Lawrence Van Gelder

Brilliant film of nature has been warped into something jarringly unnatural.

In retelling this timeworn story of conflict between young men in the New World and their stubborn Old World fathers, Mr. Efteriades may not have generated many sparks, but with his affection for Astoria and its people he has given his tale a warm glow.

Think of it as a modern-day variant on a Shakespearean comedy, only without the verbal felicity or dramatic structure.

A tepid vat of cinematic sludge...O'Neal will doubtless survive this latest misadventure, as he did last year's outing as a genie in "Kazaam," but only the most devoted of his admirers will want to watch him lumber through "Steel."

All the special effects in the world cannot compensate for an inability to generate tension, establish and sustain pace or create any character whose survival is worth rooting for.

What results is a candy-colored broad comedy with noteworthy performances.

Theresa Russell is terrific as Angela's slatternly but loving mother, but her character disappears abruptly midway through the movie.

It is a measure of the shortcomings of this genial, well-meaning but ultimately unenchanting film that scene after scene is stolen by the second bananas.

A smoother, funnier, more suspenseful and more endearing version of the 1980 John Cassavetes film of the same title.

Tedious descent into cinema hell.

When it comes to entertainment, children deserve better than Pokémon 4Ever.

Structurally, Sex, Politics and Cocktails is wildly, almost frantically inventive, with techniques ranging from stop-motion to split-screen to silent film-style intertitles. But no amount of directorial trickery can mask the essential vacuousness of the story and its characters.

Memo to Shaquille O'Neal: Don't give up your night job.

Cause for fright in only one respect: the possibility that it could spawn sequels.

Pallid writing, awkward acting, familiar situations and tired jokes make the morons, wimps and losers of Meatballs Part II easy to pass up.

A mound of standard-issue parent-child conflicts and enough self-help cliches to drive Polonius to the aquavit barrel at Elsinore.

Comes off as noisy and ill conceived, long on morphing monsters, short on storytelling talent and uneven in its efforts at animation.

Throughout this lame film, directed by Stephen Kessler and written by Elisa Bell, situations are developed -- complicated directions to a hotel room, Clark clinging to the face of Hoover Dam, Ellen the object of Mr. Newton's seductive charm -- and left to wither without a payoff.

As long on adrenaline and special effects as it is short on genuine novelty and intellectual content.

The scenery, however, is handsome, and Miss Pays is indeed the sort of beauty who might have inspired Fitzgerald. But on the subject of credible motivation, Oxford Blues is likely to have left him depressed.

In the spring a monster's fancy lethally turns to thoughts of lust. This thought, reduced to a level contemptuous of taste and reasonable intelligence, underlies Species II.

Light on originality and low on suspense though high on design and special effects.

Poor old Mr. Magoo should have been allowed to rest in piece. This film suggests that when you loot a crypt, you're likely to find a corpse.

Not very funny, intellignet or grippingly plotted, it is likely to appeal only to those who think that anything to do with marijuana - smoking, sharing, stealing or selling - constitutes the Everest of rip-roaring hilarity. [17 Jan 1998]

Monotonously paced and too long, Jersey Guy also suffers in its early scenes from attempts at humor that probably read better on the page than they play on the screen.

Suffers from clumsy exposition and uneven acting, except in the case of Eddie T. Robinson.

To imagine the life of Harry Potter as a martial arts adventure told by a lobotomized Woody Allen is to have some idea of the fate that lies in store for moviegoers lured to the mediocrity that is Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.

Mostly dross, an unintentionally hilarious compendium of time-tested cinematic clichés that illustrates the chasm between hopeful imitation and successful duplication.