Jay Carr

Richard Attenborough's Chaplin is little more than an illustrated crash course on Charlie Chaplin. But, while superficial, it at least avoids disgrace. [08 Jan 1993, p.25]

While Harrison Ford brings all you could hope for to the role of Clancy's hero, CIA analyst Jack Ryan, Patriot Games is a pretty routine, generic and on the whole pedestrian film. Considering the talent and obvious care taken, it's surprisingly flavorless. [5 June 1992, p.25]

It starts with a flyboy roasting franks in the exhaust of a combat jet and never lets up, giddily puncturing all those wartime flying hero movies and throwing in a heap of movie parodies besides. Either way, the pacing is jetstreamed and the level of inventiveness is sky-high. [31 July 1991, p.25]

The 'Burbs begins promisingly, as if Joe Dante is going to yank a Steven Spielberg film into Blue Velvet depths. Once the premise is laid down, however, the film deflates and empties with alarming speed. [17 Feb 1989, p.88]

Soapdish should have been a laugher. But this new spoof of TV soaps isn't nearly as funny as the real thing. Soapdish holds only the merest sliver of entertainment. [31 May 1991, p.28]

Its pile-driving succession of set pieces comes at you with numbingly relentless efficiency, presumably in the hope that you won't notice or care how dumb it all is.

Films that achieve the dimension of seraphic embrace achieved by 'Innocence, as it explores a return to first love, are the rarest of the rare.

What saves it is that it's lighter than mousse and is animated by a handful of engaging performers.

Under Siege is dumb formula stuff, sensory jolts by the numbers. [09 Oct 1992, p.89]

American Pimp, if not quite a self-serving orgy of self-justification, can hardly be thought of as a searching look at the skin trade.

At times Mantegna's character seems little more than his dilemma, but Mamet's stylized dialogue crackles urgently and colorfully, each word landing with a weight you find only in good writing. The dislocation accelerates compellingly into ironic absurdity as Mamet lets his cop swing in the wind in this mordant parable of wrong things done for right reasons. There have been a lot of cop movies, but never one like Homicide. It has a way all its own of raising your consciousness by whacking you in the head. [18 Oct 1991, p.33]

Screenwriter John Hughes, making his directing debut, is at his best when he empathizes with the sensitivity in the ugly-duckling Ringwald and Hall characters. [04 May 1984]

Sensuous and rarefied, elevating its particulars into epiphanies, The Long Day Closes is as joyful as introversion gets. [9 July 1993, p.25]

'Trainspotting'' Lite.

Despite the heavy-handedness, isn't awful enough to be a hilarious howler. But neither is it good enough to become the tropical noir it could have been.

An earnest but ultimately scattered effort to put Yippie radical Abbie Hoffman's best foot posthumously forward.

This is classic Disney in the traditional mold - cute, but also pushing into dark territory, fueled by elemental passions. [21 June 1996, p.47]

Frears makes every note count for a lot in this beautifully gauged microcosm of big emotions expressed in small gestures.

A powerful and surehandedly crafted depth charge of a movie.

In short, the film isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve and bring conviction to its focus on feelings. It's written with enough dexterity and wit to make you buy into it. [29 Jan 1999, p.C4]

Lots of sex, but little joy.

Amusing Made doesn't quite measure up to expectations.

Even when it falls back excessively on coincidence and contrived set pieces, even when it gushes irretrievably over the top in its final act, Washington makes Training Day sizzle.

The result is a megabudget "House Party" -- amiable, colorful, filled with glamour and style. [01 Jul 1992]

Although Crazy People would have been snappy fun in the '30s, or really wacky in the hands of a Preston Sturges in the '40s, it's pretty flaccid and pedestrian in Tony Bill's hands, not crazy enough. Still, it's on to something with those parodies. [11 Apr 1990, p.43]

Less than memorable.

If you walk in with your expectations at a suitably low setting, you won't walk away disappointed.

The best film of 2001 was made in 1979. [10 Aug 2001, p.D1]

In short, Nowhere needs more humor, more wildness. Its pandemonium is only on the surface - which could have been the premise of a really humorous take on teen chaos. But it doesn't push the envelope as much as Araki's previous films. Although it gives his pop sensibility a vigorous workout, Nowhere is Araki's Mallrats. [06 June 1997, p.D6]

The best scenes come when the family gathers under tense circumstances that give Ian Bannen (as the MP's father) and Miranda Richardson (as his wife) the chance to unleash some civilized ferocity that's genial in his case and icy in hers. Her spurned-wife scene toward the end is the film's most powerful, and still would be even if the stilted sex scenes were volcanic. [22 Jan 1993, p.25]

The characters, in short, are never given enough dimension, enough chance to develop the individual tics and eccentricities on which this kind of comedy thrives.

He's (Dafoe) the stuff bad dreams are made of. He's also the best movie vampire since Schreck's original. He deserves a bloody Oscar.

To have been the film it could have been, crazy/beautiful needed to be messier.

If Foley's strategies don't quite regenerate the caged-animal urgency of the play, the tradeoff of some verbal fireworks for piercing closeups isn't all bad. [16 Sep 1992, p.72]

Music for the eyes. That's why it has become a treasured classic. That's why we'll see it again and again. [2002 re-release]

The attempts to supply heart are never more than synthetic, but Schwarzenegger, as the good guy with the good genes, and his goofy sweetness lift Twins into the win column. [9 Dec 1988, p.33]

The sequel goes down the tubes by spreading itself across four time zones and inviting comparison to the original by spending most of its time back in 1955, where another mess must be set right. [22 Nov 1989, p.35]

The phone scene, in which he's on the hot line to his Russian counterpart, is a classic of prevarication, a masterpiece of nothingspeak in the face of disaster. [28 Oct 1994, p.48]

The same underdog formulas and sunny disposition that turned it into an unexpected Thai box-office hit should win it friends here, too.

Nichols is a director who cleanly sculpts his scenes, leaving no intention or action vague. Maybe he should have allowed for a little more ambiguity. [10 July 1991, p.51]

The film is rightfully carried by Nico and Dani and under Gay's artful helmsmanship it's carried with remarkable sympathy and believability.

Involvingly acted, surehandedly crafted.

Nobody does a better job of putting animals and people in the same movie than Carroll Ballard, and he does it again, humanely as ever, in Fly Away Home. [13 Sep 1996, p.D8]

It could have been shorter, some of its exchanges misfire, but I respect The Last Temptation of Christ, and I'm much more for it than against it. It's the most spiritual biblical movie of our times. [2 Sep 1988, p.25]

It epitomizes the kind of high-profile bloodshed we now expect to herald the hazy, lazy, blockbuster-fixated days of summer.

This handsome remake has distinction, but isn't as wrenching, urgent or keeningly lyrical as that 1939 original. [16 Oct 1992, p.33]

The last word in good-time mayhem.

Although we're only two weeks into 1989, we've already got a movie so resoundingly awful that it's bound to stand the test of time and emerge as one of the year's worst. [13 Jan 1989, p.48]

This is an instant classic, primal and immediate in its depiction of the death of a parent, firmly anchored in the Disney style while extending its boundaries with arresting new perspectives and a tough-mindedness simply not possible to its most obvious ancestors, Bambi and The Jungle Book. [24 June 1994, p.47]

In a dismal summer for movies, Osmosis Jones is a fresh breath of foul air.

It's not that the film is devoid of honestly earned laughs here and there. The problem is that there are too few of them and that the film can't connect them.

A mildly diverting gay-straight odd couple comedy that has just enough bright one-liners to carry it past its plot structuring.

The most disorienting and trippiest data-retrieval caper in years.

Wild Reeds is not only Andre Techine's best film in a decade, it's one of France's, too. [22 Sep 1995, p.57]

Two scenes in Misery are shockingly brutal. But many more are wickedly amusing - especially the ones stemming from the fact that no small part of the writer's torture is the way his deranged muse uses language. There's something simultaneously comical and scary about the way Bates employs euphemisms to keep the lid on. [30 Nov 1990, p.29p]

Dragonheart has what it needs at its heart - namely, the dragon. The rest of its story, about a disillusioned knight joining forces with the world's last dragon to help peasants overthrow a tyrannical 10th-century king, has a warmed-over quality. [31 May 1996, p.47]

The kind of richly layered film that Hollywood seldom attempts, much less brings off. But it's more than brought off here in grand, solid style and beautifully crafted detail.

Unstrung Heroes, with its small, detailed brush strokes and its eye for specifics, marks Diane Keaton's directorial breakthrough. [15 Sep 1995]

Avoids the potentially suffocating pall of uplift hovering over its quite exhilarating story.

Frankly, Mermaids is the kind of movie that needs the strong personalities of Cher and Ryder, and is lucky it has them. They put the movie over. It has a weak script, and the direction by Richard Benjamin - who had two predecessors on this project - is so reticent as to be almost absent. There's almost no pacing or shaping to speak of. [14 Dec 1990, p.53P]

Married to the Mob is a funny yard sale of a film about regeneration in a junked-up America. [19 Aug 1988]

There's always Witherspoon, swimming upstream and never letting it slow her down. Blindingly purposeful, she's a perky blond tornado. Marilyn Monroe would not only have cheered her on. She'd have learned something.

Isn't what you'd call a probing film, but it's a slick and savvy one.

Red Rock West is one of the ongoing reasons noir is a genre that just won't say die. It's one of the most deviously entertaining detours since, well, Detour. [20 May 1994, p.53]

Muppetmaster Jim Henson has done a good job of translating the Turtles - and their 4-foot-tall rat guru, Splinter - into animatronic form. [30 Mar 1990, p.28p]

You couldn't ask for a better setting for a horror movie. What you could ask for is a better script.

As luminous as the star presence at its center. It's at once a touching teacher movie and an even more touching love story.

Red blood, white sands and a blue Corvette are the real stars of "White Sands," the slick new Roger Donaldson thriller that's more about its plot convolutions than its characters, and more about its visuals than either. [24 Apr 1992, p.85]

With Jackson leading the way, Shaft has style, punch, and street cred. It's a hot cool update.

Blew its chance to be an epic drug opera. It's only nostril-deep.

A juicy and gratifying teacher movie (a genre to which I'm partial). The joy in performance shared by Connery and Brown is the big reason.

From beginning to end, it bristles with ironies in classic Eastern European absurdist style.

Jim McKay's funky, spunky "Girls Town" is a refreshing girls-who-fight-back film that succeeds in being political without ever being didactic. [30 Aug 1996, p.F4]

Back to the Future III has no future. The reason is that it never works up much of a past as it sends its gull-winged DeLorean time machine back to the Old West. In effect, it goes back to the Age of Steam and runs out of gas. [25 May 1990, p.45]

Child's Play is junk fun. [09 Nov 1988, p.95]

It's all prefab stuff, rendered acceptable by the sunny dispositions of the performers and the Jamaican location shots. You really have to love bobsledding, or Jamaica, or both, to love Cool Runnings. [1 Oct 1993, p.55]

Entertaining set pieces, the lively give-and-take of Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and James Garner and a playful affection for old Westerns carry Maverick past some soft spots and emphasize its adult wit and intelligence. [20 May 1994, p.49]

Alien Nation quickly abandons any possibility of an equivalently fascinating world for the formulas of a routine cop movie. [7 Oct 1988, p.40]

Few actors apart from Williams could bring it off.

Ford and Pfeiffer deliver craftsmanlike work, but the film steadily unravels as Zemeckis tries to ratchet up the suspense.

There are several kinds of wit at work here - Gould deserved no less - and they add up to an entertainingly offbeat evocation of a stimulating character whose wistful side is touchingly and glancingly evoked as well. [02 Feb 1994, p.66]

Warm, smart, and funny!

It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort. That, and not its unsavory subject matter, is what makes it bummer theater.

In short, it's a gripping film with some surprises that emerge from around the edges. [24 Nov 1993, p.39]

The cop-out is mitigated by Allen's ability to impart a comfortable, lived-in quality to his roles, this one included.

Sequels and fun don't often coincide, but this time they do.

Cyborg is cyboring. [07 Apr 1989, p.34]

It falls far short of the lighthandedness, whimsy and feeling it needs to override its slightness. You keep wanting to like it, to match the good will coming out of the actors, but the writing keeps shoving its fabricated nothingness in your face. [09 Dec 1988, p.36]

Avildsen's - and the screenplay's - blatant manipulations make Freeman's job harder. To his credit, Freeman not only sustains the level of fever pitch at which Clark operates throughout, but succeeds in making him seem admirable, if not exactly likable. A well-meaning steamroller is still a steamroller. Are people who question Clark necessarily wrong? And why, for instance, do the students have to be presented with an either-or picture of Mozart and gospel music? Why can't they have both? The script to Lean on Me plays like something written by the Reagan administration. It supplies a rationale for white-controlled governments to ignore the educational needs of largely black school districts that need funding most. With Freeman breathing inspirational fire, Lean on Me is never dull. But it sidesteps some troubling questions. [3 March 1989, p.43]

Efficient, but in the end quite pedestrian.

Winkler fills the screen with some first-rate actors doing first-rate work. It's a handsomely crafted film as well as an honorable one. But it's also, on the whole, dramatically flat. [15 Mar 1991, p.41]

What Fatal Instinct seems to overlook, though, is that erotic thrillers such as "Basic Instinct" and "Fatal Attraction" do a pretty good job of parodying themselves. Rather than really develop any of their setups, writer David O'Malley and director Carl Reiner seem to think it's enough simply to cite the originals. [29 Oct 1993, p.51]

Phar Lap wastes its brilliant potential through embarrassingly inept acting, a cloying soundtrack, stereotyped characters and pedestrian direction. [13 Jul 1984]

It's the best drug-busting movie since ''The French Connection.''

Watching it is a nonstop high.

Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser doesn't make the mistake of trying to oversell Monk as a colorful personality. It doesn't have to. It simply stands back and allows his genuine originality and unorthodoxy to make their own impressions. [13 Oct 1989, p.37p]

Nil by Mouth is a scaldingly invigorating filmaking debut. [06 Mar 1998, p.D7]

By the end, we're left with a feeling of depletion rather than resolution, which may have been Gray's intention.