Janet Maslin

Traveller is just a hot little sleeper with strong characters and a story to tell.

The Hot Spot, his film noir set in a small, sex-starved Texas backwater, is the closest Mr. Hopper has yet come to working within the bounds of a familiar genre. Nevertheless, The Hot Spot bears the film maker's idiosyncratic stamp all the way.

At two hours and 14 minutes, the movie is a lot longer than it needs to be. On the other hand, Elliott (whose beeps and bomps and chomping sounds are supplied by Charlie Callas) is very sweet and emotive, and you don't often see children's musicals as ambitious as this one any more.

Breakin' 2 slights dramatic matters to concentrate exclusively on dancing. The movie contains so much of it that it's exhausting even to watch, but at least the choreography isn't being executed by John Travolta.

The gags, like the plotting, have a giddy edge that can be sharp, but just as often they go nowhere.

An enjoyable, second-rate family drama rich in the kind of folk wisdom that can ordinarily be found on daytime television.

The stunning black-and-white cinematography in Francis Coppola's Rumble Fish functions rather like a cold compress, subduing a film that is otherwise all feverish extremes.

Newell's ensemble timing and breezily sardonic style make it work better than might be expected.

Johnny Dangerously winds down as it moves along, eventually descending to a lowest common denominator of dopey adolescent gags that overpower the parody. Still, even at its thinnest, it remains good-humored and intermittently entertaining.

Some routines work a lot better than others, but the whole film sparkles with a boisterous lunacy that's perfectly in keeping with the frenzy of the fans.

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is closer to a curiosity than to a triumph, though its conception is certainly ambitious.

Mr. Boyle's brand of heaven-sent love story comes with a strange and whimsical mean streak. Tender thoughts and ha-ha shootings don't automatically mix.

Once the story settles down to wondering whether Maggie/Claudia can find happiness in romantic love, it becomes noticeably less interesting. Ms. Fonda sometimes verges on the mechanical in mouthing her character's nobler sentiments (the film also relies heavily on Nina Simone records to express its heroine's feelings), but that is to be expected. At heart, this woman is little more than a laboratory specimen with great legs, so it's miraculous to find an actress breathing life into her at all.

First-time screenwriters Jeff Wadlow and Beau Bauman prove more adept at staging mind games than creating chills and thrills for the audience.

This film's not-so-secret weapon is Michael J. Fox, who works tirelessly to keep the comedy afloat even when its sentimental side begins to show.

It's a beach party movie, marginally better than the average, with snow taking the place of surf.

But Mr. Olmos's direction, from a screenplay by Floyd Mutrux and Desmond Nakano, is dark, slow and solemn, so much so that it diverts energy from the film's fundamental frankness. Violent as it is, American Me is seldom dramatic enough to bring its material to life.

A gloomy film with a story whose outcome... is an especially foregone conclusion.

For all the funny possibilities of Mr. Murphy's neat transformation here, the latest comedy from Stephen Herek ("Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," "The Mighty Ducks") doesn't know what to do with him.

It is by no means the dopiest thing on the big screen.

The director, Simon Wincer, makes Quigley Down Under an unapologetic homage to the formula western at its most pokey, complete with Wagon Train-style score. All things considered, this could be a lot worse.

The gimmick behind When a Stranger Galls is a scary one, but it's been played for more than it's worth.

It's both a frantic, innovative mixture of animation technologies and a fan magazine full of adulation for Michael Jordan. He handles this tribute with regal bearing and good grace.

As directed by Ralph S. Singleton, Graveyard Shift works better above ground than below. The early scenes that allow the actors a little color are more fun than the all-basement episodes, which are visually monotonous despite the fact that the film's monster plot is a multi-media affair.

Miss Littman, who directed and was co-producer of Testament, gives its individual scenes a very realistic air, even if the film's overall conception is sometimes strained.

The film's cool, sober texture and its clever characters are often more interesting than the larger plot.

Unlike ''The Fugitive,'' which had tremendous dramatic urgency, this film isn't clear enough to build suspense that escalates from scene to scene...A lively look and some frantically inventive action scenes generate energy, even if the gimmicks do have an edge of desperation. Mr. Davis churns out vigorous excitement inside the working of a drawbridge, in a science museum, in a secret bunker and on a frozen lake.

D.C. CAB is a musical mob scene, a raucous, crowded movie that's fun as long as it stays wildly busy, and a lot less interesting when it wastes time on plot or conversation. There's a lot of talent in the large cast, and Joel Schumacher, the director, generally keeps things bustling.

Some of the gags in Better Off Dead have a lot more cleverness than the material - just another silly story about a lovesick high school boy and the cute, annoying habits of his friends and family - might warrant.

The film is full of gratifying gags, but it also has to strain for newly enlarged scope.

Unlawful Entry manages to be more gripping than it is convincing, thanks to the story's inevitable movement toward a violent showdown.

This is a strong, affecting story but it's also a straggly one, populated by tangential figures and parallel plotlines; the criminals' histories are every bit as convoluted and fascinating as those of the policemen they abducted. Even the courtroom drama is unusually complicated, introducing a new legal team with each new trial.

A cheerful, four-cylinder children's movie, though its car jokes aren't good for much mileage. Herbie the Volkswagen, last seen in Monte Carlo, is now in South America, as the title may or may not indicate. This allows him to get into a bullfight, for the movie's most inspired episode, and to fall into the sea and get rusty, for its saddest. His adventures aren't much more far-flung than this, but fortunately they move fast. [12 Sept 1980, p.C8]

The new film is twice as busy as its quiet predecessor, and perhaps half as interesting (which still places it several notches above run-of-the-mill studio fare).

Grosbard mercifully avoids melodrama -- the only real false notes are musical ones, from a score by Elmer Bernstein that turns familiar and trite when the film does not.

Coup de Torchon, which opens today at the Paris, has Mr. Tavernier's typical polish, which means it has much to recommend it. But however impressive the meticulousness and conviction on display here, or the performances Mr. Tavernier has elicited, Coup de Torchon seems strangely lacking in overall momentum and direction.

Grandview, U.S.A. is slight, but it has a good enough cast to keep it watchable.

Easier to watch than it is to believe.

Years of tireless persistence have begun to work in Mr. Van Damme's favor. It's hard not to enjoy his energy, even if his acting gifts still leave a lot to be desired. The fact is that he looks good, behaves affably and kicks with gusto, which is quite enough to satisfy the demands of Timecop.

The Coca-Cola Kid is of more interest for these oddball peripheral touches than for its awkward attempts at satire.

What the film needs, instead of these familiar teen-movie trappings, is a cleverness and eccentricity to match that of its characters. For the most part, these are qualities that it lacks.

[Hanson] does another deft job of conveying a heroine's secret anxieties, at least during the first half of his story.

There is a dazzling array of talent on display here, and the film surely has its memorable moments. But it articulates so little of the end-of-an-era feeling it hints at—and some of Mr. Scorsese's accomplishments have been so stunning—that it's impossible to view The Last Waltz as anything but an also-ran.

The film bounces busily among these players until it has to slow down and pretend to be sincere.

This latest special-effects free-for-all from Jan De Bont is a lavish illustration of how to take a fairly modest black-and-white horror film from 1963 and amplify it so relentlessly that the sight of the flying cow in Twister would not be all that amiss.

It's easy to see why this cheerfully dopey film has struck pay dirt.

Couch-potato comedy can't get any lazier than Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, but that counts for most of this film's slender charm. [19 Apr 1996, p.C8]

In performance, as in the rest of this film, Mr. Noonan only haltingly captures what he seeks.

Higher Learning culminates in facile violence instead of the assurance that this film maker, in trying to explain forces that oppress his characters, has really done his homework.

In his third and most comfortable effort to model the Bond mantle, Pierce Brosnan bears noticeably more resemblance to a real human being.

M. Butterfly as idiosyncratic as Mr. Cronenberg's work always is, is sometimes too flat and ambiguous for its own good.

Although Manhattan Murder Mystery struggles with its own contrivances, it achieves a gentle, nostalgic grace and a hint of un-self-conscious wisdom. Those who appreciate the long, daring continuum of Mr. Allen's work will be glad to find him simply carrying on.

The best thing about Yentl is its earnestness. It may resemble a vanity production from afar (or at close range, too, for that matter), but even at its kitschiest it seems to be heartfelt. That goes a long way, though not far enough, toward saving the film from its own built-in difficulties.

Little more than a set of intermittently funny skits strung together by a sketchy nonplot about Stuart's relatives. As directed by Harold Ramis, it's seldom better than just amiable.

Children may enjoy this, but their adult escorts will have a harder time...It's been well made and, especially in Miss Tandy's case, acted with a sense of fun. But the time for this brand of fantasy may have come and gone.

This carefree comedy film does its best with material that would have been totally ephemeral in a less Brady world.

Largely because Mr. Cuaron is such a voluptuous visual stylist, this Great Expectations is capable of wonder even when its wilder ideas misfire.

Nothing in Gilda Live is funnier than, or a substantial departure from, the material Gilda Radner does on "Saturday Night Live." But the film ought to satisfy her fans.

With some gentle humor that will delight the "Napoleon Dynamite" set, Dorian Blues lights a natural little footpath between two ways of living.

Moving isn't anything out of the ordinary, but those who have shared at least some of these experiences ought to find it amusing.

It's rambling and unfocused, but still fresh enough to break the usual Hollywood mold.

Mallrats mixes clever bits and an appealing quirkiness (which goes a long way) with gross-out practical jokes, needless repetition and obvious padding, since it has no real plot.

The Good Son has a handsome, scenic look that sustains interest, and a suspenseful ending that is quite literally gripping. The film's final scene is one of its few suspenseful and original moments.

Red Dawn may be rabidly inflammatory, but it isn't dull. Mr. Milius does know how to keep a story moving. He might well have turned this into a genuinely stirring war film, if he had not also made it so incorrigibly gung-ho. But the effectiveness of its chilling premise, from a story by Kevin Reynolds, is dissipated by wildly excessive directorial fervor at every turn.

Citizen's Band, is so clever that its seams show. Mr. Demme's tidiest parallels and most purposeful compositions are such attention-getters that the film has a hard time turning serious for its finale, in which characters who couldn't communicate directly come to understand one another at long last.

But Night Falls on Manhattan is also oddly listless. It doesn't often live up to the doomy eloquence of its title.

Overshadowed by its own ambition and not-quite-ironic pageantry, Jefferson in Paris doesn't quite come to life.

Travolta again carries a film with enjoyable ease, even if this one remains badly diminished by its perverse streak.

Risky Business improves as it goes along.

A B-movie with flair.

Overdressed and overplotted as it is, City Heat benefits greatly from the sardonic teamwork of Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Without them the film would be eminently forgettable, but their bantering gives it an enjoyable edge.

The forcefulness and mystery of Mr. Melville's direction often generate an urgency that keeps the film from feeling vague. [30 Nov. 1979]

The special effects are suitably catastrophic, though they aren't much more clever than the computer tricks that turn up in beer commercials these days.

The specifics of the spider rampage have been very enjoyably executed by Mr. Marshall and particularly well played by Mr. Daniels, whose dryly self-deprecating manner and underlying decency make him an irresistible hero. Arachnophobia falters only when it becomes too broad, as in a dopey nod to Psycho that captures none of Hitchcock's formal elegance, and in various minor characters who serve as comic grotesques, like the town's potato-chip-munching mortician. 

The Crash characters sleepwalk through this story in a state of futuristic numbness, seeking extreme forms of sensation because familiar feelings have long since failed them. It's a chilling, ghastly possibility that manages to exert a grim fascination.

Its name, the film's title, is pronounced "eggs is tense" and meant to have a whiff of the philosophical, even if its intellectual ambition seems mostly limited to spelling affectations.

Rush is often more successful at being clinical than at being clear.

Brilliantly as it begins, Safe eventually succumbs to its own modern malady, as the film maker insists on a chilly ambiguity that breeds more detachment than interest.

The film's best scenes are those between the goofily nonchalant Mr. Reinhold and the precociously stern Mr. Savage, however bluntly these moments call attention to the craziness of the premise.

Eschewing warm, cuddly imagery just as Mr. Van Allsburg's book does, the film affects a strange, artificial style that has the invasive weirdness of "Gremlins" but none of the charm.

Edward Zwick's ultimately sedate thriller starts out with crisply efficient style and the potential for a much more involving story.

Eventually, though it happens later rather than sooner, the conventional aspects of Alien Nation overwhelm the novelty.

His The Wall is a good-looking film, and it has no shortage of nerve. When he puts an entire schoolchildren's choir on a conveyor belt leading into a meat grinder as they sing, ''We don't need no education,'' he is being nothing if not bold. These effects, while some are individually powerful, are dwarfed by the towering selfimportance of The Wall and by its lack of focus.

The film's concerns emerge as heartfelt even when they aren't clearly expressed. On those occasions when clarity prevails the style becomes emphatic and tough, but at other times it tends to preach and to wander.

North, a playful modern fable about a boy in search of new parents, doesn't always work, but much of it is clever in amusingly unpredictable ways.

It takes great confidence to think of a second film before the first is even finished; either that, or it takes great nerve. In any case, Innerspace, which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, has all the brashness of a hit, if not all the luster.

A coolly efficient thriller with an octopus of a plot.

If Suspect amounts to less than the sum of its parts, those parts are often valuable on their own.

A routine Joe College movie.

Police Academy 2 isn't as funny as its predecessor, but as sequels go it's certainly amusing. [31 Mar 1985, p.55]

Luckily, High Spirits has a good cast and enough joie de vivre to rise above some of its underlying clumsiness.

Vivid, full of conviction and more than a little foolish at times.

Small-scale, perfectly acted family film.

Ultimately, Ms Lynch has nowhere to take her erotic parable except to a dead end, but she makes the unfolding of the story a spooky, engrossing process.

IF Norman Rockwell had wanted to make ''Porky's,'' he might have come up with something like Mischief.

Ms. Davis gets to deliver the film's obvious message in a single unremarkable line: ''You can tell a lot about a society by who it chooses to celebrate.'' But most of what you can tell from the fun-house mirrors of Celebrity is what you already know.

Baby Boom isn't much more than a glorified sitcom, but it's funny, and it's liable to hit home. The reason: a devilishly good performance by Diane Keaton.

Yet this film, for all its apparent immediacy, winds up less affecting than a more poetic or roundabout approach might be.

Something disturbing has happened to this story en route to the screen.

But the film's central figure remains a cipher, the subject of a colorful scrapbook rather than a revealing portrait.

Sid and Nancy doesn't try to win its audience's sympathy in any conventional way, which is just as well, since that would have been a losing battle. But it does succeed in offering bleak, nasty and sometimes hilarious glimpses of life in the punk demimonde.

Yet for all the film's hard work at capturing Savannah's spirit, there is seldom enough context to make these characters seem anything but adorably whimsical to excess.

In the end, "Falling From Grace" is more a series of separate reflections than a sustained story. But Mr. Mellencamp does bring out the naturalness of his actors, and he has assembled a large and believable cast.

Although Robbins might have drawn some of these characters with less obviousness and more satirical bite, he ably keeps this lively, complicated film on track.

Nothing if not earnest. It's also eccentric enough to remain interesting even when its ghost story isn't easy to believe.

Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.

Mr. Cassavetes is effectively black-hearted, and makes a striking figure, and Randy Quaid does a lot with the underdeveloped role of a local sheriff. Mr. Marvin directs at a brisk pace, but his screenplay, though lively, seems to be written in an alien language.

As directed by Randall Miller, the movie doesn't aspire to much more than cartoonish verve, but Kid 'n' Play easily hold it together. Their comic timing is right, and their humor manages to be both traditional and current.

Mr. Giraldi, who also directs commercials, takes a fairly ordinary approach to this easygoing teen-age comedy about a stockbroker in his mid-20's who must pretend to be a high-school student. The material is pleasant enough, and Mr. Cryer is a good deal less strained here than he has been in other roles, affecting a natural manner and a good way with wisecracks.

Only fleetingly amusing, but Miss Long does make it fun for a while.

Mr. Murphy proves himself a surprisingly strong actor here, playing Sherman with sweetness and poignancy, not to mention loads of funny weight-related humor.

Prince's direction is on a par with his acting, roughly equivalent to his aptitude for Presidential politics. Nonetheless, the film has a lively style, a galvanizing score and some dance numbers in which the star truly shines.

[It] has a gentle approach to its characters and an occasionally striking visual style. What it doesn't have is much momentum or originality.

Thanks to Glenn Close's delicious villainy, it succeeds in breathing archly theatrical life into the irresistibly monstrous Cruella DeVil. Otherwise, this remake goes to the dogs too often.

Once Bitten affects a glossy, sophisticated look that does little to upgrade the film's adolescent humor. As directed by Howard Storm, it has a lot more stylishness than wit. Miss Hutton looks great in black, but her predatory vampire grows tiresome very quickly, as do all the Bloody Mary jokes.

Mr. Rifkin's direction does display, in addition to an appreciation of Mr. Lynch and perhaps John Waters, a promising eye for design and a taste for the unusual. With less noxious material and a less patronizing manner, those talents would amount to a lot more.

Mr. Diesel could not have succeeded as a genre-switcher without the proven television talents of the film's able ensemble.

For all its pretty glimpses of the desert island, the film never offers a clear, overall sense of what the place looks like; neither the camera nor the boy really goes exploring.

Carl Reiner's hit-or-miss film noir parody, a collection of gags that vary much too wildly in terms of timing and wit. All that hold this comedy together are a playful outlook and a conviction that detective stories are intrinsically funny, especially if the detective is as much of a blockhead as Ned Ravine.

Multiplicity weaves such an uninteresting plot around its bland, generic principals that it rarely reaches the absurdist heights its premise demands.

Mr. Marshall does a much better job with the feistier early scenes than with this subsequent mush, so the film does have a good first hour. But by the end, the film goes on much longer than it should. The physical look of Overboard is also surprisingly dreary. Though the yacht scenes have some visual wit, particularly where Miss Hawn's outrageous costumes are concerned, John A. Alonzo's cinematography is conspicuously poor.

The situation that Neighbors starts off with is funnier than anything that grows out of it, at least the version of the tale by Mr. Avildsen's and Larry Gelbart, the screenwriter. While Mr. Berger's novel has an aspect of the mysterious to keep it going, the film is solely devoted to hijinks, and the hijinks have nowhere to go.

The early parts of the film are engaging and well acted, creating a believable high school atmosphere. Unfortunately, the later part of the film is slow in developing, and it unfolds in predictable ways. The special effects are good, the performances are nicely deadpan, and the score is clever. But Christine herself is something of a bust.

Unlike the screenwriters, who often cross the thin line between wit and silliness as they outline Celeste's neo-I Love Lucy-isms, Miss Basinger reveals unfailingly sound instincts for comedy.

Helen Hunt is a real scene-stealer as a girl who wears things like toy dinosaurs in her hair, in keeping with the film's relentlessly silly mood. The audience at the National Theater seemed giddy enough in its own right.

Something like a sequel to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The characters are different, but the perspective on teen-age Americana, West Coast-style, is very much the same. This time around, though, the material is less funny.

Joseph Ruben, whose other films include The Stepfather and True Believer, has directed Sleeping With the Enemy with full appreciation of his leading lady's disarming beauty but less successful attention to the people and places that surround her.

Only charm and sentimentality could have brought the requisite magic to Clint Eastwood's Honkytonk Man; unfortunately, this well-intentioned but weak film hasn't nearly enough of either.

As for comedy, Mr. Grodin's deadpan manner supplies a fair amount of that until the adventure-mystery aspects become overpowering.

Neither performer upstages the other, but the admirable film is weakened by timidity or a lack of skill.

Ms. Olin looks great, and she's a lot more fiery in this hit-woman's role than she has been when trying, in tamer films, to be nice. But otherwise, "Romeo Is Bleeding" adds up to much less than the sum of its parts. Mr. Medak fared better in the service of true, wrenching stories than he does under the spell of this material's desperate fancifulness. The joke isn't much of a joke to begin with, and it wears thin.

Mr. Black's screenplay is mean-spirited, but it earns its keep with sharp, sarcastic dialogue and ingenious ways of setting up this story.

Christopher Penn very nearly steals the movie as Ren's hayseed friend, and the two share a musical scene (to Deniece Williams's ''Let's Hear It for the Boy'') that's almost as sensational as the opening credits.

There are some funny routines here, though Mr. Carpenter doesn't seem to have cared much about integrating or sustaining them. Mr. Carpenter makes his amateurishness unmistakable, especially when it comes to the film's four actors. Only one of them can act even crudely (fortunately, his is the largest role). The other three, neither photogenic nor particularly extroverted, look like well-meaning fraternity brothers helping out a pal with his class project.

The material is extremely slight, but at least it's benign.

At least slightly more varied than the average fraternity-boy comedy.The nerds' rap number, in which they sing of nerd pride, is probably the high point of this whole endeavor.

This sequel has no real purpose beyond the obvious one of following up a hit, although the original film was just as casual at times. Both of them rely on Billy Crystal's breezy, dependably funny screen presence to hold the interest, even when not much around him is up to par. Both also count on the irascible Jack Palance, even though Mr. Palance's Curly was dead and buried when the first film was over.

Nestor Almendros's cinematography is soothingly gorgeous, and so are Miss Shields and Mr. Atkins. Both are quite adequate to the movie's requirements, and neither has much acting to do--Miss Shields's hardest job, for instance, is to pretend she is giving birth to a baby without ever having wondered why she's put on so much weight. Her second hardest job is to keep the wind from ruffling her hair.

Nothing about his modest coming-of-age comedy demands anything like this awestruck approach.

The film is shot by Bill Pope with such enterprising flair that it never looks claustrophobic, but the action inevitably stalls in such close quarters.

The mice themselves are enjoyably dowdy, comfortable throwbacks to a time before earth-shattering conquests were the sine qua non of children's entertainment. The film's action sequences, on the other hand, provide the dizzying heights and spectacular exploits to which live-action audiences are by now well accustomed, and they seem derivative despite the ingenuity of the animators.

The appeal of character and story line here is thoroughly overshadowed by the various technical feats involved in bringing the film to the screen.

Mr. Cooper's abrupt, stylized direction can't tease much delicacy or meaning out of the material, though delicacy is all that might recommend it. John Alcott's handsome cinematography is most effective, but the beauty it imparts is skin-deep.

Cary Grant's shoes aren't fillable, but Mr. Beatty could have come closer if Love Affair had given him half a chance.

Its sensational looks pale beside storytelling weaknesses that expose the more soulless aspects of this cat-and-mouse crime tale.

But for all its enthusiasm, this film isn't sharp enough to afford all the time it wastes on small talk, long drives, trips to the mall and favorite songs played on car radios.

Coneheads falls flat about as often as it turns funny, and displays more amiability than style.

Its light classical manner and its happyish ending. Whatever Mr. Allen is doing in constructing this pretty, slight, gently entertaining movie, he isn't doing the thing he does best. A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy gives the impression of someone speaking fluently but formally in a language not his own.

A lot of attention has gone into the film's video games, computer imagery and costumes, to the point where simply watching these artifacts is half the fun...But eventually Hackers turns tedious, perhaps not realizing that an audience can get tired of the same old equations floating in cyberspace.

The Stepfather is too often disappointingly thin.

Eraser means to show off the star's standard persona against a backdrop of lavish special effects, which is certainly a formula that's worked before. But this is no "Terminator," since its tricks are so much more arbitrary and over-the-top.

The shrill, melodramatic quality of the film's final sections, so unlike its calmly controlled beginning, suggests that no one connected with Split Image really knew which way this story was heading.

After his triumphant Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy could have done anything. Why, then, did he choose to head for the mysterious Orient to make a film as rich in mumbo jumbo as The Golden Child? Mr. Murphy's comic skepticism in the face of all this is the film's greatest asset. But it is worn thin by the awareness that not even he seems able to take the adventure seriously, and by the preposterousness and inconsistency of what surrounds him.

Nicolas Gessner's direction has a correspondingly comfortable feel, but this type of story is as old as the hills—no, older—and Mr. Gessner doesn't do much to make it plausible.

Not unfunny, and not really an offense to the memory of Inspector Clouseau, it's merely a movie with very little reason to exist.

This is a halfway funny movie, one that's got loads of good gags in its first half and nothing but trouble in its second.

Mr. Hill weaves their gestures together with a portentous elegance that promises a great deal that it never delivers.

As directed by Harry Hook, the new Lord of the Flies offers much spectacle for the eye and almost nothing to keep the mind from wandering.

The Fly II is competent but hardly clever. The only respect in which it matches Mr. Cronenberg's Fly is in its sheer repulsiveness, since this film degenerates into a series of slime-ridden, glop-oozing special effects in its final half hour.

Vicious as Chucky is, it's hard to be scared by anything that kicks its little feet helplessly every time it flings itself upon a full-sized human target.

Last Man Standing comes to life only with rapturous gunfights that add Sam Peckinpah to the film maker's pantheon of heroes, and that are ear-splitting enough to jolt the audience out of its seats. These scenes have their firepower, but they would have larger impact if anyone cared which of the film's gangsters lived or died.

As in each of the other recent 3-D movies, of which this is easily the most professional, there is a lot of time devoted to trying out the gimmick. Titles loom toward you. Yo-yos spin. Popcorn bounces. Snakes dart toward the camera and strike. Eventually, the novelty wears off, and what remains is the now-familiar spectacle of nice, dumb kids being lopped, chopped and perforated.

Despite this lively history, the material seldom rises above the level of upbeat platitudes.

Losin' It isn't without its likable moments, but it isn't overloaded with them, either.

Young Guns II concentrates principally on the drawing power of the post-adolescent heartthrobs in its cast. This approach has its appeal in limited doses, but it makes for a western that's smaller than life.

Mr. Verhoeven is much better at drumming up this sort of artificial excitement than he is at knowing when to stop.

Youngblood seems chiefly designed as a vehicle for Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Lowe seems well able to handle more demanding material. But once the film descends into the usual platitudes about doing one's best and making the grade, it begins to seem aimless.

Mr. Bronson is stony as ever, and a little more nattily dressed.

But the film is still breathless and shrill, since Alan Parker's direction shows no signs of a moral or political compass and remains in exhausting overdrive all the time.

Taken on its own terms, "Army of Darkness" displays some ambition and wit, though not nearly enough to lend it broad appeal.

The actors mark time, and the gung-ho heroics on display are embarrassingly hollow.

As directed once again by George Miller, Babe remains a cute little porker, but his fanciful new backdrops are less beguiling.

Jungle 2 Jungle' still finds time to appreciate Mr. Allen's easy way with a child actor, an audience or a heavily tranquilized pet cat.

It really would be unfair to take such a narrow view of Mr. Seagal's appeal. In fact, he combines street-smart swagger and a flair for wisecracks with a martial arts background and the pampered look of a Hollywood eminence, all of which makes for a lively mix. [13 Apr 1991, p.12]

Action fans may well find Uncommon Valor enjoyably familiar, but for others it will smack of war movie dej a-vu, despite the new angle provided by its concern for American soldiers missing in action in Vietnam.

What's remarkable is how seldom it delivers. For all its technical brilliance, not even Ms. Foster's intense, accomplished performance in the title role holds much surprise.

The star shines, but the movie is hard to watch.

As a yammering, swishy talk show host, Chris Tucker is flat-out incomprehensible, while Mr. Oldman preens evilly enough to leave tooth marks on the scenery.

Sledgehammer direction, heavy irony and the easiest imaginable targets hardly show talent off to good advantage.

To be fair, ''Adventures in Baby-Sitting'' is determinedly cute, and its pep may well be appreciated by anyone with a frame of reference as narrow as the film makers' own. It's clear from the film's opening moments that pep is all that matters here anyhow.

In Children of Heaven, life is sweet despite countless hardships, and no reality beyond the economic intrudes upon a fairy tale atmosphere. Only through heavy-handed emphasis does the quest for new sneakers take on any greater meaning.

Anyone who has been following the ''Superman'' saga will find this installment enjoyable enough, but some of the magic is missing.

The film moves along at a serviceable clip, but it seems half an hour too long, thanks to the obligatory shoot-'em-up conclusion, filmed on the largest sound-stage in the world, but nevertheless the dullest sequence here.

Though Mr. Williams sometimes seems on the verge of "Aladdin"-caliber improvisation with the ever-morphing green flubber, the film bogs him down with a fiancee (Marcia Gay Harden) hellbent on making him remember a wedding date, and with the full Hughes retinue of thugs and bullies.

Despite the grumpy, flatulent behavior the script demands of him, Mr. Falk rises above the treacly shenanigans.

The trouble with Fade to Black is that it's supposed to be a thriller. It's much more amusing than it is scary, although the killings are gory enough to be borderline vile. [17 Oct 1980, p.C5]

There's a lot to make [Heckerling's] film likeable, but not much to hold it together.

The frontiersmen are wild and woolly, and most of the Indians remain scalp-collecting savages. [13 Sep 1980, p.C14]

Born in Flames, while inventive, is also much too diffuse and overcrowded. Only those who already share Miss Borden's ideas are apt to find her film persuasive.

Makes mincemeat of an excellent novel.

And Willow, a pleasant but bland character, doesn't often inspire much sentiment, so the film lacks an emotional center. In place of this, it relies on so much overstatement and repetition that it's possible to grow tired even of the adorable baby.

With a too-many-cooks screenplay credited to Ron Osborn, Jeff Reno, Kevin Wade and Bo Goldman, it's so long that every character regrettably wears out his or her welcome.

Aiming at a target as easy as suburban sterility, She's Having a Baby might be expected to hit its mark every now and then. But the film's mood is simply too sour, despite the best efforts of a cast filled with appealing actors, a number of whom have had walk-ons in other Hughes efforts.

Code of Silence, as directed by Andy Davis, has a slick look and adequate pacing, though its action sequences tend to fizzle as they end.

While Mr. Howard ably maintains a strong forward momentum, Backdraft often feels directionless beneath its overlay of frantic activity. One clear story line would have been worth more than a series of subplots and tangents.

Made in the shadow of Wayne's World, CB4 is another Saturday Night Live-related music parody, this time skewering rap instead of heavy metal. Desperately uneven, it works best as a string of sketches about the title band, three guys who were born Albert (Chris Rock), Otis (Deezer D) and Euripides (Allen Payne) until they realized it might be more profitable to rename themselves MC Gusto, Stab Master Arson and Dead Mike.

Even more dispiriting than the film's silly moments are its pious ones. Only at rare moments does Life Stinks offer much in the way of surprise or grace.

Only the film's resolution has any spirit or novelty, and even that goes all the way back to the Roman Colosseum. Quicker than you can say "Spartacus," two fighters figure out that their real enemy is outside the ring.

The film has energy even when it hasn't much sense, in a manner that will strike most non-cultists as exhausting.

The film, which is better written than staged, could have been funnier if its actors weren't playing against type.

Still, as the documentary plods past the two-hour mark, much of Mr. McGovern's legend seems dependent on Nixon's faults, and even the Democrat's political supporters, with hindsight's many gifts, can't infuse his persona with any more dynamism.

As directed by Howard Zieff, My Girl has a bizarrely light tone and an awkward pace, in part because it's hard for the director to keep track of the story's many half-developed subplots.

Krull is a gentle, pensive sci-fi adventure film that winds up a little too moody and melancholy for the Star Wars set, though that must be the audience at which it is aimed.

However good an idea it may have been to unleash Mr. Murray in an ''Exorcist''-like setting, this film hasn't gotten very far past the idea stage. Its jokes, characters and story line are as wispy as the ghosts themselves, and a good deal less substantial.

The tedium of this antidrinking hoodlum's tale inspires the wrong kind of longing entirely.

Despite its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, its superstar cast and its $23 million budget, Mr. Babenco's Ironweed is skeletal, a mere outline of Mr. Kennedy's far more resonant book.

It cares far more about herding audiences into theaters than about what they hear or see.

The narrative manages 30 solid minutes of ingenuity, before breaking into a version of Charlie Kaufman-style absurdity.

Easy Money is strictly for the easy laughers, or at least for those who find Rodney Dangerfield an irresistible card. Mr. Dangerfield has some funny moments here, but he also has a screen presence that's decidedly strange. He won't stand still, being given to constant jerking motions, and neither will he refrain from eye rolling and mugging at the slightest opportunity. Almost never, during the course of a very long 95 minutes, do these tics have anything to do with what is ostensibly going on.

One of Mr. Stallone's more muddled efforts but by no means a flop on the order of F.I.S.T. or Rhinestone.

It's harmless but unsurprising...Without Steven Spielberg's timing or John Williams's music, the shark's periodic visits become feeding scenes rather than ferocious attacks. It's like watching someone make regular raids on a refrigerator in search of midnight snacks.

Style overwhelms substance by default.

A film that not only breaks the cross-dressing barrier but also ratchets up the violence level for children's animation.

The actors can't keep the film's mood from verging on hysteria as the story roams all over the map.

A parade of incongruities, with performances ranging from the sublime to the you-know-what.

Startlingly original at first, Wings of Desire is in the end damagingly overloaded. The excesses of language, the ceaseless camera movement, the unyielding whimsy have the ultimate effect of wearing the audience down. (Review of Original Release)

The film transcends racial divisions by bestowing equally hopeless dialogue on both sides.

By no means lacking in stylishness; if anything, it's got style to spare. But so many of its sequences are at fever pitch, and the mood varies so drastically from episode to episode, that the pace becomes pointless, even taxing, after a while.

Timing does no favors for The Chamber, the John Grisham death row drama that arrives on the heels of a better death row film (''Dead Man Walking'') and a better Grisham adaptation (''A Time to Kill''). But this film's also-ran aspects are partly offset by Gene Hackman's superlative performance.

The inventiveness that has gone into this, and into turning Oz into a land of lavish special effects, will be lost on anyone with a fondness for the 1939 musical classic. That film will always enchant adults and children alike. This joyless new Return to Oz isn't likely to appeal to the former, and may give many of the latter a good scare. Children are sure to be startled by the new film's bleakness.

Depp moves through the film suavely and imperturbably, never letting the particulars bog him down.

As directed by Dwight H. Little, Marked for Death lacks much visual interest or suspense.

Cadence, which is the first feature Martin Sheen has directed, allows the director and his son Charlie ample opportunity to grapple with one another, as well as with questions of racial harmony and with another of Mr. Sheen's sons, Ramon Estevez. The result is well meaning and at times even gently likable.

Return of the Living Dead 3 has more visual than dramatic flair, with the actors most memorable for their sharply-lit cheekbones and upstaged regularly by the macabre special effects.

Neither this anger nor Mr. Lee's daring is ever given free rein. Instead of a sharp satire or even an "Animal House" variation (since fraternity life is central to its story), School Daze is a collection of musical numbers, dramatic episodes, attempts at parody and cinematic wild cards, bound together only loosely by Mr. Lee's prevailing sense of outrage.

Rocky II has a waxy feeling, and it never comes to life the way its predecessor did. As the characters go through their stock routines — Talia Shire shyly whispering I love you, Mr. Stallone making self-deprecating jokes, Burgess Meredith telling the kid he's either a bum or a hero — you get the feeling that you've been here before. Well, you have.

Rob Roy is best watched for local color and for its hearty, hot-blooded stars.

Has a droll tone that sets it well above comedy's lowest common denominator. But it also has a bloodlessness that keeps it from being funny very often.

Sister Act was screened on Wednesday night for an audience of 300 nuns who found a lot of it funny, especially a closing gag about the Pope. Secular audiences aren't likely to be so charitable.

Stalker offers the eye so little that it might well have made a better novel, or short story, than a nearly three-hour-long film.

This comedy has the earmarks of humor and even a few genuine laughs, but it also has a prefabricated, automatic-pilot feeling.

The Night We Never Met is never lifelike enough to evoke the madly romantic New York atmosphere it seems to be after. The actors try hard, but they are hamstrung by too many broad strokes and silly inconsistencies.

The Kids in the Hall's first feature isn't anything more than a sloppy showcase for the group's costume-changing tricks, but sometimes its sheer chutzpah can be amusing. Just as often, flashes of complete plot incoherence or atrocious taste spoil the effect.

Mr. Zieff seems never to have determined what sort of romance he wanted to show, and as a result the movie is constantly contradicting itself.

It lacks the coherent fantasy of truly enveloping science fiction, preferring to concentrate on flashy, isolated stunts that say more about expense than expertise. [28 July 1995]

A comedy that's cheery, earnest, harmless and almost totally lacking in bite. City Slickers ambles along lackadaisically, incorporating birth, death, casual wisecracks and a running gag about two ice-cream moguls who pride themselves on knowing the right flavor for any occasion. Each of these things seems to be given equal weight.

The worst of it is painless; the best is funny, sly, cheerful and, here and there, even genuinely inspired.

Mr. Avary's debut feature, fiercely ambitious but way out of control, is an orgiastically violent exercise in hand-me-down nihilism, much more firmly rooted in cinematic posturing than in real pain.

Most of the movie is simply about mountain climbing, something that is undoubtedly more thrilling to attempt than it is to watch.

The backgrounds and characters, though ambitiously executed, aren't particularly compatible, because there's nothing in Mr. Frazetta's steep phallic landscapes that speaks to Mr. Bakshi's overly sleek cavemen.

Mr. Craven's attempts at such effects are always gripping, but here they are sometimes overpowered by the complexity of the material. The search for the zombifying elixir, the influence of the Tontons Macoute, the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship and the mysterious powers of voodoo sometimes run together in a manner less provocative than confusing.

Crimson Tide is better watched for its toy appeal and high-priced talent than for any real suspense over where Hunter's mutinous instincts will lead the story.

Despite great scenery, the distinctive visual ideas of Mr. Scott ("Alien," "Blade Runner") and the strong dramatic presence of Mr. Bridges, most of White Squall remains listless and tame.

It is beautiful -spectacularly so, at times - but dumb. Computer fans may very well love it, because Tron is a nonstop parade of stunning computer graphics, accompanied by a barrage of scientific-sounding jargon. Though it's certainly very impressive, it may not be the film for you if you haven't played Atari today.

Alive remains remarkably colorless, despite its difficult subject and the harrowing adventure it describes.

A benign adventure saga that has attractive stars, elaborate gimmicks and nice production values -- everything it needs except a personality of its own.

What it doesn't have, unfortunately, is enough true conviction to rise above novelty status. Nor does it really have a plot.

Directing his first feature, Christopher Browne shows flair and determination in getting the movie's pathos down pat, but he can't quite find enough that is pleasurable in its many reels.

Its own efforts to be tongue-in-cheek, as with a backwoods gunman who quotes Emerson and Machiavelli, fall seriously flat. But should anyone have the patience to look closely, the two leading players do show signs of what would soon make them famous.

Ferngully is more run-of-the-mill than its subject matter might indicate. The main characters are disappointingly ordinary, with the exotic Crysta sounding very much like someone who spends time at the mall.

As a film about heroism, it is chiefly remarkable for its gutlessness.

But the screenplay, by Eric Roth and Michael Cristofer, can sound pat enough to diminish the characters.

If you can get past the movie's aimlessness and its visual drabness, it has its share of isolated laughs.

In fact even the film's most dramatic moments are presented with decorousness bordering on detachment.

The effort to turn Outbreak into an action picture insures that little of it will be believable, regardless of how much scientific data has been woven into the story. The film's shallowness also contributes to the impression that no problem is too thorny to be solved by movie heroics.

It's cheerfully inoffensive entertainment designed for the crowd that liked "Car Wash," with which one of the present film's producers was also involved, and it offers a similarly shapeless brand of merriment.

Death Becomes Her dares to invent a world of spectacular self-interest and populate that world with two fabulous harridans (Ms. Streep and Goldie Hawn) giving wonderfully spirited performances. But in spite of that, it remains surprisingly tame. A lot of the problem arises from simple -- and inexplicable -- lapses in the screenplay.

Gleaming the Cube (the title refers to achieving the skateboarding equivalent of cosmic bliss) has an intrigue plot that is unremarkable, and it doesn't do anything terribly novel with the relationship between Brian and the policeman (Steven Bauer) who helps investigate the case. It becomes somewhat more interesting in exploring the Vietnamese community of Orange County, Calif., especially in its tinier details.

Despite huge resources at Mr. De Bont's disposal and the fact that both he and Ms. Bullock have achieved stellar status since ''Speed'' screeched onto movie screens, the sequel is still a B-movie at heart.

If you've never seen anyone wear a gold chain with a sweatshirt, then by all means go see Kenny Rogers in Six Pack. If that is not your idea of originality, the good-natured but none-too-interesting Six Pack won't strike you as anything new.

The only sneaky scheme at work here is the one that inflates a hollow plot to fill 2 1/4 hours while banishing skepticism with endless close-ups of big, beautiful movie-star eyes.

Mr. Brosnan, as the best-moussed Bond ever to play baccarat in Monte Carlo, makes the character's latest personality transplant viable (not to mention smashingly photogenic), but the series still suffers the blahs.

The movie's biggest challenge, one that it does not exactly meet, is to persuade the audience that this husband and father's escapade is somehow an act of love.

Even by the standards of escapist entertainment, little of Lassiter seems to matter.

Bad Boys is a suspenseful movie, but it's also an extremely brutal one. It begins with someone's brains spattered on a wall, and ends with a particularly bloody battle. In between, there's a lot more of the same.