Janet Maslin

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.