Hal Hinson

The Little Mermaid is only passable. Even at its highest points, it cannot claim a place next to even the least of the great Disney classics.

If it weren't for the good will that the stars have built up over the years, See No Evil would pass without notice; even with the stars, that's what it deserves. But these are ingratiating performers, even when working far below their peak. Watching them, you find yourself wanting to laugh even when the laughs are undeserved.

If Eastwood had any emotional depth as an actor, the character's anguish might come through.

For all its stunning, poetic imagery, it's almost impossible to sit through.

The central story itself is not distinctive, and though Lee certainly churns up a lot of dust, he never captures the mythic quality that made Price's original seem so much bigger than its almost generic cast of players.

The movie has some beautifully observed moments and a generous spirit, but in the end, it's undone by its own sweetness and charm....It's just not distinctive enough to sustain your interest. A lot of the movie is routine coming-of-age stuff.

It's respectful but not particularly vigorous or enlightening.

My 20th Century is like a dream, without a unifying logic -- ravishing fragments without coherence or meaning. Immersed somewhere in all this are Enyedi's meditations on the true nature of women, the shortcomings of 20th-century progress, and the connections between art and science. Yet though her own inventiveness and witty command of the medium are invigorating, her thinking is so scrambled that her originality is undermined. The movie is overintellectualized and yet not fully thought out.

People bicker and play word games with each other to hide their true feelings, just like you and me, and yet absolutely nothing is at stake.

At first, the movie's restraint is enticing, and even soothing. By the end, though, Tran's strategies have an enervating, numbing effect. The same methods he uses to pull us in finally kill our interest.

Visually, the film is arresting; Robby Mueller's images have a low-energy vibrancy. But Jarmusch won't come out of himself. He's got juice, but only enough for doodling. He's too hip to live.

It's precisely Henry's coldblooded affectlessness that is meant to shock and disturb us. But "Henry" leaves us feeling more numbed than moved. Half art film, half schlock-horror cheapie, "Henry" isn't quite sure what it wants to be.

Why ... does it feel so lifeless?

The real root of the movie's problems may lie in the fact that Mamet has identified with the men of principle and De Palma with the scoundrels -- in other words, with Capone instead of the eagle-scout Ness.

It feels more like a prosaic knockoff than a classically inspired original.

No actor has ever been more contemptuous of his profession -- or the movie business as a whole -- than Brando; to him, acting is nothing, and his performance here shows his self-loathing, his desire to trash himself and his accomplishments. This isn't self-parody, it's self-desecration.

Dracula, which also stars Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins, is an evocative visual feast. But the meal is spectral, without the dramatic equivalent of nutritional value.

Dern's dirtball performance gives After Dark, My Sweet a desperately needed quality of slugged-out authenticity -- he gives the movie its edge. If anything, though, Foley makes Thompson's killing universe too inviting, too sunny and comfortable. He's missed the essence of Thompson, but all in all, there are worse ways of failing.

Undeniably, the picture now and again supplies that edge-of-the-seat sensation; yet, by action-adventure standards, Speed is leaden and strangely poky. It never seems to shift into overdrive and let fly.

A pretty dry cracker.

Too routinely formulaic to be anything more than modestly diverting. But as modest diversions go it cruises along at a reasonably brisk pace and, in the smaller details -- the off-in-the-margins doodling -- it has its rewards. [20 July 1988]

Ultimately, though, the movie never transcends the limitations of its Hemingwayesque, men-with-men attitudes.

True Believer is a thriller about moral rejuvenation, and there's not much wrong with it that another actor in the lead wouldn't cure.

When a master dedicates his genius to the production of schmaltz, it's not a pretty sight.

This is an impassioned movie, made with conviction and evangelical verve. It's also hysterical and overbearing and alienating.

Our culture may be drifting toward the sort of calamity that Stone describes in Natural Born Killers, but the hysteria he depicts seems to come from within him. His soul is in turmoil and so he keeps trying to convince us that we're sick.

Working from the script by Jeff Maguire, director Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot") plods through the narrative as if he were completely unconcerned with giving it even a semblance of credibility.

At its worst, River's Edge is crackpot sociology. Jimenez and Hunter use the characters' lack of affect as an indictment. The film has a hectoring, hysterical tone. It wants to find out why these kids, who have grown up in splintered, lower-middle-class homes, are like they are. They want to blame somebody.