Jay Boyar

As an evening out: Its many faults notwithstanding, Bonfire does have at least one thing going for it. The movie is a mess, but, like Wise Guys, it's a lively mess.

Where The Last Picture Show was emotionally involving and dramatically episodic, Texasville is sprawling, badly paced and remote. [29 Oct 1990, p.C1]

The most jarring casting mistake (even more jarring than the miscasting of Dangerfield) involves Keith Gordon, who plays Thornton's son. Gordon, who has shown himself to be an intense and quirky actor in such films as Christine and Dressed to Kill, is a smoldering presence in what ought to be a light, comic role. His psycho-killer eyes just don't fit here.

The action in Terminator 2 is edited for maximum suspense, and much of it is mounted on such a grand scale that little in movie history comes close. (Scenes in last summer's Die Hard 2 did, but they lacked the finesse of the new film).

Otomo's movie, set in the usual sci-fi post-apocalyptic world, has all the narrative fascination of a Godzilla movie (not much). The filmmaker does have a vivid visual imagination, but this imagination has more to do with composition and color than with motion (i.e., animation). [01 Jun 1990, p.7]

Egoyan makes you pay dearly by subjecting you to large doses of film-festival-strength ponderousness. [14 Apr 1995, p.19]

The problem isn't that the film is derivative, it's that the film fails at being derivative. In Only the Lonely, we get only the baloney. [28 May 1991, p.D1]

By the end of the film, there's even something vaguely inspirational about our antihero's painful journey through the bowels of his self-created hell.

A Walk in the Clouds does have its problems, but it looks good enough to eat. [11 Aug 1995]

The Russia House is one of the most gorgeous-looking movies currently in release and also, unfortunately, one of the dullest. If it were a travelogue, it would be great. But it isn't. [21 Dec 1990, p.9]

If you tried to remake a cheapie zombie flick with a big budget and an eye on the mass audience, you'd end up with something like Death Becomes Her. This new horror-comedy has to be one of the most heartless mainstream pictures ever made. [31 July 1992, p.17]

The dialogue sounds irritatingly tough-clever, the premise is elaborately contrived, and the pacing is best described by the term "commercial-ready." But Narrow Margin has one element that lifts it above the all-too-obvious limitations of the material. That element is Gene Hackman. [21 Sep 1990, p.8]

The basic problem with Indian Summer: The movie sacrifices credibility in an attempt to get easy laughs. [23 Apr 1993]

No one can know what Jim Henson would have thought of The Muppet Christmas Carol, but I suspect he would have admired the way it fuses Dickens' spirit with his and usually comes up with something fresh and subtly different from either. Taking Scrooge's advice, Brian Henson and his crew keep Christmas in their own way - which, I suppose, is the only way to keep it. [11 Dec 1992, p.C-19]

Compared to Ghost Dad and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Jetsons: The Movie is eminently orbital. [6 July 1990, p.6]

Noisy and (nearly) awful, Noises Off is the sort of movie that gives filmed theater a bad name. Based on Michael Frayn's popular, Tony-nominated play, the screen version is so lame that even without having seen a stage production of the material I can tell that the film doesn't do it justice.

Sayles has created a lively and instructive entertainment, a moral tale that is everything The Natural (1984) should have been.

Prelude to a Kiss is a kind of fairy tale, but it's a fairy tale grounded in human experience. [10 Jul 1992, p.10]

What it all comes down to is that Kaufman gets the hard things right and messes up the simple stuff. If there isn't a Japanese saying for that, there certainly ought to be.

While the movie's visuals are complex and suggestive, the plotting and dialogue are merely congested and muddled. Hill and the writers get caught between political correctness, historical fidelity, dramatic license and simple movie nostalgia. [11 Dec 1993, p.E1]

At a time when a lot of very silly and terribly dangerous things are being said about sexual harassment, Oleanna sheds a remarkable amount of light on one of the major issues facing us as we struggle, both women and men, to play out our new roles. [02 Dec 1994, p.20]

Even by kid standards, young Macaulay can't act. The boy just races through his dialogue, barely pausing long enough to be understood. And when the script requires him to actually show some emotion, he sounds completely mechanical - as if he were merely parroting a line reading that some adult had given him. [20 Nov 1992, p.16]

Despite the film's serious shortcomings, it does have a certain wan charm. And its surprise ending packs a strong punch. [23 Feb 1990, p.4]

The setup isn't exactly what you'd call plausible, but the follow-through is consistent and clever.

With DiCaprio and Thewlis cast as 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine in Total Eclipse, you'd figure that the new film would almost have to be worth watching -if only for the acting. You would be mistaken. [01 Dec 1995, p.23]

The filmmakers should be praised for injecting a stark, sense-quickening drama into the current movie scene. Just say yes to this Rush. [13 Jan 1992, p.B1]

This good and gentle film, directed by Sydney Pollack (Tootsie), might have been fashioned to make the most of Streep's natural qualities of independence, humor and sophistication (bordering on snobbishness) and her exciting suggestion of untrustworthiness.

When the comedy is on this level, all the actors can do is to hang on and hope for the best. [23 Nov 1990, p.7]