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.

Taken on its own terms, Without a Trace is a reasonably well made film, and it's certainly slick enough to hold an audience's attention. But its own terms are very, very limited.

But Mr. Berenger, grousing steadily, and Mr. McNamara, in a boyish Ricky Nelson mode, are likably matched. Ms. Eleniak, who also made a playful and picturesque Elly May Clampett in "The Beverly Hillbillies," succeeds here in rising above the cheesecake level.

It doesn't help that the mystery plot seems half-baked in the end, or that none of the actors appear entirely comfortable with their roles. Miss Ryan looks edgy and spends a lot of time tossing her hair. Mr. Harmon is easygoing and attractive, but his nice-guy manner belies his character's steely talk.

Troll has a knowing tone that's more smart-alecky than clever. And it hovers uncomfortably between comedy and horror, without ever landing decisively in either camp. The film is as funny as it gets in a sequence that has Sonny Bono pretending to be a great ladies' man.

Feverish, whimsical allegory elevated by moments of brilliant clarity.

While its slender, two-tiered plot links love affairs that happen largely by accident, the film's real interest seems to lie in raffish affectation. Mr. Wong has legitimate visual flair, but his characters spend an awful lot of time playing impish tricks.

FOR all their extravagance, Ken Russell's films have never lacked exuberance or humor, which makes the flat, joyless tone of Crimes of Passion a surprise. Much of this is attributable to a screenplay by Barry Sandler filled with smutty double-entendres and weighty ironies. Only intermittently does Mr. Russell break through with the kind of manic flamboyance that is so singularly and rudely his own.

In spite of this sogginess, and despite a self-congratulatory, do-gooder streak that the film discovers within Dave, this comedy remains bright and buoyant much of the way through.

Set against lovely verdant scenery but structured as a series of rambling vignettes, the stories in Being Human don't entirely mesh.

Renny Harlin, who did a much better job directing ''Die Hard 2,'' displays no sense of humor and takes the film's nonsensical action scenes much too seriously, at one point even blowing up a beach house in the process.

Mr. Hill weaves their gestures together with a portentous elegance that promises a great deal that it never delivers.

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

As directed by Harry Hook, the new Lord of the Flies offers much spectacle for the eye and almost nothing to keep the mind from wandering.

YOU could live a long time and never see anything as awful as Fever Pitch, Richard Brooks's shrill, hysterical peek at the world of compulsive gambling.

The Fly II is competent but hardly clever. The only respect in which it matches Mr. Cronenberg's Fly is in its sheer repulsiveness, since this film degenerates into a series of slime-ridden, glop-oozing special effects in its final half hour.

A grim, sour Jim Carrey comedy that erases the boundary between anarchic humor and sociopathic malice.

103 minutes is an awfully long time to watch people whiz along the boardwalk. The novelty wears off in a hurry.

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.

A shrewd and engrossing documentary even for audiences who have absolutely no patience for the music it includes.

Bagdad Cafe is too slow-paced to work as a comedy, and its screenplay manages simultaneously to be both shapeless and pat.

Mr. Lee isn't as successful at shaping a story around Girl 6, but enjoying her company is all his slender, sunny film really tries to do.

It is to the credit of Mr. Apted, and to a cast including some very believable young actors, that Firstborn moves swiftly and smoothly enough to dispel much nitpicking about plot points, at least for a time.

If all of Virtuosity were as tightly controlled as that, it would exert a greater fascination than it finally does.

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.

Diner isn't lavish or long, but it's the sort of small, honest, entertaining movie that should never go out of style, even in an age of sequels and extravaganzas.

Works well as family entertainment.

Mr. Tannen's strength is his ability to grab his audience's interest quickly and to hold on to it, even by the most superficial means. Even when the movie doesn't entirely make sense, it manages to be effective.

Suspicious and hilariously self-absorbed, Favreau's every bit as comfortable in California as Charles Grodin's "Heartbreak Kid" was in Miami.

Fortunately, the Webber shelter is a jaunty monument to kitsch, and the Webbers themselves are an appealingly batty crew.

Derivative as it was, ''Romancing the Stone'' did have a certain spunk, thanks to its contrast between the workaday life of Joan Wilder, romance novelist (played so gamely by Kathleen Turner), and the far-flung adventures into which the screenplay propelled her. Sadly for the sequel, the novelty in that contrast was more than used up the first time around. This time, through no fault of his own, the director Lewis Teague (the first film was directed by Robert Zemeckis) has little more to do than construct a retread.

One of this film's greatest accomplishments is its making an audience believe that the Corleones and their various partners in crime have been entirely in character during the intervening decades, but have simply neglected to turn up on screen.

Vicious as Chucky is, it's hard to be scared by anything that kicks its little feet helplessly every time it flings itself upon a full-sized human target.

Dependably well made and not quite like any Allen film that came before. Nimble film making like this isn't necessarily geared to the magnum opus, but Mr. Allen can achieve fine, amusing results even while thinking small. [27 October 1995, P.C1]

Towne especially excels at the smaller touches that bring such connections to life, whether it's an ear for pop music or a clear familiarity with college girls, circa 1970, or the group of bonsai trees that presumably occupy Bowerman when he isn't measuring feet and molding rubber. His proudly unconventional Without Limits is filled with such souvenirs of the real world.

The screenplay, by Harold Nebenzal, leaves one end of this story conspicuously untied, but it does its best to titillate the audience with a mixture of teen-age porn and trademark Bronson spitefulness.

In the Mouth of Madness has enough menace and novelty to please fans of Mr. Carpenter's horror films (among them The Fog, Christine and Halloween) without the wider interest of an enchanting parable like Starman, which he also directed. Still, this is a film with the temerity to think big, if only for the magnitude of the wickedness it invokes.

Last Man Standing comes to life only with rapturous gunfights that add Sam Peckinpah to the film maker's pantheon of heroes, and that are ear-splitting enough to jolt the audience out of its seats. These scenes have their firepower, but they would have larger impact if anyone cared which of the film's gangsters lived or died.

The main trouble is that The Little Rascals is caught in a time warp, lost between the ingenuous ragamuffins of the early talkies and the more willfully streetwise children of today. So even working the title into the screenplay becomes a strain.

Even if you haven't spent as much obsessive time at the video store as these guys have, you might enjoy helping 'Scream 2' laugh all the way to the bank.

Beyond letting its characters talk fast, use jargon and interrupt each other, "The Paper" misses most of the genre's real flavor. Its progress is methodical and sane.

As in each of the other recent 3-D movies, of which this is easily the most professional, there is a lot of time devoted to trying out the gimmick. Titles loom toward you. Yo-yos spin. Popcorn bounces. Snakes dart toward the camera and strike. Eventually, the novelty wears off, and what remains is the now-familiar spectacle of nice, dumb kids being lopped, chopped and perforated.

Despite this lively history, the material seldom rises above the level of upbeat platitudes.

To its credit, the film doesn't sugarcoat its women too monstrously, and it lets real conflicts and opinions occasionally creep in.

Losin' It isn't without its likable moments, but it isn't overloaded with them, either.

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.

What makes Crossing Delancey so appealing is the warm and leisurely way it arrives at its inevitable conclusion. All the different aspects of Izzy's busy, contradiction-filled life are carefully drawn, giving the film a realistic, well-populated feeling and a nicely wry view of the modern world.

It becomes less crisp on screen than it was on the page, with much of the enjoyable jargon either mumbled confusingly or otherwise thrown away.

An unexpected but certainly major force in movies at the moment, S.E. Hinton (with four of her novels being adapted for the screen), created in Tex an utterly disarming, believable portrait of a small-town adolescent. Tim Hunter's film version captures Miss Hinton's novel perfectly.

Makes jaunty, imaginative use of both extraordinary technology and bold storytelling possibilities within the insect world.

A film whose best moments are so novel, so deliriously funny, and so crazily unexpected that they truly must be seen to be believed.

Dumb, vulgar and mostly humorless.

Winter Kills isn't exactly a comedy, but it's funny. And it isn't exactly serious, but it takes on the serious business of the Kennedy assassination.

Young Guns II concentrates principally on the drawing power of the post-adolescent heartthrobs in its cast. This approach has its appeal in limited doses, but it makes for a western that's smaller than life.

Proceeds efficiently but never quite lives up to its own potential as a sight gag.

Mr. Redford has found his own visually eloquent way to turn the potboiler into a panorama, with a deep-seated love for the Montana landscape against which his rapturously beautiful film unfolds.

Like "Agatha" and the rock drama "Stardust," other movies of Mr. Apted's, Coal Miner's Daughter does a better job of setting its scenes than of telling a story. Its characterizations and its atmosphere work better than the action, which becomes shapeless and, in the manner of biographies of living subjects, slightly cramped by its good intentions.

Because Johnny Handsome is a film by Walter Hill (The Warriors, Streets of Fire), it crams the following things into its first five minutes: gunfire, screeching brakes, a drug-popping hoodlum, a moll in black leather, a violent robbery, one murder, sinister masks, shattering glass. But because this is Mr. Hill's work, these ingredients are slapped together with high style.

Mr. Schrader doesn't match the Leonard habit of ending each scene with a lively little jolt. But he succeeds admirably in extracting the novel's best lines and in casting his film with mischievous verve.

Allen Daviau's camera work and Albert Wolsky's costumes help to forge the film's high style, as does Ennio Morricone's score. But much of its elan comes from Mr. Levinson's obvious affection for the time and place that are his film's backdrop, and from the flair with which he stages even minor episodes.

The film's cleverness is aggressive and cool, and so its mysteries, though elaborate, remain largely uninviting.

As directed by Stephen Herek, The Mighty Ducks moves energetically but lacks the enjoyable quirkiness of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, which Mr. Herek also directed.

Though he and his co-stars tackle their roles with mischievous humor, Beeban Kidron's direction stays flat even when the actors are funny.

Before we go numb from such prefab excitement, here comes a mega-movie that actually delivers what mega-movies promise: strong characters, smart plotting, breathless action and a gimmick that hasn't been seen before.

A visual splendor, a heroic adventurousness and an immense scope that make it unforgettable.

One of the most surprising things about Jennifer 8, a strikingly atmospheric film even when not an entirely convincing one, is a running time that is in excess of two hours. Losing 20 minutes would almost certainly have heightened the film's sense of purpose, which is sometimes in danger of drifting away.

Quest for Fire is more than just a hugely enterprising science lesson, although it certainly is that. It's also a touching, funny and suspenseful drama about prehumans.

Mr. Verhoeven is much better at drumming up this sort of artificial excitement than he is at knowing when to stop.

Youngblood seems chiefly designed as a vehicle for Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Lowe seems well able to handle more demanding material. But once the film descends into the usual platitudes about doing one's best and making the grade, it begins to seem aimless.

The screenplay, by Mr. Tavernier and David Rayfiel, is both rich and relaxed, with a style that perfectly matches the musicians'. Some of the talk may well be improvised, but nothing sounds improvised, but nothing sounds forced, and the film remains effortlessly idiosyncratic all the way through.

Mr. Bronson is stony as ever, and a little more nattily dressed.

In Hollywood Buddha, Mr. Caland plays, directs and reimagines himself. This is truly a vanity project, as evidenced by the ample amount of screen time he gives his own pecs and thighs.

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.

The screenplay, by Steven E. de Souza (whose credits include the Die Hard movies), contains many glib, obscene wisecracks, plus the misinformation that Anna Karenina was Tolstoy's first book.

To be fair, ''Adventures in Baby-Sitting'' is determinedly cute, and its pep may well be appreciated by anyone with a frame of reference as narrow as the film makers' own. It's clear from the film's opening moments that pep is all that matters here anyhow.

The movie is nicely whimsical, and elaborate in a way that no fantasy film this side of outer space has lately been. It's dopey, but it's also lots of fun.

The cast is unknown, the director has a spotty history, and the basic premise falls into this year's most hackneyed category (unknown boxer/ bowler/jogger hopes to become sports hero). Even so, the finished product is wonderful. Here is a movie so fresh and funny it didn't even need a big budget or a pedigree.

In Children of Heaven, life is sweet despite countless hardships, and no reality beyond the economic intrudes upon a fairy tale atmosphere. Only through heavy-handed emphasis does the quest for new sneakers take on any greater meaning.

The film is played as witchy, all-star vamping with a lethal sting. What makes its premise especially funny is that, at heart, it's no laughing matter.

Within the larger context of the Brooks oeuvre, this pleasantly mortifying arrangement makes perfect sense. [22 Mar 1991, p.C12]

The actors are best when they avoid exaggeration and remain weirdly sincere. That way, they do nothing to break the vibrant, even hallucinogenic spell of Mr. Waters's nostalgia.

The film's view of Eddie Dodd is occasionally on the facile side, but Mr. Woods's performance is crackling and passionate enough to give the character depth despite that; it's also laced with snappish, self-mocking humor that Mr. Woods delivers particularly well. This performance is so razor-sharp that Eddie can be seen coming alive with each little triumph, reveling in each little maneuver and taking each little disappointment terribly hard. His enthusiasm is irresistible.

Anyone who has been following the ''Superman'' saga will find this installment enjoyable enough, but some of the magic is missing.

Gentle and moving as it means to be, Always is overloaded. There is barely a scene here that wouldn't have worked better with less fanfare.

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

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.

Prince, whose ties to soul and jazz are clearer than ever before, whose willingness to embrace different musical forms seems to grow all the time, has never cast a stronger spell.

The film moves along at a serviceable clip, but it seems half an hour too long, thanks to the obligatory shoot-'em-up conclusion, filmed on the largest sound-stage in the world, but nevertheless the dullest sequence here.

Silverado is sufficiently modern to make its landscapes bigger, its people smaller and its moral polarities less powerfully distinct than those of simpler, more starkly beautiful westerns gone by.

This is his sleekest and most engaging film thus far. If you like a good cat-and-mouse game with a keen ear for language, then go.

No film winds up with a name like Feeling Minnesota if it has anything definite in mind.

Though Mr. Williams sometimes seems on the verge of "Aladdin"-caliber improvisation with the ever-morphing green flubber, the film bogs him down with a fiancee (Marcia Gay Harden) hellbent on making him remember a wedding date, and with the full Hughes retinue of thugs and bullies.

The two young principals are serviceable, but not nearly as lively as some of their co-stars — Christian Juttner, as the tallest Earthquake, steals virtually every scene he doesn't share with Miss Davis or Mr. Lee.

There's some variety to the crimes, as there is to the characters, and an audience is likely to do more screaming at suspenseful moments than at scary ones. The gore, while very explicit and gruesome, won't make you feel as if you're watching major surgery. The direction and camera work are quite competent, and the actors don't look like amateurs.

Just a parade of scattershot gags, more often weird than funny an dmost often just flat.

The martial arts stunts that are its single strongest selling point.

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.

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]

There are seeds of something funny in the film's beginning and in its premise, but they are soon dissipated by so little sustained wit, and so much scenery.

Despite the grumpy, flatulent behavior the script demands of him, Mr. Falk rises above the treacly shenanigans.

This film's reflective, even stately style elevates it from the ranks of ordinary stake-through-the-heart vampire dramaturgy, turning it into something much more exotic.

Food and passion create a sublime alchemy in Like Water for Chocolate, a Mexican film whose characters experience life so intensely that they sometimes literally smolder.

At regular intervals the film stops short for similiarly nifty Chan choreography, letting the star flip, swivel, scamper up walls and hurl large objects with his feet.

As directed by Jerry Schatzberg from a screenplay by Charles Bolt and Terence Mulcahy, the film stays snappy much of the way.

Mr. Zemeckis is able both to keep the story moving and to keep it from going too far. He handles Back to the Future with the kind of inventiveness that indicates he will be spinning funny, whimsical tall tales for a long time to come.

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.

Directed by Robert Mulligan in an unapologetically sentimental style, Clara's Heart succeeds in tugging the heartstrings only when Clara herself is on screen.

Meets its main requirements: it adapts a classic novel in gleaming cinematic form, and it ridicules the foibles of ruthless adults.

Not a worm is left unturned in Ken Russell's buoyant, mischievous and predictably overwrought new film.

Mr. Howard brings a real sweetness to his subject, as does the film's fine cast of veteran stars; he has also given Cocoon the bright, expansive look of a hot-weather hit. And even when the film begins to falter, as it does in its latter sections, Mr. Howard's touch remains reasonably steady.

This modest, enormously likable film, about love and temptation and ties that bind, is about brotherhood most of all. [9 August 1995, p.C9]

This is Mr. Martin's movie, and he brings to it the ingeniously dopey presence that's become his trademark; he easily carries even the most dubious moments in the rather jumbled screenplay, which was written by Mr. Martin, Mr. Reiner and George Gipe. [03 Jun 1983]

A costly, awful-looking science-fiction epic with one of the weirdest story lines ever to hit the screen.

Mischievously entertaining...Dahl's film has character in oversupply even if its actual characters are sometimes thin. Poker fever makes up for whatever the story lacks in everyday emotions.

The trouble with Fade to Black is that it's supposed to be a thriller. It's much more amusing than it is scary, although the killings are gory enough to be borderline vile. [17 Oct 1980, p.C5]

Directed by Eastwood with righteous indignation and increasingly strong momentum.

The film's spooky atmosphere is accentuated by Anthony B. Richmond's cinematography and Philip Glass's score. Ms. Madsen's performance is a lot more enterprising than what the material requires; the same can be said for Mr. Rose's direction.

Although Michael Dinner's direction is noticeably better than the material, the film aims consistently for the lowest common denominator.

This film is quite literally lost in the wilderness, with an intermittent, picturesque prettiness that doesn't suit the action at all. More damagingly, Mr. Dickerson does nothing to keep his cast from chewing up the mountain scenery. [16 Apr 1994, p.11]

The film's outstanding nastiness, which is often diabolically funny until a poorly staged final battle sequence simply takes things too far, has something real and recognizable at its core.

Mr. Parker immerses his audience in a world in which popular art amounts to a communal high, a means of achieving identity and a great escape from the abundant problems of everyday life. As in Fame, he does this with a mixture of annoying glibness and undeniable high-voltage style. [14 Aug 1991, p.C11]

There's a lot to make [Heckerling's] film likeable, but not much to hold it together.

Schumacher almost invariably breathes more life into his material than he has here. It's a lot easier to tick off the forced, farfetched touches in Eight Millimeter than to count the ones that ring true.

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.

The filmmaker has borrowed from Chekhov the soul-baring introspection that can be so ineffable on the page or stage yet becomes so damply sensitive and dramatically vague on screen.

The usual elements of scheming and deception are well represented here, but they are made all the knottier by shifting time frames.

It isn't nearly as successful a showcase for this filmmaker's extraordinary talents.

Mr. Fleischer brings absolutely no playfulness to what might, at least, have been enjoyably light. And he brings out the worst in a cast that was ill-chosen to begin with. The most memorable thing about the film is the costume/production design by Danilo Donati, which is genuinely demented. Even the horses wear too much junk jewelry.

Directed by Dwight Little of "Free Willy 2," and written by onetime high school classmates, Wayne Beach and David Hodgin (Mr. Hodgin died in 1995), Murder at 1600 eagerly invokes other films and stock images without showing much style of its own.

If Ed Wood has a major failing, it's the lack of momentum. Wood's career had nowhere to go, and to some extent the film has the same problem.

It's a film to gall fans of the old television series and perplex anyone else.

A supremely elegant and thoughtful parable.

High Heels has no real mirth and not even enough energy to keep it lively.

The results are so disastrous that absolutely no one is shown off to good advantage, with the possible exception of the hairdressers involved.

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is a lively but uncertain mixture of nostalgia, silliness and genuinely unpredictable humor.

Toy Soldiers is a crisp, suspenseful thriller well tailored to the tastes of teen-age audiences, who will doubtless appreciate such touches as the equivalent microchips found in one student's radio-controlled airplane and the chief terrorist's detonator, which is rigged to blow up the entire school.

All things considered, Benji's ability to hold the viewer's interest is remarkable, as is his sweetness with the cubs and his fearlessness with larger, predatory types. Adults are likely to stay alert, and any child who has so much as petted a poodle will probably find the animal footage irresistible.

Obtuse, prettily decorative comedy. Characters burst gaily into song when, as often happens, they don't have anything better to do.

Mr. Frankenheimer relies on standard touches at times, but he also fills The Fourth War with interesting little asides.