Janet Maslin

Particularly impressive are the sweet, weirdly idyllic tone of Mr. Hallstrom's direction and Johnny Depp's tender, disarming performance as the long-suffering Gilbert Grape.

This film's dialogue isn't much more literate than a bus schedule, but its plotting is smart and breathless enough to make up for that.

The Scent of the Green Papaya marks a luxuriant, visually seductive debut for Mr. Hung, whose film is often so wordlessly evocative that it barely needs dialogue. Reaching into the past for its precisely drawn memories, it casts a rich, delicate spell.

The best that can be said about Mr. Gibson as a director -- and this is no mean achievement -- is that it's often possible to forget he was the man behind the camera. Most of this film has a crisp, picturesque look and a believable manner.

The film is all fast action, noisy stunts and huge, often unflattering close-ups, but it packs an undeniable wallop.

What matters more is that Ms. Goldberg, along with her co-stars Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore, is so sharp, funny and wholehearted that this film creates an unexpected groundswell of real emotion.

Prince of the City begins with the strength and confidence of a great film, and ends merely as a good one. The achievement isn't what it first promises to be, but it's exciting and impressive all the same.

Mr. Clark's vision of these characters is so bleak and legitimately shocking that it makes almost any other portrait of American adolescence look like the picture of Dorian Gray...Kids is far too serious to be tarred as exploitation, and its extremism is both artful and devastatingly effective. Think of this not as cinema verite but as a new strain of post-apocalyptic science fiction, using hyperbole to magnify a kernel of terrible, undeniable truth.

What redeems the film's surface bitterness are sharp observations, laceratingly funny dialogue and something Dedee claims to find especially loathsome: a secret heart of gold.

An ambitious, energetic thriller that stops short of real excitement for reasons that are hard to pinpoint. It's an entertaining movie, and an extremely well-acted one.

Some of the film's best and most comfortable moments find the bus passengers simply singing together in a show of warm, spontaneous unity.

This time, Mr. Reynolds has made a movie to please fans of all persuasions, and to please them a great deal.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert presents a defiant culture clash in generous, warmly entertaining ways.

Tykwer deliberately blows away all traces of the mundane and the familiar, so that not even the closing credit crawl moves in the expected way.

An interestingly wild hybrid of visual styles and cultural references.

A dense, quirky, uncommonly interesting movie, this time with a high quotient of suspense.

The web of lies, failures and brutal revelations here is strong stuff, and it's the work of an original filmmaker who takes no prisoners.

However simply he approaches this familiar milieu, Mr. Stone winds up treating his story's sin-soaked connivers the way Francis Ford Coppola treated vampires. Neither of them is really capable of anything plain.

The film turns into a preposterous but engrossing spectacle, fueled by a resource more enduring than steam or its successors: big ideas.

Another nice thing about Circle of Friends is that it escapes a happily-ever-after scenario to provide more bite and toughness than it first promises.

Mamet's handsome, stately adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy does not embellish upon its source material. Instead it skillfully pares the play down to its essentials, arriving at a faithful but tighter version of this drama.

For anyone who doesn't think an hour and a half is a long time to spend with a comic book, Heavy Metal is impressive. Though it owes some slight bit of its toughness and nihilism to Ralph Bakshi, this animated feature is off on its own track, combining science fiction, mysticism, sex, violence and rock music. Much of the time, these elements do what the film makers want them to, and make for a heady mix.

I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, a documentary about Mr. Wilson that ought to fascinate anyone who's ever turned on a car radio in America, does more than induce this legendary rock recluse to speak for himself. . . . This film also illuminates the music itself and makes interesting, accessible sense of Mr. Wilson's very real genius.

Even if Clueless runs out of gas before it's over, most of it is as eye-catching and cheery as its star. [19 July 1995]

While Body Heat involves murder, fraud, a weak hero led astray and a seductive, double-dealing broad, it also incorporates something new: a sexual explicitness that the old films could only hint at.

As he demonstrated in "Groundhog Day," Ramis knows how to handle a high-concept story with unusual cleverness, and he does it again here. It helps to no end that De Niro and Crystal, despite their obvious differences, are perfectly in tune.

This new menu movie has a soapy plot, appealing stars, family values, down-home atmosphere and a conviction that there's rarely a problem fried chicken can't cure.

Queen Victoria is played with splendid regal grace by Judi Dench.

Another fast, gripping spy story with some good tricks up its sleeve.

The whole film has the intensity of a dream, and Mr. Kazan selects his fantasy elements with great care.

A movie that's as sweet as it is clever, and never so clever that it forgets to be entertaining.

The moral ambiguity of James's novel has been skillfully captured in the film, as has its remarkable modernity.

Fresh features delicate and sympathetic work from both Mr. Esposito and Mr. Jackson, whose fine characterizations say a lot about the originality of this film's vision.

Two reasons it's impossible to resist "Independence Day": because of its pitch-perfect cartoonish dialogue ("Now you're never gonna get to fly the space shuttle if you marry a stripper!") and because the Captain, like Indiana Jones, is so unflappably tough.

Even when the action seems wrongheaded—and it frequently does—the movie is richly textured and well played.

Hal Ashby directs Being There at an unruffled, elegant pace, the better to let Mr. Sellers's double-edged mannerisms make their full impression upon the audience.

The Long Good Friday charts a perilous course through a world of powerful people, ghastly acts of vengeance and ominously shifting fortunes.

There's plenty of room for sentimentality here, but the wonder of Salles' film is all in the telling.

As both a skillful director and a lovable oddball, [Moretti] commands interest. It's easy to follow him anywhere.

Das Boot is yet another moving testament to the wastefulness of battle.

Mr. Jarman's visual sense easily eclipses his conceptual talents. And The Garden has a burning, kaleidoscopic energy to compensate for the facile nature of some of its more unavoidable thoughts.

Gary Kemp, as the more commanding and peculiar Ron Kray, makes an especially scary impression, particularly once the Krays' perfect control has begun to unravel. In a series of events set off by Reg's marriage, the Krays are seen on a downhill spiral that Mr. Medak conveys with great and effective understatement.

Big features believable young teen-age mannerisms from the two real boys in its cast, and this only makes Mr. Hanks's funny, flawless impression that much more adorable. This really is the performance to beat.

The sardonic, testosterone-fueled science fiction of Fight Club touches a raw nerve.

The film's flamboyant portrait of Nino may be stereotypical, but Mr. Snipes makes it chilling.

Until its final reel, when it strains badly to accommodate an almost biblical stroke of retribution, The Man in the Moon is a small, fond film that achieves a kind of quiet perfection.

Barry Levinson's richly textured new film also has a rueful nostalgia, a fine-tuned streak of con artistry, and the same hilarious, nit-picking small talk that colored Diner, his first and best film - which is recalled, rivaled and in a few ways even outdone by this one.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle has its flaws, but it also has a heartfelt grasp of what set Dorothy Parker apart from her fellow revelers and makes her so emblematic a figure even today.

But Mr. Costa-Gavras, a galvanizing filmmaker working with a splendid cast, is able to tell this story in style.

This film's very lack of surprise and sophistication accounts for a lot of its considerable charm.

There's no need to worry that Mamet is on foreign territory with this action premise. The Edge succeeds ably in blending his famously acerbic dialogue with nerve-racking adventure scenes.

Barry Sonnenfeld...proves that he does not need the Addams family to develop a wry, cartoonish atmosphere filled with funny, well-etched minor characters.

It's hard to imagine what the film might have been with anyone other than Mr. Hackman in this role, for this actor's quintessential decency and ordinariness have never seemed more affecting. It's precisely the lack of bravado in Hambleton that makes him an interesting character, and a poignant anti-Rambo.

A marvelous toy. It's funny, it's full of tricks and it manages to be royally entertaining, which is really all it aims for.

Meticulously detailed and never less than fascinating, The Shining may be the first movie that ever made its audience jump with a title that simply says "Tuesday."

Violent as it is on the surface, Akira is tranquil at its core. The story's sanest characters plead for the wise use of mankind's frightening new powers, lending the whole film the feeling of a cautionary tale.

Enough wild-card energy to keep it bright and surprising.

Young Guns is best watched in the playful, none-too-serious spirit in which it was made. Though the film concentrates reverentially on its young stars, it also includes good performances from a few grown-ups, notably Terry O'Quinn as a lawyer and Jack Palance as the story's wild-eyed villain.

Affectionately told ...beguiling.

Finding hilarity in John Waters's latest movie title is the basic pre requisite for enjoying the goofy ingenuity of his new film.

Captivating.

Ms. Holland's film of The Secret Garden is elegantly expressive, a discreet and lovely rendering of the children's classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Mr. Modine's performance is exceptionally sweet and graceful; Mr. Cage very sympathetically captures Al's urgency and frustration. Together, these actors work miracles with what might have been unplayable.

The film is loaded with brotherly affection and with warm, funny and poignant evocations of a gentler time.[20 September 1996, p.C12]

Natural Born Killers never digs deep enough. Mr. Stone's vision is impassioned, alarming, visually inventive, characteristically overpowering. But it's no match for the awful truth.

Even more impressive than the tact, warmth and humor of Sidewalk Stories is the fact that it exists at all. Mr. Lane has flown quite fearlessly in the face of fashion, and done this so confidently that any comparisons with Chaplin deserve to be appreciative.

Watching it amble along is enough of a treat, since the Coens populate this story with oddballs and bowling balls of such comic variety.

Beverly Hills Cop finds Eddie Murphy doing what he does best: playing the shrewdest, hippest, fastest-talking underdog in a rich man's world.

This comedy has less to do with narrative than with sheer chutzpah and a first-rate cast. It manages to be irreverently funny despite a subject that is no laughing matter.

The result is a film as maddening and unpredictable as the character herself, held together by a fierce, risk-taking performance and flashes of overwhelming honesty.

That glimmer of recognition is what makes Groundhog Day a particularly witty and resonant comedy, even when its jokes are more apt to prompt gentle giggles than rolling in the aisles.

This is hot-weather escapism so earnestly retrograde that it seems new.

Against All Odds is so lively and enjoyable on its own terms that its genre problems, while real, are easily overlooked. Mr. Hackford's brand of glossy, romantic escapism doesn't have to work as an homage. It has a vitality of its own.

A sunny, exuberant confection and an enjoyably skillful one.

It has a hurtling pace, nonstop intensity and a stylish, appealing performance by Will Smith in his first real starring role.

Though in essence this is little more than a girls' romance novel brought to life, it has been filled with heart and humor. The place, the people and even the largely predictable situations in which they find themselves are presented in an entirely winning way.

Pacific Heights deserves a little credit for originality, and a little more for remaining within the realm of realism until a contrived, violent ending becomes overdue. Thanks to its three stars and a well-chosen supporting cast, the film remains sly fun even when its characters begin making silly mistakes.

A funny, romantic film filled with cozy intimacies and lovely, wide-screen images of the French countryside.

Like a great chef concocting an exquisite peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, Mr. Burton invests awe-inspiring ingenuity into the process of reinventing something very small.

Duvall's unobtrusive direction moves the film at a leisurely pace that lets many scenes build the gentle, pleasing rhythms of small-town Southern life. A rare display of spiritual light on screen.

Miss Walker, who also plays a terrorist femme fatale in "Patriot Games," makes a mesmerizing impression as she holds her own against Miss Plowright without seeming remotely ruffled.

Mr. Mogotlane makes Panic much more than a symbol, treating him as a raffish, amusingly overconfident figure at first and a visibly shaken man as the film progresses, until at last he utters the single syllable that encapsulates the film's final point.

Freed from the slavishness of most authorized biography, the film makers try bold strokes.

Mr. Lee, whose lean, straightforward documentary style loses none of his usual clarity and fire (the film has been exceptionally well shot by Ellen Kuras), summons a powerful sense of Birmingham's past and a galvanizing sense of how this bombing would change its future.

The movie's special gift happens to be Mark Wahlberg, who gives a terrifically appealing performance in this tricky role.

Frantic generates its suspense precisely because it appears so reasonable, because it takes such a calm, methodical approach to the maddening events that lure Dr. Walker into the maelstrom.

Horrocks's phenomenal mimicry of musical grande dames...makes a splendid centerpiece for the otherwise more ordinary film built around it.

Good-humored, try-anything fun.

Shaking off the solemnity that smothers many a well-meaning, high-minded family film, this one revels in an exuberant sense of play, drawing its audience into the wittily heightened reality of a fairy tale. The material, like the title, is a tad precious, but the finished film is much too spirited and pretty for that to matter.

Mr. Olmos seems to be living and breathing this role rather than merely playing it, and his enthusiasm really catches on.

Cheech and Chong have a good time with Things Are Tough All Over, and you will, too.

A well-acted drama more eerie than terrifying, more rooted in the occult than in sheer horror.

Deliver laughs and skewer a few stereotypes, thanks to extremely sly wit and a fine cast.

Tender Mercies has a bleak handsomeness bordering on the arty, but it also has real delicacy and emotional power, both largely attributable to a fine performance by Robert Duvall.

This Elizabeth is presented as a glamorously stressed-out modern woman who must cope with a super-intense case of having it all.

Gloriously colorful, cleverly conceived and set in motion with the usual Disney vigor, Pocahontas is one more landmark feat of animation.

Limited by the vapidity of this material while he trims its excesses with the requisite machete, Mr. Eastwood locates a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill.

A romantic comedy that's a hoot in every sense, worth a smidgen of disapproval and a whole lot of helpless laughter...The film works ridiculously well because it never stoops to being mean-spirited or (despite all appearances) authentically inane.