Janet Maslin

The colorfully written Con Air is a solid chip off "The Rock," pumped up and very well cast, with the prettiness and polish of advertising art.

If the film doesn't add up to a cogent legal argument, neither does it have trouble delivering 2 hours and 20 minutes' worth of sturdy, highly charged drama.

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.

The film's bright look and visual energy are much more liberating than the machinations of its teen queens.

An inviting but evanescent film that does have casualness, curiosity value and a lot of talent on its side.

Gratifyingly complex and beautifully told, this tale explores a huge array of cultural, racial, economic and familial tensions. In the process, it also sustains strong characters, deep emotions and clear dramatic force.

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.

Would-be Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse games...are more memorable for their settings...than for their sense.

The director, B. W. L. Norton, and the writers, Richard Martini, Tim Metcalfe and Miguel Tejada-Flores, display no idea whatsoever of how to keep a film moving or how to hold an audience's interest. Listlessness and sloppiness on this scale are truly depressing.

National Lampoon's Animal House is by no means one long howl, but it's often very funny, with gags that are effective in a dependable, all-purpose way.

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.

Mr. Hanks's debut feature, written and directed with delightful good cheer, is rock-and-roll nostalgia presented as pure fizz.

National Lampoon's Vacation, which is more controlled than other Lampoon movies have been, is careful not to stray too far from its target. The result is a confident humor and throwaway style that helps sustain the laughs - of which there are quite a few.

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

But Mr. Penn mostly keeps a tight, impassioned grip on this material, preventing it from wandering too far afield. The influence of John Cassavetes is again clear in the characters' emotional sparring, which has energy and heart.

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.

This isn't a particularly well-made film, or even a truthful one - as a matter of fact, its fraudulence is its one uncompromising aspect. And yet it is mesmerizing, if not as a drama or documentary, then as an artifact.

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.

While this is no quick-witted treat on a par with Mr. Levinson's ''Wag the Dog,'' it's a solid thriller with showy scientific overtones.

Mr. Luhrmann's frenetic hodgepodge actually amounts to a witty and sometimes successful experiment, an attempt to reinvent "Romeo and Juliet" in the hyperkinetic vocabulary of post-modern kitsch. This is headache Shakespeare, but there's method to its madness.

Thornton is sadly affecting in the film's central role.

It comes as a welcome surprise that "So I Married an Axe Murderer," which might have been nothing more than a by-the-numbers star vehicle, surrounds Mr. Myers with amusing cameos and gives him a chance to do more than just coast.

The Ghost and the Darkness, a lion-hunting story set in 19th-century Africa, is the rare Hollywood action-adventure that becomes more surprising and exotic as it moves along. While it begins on an unpromisingly starchy note, the film soon picks up speed, color and nicely nonchalant humor as it tells a true story about near-mythic beasts.

This direction is more ambitious than apt, since it calls attention to the artifice that Mr. Gray otherwise conceals so well. Cuts and scene changes become distractingly blunt, as do the star's efforts to suggest spontaneous enthusiasm.

Beyond its persistent coarseness, Wallace's story often trades yesterday's inspiration (Dumas) for today's (Simpson-Bruckheimer).

Two little words: Jim Carrey. That's all it takes to transform Liar Liar from a formulaic Hollywood comedy into an uproarious one-man free-for-all.

The Long Walk Home offers a careful, dispassionate, finally moving evocation of its setting. In attempting to present segregated Southern society matter-of-factly, it avoids shrillness and keeps its potential for preachiness more or less at bay.

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.