santos but examines the hot, reckless fever of his life in all its thorny complexity.

The beauty of Morris' achievement is the way he fuses Hawking's work in theoretical physics with his subject's life history -- finding subtle connections between the two, and avoiding the pat, predictable structure of biographical film. [28 Aug 1992, p.C3]

A downbeat but oddly affectionate tale.

It starts out with several seemingly separate stories and characters, allows them to tease, overlap and shade one another, and then weaves them into one rich fabric. It's an allegory about American life -- a tough, cynical meditation on race, crime and the futility of human endeavor.

Doesn't sanitize its tale of African American loss and survival -- the way Steven Spielberg's “The Color Purple'' did -- but delves deeply, heartbreakingly into an American tragedy.

Nelson's work is relentless, grueling and courageous. He makes a large blunder in having American actors (David Arquette, Steve Buscemi) play Hungarian Jews with American accents, while Harvey Keitel plays a Nazi officer with a German accent.

Told so simply and powerfully that it seems to carry echoes of earlier, timeless tales.

The story doesn't quite pay off, characters are underwritten and the surprise ending is contrived and unconvincing.

The schmaltz is relentless in The Legend of 1900, the newest film from "Cinema Paradiso'' director Giuseppe Tornatore. It comes in waves, it leeches onto every surface and it turns decent actors into sticky-sweet fuzzballs.

An unabashed soft- core sex marathon, much of it played for laughs, Sex and Zen could catch on as a voyeur's delight -- an Asian spin on the jiggle- and-hump comedies of sex-satirist Russ Meyer (''Beyond the Valley of the Dolls'').

The Indian in the Cupboard is such a sweet film, and so lacking in the bloodthirstiness and violence that parents dread in children's films, that its mere existence seems worthy of praise. Too bad, then, that it turned out so dull and lifeless.