Hal Lipper

Running on Empty, for all its implausibilities and pseudo-radical bourgeois banter, is an unusually engaging movie. [14 Oct 1988, p.10]

Writer-director Shelton builds his story around Starr's and Long's scandalous affair, capturing Long's unprecedented bid for a fourth gubernatorial term and his fight against Louisiana's voter registration law, which disenfranchised illiterate blacks. Through Long's eccentric and purportedly immoral behavior, Shelton captures the last gasp of American innocence when public officials could do as they pleased with minimal scrutiny by the press. Handsome, fulfilling, though not entirely perfect movie. [13 Dec 1989, p.1D]

Good Morning, Vietnam moves fitfully, as it should. Like Tin Men and Diner, there's an underbelly of sadness here. Audiences expecting an all-out Robin Williams comedy may feel shortchanged. The banter in Good Morning, Vietnam is lively, but its mood has the melancholy bitterness of truth. [15 Jan 1988, p.6]

It defies convention. It breaks taboos. It isn't a pleasant experience, but it is challenging. [21 June 1991, p.7]

FernGully...The Last Rainforest is surprisingly fun for being the first politically correct, environmentally conscious full-length animated film. [10 Apr 1992, p.5]

Schepisi & Co. appear to have forgotten a tenet of film making: A moving picture needs to move to succeed. [21 Dec 1990, p.6]

The roller coaster of events more than compensates for the film's inane dialogue. Innerspace is the stuff summer adventure is made of. [1 July 1987, p.1D]

Eastwood is absolutely the wrong actor to play Huston, called John Wilson in White Hunter, Black Heart. Eastwood is tense and tightly coiled, while Huston was gleefully bombastic. [12 Oct 1990, p.7]

Q & A marks Lumet's return to stride after Family Business, Running on Empty and The Morning After. When he deals with New York, cops and corruption, he can't be surpassed. [27 Apr 1990, p.6]

The material fails the execution and performances. [13 Jan 1989, p.7]

Sidewalk Stories is a comedy of forgotten pleasures. It harkens back to the purest form of cinema to silently record what passes for society today. [16 Feb 1990, p.11]

Finally! An American adaptation of a French movie that works.

Romances such as Frankie's and Johnny's work better in the artificial environment of the stage than the "real" world of movies. The couple's bond seems phony from the start. [11 Oct 1991, p.7]

While there isn't much mystery to this mystery - only a handful of suspects are interviewed - there is a compelling sense of helplessness underscoring the lives of all its characters. In that sense, Sea of Love is a gender bender Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a disturbing allegory for the '80s when the fear of AIDS and sexual violence only deters a percentage of the singles population from making its appointed meat-market rounds. [15 Sep 1989, p.6]

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is one of the finest installments in the saga. [6 Dec. 1991, p.5]

What begins as an unflinching account of the victim's hospitalization, interrogation, feelings of anger and fear of intimacy, eventually succumbs to courtroom theatrics.[14 Oct 1988, p.6]

Like Top Secret and other less inspired efforts made by Zucker, brother Jerry Zucker and pal Jim Abrahams, The Naked Gun 2 is consistently amusing without being outright funny. [28 June 1991, p.6]

Writer-director Luis Valdez's movie is an example of just how tedious a bio-pic can be. [24 July 1987, p.3D]

Prince of Tides brims with earnest emotion, but it's packed as tight as a can of sardines. There's no room for the actors to breathe, to relax, to reflect on the events around them...Despite numerous flaws, this is an unusual and special movie, a throwback to an era when big pictures were made about little people in the throes of everyday crisis. [25 Dec 1991, p.1D]

Mortal Thoughts is limited both by its scope and its structure, a relentlessly long Q&A session that relates what happened through a series of flashbacks. It grows tedious at first, then becomes frustrating as the women bungle their alibis and the truth is revealed. [19 Apr 1991, p.6]

It's witty, wise, nasty and frothy. But it's also frantically paced, leaving its cast and the audience in its wake as it plows forward. [31 May 1991, p.6]

Cool yet engrossing story of Merrill's fall from grace for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. [15 Mar 1991, p.7]

It waffles. In the end, it emerges a distinctly pro-soldier, possibly anti-war movie that supports America's overseas doctrine, whether it be right or wrong. One shudders to think what they might create if asked to portray the United States' current role in Central America. Their film certainly wouldn't dare make a statement, bother to educate or entertain. And most importantly, it wouldn't take sides. [29 Aug 1987, p.1D]

Silver wrote The Hand that Rocks the Cradle as a graduate thesis at the University of Southern California film school, and the movie's derivative nature shows it. The Hand that Rocks the Cradle has the viciousness of The Stepfather. DeMornay's live-in nursemaid recalls Michael Keaton's malicious tenant in Pacific Heights. The entire picture stinks of Fatal Attraction, a movie that begins as an ethical exploration and ends as a mad slasher movie. [10 Jan 1992, p.5]

Had the writing matched their performances, Fried Green Tomatoes would be this year's Driving Miss Daisy. As it is, it's an absorbing period mystery and a hapless social comedy. Half of it works. [24 Jan 1992, p.28

More than a little has been lost in the translation. Screenwriters Richard Maxwell and A.R. Simoun have created a horrific Indiana Jones adventure with Davis being portrayed by Bill Pullman, an actor who does a poor imitation of Michael Douglas doing a poor imitation of Harrison Ford.[6 Feb 1988, p.2D]

A slam-bang terrorist thriller from first frame to last. It also is astonishingly conventional. You've seen the plot machinations up to the final showdown in a dark, secluded house in dozens of movies before, though rarely so well-orchestrated. [5 June 1992, p.5]

Co-writer and director Barry Primus knows his characters well, but his scenarios are stilted and pretentious. So is Landisman's screenplay, which everyone wants to change.