Janet Maslin

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.