Janet Maslin

One of this film's greatest accomplishments is its making an audience believe that the Corleones and their various partners in crime have been entirely in character during the intervening decades, but have simply neglected to turn up on screen.

What makes Crossing Delancey so appealing is the warm and leisurely way it arrives at its inevitable conclusion. All the different aspects of Izzy's busy, contradiction-filled life are carefully drawn, giving the film a realistic, well-populated feeling and a nicely wry view of the modern world.

An unexpected but certainly major force in movies at the moment, S.E. Hinton (with four of her novels being adapted for the screen), created in Tex an utterly disarming, believable portrait of a small-town adolescent. Tim Hunter's film version captures Miss Hinton's novel perfectly.

Winter Kills isn't exactly a comedy, but it's funny. And it isn't exactly serious, but it takes on the serious business of the Kennedy assassination.

Allen Daviau's camera work and Albert Wolsky's costumes help to forge the film's high style, as does Ennio Morricone's score. But much of its elan comes from Mr. Levinson's obvious affection for the time and place that are his film's backdrop, and from the flair with which he stages even minor episodes.

A visual splendor, a heroic adventurousness and an immense scope that make it unforgettable.

It's a sleek, muscular thriller played by a terrific ensemble cast, directed by Barbet Schroeder with the somber acuity he has brought to subjects as diverse as Claus von Bulow ("Reversal of Fortune") and Gen. Idi Amin Dada.

John Hurt is simply wonderful -- acerbic, funny and heartbreaking.

Mr. Assayas's screenplay is loose and uneventful, but his direction has more energy.

Permanent Midnight is as enveloping as it is darkly cautionary, thanks to the effectively varied layers of Mr. Veloz's direction and the bitter intensity Mr. Stiller brings to his central role.

Hurtling pace, by-the-numbers character development and exotic science. Tornado-chasing suddenly takes on a sex appeal not usually associated with horrendous storms.

This is Rebel Without a Cause without the grown-ups and without boundaries, transposed to a world of hard drugs, petty crime, hand-to-mouth existence and hopes that somehow will not die.

Thanks to sharp editing and surprisingly strong comic timing, the film puts less emphasis on the Stern raunchiness than on how his wilder routines make listeners drive off the road.

A meat-and-potatoes American thriller that means business all around the world.

Mr. Reiner seems to understand exactly what Mr. Goldman loves about stories of this kind, and he conveys it with clarity and affection.

Unless the viewer has ever been inside an anthill, Microcosmos is sure to reveal a strange and transfixing secret universe, one in which even the physics of splashing raindrops looks suddenly new.

Re-Animator has a fast pace and a good deal of grisly vitality. It even has a sense of humor, albeit one that would be lost on 99.9 percent of any ordinary moviegoing crowd...All of this, ingenious as it may be and much as it will redound to Mr. Gordon's credit in hard-core horror circles, is absolutely to be avoided by anyone not in the mood for a major bloodbath.

High Hopes manages to be enjoyably whimsical without ever losing its cutting edge.

Terms of Endearment is a funny, touching, beautifully acted film that covers more territory than it can easily manage.

The author's sardonic voice has been lost in most films based on his fiction, but this one nicely captures that unruffled Leonard authority. And since Get Shorty is about Hollywood, it invites the sneaky self-mockery that gives this film its comic punch.

The director Michael Dinner, making his feature debut, and the screenwriter Charles Purpura have an unusually good feeling for the time, the place, the characters as kids and the adults they later turned into.

The actors are best when they avoid exaggeration and remain weirdly sincere. That way, they do nothing to break the vibrant, even hallucinogenic spell of Mr. Waters's nostalgia.

Gwyneth Paltrow makes a resplendent Emma, gliding through the film with an elegance and patrician wit that bring the young Katharine Hepburn to mind.

Prince, whose ties to soul and jazz are clearer than ever before, whose willingness to embrace different musical forms seems to grow all the time, has never cast a stronger spell.

Silverado is sufficiently modern to make its landscapes bigger, its people smaller and its moral polarities less powerfully distinct than those of simpler, more starkly beautiful westerns gone by.

This film's reflective, even stately style elevates it from the ranks of ordinary stake-through-the-heart vampire dramaturgy, turning it into something much more exotic.

It will surprise no one who saw the first ''Die Hard'' that the heart and soul of the new film is Bruce Willis, who this time is even better.

Mischievously entertaining...Dahl's film has character in oversupply even if its actual characters are sometimes thin. Poker fever makes up for whatever the story lacks in everyday emotions.

Directed by Eastwood with righteous indignation and increasingly strong momentum.

The usual elements of scheming and deception are well represented here, but they are made all the knottier by shifting time frames.

It has crooks, bats, cobwebs, skeletons, a lovable monster, an underground grotto and a treasure hidden by some of the most considerate, clue-loving pirates who ever lived. Their ghostly ship is the movie's piece de resistance.

The brilliant, mercurial portrayal of Ike Turner by Laurence Fishburne, formerly known as Larry, is what elevates What's Love Got to Do With It beyond the realm of run-of-the-mill biography.

Back to the Future deserved a chance to come back, especially under the cheerful, enterprising, mathematically minded stewardship of Mr. Zemeckis and Mr. Gale. Their new film isn't an ordinary sequel. It's as if the earlier film had been squared.

The film is best watched as a richly sensual stylistic exercise filled with audaciously beautiful imagery, captivating symmetries and brilliantly facile tricks.

Philip Borsos, who directed ''The Grey Fox,'' builds the suspense of The Mean Season slowly and, for the most part, very effectively.

A delectable comic performance by Sharon Stone.

Mr. Weir's work has a delicacy, gentleness, even wispiness that would seem not well suited to the subject. And yet his film has an uncommon beauty, warmth and immediacy, and a touch of the mysterious, too.

The don't quite do for "Oklahoma!" what they did for heavy metal, but they come close. [31 Jan 1997, p.C6]

Warm, affecting and refreshingly shtickless, he (Carrey) occupies center stage here through sheer, beguiling force of personality.

It has a breezy, unapologetic manner. And it also happens to be funny, which goes a long way toward making up for any underlying obtuseness or insensitivity.

With great looks, a dandy supporting cast, a zinger-filled screenplay by Aaron Sorkin ("A Few Good Men") and Mr. Douglas twinkling merrily in the Oval Office, The American President is sunny enough to make the real Presidency pale by comparison.

Though The King of Comedy seems less substantial than past De Niro-Scorsese collaborations, it's a funny, stinging film in which there's much to enjoy. Miss Abbott, Mr. De Niro, Mr. Lewis and the unforgettably alarming Sandra Bernhard (as a fan even crazier than Rupert, and one who looks like an enraged ostrich) deliver fine performances, and the film's satirical edge can indeed be cutting.

To their credit, the actors immerse themselves deeply in the film's self-conscious aura. Ms. Sheedy reinvents herself as a tough, fascinating presence, while Ms. Mitchell's earnest bewilderment also serves the story well.

An exuberant satire, uneven but tirelessly energetic, with the kind of comic bluster that can override any lapse. It's funny, ragged, appealingly mean-spirited and very easy to like, even if it plays as a series of skits rather than a coherent whole.

It has a light touch, a disarming cast, a well-developed sense of humor and a lot of charm. [27 Feb 1987, p.C17]

Polyester is not Mr. Waters's ordinary movie. It's a very funny one, with a hip, stylized humor that extends beyond the usual limitations of his outlook.

Working Girl is enjoyable even when it isn't credible, which is most of the time. The film, like its heroine, has a genius for getting by on pure charm.

The characters remain funny and likable, and they all live on Earth.

Based on Alice Hoffman's fanciful novel and directed with go-for-broke prettiness by Griffin Dunne, Practical Magic is nothing but a guilty pleasure.

As written by Remi Waterhouse, who draws on real historical detail here, Ridicule satirizes this world of absurd protocol while it proves that skewering fatuousness and snobbery, however obviously, is never out of style.

Benigni effectively creates a situation in which comedy is courage. And he draws from this an unpretentious, enormously likable film that plays with history both seriously and mischievously. Piety has no place here, nor do tears until the final reel. Life is Beautiful plays by its own rules

Risky as it sounds, Raising Cain is enjoyable precisely because it makes the most of its own lunacy and stays so far out on a limb. The fact that Raising Cain is beautifully made is, of course, another attraction.

Blind Date is farce of a traditional and even old-fashioned sort, but Mr. Edwards's complete enthusiasm for the form creates a comic style so avid that it's slightly surreal. Comic possibilities are everywhere in Blind Date, and the tireless Mr. Edwards leaves none of them unexploited.

All of the performers are upstaged by the film's breathtaking backdrop, and by the fast and furious way Renny Harlin, the director, approaches action sequences.

With its devilish attention to polite little touches, its abundant bitchiness, its decrying of the Handmaids' oppression along with its tacit celebration of their fecundity, The Handmaid's Tale is a shrewd if preposterous cautionary tale that strikes a wide range of resonant chords.

However turbulent its narrative, this Les Miserables unfolds in a comforting style, serious and intelligent in ways that seem much too quaint today. The essence of Hugo's morality tale remains pure, and so does the value of a vigorous, gripping story, straightforwardly told.

Even after the film's last half-hour descends into a silly season, Mr. Rudolph writes and directs with obvious affection for his characters and with a deep knowledge of whatever makes them tick.

No Mercy is a passionate film noir that depends heavily upon Mr. Gere to give it credence, and Mr. Gere delivers.

Smith's knowing humor and unruffled style make a good antidote to gender chaos. Music by David Pirner contributes to the film's loose, inviting mood.

This film has showier stunts than its predecessors, and a better sense of humor. It also has Tina Turner, in chain-mail stockings.

By the time it plays out its hand, this film has become genuinely, surprisingly affecting. And unspeakably sad.

The fierce-looking Sean Bean is outstandingly good as Ryan's main antagonist, and Patrick Bergin brings the right air of calculation to the terrorist mastermind he plays. Several of the film's main sequences, like an encounter between Mr. Bean's Sean Miller and David Threlfall as the police inspector who has been his captor, derive their horror from the looks of pure loathing that these terrorists bestow upon their prey.

We've seen movies like Nighthawks before, but we haven't seen one in a while. That may be why this police film, with an international cast and a plot about international terrorism, has so much punch. All of it is standard stuff, and yet Nighthawks has been assembled with enough pep to make it feel fresh. It is particularly helped by the performances of Rutger Hauer, a Dutch actor who makes a startling impression as a cold-blooded fiend, and Sylvester Stallone, from whom less is definitely more.

Andrew Bergman has written one of those rare comedy scripts that escalates steadily and hilariously, without faltering or even having to strain for an ending.

There are no signs of waning energy here, not even in an Enterprise crew that looks ever more ready for intergalactic rocking chairs. The principals' enthusiasm for their material has never seemed to fade. If anything, that enthusiasm grows more appealingly nutty with time.

As directed by Irvin Kershner, Never Say Never Again has noticeably more humor and character than the Bond films usually provide. It has a marvelous villain in Largo.