Janet Maslin

For the most part this is a coolly riveting film and even a darkly entertaining one, at least for audiences with steel nerves, a predisposition toward Mr. Burroughs and a willingness to meet Mr. Cronenberg halfway.

It's the kind of story that leaves viewers with a warm glow.

Running on Empty works best when it plays upon emotions generated by the Popes' unique predicament, something that it often does rather shamelessly. It helps that Sidney Lumet has directed the film in a crisp, handsome style that diminishes the maudlin or unlikely aspects of its story, even when they threaten to intrude.

Mr. Lyne takes a brilliantly manipulative approach to what might have been a humdrum subject and shapes a soap opera of exceptional power.

What emerges, in the end, are a clever premise that has been allowed to go awry and several performances that are lively and unpredictable enough to transcend the confusion. Mr. Bridges, always a fine intuitive actor, has never displayed a greater range.

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.

Blaze has been beautifully photographed by Haskell Wexler in the soft, lulling colors of the Louisiana countryside, against which Ms. Davidovich's amusingly garish costumes stand out as markedly as they're meant to. The costumes, by Ruth Myers, are particularly good, with ice-cream-colored suits for Mr. Newman that allow him to dominate the film visually just as surely as he dominates it dramatically.

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.

My Bodyguared is a sweet little movie about characters who really seem to be people, and that sort of verisimilitude is rarer than it ought to be nowadays.

This film often fumbles, but it finally tugs at the heartstrings all the same.

Affectionately told ...beguiling.

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

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.

The punchy little flourishes that load this English gangster film with attitude are perfectly welcome, because there's no honest, substantial part of the movie they can hurt.

What is well worth watching here, much more so than the train itself, is Jon Voight, who gives a fiery performance in an unusually hard-edged role.

BY the time you realize what's wrong with "The Rose," it will have you hooked anyhow...The Rose has an earnest, affecting character at its core. Even at its most preposterous, it never feels like a fraud.

A gentle and affecting film that ought to charm older children while also holding their parents' interest,

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.

This is a formula film, but it has the kind of good cheer and fine tuning that occasionally give slickness a good name.

Deep Cover eventually degenerates into so much gratuitous violence that "kill" sounds like the most-used verb in the screenplay's last stages. The screenplay's frequent emphasis on homophobic insults is another unfortunate touch.

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. 

Ronin can be watched as appreciatively for its hard-boiled performances as for its visceral excitement.

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

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.

True Stories may well appeal more to those who don't know much about Mr. Byrne's music career than those who do. The soundtrack songs have the catchy simplicity of Talking Heads' most recent and least demanding compositions. And the film's imagery, expertly captured in bold, bright colors by Ed Lachman, will be even more striking to those who find it novel.

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.

Though the film never becomes actively unfunny, neither does it do much more than tread water. The raccoons have a better time than the audience will.

The Witches of Eastwick does have enough flamboyance to hold the attention, directed as it has been by Mr. Miller in a bright, flashy, exclamatory style. But beneath the surface charm there is too much confusion, and the charm itself is gone long before the film is over.

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.

The spiky documentary in their honor keeps alive the echoes of their slapdash, Smithsonian-worthy sound.

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.

Mr. Rodriguez demonstrates his talents more clearly than ever -- he's visually inventive, quick-witted and a fabulous editor -- while still hampering himself with sophomoric material.

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

The five young stars would have mixed well even without the fraudulent encounter-group candor towardS which The Breakfast Club forces them. Mr. Hughes, having thought up the characters and simply flung them together, should have left well enough alone.

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.

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

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

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.

This material marks a gutsy, fascinating departure for Mr. Eastwood, and makes it clear that his directorial ambitions have by now outstripped his goals as an actor.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The best and funniest Clint Eastwood movie in quite a while.

The Pirates of Penzance has been made into a cheerful movie, but it isn't nearly as deft or distinctive here as it was on stage.

Directed with a spare look and exceptional crispness and precision, The Trigger Effect ultimately falls back on the familiar, especially in its banal ideas of how Matt and Annie are changed by their experience. But during the three-day emergency that it describes, this cleverly made film sustains a spooky intensity and an insinuating, utterly confident style.

No more convincing on screen than it was on the page. But it is greatly helped by the presence of Mr. Spader, who was apparently born to play life-denying, icy-veined young heroes, and especially Ms. Sarandon, who has made a career out of coaxing such characters out of their buttoned-down ways.

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.

Mr. Zeffirelli and his screenwriter, Judith Rascoe, have bitten off so much more than they can chew that their film is virtually unintelligible at times. A great deal happens in the novel, much more than this two-hour movie can contain. But it tries to touch so many bases that its transitions are jolting, its scenes often undeveloped, and the motives of its characters frequently unclear.

The characters and their jargon are occasionally amusing, but there's no action, no conflict, no overwhelming satire and nothing to jolt them out of their lethargy.

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

Only when it comes time to justify its excesses and deliver on a promise of wider revelation does the otherwise audacious screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks look too specific and small.

Carlito's Way is best watched as lively, colorful posturing and as a fine demonstration of this director's bravura visual style.

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.

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.

And the dancing, as in ''Strictly Ballroom,'' is filmed with a wishful Fred-and-Ginger sweetness that gives the film a studiously effervescent mood.

Mr. Walken, as Frank, does a memorable job of taking a fanciful projection of corruption, greed and complacency, giving it intelligence, and making it flesh and blood.

It's the overall resourcefulness of Mr. Tsukerman and his talented colleagues that gives Liquid Sky its high style. Visually bright and arresting, with a varied and insinuating electronic score, the film is full of eye-catching images.

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

In the end, thanks to such effects and to the simple grace of Mr. Hanks's performance, this film does accomplish what it means to. Philadelphia rises above its flaws to convey the full urgency of its difficult subject, and to bring that subject home.

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.

In his six years working for various movie executives, Mr. Huang filed away trenchant observations about great big egos and helpless little assistants. Now he gleefully brings those observations to the screen. His witty, score-settling Swimming With Sharks is the perfect revenge for anyone who has ever been showered with paper clips, compared unfavorably with a bath mat or ordered to place an urgent phone call to somebody who's out white-water rafting with Tom Cruise -- right now! No excuses!

Mr. Stone's compassion for his subject overwhelms his film's false moves. And the barrage of undramatized, undigested data gives way to a much tighter and more artful vision...the film starts snowballing its way to real dramatic power. [20 Dec 1995, p.C11]

As a film maker who has his own love-hate romance with the sports world, Mr. Shelton is naturally drawn to his writer's uneasy relationship to Cobb. And at its best, this film explores the edgy compromises that link these two, while at worst it dramatizes the relationship broadly and histrionically.

A terrific offbeat cast operating on one shared, loony wavelength.

Mr. Pacino has not been this uncomplicatedly appealing since his Dog Day Afternoon days, and he makes Johnny's endless enterprise in wooing Frankie a delight. His scenes alone with Ms. Pfeiffer have a precision and honesty that keep the film's maudlin aspects at bay.

Among the things that deserve mention in this lightweight but sometimes subversively stylish farce are its ingenious credit sequence, its lively editing by Herve Schneid, its use of code names like Artichoke Heart and Cordon Bleu in the guerrilla war that rages underground and its reference to a couple of odd inventions.

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.

Certainly, this is a gently evocative movie, with its glimpses of a strict and self-contained culture, and its memories of a time gone by.

The Land Before Time isn't heavily plotted; it doesn't do much more than concentrate on the amusingly lifelike dynamics among the dinosaur children as they make their journey. Luckily, it isn't very long either. At a just-right length of 73 minutes, it ought to win audiences' hearts without wearing out their patience.

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.

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.

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

The terrifically confident Mr. Snipes gives a funny, knowing performance with a lot of physical verve. And Mr. Harrelson (of Cheers) further perfects the art of appearing utterly without guile. Their comic timing together shapes the film's raucous wit, and their basketball playing looks creditable, too.

The principal thing that keeps "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" engrossing is the level of acting it sustains throughout.

The Client, with a fast, no-nonsense pace and three winning performances, is the movie that most clearly echoes the simple, vigorous Grisham style.

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]

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.

When it comes to holiday films worth swooning over, here's the one to see.

The film, like Nikita herself, becomes more conventionally sleek and less interestingly bizarre as it moves along.

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.

Slinky, sexy Love Jones brings new life to an old story: a courtship and all its predictable detours on the road to romance, with a boy-meets-girl inexorability along the way to love.

While this film's conception of a terrorist threat is apparent early on, its strength lies in a string of ingenious little surprises.

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.

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

A film like this is quite naturally a showcase for its star, and as Valens, Lou Diamond Phillips has a sweetness and sincerity that in no way diminish the toughness of his onstage persona.

The film is as handsome to watch as it is preposterous to listen to, full of gorgeous nocturnal city images that splash blaring neon colors against filthy, rain-slicked gray. Mr. Hill uses subways, jukeboxes, spectacularly eerie costumes and deserted streets to create a stark yet extravagant visual style, and a grimy little world in which everything looks curiously brand-new. Thanks to a lot of wipes and slow-motion shots, you are never in danger of forgetting that somebody clever is at the helm.

With unexpected success, Robert Altman plays a John Grisham mystery in a seductive new key.

Has warmth and good cheer. The film is loosely focused, but its ensemble cast is as affable as anything on television these days.