Janet Maslin

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.

Garret is played by Kevin Costner, who should avoid all future roles that call for overalls and goggles and who this time crosses the line from teasingly laconic to stodgy.

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.

Mr. Douglas does a lot of stunts, some of them reasonably good; these seem to be the would-be comic backbone of a movie that's not after laughs but heehaws, which in any case it doesn't get.

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

There are parts of The Blues Brothers that would have played infinitely better with a knock-about feeling, a sloppiness like that of "Animal House." As it is, the movie is airless. The stakes needn't have been so suffocatingly high.

If The Journey of Natty Gann were only a speedier, more energetic movie, Natty might have real staying power.

It isn't necessary to believe Blue Steel fully to find it gripping all the way through, and to be both fascinated and frightened by its icy, gleaming vision of urban life. For the audience, it's both a sobering and invigorating experience. For Ms. Bigelow, it's a breakthrough.

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.

The plot of Michael Grais's and Mark Victor's screenplay is even more nonsensical than it needs to be. [11 Jul 1992]

Mr. Argento's methods make potentially stomach-turning material more interesting than it ought to be. Shooting on bold, very fake-looking sets, he uses bright primary colors and stark lines to create a campy, surreal atmosphere, and his distorted camera angles and crazy lighting turn out to be much more memorable than the carnage.

Handsome and impassioned, vigorously staged by the director of ''The Madness of King George,'' this ''Crucible'' is a reminder of the play's wide reach, which goes well beyond witch trials in any century. As adapted gamely by the playwright into a screenplay that takes advantage of scenic backgrounds and photogenic stars, ''The Crucible'' now speaks to subtler forms of dishonesty and opportunism than it did before.

As it is, the suspense is sludgy and the character development nil; even the inadvertent comedy is spotty.

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

It's a big, lavishly staged farce that aims to please even those who favor sophisticated screwball comedy, a genre to which it is greatly indebted.

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

Contrived and cliched as it turns out to be, Reckless has enough vitality to carry it for a while, although it never stops recalling other films.

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

there is so little genuine wit to be found in ''Clue.'' The film does have a speedy pace, but that could hardly be confused with Mr. Hawks's madcap humor; instead, it involves a lot of running around through secret passages, and some slapstick routines involving dead bodies. The actors are meant to function as an ensemble, but that merely means that they often repeat the same line simultaneously.

Like The Wiz...Xanadu is desperately stylish without having any real style.

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.

It means to be funny, with a cast including several talented young comedians (among them Bill Maher, as a record business exectuvie), but it's not.

Concentrating on the fine-tuned trivia that fuels so much television comedy, it also creates two bright, appealing heroines and watches them face life's little insults with fresh, disarming humor.

Of all the bravura visual effects in Martin Scorsese's dazzingly stylish Casino, it's a glimpse of ordinary people that delivers the greatest jolt.

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.

Besides being one of Woody's most consistently witty films, Love and Death marks a couple of other advances for Mr. Allen as a film maker and for Miss Keaton as a wickedly funny comedienne.

Brooks brings vast reserves of quarrelsome, hairsplitting hilarity to the story of a man going mano a mano with his sweet little mom.

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

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

Two ridiculous blood-soaked hours.

Mr. Crowe (who wrote "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and directed "Say Anything") has an exceptional ability to enjoy such characters without a trace of condescension

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

The screenplay, by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and Daniel Pyne, is occasionally sharp-tongued but more often pleasantly knee-deep in rustic corn. Mr. Fox also seems a shade more substantial this time, possibly because he is seen making life-or-death decisions when not fielding comic lines.

At the very least, Lady Jane ought to summon more emotion than it does. But the early part of it is so reserved, and the latter part so incongruously fulsome, that it never manages to draw any deep response - not even when a beheading costs the hapless young Jane her luxuriant, Brooke Shields-like hair.

It has a bold, bright look and a crisp tempo, propelling the action from one shootout to another until it finally reaches the most violent of its crescendos. By the time it has arrived at this last stage, the film is so close to being ludicrous that it's hard to know whether it is deteriorating or ascending.

Even when it turns turbulent, the film sustains its warm summer glow, and makes itself a conversation piece about the moral issues it means to raise.

Deliciously silly.

In Year of the Dragon, a busy and elaborate film that manages to be inordinately messy, his tactics are a constant distraction, dissipating the viewer's interest at every turn.

Thanks in large part to Miss Streep's bravura performance, it's a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell.

Ms. Stone's presence nicely underscores the genre-bending tactics of Sam Raimi, the cult director now doing his best to reinvent the B-movie in a spirit of self-referential glee. Mr. Raimi is limited by a sketch mentality, which means his jokes tend to be over long before his films end. But his tastes for visual mischief and crazy, ill-advised homage can still make for sly, sporadic fun.

This film has enough new characters and independent spirit to have a light, cheery style of its own.

It works because Miss Midler and Miss Long are hilarious, both separately and together. Another thing that works is Leslie Dixon's screenplay, which has energy, wit and a supreme confidence that's just this side of bluster.

With Beauty and the Beast, a tender, seamless and even more ambitious film than its predecessor, Disney has done something no one has done before: combine the latest computer animation techniques with the best of Broadway.

Both Paul and the film would seem maddening if they weren't so passionately sincere, and if Paul did not gaze at the film's many beautiful young actresses with such an amazed, seductive gleam in his eye.

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.

Is still sleek, gripping entertainment with a raw-nerved, changeable camera style that helps to amplify its meaning.

Boiling Point is a barely tepid police story co-starring Wesley Snipes and Dennis Hopper, cast respectively as a hard-boiled detective and a wily con man. Since the material (written and directed by James B. Harris, from a novel by Gerald Petievich) offers not one shred of surprise, it's understandable that neither actor seems to believe anything he has to say.

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.

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]

One of the more remarkable things about Notorious is that it hasn't seemed to age; if anything, it grows more timely. [26 Oct 1980, p.17]

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.

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.

A simple, bullet-riddled, crowd-pleasing action movie.

Best watched as a showcase for radiant young talent.

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 fundamentals here go beyond first-rate: animation both gorgeous and thoughtful, several wonderful songs and a wealth of funny minor figures on the sidelines, practicing foolproof Disney tricks. Only when it comes to the basics of the story line does Aladdin encounter any difficulties.

The film's sleek moodiness and visual sophistication are so effective that there's even a scene here that makes Detroit look like the most romantic city in the world.

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

The film shows off Ms. Bullock to amusing if overly frenetic advantage. It also leaves Affleck without enough of a Cary Grant aura to play his wimpier character with style.

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

Unfortunately, the skimpy screenplay by Ralph Farquhar insists upon entangling the performers in the most conventional subplots imaginable. Talent contests, feeble attempts at romance and the travails of a struggling young record company are all enlisted, however briefly, in the effort to drum up backstage activities for the players, who are best watched in performance anyhow. Rap music is infinitely more original than these creaky devices, and it deserves something better.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Blake Allen is enough of a raging dynamo to find the dark humor and desperate romanticism at the heart of Mr. Toback's ego trip of a premise, and to make Blake sympathetic too.

Hope Floats, which often resembles a rosy commercial, does indulge in too much awkward slow motion, and in occasional embarrassing romps that are meant to signify family fun.

Loud, frantic, ridiculously overproduced and featuring a preening performance by Val Kilmer as a supposedly brilliant master of disguise, The Saint is sheer overkill.

This glib, overheated film about vicious primates delivers little suspense, nor are there signs of the 65 cited volumes and articles that turned Mr. Crichton's book into such a learning experience.

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

This is essentially a formula film, and as such it's nothing fancy. But it has crisp, spare direction, enormous momentum and a story full of twists and turns. For anyone who thinks they don't make spine-tingling detective films the way they used to, good news: they've just made another.

A sky-high level of misanthropy overwhelms his film in ways that prove more sour than droll, despite the presence of skillful actors and a bizarrely enveloping plot.

Brilliantly reimagines the glam-rock 70's as a brave new world of electrifying theatricality and sexual possibility, to the point where identifying precise figures in this neo-psychedelic landscape is almost beside the point.

Mr. Douglas, who delivers a new shade of cruel elegance each time he plays another urbane monster, is the ideal star for this vigorously contrived thriller.

Sirens is best watched as a soft-core, high-minded daydream about the liberating sensuality of art. Its bubble tends to burst whenever the nymphs are asked to make clever dinner-table conversation, but the mood is nicely lulling anyhow.

Banderas directs capably enough to keep the film lively.

It's mostly just slight, and none of it elicits more than the mildest of chuckles.

Mr. Burton's new Batman Returns is as sprightly as its predecessor was sluggish, and it succeeds in banishing much of the dourness and tedium that made the first film such an ordeal.

At a time when throwaway gags seem like a luxury in any film, Airplane! has jokes—hilarious jokes—to spare. It's also clever and confident and furiously energetic, and it has the two most sadly neglected selling points any movie could want right now: it's brief (only eighty-eight minutes), and it looks inexpensive (it cost about three million dollars) without looking cheap. Airplane! is more than a pleasant surprise, in the midst of this dim movie season. As a remedy for the bloated self-importance of too many other current efforts, it's just what the doctor ordered.

A well-made work with much to recommend it, even if its worthiness is not the brightest flare on the movie horizon this season.

Gathers a partyful of young players and barely gives them enough of a story line to puff on, but it gets by on personality anyhow.

Despite its flaws, the film gets across some genuine melancholy, played up by a sobbing Irish fiddle.

Drawing upon the novel with merciful selectivity, and adding such a contemporary flavor that the film's woodsmen often have a laid-back air, Michael Mann has directed a sultrier and more pointedly responsible version of this story.

Switching gears radically, bravely defying conventional wisdom about what it takes to excite moviegoers, Lynch presents the flip side of "Blue Velvet" and turns it into a supremely improbable triumph.

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.

As a comedy of manners it has a dependably keen aim, with its most wicked barbs leavened by Mr. Mazursky's obvious fondness for his characters.

Fortunately, the actors are mostly likable, and the story is told gently enough to downplay both its trendiness and its conventionality.

For a time, The Best Intentions captures the elements of a profoundly difficult and credible love story, one plagued by essential differences that cannot be resolved.

The nice thing about I.Q. is that its intelligence doesn't stop at the title. In a romantic comedy that mingles brilliant physicists with auto mechanics, everybody manages to seem smart.

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.

The cast of Once Upon a Crime performs energetically, as if the material was funny, although most of the time it is not. As a general rule, films whose plots revolve around lost dogs are apt to be short on comic inspiration, and this one is no exception.

The screenplay for Copycat, by Ann Biderman and Jay Presson Allen from a story by David Madsen, is otherwise so crackling good that character development threatens to eclipse the actual crimes.

A nifty example of how to make something out of nothing. Nothing but imagination, and a game plan so enterprising it should elevate its creators to pinup status at film schools everywhere.

Most of Weird Science, for all its repetitive vulgarity and its wide array of gimmicks, is essentially much too calculating and cautious. Even 14-year-old boys may find it heavy sledding.

It's a flimsy sentimental comedy with more product plugs and fewer laughs than might have been hoped for.

The essentially two-character play has been opened up to the point that it includes a variety of settings and subordinate figures, but it never approaches anything lifelike.

The comforting sameness of all the ''Rockys'' and the overbearing star quality of Mr. Stallone in his lovable-lug incarnation may well make Rocky IV another hit. But when it flashes back to its antecedents, particularly to the original ''Rocky'' with its bashful heroine and self-effacing star, it becomes clear how bloated and hollow the story has become.

The film's aimlessness and repetitiveness eventually become draining. And its small touches often work better than its more elaborate ones, like an extended party sequence that seems awkward and largely unnecessary.

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

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.

It has a style that is unexpectedly snappy. Scares are not its strong suit, but it has a trim, bright look and better performances than might be expected. William Katt, looking weathered and sounding very Robert Redfordlike as Roger Cobb, brings some conviction to his role, and George Wendt is funny as a nosy next-door neighbor named Harold.

This is another of the iron-buttercup roles in which Miss Hawn has been specializing since ''Private Benjamin,'' films in which her inspired dizziness masks an unexpectedly strong will. Initially, that contrast was delightful. But it has begun to seem less and less funny as Miss Hawn's films develop a preachier edge.