Janet Maslin

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.