Edward Guthmann

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 glossy piece of trash.

I liked Dave -- bits and pieces of it, that is -- but I think it would have worked better as a dark and fearless farce -- reckless, nervy, a little bit mean. American politics deserve it. [07 May 1993, p.C1]

Girl 6 is glossy, technically proficient and a glib waste of time. Lee and his screenwriter goof around with phone-sex rhetoric ("I wanna service your juicy kielbasa''), but that gets tired quickly.

Noe isn't a graceful filmmaker. He wants to traumatize his audience, barnstorm us, make us pay in anxiety and sweat and scorched nerves for the ugly truths he wants us to swallow.

Dead Man plays a lot of cards at the same time, and Jarmusch occasionally loses his rhythm when he allows his actors their improvisational riffs.

Graceful compositions and slow, easy pacing.

One of the year's funniest acts of malice.

It's hard to give two hoots about any of these characters.

Sexual curiosity is a very dangerous thing in Rain, a dazzling mood piece from New Zealand filmmaker Christine Jeffs.

It sets up two or three dozen satirical targets, hits the mark occasionally, but has trouble maintaining an even satirical tone or satisfying pace. Dawber, too, is unappealing in the female lead -- definitely outclassed by Ritter. I'd wager Stay Tuned will die an early death at the box office and find its real life, appropriately enough, in home video. [15 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Has a weirdly divided structure that alternates Irwin's nature segments with clumsy dramatic footage set in the CIA.

Nasty to women, cruel to old people and tosses in a cardboard gay couple for gratuitous laughs. It's also got one of those annoying soundtracks that lays rock music right over the dialogue -- as if it wanted to distract us from it.

All the actors are good, but it's Farnsworth's brilliantly simple performance that brings The Straight Story so close to greatness.

About American anti-Semitism, but it's not a typical genteel "cause" movie.

Impeccably mounted, nicely scored and beautifully written.

Kilmer dons 12 disguises in all, polishes them with impeccable accents and pliable postures and gives a performance that's far and away the best aspect of the diverting The Saint.

Varda's subject matter is surprisingly rich, but it's her own energetic, curious nature that gives the film its snap.

Alan Bates and Charlotte Rampling are the brave stars of this pretty but sterile adaptation of the Anton Chekhov stage classic.

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.

A handsome, entertaining twist on the King Arthur legend.

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.

Both halves of the film are exquisitely acted and written, both are emotionally true, and yet they don't quite fit together.

The writing, by Rapp and Catherine Dussart, is exquisite, and the performers, including Francois Truffaut's old colleague Jean-Pierre Leaud as a magistrate, are all first-rate.

Too ludicrous to be taken seriously, but not entertaining enough to rate as camp.

Get Shorty is exquisitely cast, with droll, well-nuanced performances.

Big, opulent and frequently wretched, Pinocchio is so bad that its American distributor, Miramax, opened it on Christmas Day with scant advertising and no advance press screening.