Hal Hinson

Here, Lyne indulges more in misdirection than in direction; he's a magician turning a sleazy trick. But even his technical skill breaks down. The picture is garbled and cliched.

The picture amounts to little more than an uninspired, almost perfunctory exercise in "big game" manipulations.

A nonstop moronathon... Bio-Dome offers a pants-load of poop and masturbation jokes, deviant innuendo and simian sight gags destined to gross out and offend just about everyone.

Fresh is an electrifying, sobering movie, and with it, Yakin announces himself as perhaps the most gifted newcomer of the decade.

A case study in how Hollywood can make a complete mess out of what was previously a marvelous film.

3 Ninjas, Touchstone Pictures' latest attempt to fill the idle summer hours of our nation's youth, is a Frankenstein of a movie, an unhappy creature stitched together out of the body parts of other movies. And though it's not a horror film, it is a genuinely scary experience, if only because it actually seems to make time stand dead still.

To director Scott and screenwriter Roselyne Bosch, the atrocities against the natives came about not as a product of evil but through Columbus's ineptitude as a political leader. Still, this failure -- and his frustration over never actually reaching mainland America -- renders him a tragic figure. Though he was the dreamer and pioneer who first set foot in the New World and brought treasures and territory to Spain, he died all but forgotten. The movie, alas, for all its wondrous beauty, is destined to suffer a similar fate.

The movie is shot as if Bigelow wanted to take her audience to the very edge of sensory overload. Her pulsing, super-psychedelic images are edgy and invasive. They burn as they hit your retina. After a while, however, Bigelow's careening camera, the heavy-metal music and the flash cutting begin to make you feel hammered and abused. Though the movie is jammed with plot, nothing seems to happen. [13 Oct 1995, p.F01]

Tony Scott's Revenge is fascinating for one reason only -- as an example of full-scale, mega-star perversity. The star, in this case, is Kevin Costner, and there's a willfulness in the extremes to which he's gone here to alienate his public. Costner pitches his performance at his audience like a dare, as if he were seeing how far out on a limb it's willing to climb with him.

As the years flash by, Mr. Holland ultimately discovers that he has given the world something much more valuable than a symphony; he has touched thousands of lives with the gift of music . . . blah, blah, blah. It almost makes you wanna hurl.

Director Frank Oz has brought a devilish tang to the machinations here, and the actors bring a sense of a spoiled grandeur to their characters' mingy souls.

Writer-director David O. Russell's exhilarating follow-up to "Spanking the Monkey," is even wilder, giddier and more unpredictable than that irreverent debut.

Ferrara is clearly drawing an equation between the criminals' actions and The Lieutenant's, and as trite (and potentially shameless) as this may sound, it actually works.

As a celebration of ephemera, the movie is a mixed bag, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tiresome.

The "Godfather" films transcended their mobster genre; New Jack City doesn't, but it's a great genre film, edgy, vibrant and full of urgent color.

An animated feature with political agenda -- a didactic cartoon. But that doesn't interfere with its being a whopping good time.

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.

Usually, Ephron is one of the most reliable comic voices in the movies, but here her gifts seem to have deserted her. Though she shows her customary talent for smart one-liners, the spirit of the film is forced and desperate, as if she lacked faith in her gags and were trying to shove them down our throats.

Ultimately, La Scorta is a tight, competent but rather inconsequential thriller. It's diverting, but thin. (Review of Original Release)

Riotous adaptation of Alan Bennett's comedy about monarchal frailty.

Watching Claire Denis' Chocolat, you feel as if your senses have been quickened, reawakened. The movie is like sex for the eyes -- it's ravishing in a way that goes straight into your blood.

A jazz piece may be improvised, sketched out in the process of creation, but a movie resists that kind of spontaneity -- or requires skills that are beyond Lee's talents at the moment.

Because of the square, lackluster way that director Michael Gottleib has staged his material, the whole production seems sort of limp and perfunctory.

Big has a warmhearted sweetness that's invigorating; it makes you want to break out the Legos. It's only near the end of the film, when Hanks has to play the scenes for pathos, that the movie becomes cloying.

Rourke is, in fact, exceedingly creepy. There's an unpredictable, resonant menace in his eccentricity. But Cimino can't connect the movie's thriller elements to its themes. We end up spending way too much time indoors while this thug waves a gun at these poor innocents.

Coarse and haphazardly engineered and never more than intermittently funny.

Linklater's control seems all but invisible here. But this kind of stylistic lucidity can only be the result of determined calculation and planning. The kind of happy accidents he captures don't come about by accident.

By the end, the film’s early promise has pretty much degenerated into routine pyrotechnics.

It has extravagant, bloody thrills plus something else -- something that comes close to genuine emotion.

There's a genuinely tragic side to Stuart's character, and for the movie to work the filmmakers have to keep it in balance with the comedy so that the pathos of his life doesn't kill all the laughs. But Ramis can't keep the movie's tone under control, and, as a result, it teeters precariously between farce and wake.

In Kansas, Andrew McCarthy and Matt Dillon have a way of taking pages of dialogue and making it sound like ... pages of dialogue.

Roxanne is the most unabashed, and most satisfying, romantic movie to come along in years. It's a swooning, delicate, heart-on-its-sleeve work. And so fulsome is its tenderness and naivete' that it requires a leap of imagination from the viewer to get on its wavelength. Few recent movies, though, reward the stretch as this one does.

Hill evokes the great westerns of the past—in particular "Shane" and "My Darling Clementine"— but his approach is essentially postmodern. Though Hickok is a hero from another century, his plight is thoroughly contemporary.

[Shelton's] direction here is fluid and energetic; he's got the juice for the straightaways, and the control for tight corners too. But it's the inspired jabber that fuels the film.

The movie is like a Porsche outfitted with a lawn mower engine; there's not even enough juice to get the machine out of the driveway.

Coming to America isn't as aggressively awful as the "Cop" films or "The Golden Child," but at least in those films there was something to react to. In making Coming to America, Murphy seems to have set his sights on the lowest prize imaginable. He aspires to blandness.

Spielberg and Co. have finally made their Disney movie -- or better yet, their film version of a theme park at Disneyland. It's sort of like "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "It's a Small World" rolled into one. It's a helluva contraption, and certainly one to be marveled at. It gives good ride.

As the movie progresses, it becomes less interesting. There are some striking performances from the supporting cast, particularly Steven Berkoff's rabid portrayal of a rival gang lord. The rest of the film, in fact, could have benefited from a little of his mad-dog ferocity. As heroes, the Krays are more shadow than substance; they're stuck in metaphor.

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]

The movie is inventive, hilarious and, in its own sneaky way, moving.

Lee elevates herself from the lower echelon of mere international super-babedom to the loftier realm of pulp myth. She is "It" with an exclamation mark.

It's respectful but not particularly vigorous or enlightening.

While this sort of thing may have worked in the '30s, by today's standards it's half-baked.

It is a serious and, at times, moving film, and it deserves serious analysis.

Stylish, intelligent but rather soulless bit of moviemaking.

A glorious romantic confection unlike any other in movie history.

Oldman is the least inhibited actor of his generation, and as this deranged detective, he keeps absolutely nothing in reserve.

By the time the last out is called, the movie's shamelessness far outweighs its charms. Aimed at the minors, it's in a bush league all its own.

David Cronenberg's film version of David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play, is no more successful in solving it than any other versions of this fantastic tale have been.... "The Crying Game" it's not. [09 Oct 1993]

Roger Spottiswoode's Air America is partly glorious, partly junk, but unfortunately not in equal parts.

For Kieslowski, subtlety is a religion. He hints or implies -- anything to keep from laying his cards on the table. With "Blue," you never feel he's shown his whole hand; not even after the game is over.

The Russia House doesn't sweep you off your feet; it works more insidiously than that, flying in under your radar. If it is like any of its characters, it's like Katya. It's reserved, careful to declare itself but full of potent surprises. It's one of the year's best films.

In Roger & Me, Moore's brand of slapstick reportage strikes the perfect balance between irony and sincerity; it's slyly deadpan and committed, democratic and kingly all at once. In the end, though, he winds up giving ironic credence to the swells at the Great Gatsby party who advise the laid-off workers to get out there and do something. He's shown what one man with a camera crew and a vision can do.

Little Nikita would be nothing without River Phoenix's hair. It's the most engaging, the most watchable thing in the film. It has body. It has character. It even has drama. In other words, it has everything that's missing from the rest of the picture.

What "Wild at Heart" feels like is a kind of housecleaning -- a disjointed collection of images and odd snatches of ideas that the director couldn't make room for anyplace else. They have no context, and as a result, no power to thrill or disturb.

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.

This screwball comedy starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck isn't as well regarded as others in the genre, but even if it's not exactly top-drawer, it's still jazzy fun. [24 Dec 1987, p.D7]

The mere presence of the adorable baby star, in fact, seems to throw the whole film out of whack, making the picture play more like an inadvertent comedy than a thriller.

My Left Foot is gloriously exultant and hilariously unexpected...Sheridan and his great young star have universalized their broken hero.

An Innocent Man isn't an inspired piece of filmmaking, but it is tightly focused and efficient, and on its own modest terms it is effective.

All in all, the picture goes down fairly easily, and by any estimate it's an improvement over other Pryor nonconcert films such as The Toy or even Brewster's Millions.

Based on the novel by Nicholas Proffitt, it's been written for the screen (by Ronald Bass, who also wrote "Black Widow") in a flatfooted comic-book style, and about halfway through the whole thing collapses in a heap. But, for a while at least, it's eminently watchable.

The Big Easy, starring Ellen Barkin and Dennis Quaid, is the sexiest, most companionable movie of the summer. Set in New Orleans, it's an amiable, loping, goof of a movie, with charm to burn and not a thought in its head.

As one-joke movies go, it's fairly inoffensive but also never better than mildly diverting.

The movie is showy without having any noticeably coherent style. Indeed, it might have been possible to enjoy Young Guns as a larky spree if the photogenic stars didn't carry themselves with such a smug, self-congratulatory air. But they behave as if our adoration were their birthright.

All too faithfully adapted by Kenneth Branagh, the film is the last thing that one would expect of a contemporary highbrow version of this ageless horror classic. It is, in a word, dullsville.

And yet, Goldeneye proves the character's viability as a pop icon: It isn't a great movie, but it's great, preposterous fun.

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.

Indian Summer would like to be to the '90s what "The Big Chill" was to the '80s. But something is missing, namely a superior cast, a more engaging group of characters, a far smarter, more focused script, and Lawrence Kasdan's expertly timed direction. This is a wan knockoff.

For once, the audience isn't forced to surrender its intelligence (or its healthy cynicism) to embrace the film's sunny resolution.

A phenomenally atrocious movie—so bad, in fact, that you might actually manage to squeeze a few laughs out of it.

The filmmakers have done a beautiful job of preserving the satirical snap of Gibbons's original. But the real joy of Cold Comfort Farm is watching these actors play so freely and exuberantly off each other.

Rush is a powerhouse movie but not a cheap one. It hits you hard, but never below the belt.

Dickerson's point in this passable but rather routine picture is that no one is exempt from the spidery grip of frustrations brought on by poverty and a life of depressed opportunities; that, given these circumstances, anyone can pick up a gun as the only answer to his problems.

A feature-length version of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, it's an elaborate social critique done in cartoon terms -- a combination of Care Bears and "Das Kapital." And for what it's worth, it comes closer to having an actual cultural vision than any other movie of the summer. That doesn't mean it's good, mind you, but for kiddies it's colorful and bouncy at least, and for adults it's weird enough to keep you open-mouthed with disbelief.

Stunning.

The Snapper is a small movie, but its spirit is gigantic. [17 Dec 1993, p.C1]

Tampopo is perhaps the funniest movie about the connection between food and sex ever made. But, as you're watching it, the movie's base broadens, and the parallels between the noodle-maker's art and the filmmaker's become richer, sweeter.

Better would have been excellent. But, let's face it, better is pretty much irrelevant. Mac takes care of that. Mac takes care of everything. The kid's the biggest child actor since Shirley Temple.

There's a lot of ski footage here, but most of it is pretty standard beer commercial stuff. And the characters are on about the same level. Writer-director Patrick Hasburgh may know something about skiing, but he knows nothing about people. Or storytelling. Or filmmaking.

Bissett, to her credit, is the only one who appears to know that the movie around her is a near-classic of sexy absurdity.

Not only is the picture woefully short on laughs, it's also coarse, overbearing and, in places, downright insulting.

It's hard to remember a recent love story -- maybe "Moonstruck" -- that's as involving as this one. This is not to suggest that the two movies are in the same league, but this is a teen movie that transcends its teen limitations.

What The Two Jakes makes us long for most is the earlier film.

Arguably the best movie of the Astaire-Rogers series, Swing Time is the most consistently entertaining, most imaginatively plotted of their films. [25 Jun 1987, p.B7]

Watching John Woo's The Killer may be like eating popcorn, but it's not just any old brand; it's escape-velocity popcorn, popcorn with a slurp of rocket fuel. Its story is a collision of exuberant pulp, samurai mythology and modern, urban noir.

Its attitude seems to be: You met her and liked her in "Speed," now get to know her better. But while it's easy to like her, liking the movie is another matter.

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.

So what exactly is the point? Does Jefferson's treatment of Sally Hemings establish his racism or his instinctive color-blindness? Unfortunately, the picture is so unfocused and tumbles so rapidly from one event to another that it's difficult to tell.

What's lost in momentum is gained back in the unexpectedness of the jokes and the quality of the performances. Mermaids is an infectious, bouncy diversion, like the fruity dance the girls and their mother do around the kitchen table at the film's end.

Wenders weaves all his thematic and narrative threads together into a coherent, philosophical whole. Even with the apocalypse, though, his view isn't despairing. A new direction, a new beginning emerges out of the ashes of the old, image-overloaded world, and with it, a sort of muted optimism.

Lane's comic bits are sodden, and as a result, the film is listless and fatiguing.

Weekend at Bernie's is an unfettered but uninspired one-joke movie.

It's a lovely film, but a little inert. It reaches its high point with glorious close-ups of the children. From there, it's all downhill.

A premise is about all The Cutting Edge has, and what a tired one it is.

There's a synergistic overlap here between Cronenberg's own particular brand of weirdness and Burroughs's; they're both twisted in ways that complement each other nicely.

It's not surprising that Punchline is mostly banal; it's constructed on a banality -- namely, that clowns suffer.

Unfortunately, Lumet isn't the brawny social commentator he would like to be -- he's a Jimmy Breslin manque'. His script chronicles a complex, gargantuan evil, but his insights into urban life haven't progressed beyond those of his earlier films -- the chaos of conflicting interests and cultural hatred is one that by now we're more than familiar with -- and his storytelling style isn't compelling or tightly focused enough to keep our attention from flagging.