John Hartl

There's so much blood, sweat and craziness that you stop laughing with first-time screenwriter Harry Bean's script and begin laughing at it. Long before it reaches the fever pitch of a hysterical finale, you may also find yourself looking at your watch. [12 Jan 1990, p.21]

I.F. Stone, an underground journalist who died in1989, left a rich legacy that is celebrated in a timely new documentary, All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone.

Sommers is so busy spinning his camera, crowding the soundtrack with animal noises and piling on the cheesy visual effects that he can't stop for a reflective moment or a character-revealing touch.

Despite all of the personalized Wenders touches, it ultimately resembles many a top-heavy, star-laden, special-effects-driven production from the major-studio assembly lines.

Fails to single out one plot thread and make a claim to it.

A wry, rambling, smart comedy.

Depp, who has never looked so angelic, is covering familiar ground here, playing another Gilbert Grape type who's involved with an older woman. [9 Sept 1994, p.H34]

So campy that it almost plays like a sendup of the series. It is to Alien what "The Bride of Frankenstein" was to other 1930s Frankenstein movies, and it even shares some of the same themes.

(Smith) seems out of his depth in this talky, rambling religious satire.

Entertaining as it often is, Outside Providence feels as if it were a collection of installments from an unusually raunchy television series.

Polanski has created his funniest and possibly his cruelest movie: a thoroughly warped tale of sexual obsession that leaves its quartet of lust-driven characters with nowhere left to hide. [18 Mar 1994, p.D3]

White Fang is one of the best family films around right now. The violence is not too intense, the harshness of the frontier is downplayed without being ignored, and the wildlife footage is reminiscent of the best Disney documentaries. [18 Jan 1991, p.22]

It's wry and stylish and perfectly cast, and only occasionally does it fall into the trap of taking itself as seriously as its characters sometimes do. [05 Oct 1990, p.26]

Norton's performance, which is every bit as varied as his Oscar-nominated work in Primal Fear, once more demonstrates that he's one of the most remarkable chameleons working in film.

The script, attributed to four writers, is based on stories of cats who roamed the Warners back lot, begging for food among the discarded sets of "Casablanca" and "East of Eden." Imagine any storyline designed around that studio legend and you're likely to come up with a more auspicious plot than the one this team has created. [26 Mar 1997]

Greenaway keeps his wits about him. His vision of human evil is as droll as it is unrelenting. Trained as a painter, he can't help making this particular hell look gorgeous. "The Cook, the Thief, etc." is, paradoxically, a beautiful, drily witty film about monstrous vulgarity and ugliness. [6 Apr 1990, p.22]

An oddly overblown, semi-operatic adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s once-banned 1964 novel about life among the abused prostitutes, lonely sailors, lonelier drag queens, repressed homosexuals and gay-bashing pimps along the hellish waterfront district of Brooklyn in 1952. [11 May 1990, p.22]

Already nicknamed "This Is Spinal Rap," this clever fake-documentary should delight both those who love rap music and those who feel it's been given a free ride by music critics for far too long. [17 Jun 1994, p.E3]

Neither Spader nor Amick can get past the generic nature of the characters they're playing, nor can they make up for Kazan's timid approach to their supposedly steamy love scenes. The nude Spader is so carefully draped and arranged that he could be posing for a soft-core parody, while Amick resorts to doing an impersonation of a haughty 1940s glamour queen. [6 May 1994, p.D31]

Goes out of its way to suppress most natural dramatic conflict, so it's left to the actors to carry the day.

It's hard to think of a single memorable line from Restaurant, even a memorably bad one.

The best that can be said of this campy but witless time-travel thriller is that it's acted with some authority. [12 Jan 1991, p.C7]

The first-time director and co-writer, John Dahl, has a veteran's assurance. He knows exactly what he wants from the actors, how to stage the tricky action, how to keep the plot comprehensible, how to use the Nevada/Arizona locations to suggest the aridness of the characters' lives. He doesn't break any new ground with Kill Me Again, but he does establish himself as a filmmaker to watch. [04 May 1990, p.3]

The characterizations now seem a tad thin, but Ives still impresses, and so does Charlton Heston as the most conflicted character, caught in the middle of this Cold War allegory about two feuding families and an outsider (Gregory Peck) with pacifist leanings. [29 Feb 1996, p.D3]

The first-time writer-director, Miguel Arteta, does a remarkable job of drawing us into this destructive world and making its rules and rituals seem casual and almost natural. [8 Aug 1997, p.G10]

A very romantic picture.

Warm and fuzzy and amusing enough to be slightly more than an innocuous baby-sitter for the kids.

A movie that keeps you wondering about its characters' true feelings and motives long after you've left the theater.

The only trouble with all these parodies is that Hot Shots begins to seem chaotic rather than clever. Too many of the send-ups turn out to be unnecessary detours. [31 July 1991, p.E5]

She's So Lovely works best as an actors' showcase. The ordinarily reserved Robin Wright Penn goes through a transformation not unlike Mia Farrow's complete makeover in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose; she's never been brassier or funnier. [29 Aug 1997]

While writer-director Frank Darabont often fails to make King's story plausible, that's no fault of the actors. The performances are the movie's strong suit.

Is there an audience left that really wants to see these games played one more time? Kaplan doesn't have his heart in these scenes. They lack the playful ambiguity of the movie's early episodes, which indicate that Pete might have reasons for his defensive brutality, that the wife just might be encouraging Pete's infatuation, and that her husband might be less heroic than he pretends to be. [26 June 1992, p.20]

The movie ends up playing like a series of skits and one-liners, some of them pointed and funny, that strain to achieve structure, substance and a workable ending. Fortunately, Judy Davis and Peter Weller are Tolkin's stars, and they're capable of providing a center for almost anything. [23 Sept 1994, p.H3]

While Mo' Better Blues is quite tolerable entertainment, it's skin-deep stuff, and not much of a stretch for the actors. [03 Aug 1990, p.3]

The finale to this uneven movie makes the most of Hart’s gift for physical comedy.

Stone Cold may be the morally bankrupt nadir of what is so far one of Hollywood's worst years. [17 May 1991, p.3]

Eisenstein in Guanajuato is an outrageous comic-erotic extravaganza that has more of a narrative arc than most Greenaway movies.

Too long, too predictable.

Its pretensions eventually undo it.

Haneke carefully and ingeniously presents the boy's point of view without sympathizing with him. He then does the same with his horrified but protective parents. [18 Nov 1994, p.G35]

For all its flaws, Fantasia 2000 is certainly something to see.

Big effects; threadbare story.

Better Than Chocolate is essentially a 101-minute sitcom that runs out of energy (but not vulgarity) long before it reaches its predictable finale. [27 Aug 1999]

The ride in this road movie isn't always as smooth as it could be, but even the bumps have some charm.

Neither the sophisticated teen comedy it wants to be nor the routine Disney slapstick number it sometimes becomes, it doesn't know what it is. [14 Feb 1997]

A sophomore writing-directing effort from former film critic Rod Lurie.

Lithgow's opening narration tries to throw you off the scent of the cliches, and director Michael Caton-Jones (Scandal) does his best to avoid them or make them seem charmingly dated. But they're still there. [12 Oct 1990, p.22]

There's too much feedback and some of the numbers are allowed to go on, Grateful Dead style, but the movie means to invoke a trance, and often it succeeds. [29 Oct 1997, p.C1]

The story moves beyond the limitations of its setting, transforming itself into an affecting parable about the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children from trauma, cruelty and knowledge of evil.

The pace is swift, archival clips are well-chosen and conspiracy theories pile up in a way that seems intentionally funny.

Carrey's performance, and Forman's lively attempts to ask serious questions about the nature of comedy, keep it interesting. Certainly it's never dull.

The format couldn't be slighter or more familiar, yet this Australian film-festival favorite is one of the freshest romantic comedies of the season. [11 Apr 1997, p.F5]

There's an anger and rawness here that fit hand-in-glove with Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands," which serves as the opening song. [3 Apr 1992, p.28]

Patric gives the character dignity and righteousness, but he and the narrator end up drowning the finale in noble speeches. [10 Dec 1993, p.G30]

Although it too often succumbs to the kind of whimsical sentimentality about the mentally ill that has afflicted movies from King of Hearts to The Fisher King, this filmed-in-Spokane comedy-drama is almost salvaged by its excellent cast. [16 Apr 1993, p.3]

The biggest problem with "Going All the Way" is that, despite the genuine eccentricity of Davies' performance and the charismatic smoothness of Affleck's work, the material lacks the freshness it must have had when the book was first published. [10 Oct 1997]

The problem with most movies about junkies is that they're really not about anything but getting high, crashing and screwing up. The problem with most movies about writers is that they can't demonstrate a writer's talent. Put the two together and you've got Permanent Midnight. [18 Sep 1998, p.H6]

Maybe there's a serious movie to be made about professional soldiers who can't thaw out now that the Cold War is melting. But The Fourth War plays like Laurel and Hardy's Tit For Tat in slow motion. [23 Mar 1990, p.24]

How do you turn a collection of New Yorker cartoons into a feature-length movie? And avoid the one-joke nature of the early-1960s television series that first tried to put it into dramatic form? The answer to both questions: you can't. [22 Nov 1991, p.3]

Unfortunately, Craven's constant emphasis on cannibalism, child abuse and incest adds up to more unpleasantness than thrills. [02 Nov 1991, p.C3]

Somewhere around the beginning of Hour Two, the narrative loses momentum, and Pino Donaggio's molasses-thick score begins to drag everything down with it. The ending also lacks the surprise twist that seems to be promised .

By film's end, the husband's reasons and rationalizations seem all but incomprehensible. That doesn't, however, prevent this from being a thoroughly engrossing tale. [11 Jan 1991, p.24]

The whole may be less than its parts, but the parts are pretty impressive.

The result is the kind of competent, earnest, well-made but unexciting film that could just as easily have been produced for television. [20 Dec 1996]

Crude as it sometimes is, this sequel should please plenty of Bradyphiles. But No. 3 might be overkill. [23 Aug 1996, p.F5]

Unfortunately, Kevin Anderson, the former Steppenwolf actor who was so impressive re-creating his stage role in Alan Pakula's film of "Orphans" and impersonating Bobby Kennedy in "Hoffa," can do absolutely nothing with the braying, sexist yuppie who rents the apartment out to Broderick and Sciorra. [1 May 1993, p.C9]

Kaufman can't raise the script far above the pulp material on which it's based, but it's a more intelligent adaptation than this summer's blockbuster movie of Crichton's "Jurassic Park." It's also a more interesting consideration of racial-cultural conflicts than such major-studio gaffes as "Mr. Baseball" and "Falling Down." [30 July 1993, p.D3]

Simply can't sustain interest for much of its final hour.

At times, Heart and Souls seems seriously interested in the kinds of ideas explored in "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder's fascinating attempt to account for why five people happened to meet their deaths in the same seemingly random circumstances. But any pretensions along those lines are quickly drowned by the cutesy special effects and Marc Shaiman's shamelessly overwrought score. [13 Aug 1993, p.D14]

It's sweet and funny one moment, melodramatic and contrived the next. Blending the moods, and often holding the film together through sheer force of personality, Ryder gives her most affecting performance to date. [14 Dec 1990, p.26]

The darkly comic tone is often just right, and the casting occasionally pays off.

There's not much to save this formulaic suspense film from seeming both ridiculous and predictable, but if you can get past the groaner dialogue and hysteria that follow the opening credits, the midsection of "Extreme Measures" does generate some tension. [27 Sept 1996]

The plot tries too hard to incorporate elements that drift toward melodrama.

The movie jerks tears shamelessly, it smugly mocks the political and fashion trends of the early 1970s, its characters make no sense at all, and it even makes fun of senility. [27 Nov 1991, p.C1]

Unlike the cheapie late-1970s Mexican exploitation movie Survive!, this sobering account of a 1972 Andes plane crash has a spiritual quality that makes the tougher aspects of the story easier to handle. [15 Jan 1993, p.16]

[Martin Campbell's] a master at rejuvenating tired warhorses, and he pulls it off again with this one.

So consistently unexciting, so monumentally unconvincing, so silly. [28 Sept 1990, p.22]

The script’s weaknesses are difficult to ignore.

Ultimately there's more guilt than pleasure to be found in The Craft. [03 May 1996]

The Kids' first movie is just all right. But there's enough good stuff in it to merit a sequel. [12 Apr 1996, p.F5]

Their performances lend the movie a touch of class, even if they can't make up for the superficial writing and Schumacher's anything-for-a-jolt direction.

It's as if a television sitcom director had tried to remake Robert Altman's Short Cuts, making sure that all the rough edges, ugly moments and untidy endings were removed. [22 Jan 1999]

Engaging and constantly surprising.

It's a painful sit from beginning to end.

Harrison is more interested in teasing than frightening an audience to death, but he still manages to deliver several strong jolts. So does the cast of first-rate actors, who obviously had a marvelous time turning themselves into goons, cannibals, gargoyles and ghouls. [04 May 1990, p.28]

The House of Seven Gables probably has the strongest reputation as a film, thanks mostly to the casting of George Sanders and Vincent Price, Lester Cole's serviceable script, Milton Krasner's moody cinematography and Frank Skinner's Oscar-nominated score. [21 May 1988]

It carries the stale odor of something that was stuck in a drawer long ago and could easily have gathered more dust. Worst of all, there's something inauthentic and phony about the way Gale and Zemeckis crank out racial taunts and four-letter-word dialogue. The result is a movie that isn't just a throwaway but borderline offensive. [26 Dec 1992, p.C7]

The script may be a fantasy about late-19th-century American poverty, derived more from old movies than fresh observations. But at least Brooks doesn't sweep the subject under the rug, and just enough of his jokes sting. [26 July 1991, p.20]

The results are uneven. Almost any scene with Hawkes is alive and satisfyingly showy. You feel his absence when he isn’t there, though Joanna Cassidy, Crystal Reed and Robert Forster all have their moments.

The director, John Schlesinger ("Midnight Cowboy"), and writer, Colin Welland ("Chariots of Fire"), have captured the period with contagious affection, but there are only two first-rate performances to carry the story for 141 minutes. [03 Oct 1991, p.F3]

Neither the actress nor her director disgrace themselves, and Curtis does suggest a commitment to her character that goes above and beyond the limitations of the script, but they've both done more interesting work. [16 Mar 1990, p.26]

The movie is a stylized collection of well-timed shockers, helped along by the contributions of its capable cast, especially Neill, who plays the detective in a hard-boiled manner that suggests 1940s film noir. [03 Feb 1995, p.H31]

The most popular entry in last year's Seattle International Film Festival family series.

It's "The Hustler with poker and without soul...For all its flash and occasional sizzle, "Rounders" is a disappointment.

A few startling touches.

The director is Paris Barclay, a graduate of Harvard, music videos and rewrite jobs on other studios' scripts. Unfortunately, his directing debut is little more than an idea for a movie. [13 Jan 1996, p.F7]

The action scenes are exciting, and Hackman gives such a strong, detailed performance that he doesn't make you nostalgic for McGraw. Perhaps best of all, Hyams' remake communicates an efficient, B-movie flavor that makes you long for the days when an unpretentious second feature could steal the show. [21 Sep 1990, p.33]

The Phantom has more potential as an audience-participation show than as a straight movie, so try to see it in a packed theater with a crowd that can have fun with it. Or wait for the videotape so you can build your own "Mystery Science Theater" party around it. [7 June 1996]