John Hartl

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]

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]

Underwhelming thriller.

The Man in the Moon isn't likely to replace Mockingbird in the eyes of any of its fans, but it's far superior to such recent Mulligan mistakes as Clara's Heart and Kiss Me Goodbye. It's the most careful, sensitive work he's done since the 1970s. [04 Oct 1991, p.23]

Raoul Walsh's lengthy, relatively gritty 1945 war movie stars Errol Flynn as the leader of a paratrooper group that goes after a key Japanese target. [02 Sep 1999]

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 role is built for a tour-de-force performance, and Curtis delivers. [17 Sep 2000]

An indigestible blend of sentiment and gross-out humor, Cadillac Man is an appalling choice for Robin Williams to have made at this stage in his career. [18 May 1990, p.28]

Charming and imaginative.

A very romantic picture.

There's no emotional pay-off when the characters change under pressure. The audience never knows enough about them to care when they demonstrate bravery or resourcefulness, and there's no chemistry between the people who are supposed to be deeply attached to each other. [06 Oct 1990, p.C7]

Just because you can make a movie in a day doesn't necessarily mean moviegoers should take an hour and a half to watch it.

The Glimmer Man is just as foolish and formulaic as it sounds. [05 Oct 1996, p.C3]

In its attempts to deal with her character's aimlessness and inability to discover a satisfying code of behavior ("Are there any real reasons for living right anyway?"), the script is sometimes thoughtful, sometimes banal and schoolgirlish. [12 Nov 1993, p.D16]

Based on the true story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, two late-1940s serial killers who conned and murdered several widows who took out lonely-hearts ads, writer-director Leonard Kastle's only feature film to date is one of the least glamorous couple-on-the-run movies ever made. [05 Dec 1992, p.C5]

The finished film is graceful, gripping and more accessible than several of Scorsese's contemporary New York movies. Scorsese has created a model adaptation that manages to be both remarkably faithful to its source and more audience-friendly than the Merchant/Ivory movies to which it will be compared. [17 Sept 1993, p.D3]

A perfectly balanced adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, with Deborah Kerr in her greatest performance. [05 Dec 1997]

Curiously bland and flavorless.

At its best, White Men Can't Jump gives two talented actresses a chance to shine. At worst, it's just somewhat less coherent and compelling than Shelton's previous work. [27 Mar 1992, p.19]

What a dynamite cast. What a savvy director. And what a soggy comedy they're all stuck in. [02 July 1997, p.E5]

It not only feels like a transposed stage piece, it plays like a workshop performance that may not have found its final form. But the actors keep it lively and darkly funny, and the picture rarely feels stagey. [07 Oct 1994, p.D31]

The interracial love affair in Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala doesn't burn up the screen the way it did in Spike Lee's overheated "Jungle Fever." But the movie itself is ultimately more satisfying, generating much more light than sizzle. [14 Feb 1992, p.23]

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]

It's light and fizzy and fun without once calling attention to the fact that a lot of hard work went into it (Gerald Scarfe's sharp production design keeps it from looking quite like any other Disney cartoon). [27 June 1997, p.F1]

Despite the anti-greed message, too much of For Love or Mone" is reminiscent of Fox's glib 1980s vehicles, especially "The Secret of My Success" and the TV series "Family Ties." Reportedly he's trying to break free of this syndrome, but at this point he needs a vehicle that would spell that out clearly. Too often this one plays like "For Love and Money." [1 Oct 1993, p.D18]

Rappeneau has his weaknesses - the battle sequences lack imagination, and the finale is unnecessarily protracted - but his romantic flourishes keep most of the movie humming. [25 Dec 1990, p.F1]

Mortality rather than morality has become the central theme, and McMurtry and Bogdanovich address it with rare grace and compassion. [28 Sep 1990, 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]