Edward Guthmann

Mother is a relationship comedy, like Woody Allen's films, and it screams for the smart, elastic pacing that Allen creates. The situations are funny -- 40- year-old John moves into his old bedroom, goes shopping with Mother, is shocked that she has a boyfriend and occasionally curses and smokes -- but his poor timing flattens most of those scenes.

It's a light-hearted comedy about faith, transcendence and American-brand exploitation, and addresses those issues in such goofy, indirect, unhurried fashion that you could easily miss what Schrader has to say.

The movie, directed and written by Gregory Nava ("My Family/Mi Familia"), is only so-so but Lopez, who appeared recently in "Jack'' and "Blood and Wine," is so vibrant that you almost forgive the movie's paint-by-numbers script and moldy formula.

Too bad the plotting is jumbled, and the characters too numerous and undifferentiated.

Neutralizes these characters, makes them cute and one-dimensional like fluffy dolls.

Basketball Diaries is an earnest, botched effort to do justice to Carroll's book. Amazingly, though, even with Kalvert's lack of style and vision, the greatness of DiCaprio's performance is undiminished.

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

It makes you wonder when Araki is going to find something else to think about.

The story of an elaborate con game and the wholesale betrayal of an innocent man, it's also an unusually cold film that ends with a feeling of hollow soullessness.

[Harris's] craft is shaky, and the actors she's assembled, with the exception of Johnson and Ebony Jerido as Chantel's best friend, are one step above Amateur Hour. Just Another Girl looks and feels like a first-time effort. [02 Apr 1993, p.C5]

A messy, ambitious comedy.

One can admire it, but it's hard to get caught up in it.

A not-insubstantial comedy.

Doc Hollywood has its moments, including some nice comic turns by Barnard Hughes as a curmudgeonly doctor, Bridget Fonda as the local coquette and David Ogden Stiers as Grady's folksy mayor. And Julie Warner is certainly hot stuff. But Caton-Jones' approach is too facile, and his use of Southern-cracker cliches too offensive, to capture my vote. [02 Aug 1991, p.D1]

Little rings true in The Commitments. The music, which is never lip-synched, is very good -- especially when Strong, only 16 at the time, belts Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. But the characters are shrill and two-dimensional, and the performers, most of whom had little or no prior acting experience, are made to look like pro-wrestling buffoons. [16 Aug 1991, p.F1]

Gratuitous, yes, but Giannaris has the visual finesse to make it work.

Sweet and insubstantial -- just like the French Christmas cake for which it's named.

Rich with statistics and snazzy visuals, but it ignores those larger questions and, as a result, feels a tad naïve.

Pure ham and cheese.

Lacks the kind of rhythm and snap to make it work -- and allows this fitfully entertaining romp to dribble on way too long.

Largely and insider's joke.

It's an interesting technique -- the blurring of reality and "movies" -- but Korine's objective is so narrow and mean, and his viewpoint so colored by smug, adolescent condescension, that Gummo comes off like a mean-spirited prank.

The Portrait of a Lady is a huge disappointment. It's a deliberately arty, overly formal exercise in emotional terrorism.

It may smell awful from a distance, especially if you have low tolerance for lowbrow humor, but up close this yarn about an unlikely golf star is fairly painless.

As dreary as Oscar is for the majority of its 110 minutes, the movie sings whenever Shearer and Ferrero are on screen. [26 Apr 1991, p.E1]

Coming-of-age schmaltz fest.

Pokemon is over.

Campbell and Edwards work wonders with the rocky, wide-open Oregon landscape, but none of their periwinkle-blue skies and sparkling shots of whooping cranes in flight can compensate for a film that aims high, means well, and ultimately fails its audience. [20 May 1994]