Jay Boyar

Memphis Belle simply doesn't fly. [12 Oct 1990, p.4]

Filmmaker Haynes has brought forth a punishing little movie, but he fails to make the case that the viewer deserves to be punished. Poison really wants us to suffer - which, come to think of it, is also the underlying aim of many exploitation flicks. For all their cheap thrills, they are basically soul-deadening - and so, ultimately, is this earnest little message movie. [17 May 1991, p.6]

The Big Easy is as atmospheric as they come, but -- surprise! -- it's also sharp and swift. Plus, it has ample amounts of chemistry -- the steamy, sexy kind.

For those of us who will never go to the moon, watching For All Mankind may be as close as we'll come to fulfilling that ancient dream. If what the Hubble eventually sends back is nearly this splendid, it could actually be worth the wait. [17 Aug 1990, p.10]

This delicious, mystical Mexican drama keeps you in an almost constant state of stimulation. [11 June 1993, p.28]

Bottom line: Stake out another movie. [23 July 1993, p.8]

The best to be said for the current production is that the editing is refreshingly swift, the cinematography is clear-eyed and the running time is mercifully short. (I clocked it at just under an hour and a half.) But do I recommend Fire Birds? That's a negative. [29 May 1990, p.D1]

The movie works the way Westerns have always worked: In clear, simple terms and with straightforward dramatic devices.

Where Fargo was cool and wryly detached, the zany new film is aggressively antic - more like parts of their Barton Fink or The Hudsucker Proxy. On occasion, in fact, the Coens' anything-goes approach can begin to get on your nerves. [6 March 1998, p.17]

Hard as it is to justify Bond films on intellectual grounds, there's something invigorating -- and strangely reassuring -- about this sort of picture. It is comforting to feel that should a psychopath threaten the stability of the world, our hero will be ready to wipe the grin off his face and shove him into San Francisco Bay.

The movie's sneaky intelligence pokes out in surprising, amusing ways.

There is a sweet, simple tale at the center of this overstuffed epic. And sometimes, its romanticism manages to shine through all the picture-book pomp. [07 Jul 1995, p.17]

The movie may have been so structured to offer whites in the audience a central white figure with whom to identify. But it's the ultimate irony that moviemakers who want to call attention to the historical accomplishments of blacks feel that they can only do so if the hero of their film is white. [12 Jan 1990, p.6]

You buy the movie's premise because director Fred Schepisi evokes such a rich spirit of playfulness and romance that you want to buy it. [26 Dec 1994, p.D1]

In Hero, Frears and Peoples send up the press and the public, but they stop short of debunking the notion of heroism itself. [02 Oct 1992, p.17]

Represents a new low for the form. Watching this one, you may be tempted to throw the baby movie out with the bath water.

I had fun watching Drop Dead Fred, but I want to take special care not to raise expectations unrealistically by overpraising it. The movie is no comic masterpiece, but it is consistently amusing in a way that sometimes reminded me of a kiddie picture and at other times of a more sophisticated comedy.

Although Daniel Petrie Jr., who directed and co-wrote Toy Soldiers (with David Koepp, based on William P. Kennedy's novel), has never before directed a movie, he sure knows how to keep things moving. Even with its faults, Toy Soldiers gets by a lot of the time. [26 Apr 1991, p.12]

Frankly, the original was never one of my favorite Disney cartoons - pleasant enough, but uninspiring. The sequel, I'm afraid, isn't much of an improvement. [16 Nov 1990, p.8]

Nominally a romantic action-comedy, this Goldie Hawn-Mel Gibson picture is actually a mind-numbingly raucous exploitation flick with occasional bad jokes and mild sex scenes. [18 May 1990, p.21]

Spike Lee's ambitious, occasionally brilliant new film about an interracial relationship might have been a masterpiece if only it had been integrated. Thematically integrated, that is. The cast of Jungle Fever is racially integrated, but there's so little holding the diverse elements of the movie together that Lee could have called it Jumble Fever.

Director Donald Petrie (Grumpy Old Men) and his screenwriters have nimbly constructed a movie around young Culkin in such a way as to almost conceal the boy's shortcomings - or, at least, to divert us from them for surprisingly long stretches of time. [21 Dec 1994, p.E1]

A big-screen version of a routine cop show that occasionally gets by on momentum from the original movie.

Abetter title for Jaws The Revenge would be Jaws The Refund. A refund is what a lot of people who go to see this picture will demand. This Time It's Personal, the tag line for the new film's ad campaign, doesn't seem quite right either. This Time It's Terrible would have been more accurate.

One great thing about the script for Housesitter - the new Steve Martin-Goldie Hawn screwball comedy - is that it takes the romanticism of shared dream-spinning and turns it into a sustaining comic device. The other great thing about the script is that it's beautifully structured. [12 June 1992, p.19]

Although the second half of the picture (which could have been called Single White Females Can't Live Together) is mostly a waste, the early scenes are tantalizing enough to be worth a look. [14 Aug 1992, p.17]

This picture isn't Shakespeare for the ages, and purists, of course, must be scandalized. But it isn't Shakespeare for the masses, either. This Richard III is only for very particular tastes. To like the film you have to love Shakespeare, but you can't worship him. [16 Feb 1996, p.22]

Somehow, the new production fails to sustain the creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky and altogether ooky visual sweep that held the first film together.