Harper Barnes

A rousingly funny sequel. [25 July 1993, p.7D]

Just when you've decided it's just another queasy thriller about a woman-hating serial killer, and you're beginning to wonder if Hollywood isn't making too many of these nasty little things, Malice winds up and delivers a terrific curveball. [01 Oct 1993, p.3EV]

Ultimately, however, the only real problem with the new version of "The Getaway" is that Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger just don't seem very believable as tough professional criminals. You just know they are only a shower and a manicure away from dinner at Spago. [11 Feb 1994, p.3E]

The elements never quite combine into a cohesive compound, and a lot of the dialogue - particularly Calamity Jane's - might have worked on the page, or even on the stage, but has a phony theatricality when uttered by people with cameras in their faces. [01 Dec 1995, p.3E]

ROMEO Is Bleeding is an interesting mess. A very self-conscious contemporary take on the film noir genre, it is so dark (both photographically and psychologically) and derivative that at times it seems like a parody. [2 March 1994, p.6F]

The movie has a hallucinatory intensity that is skillfully mixed with light-comic relief and straight-faced farce. It never takes itself too seriously, and never veers too far in the other direction by surrendering to self-parody. [01 Jul 1994, p.3D]

This convoluted tale of a U.S. Treasury agent (Wesley Snipes) looking for the rats who killed one of his partners simmers along fairly well for about 45 minutes and then gets all lukewarm and fuzzy. [21 Apr 1993, p.6F]

Texasville is much less memorable than The Last Picture Show, but it is well worth seeing, particularly if you loved the original movie and are curious about what happened to the people in it. There are some slow spots, but not too many. And there are more laughs than tears, although, as country music fans know, it is often hard to tell the difference. [28 Oct 1990, p.6C]

PRESUMABLY this zombie flick is supposed to be funny, since it's about as scary as "Little Women." [18 Jan 1995, p.6F]

A generally entertaining Western with some striking images, Young Guns II is significantly better than the original Young Guns. [02 Aug 1990, p.4E]

Stallone starring in a comedy? Absolutely. Furthermore, it's a terrific comedy. Oscar is a fast-moving, highly stylized, very entertaining farce that is played as a combination of comic opera (complete with numerous soundtrack references to The Barber of Seville) and Depression-era zany comedy. [26 Apr 1991, p.3F]

Candy breaks out of his goofball mold and delivers a solid performance as a lonely Chicago cop who can't pull loose from his domineering mother. The major flaw in Only the Lonely is that the mother (Maureen O'Hara) is such a vicious, whining, manipulative bigot that it is hard to care about her when the inevitable turnabout comes, or see why Candy doesn't just pull out his service revolver and blow her away. [24 May 1991, p.3F]

The new Clint Eastwood movie, Pink Cadillac, might approach mediocrity if it were about half an hour shorter. At almost two hours, it is, to paraphrase a line in the movie, Snooze City. [26 May 1989, p.3F]

This droll, leisurely paced movie might alternately be titled "The Only Good Man in Africa." [09 Sep 1994, p.3F]

The Good Son is cheaply manipulative in a way that can make you angry. [24 Sep 1993, p.3EV]

Taken as mindless entertainment, "Chain Reaction" is a cut or two below "Independence Day" and a couple of cuts above "Fled." It's a little better than "Eraser," not as good as "The Rock." [2 Aug 1996, p.3E]

A SURPRISING number of good, long, serious, thought-provoking movies have opened in the past few weeks. This isn't one of them. But if you're looking for a break from heavy fare, this fluffy serving of junk food might be just right. [12 Nov 1993]

The best thing about Renegades is a beautifully choreographed car chase early in the movie. After that, the movie creeps along for 20 minutes or so while the two principals grope toward buddyhood. Then, with bonding accomplished, the action picks up somewhat, but never really catches fire. [07 Jun 1989, p.3E]

CRAZY PEOPLE is a one-joke movie. It's a pretty good joke: Slightly unbalanced people write ads that tell the absolute truth about products, and the products sell like crazy. But it isn't good enough to make us care for long about a mental-institution romance between Dudley Moore and Daryl Hannah that has the feel of ''David and Lisa: The Sit-Com.'' [13 Apr 1990, p.3F]

Despite a solid cast and a few interesting visual moments, Surviving the Game is just a routine action picture. [21 Apr 1994, p.5G]

The suspense trickles out of A Kiss Before Dying in the first 10 or 15 minutes, and the movie just lies there until the final 10 or 15 minutes. Writer-director James Dearden tries to inject life into the long, slow middle with blood, breasts and buttocks, but we never sense that any of these attributes belongs to actual breathing human beings. [26 Apr 1991, p.5F]

In this year's stupid sexy screamer, Sliver, [Stone] tries to reveal some of her character's mind. But there's nothing in there but cotton candy and foggy images from old soap operas. [23 May 1993, p.12C]

Don't let anyone off the hook. That's a basic rule of good satire, and on the whole Amos & Andrew follows it. The result is a generally amusing, occasionally hilarious send-up of racial posturing in America. [05 Mar 1993, p.3G]

This summer's first really bad major movie has finally arrived, and it's time to celebrate. There's been a lot of mediocrity, but until Color of Night there'd been nothing deeply rotten on the grand scale of "Last Action Hero" or "Hudson Hawk." [19 Aug 1994, p.9F]

Prince is a puzzle. Unfortunately, in Graffiti Bridge, he isn't a very interesting one. The main problem may be that most of the music in this sequel to Prince's 1984 musical Purple Rain is mediocre, mainly derived from rap and funk but without the energy those forms generate when they are presented raw. [06 Nov 1990, p.4D]

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is a terrible movie. For the first 20 minutes or so, it is so far over the top in its pseudo-mythic urban cowboy way that it is at least entertainingly terrible. [23 Aug 1991, p.3F]

This time, the results are only fair. [13 Jan 1989, p.5G]

Elijah Wood Jr. is excellent as a boy who goes looking for a new father and mother. A fairly amusing, very light fantasy from Rob Reiner. [14 Aug 1994, p.14C]