Janet Maslin

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.