Matthew Gilbert

For your two hours of discomfort, you will gain a better understanding of the insidious ways in which sexual predators work, and a clearer picture of how a victim’s denial and memory can conspire to bury the truth in the name of self-protection. You will also gain the experience of watching a wisely written, inventively directed, and extraordinarily acted story

Taking Care of Business could be a lot worse. It's a swift, if entirely predictable, identity-switch movie that wastes little time on the way to its morality play conclusion. [17 Aug 1990, p.36p]

As far as shootouts go, The Killer is an over-the-top success. It's shameless in its excesses - in its filmic allusions, in its camp emotionality, in its frenzied and slo-mo sequences of bullet fire. There are shades of Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah in the artfelt violence, and a direct hit on "Duel in the Sun" as two blinded lovers crawl to each other but miss. Throughout the absurd goings-on, director John Woo's playfulness is hard to resist, and Chow Yun-Fat as the hired killer has an appealing deadpan charisma. [28 June 1991, p.72]

Larger Than Life is a thin, disjointed road comedy that contains a few laughs despite itself. No matter how loosey-goosey and silly the script gets, and no matter how contrived the premise is, Bill Murray manages to sneak in a number of typically zany actions and reactions. [01 Nov 1996, p.E7]

Without any framing background information, this affectionate documentary and its continual monologues can feel a little too insidery and indulgent. [22 Nov 2010, p.G9]

It's a splendidly designed flight of imagination that soars from the barren grays of England to the Art Deco towers of New York over a shining sea of wrinkled, deep blue velvet. With the movie's mixture of stop-motion animation, digital animation and live action, Roald Dahl's 1961 children's book has found its ideal realization. [12 Apr 1996, p.59]

As a piece of nostalgia, "Mrs. Miniver" will carry you into a world gone by when war movies promoted community and not fragmentation. [16 Oct 1992, p.38]

As a general survey of Williams’s life, as a collection of precious backstage outtakes, and as a nostalgic trip back into his comedy stylings, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind does the trick. It’s a sad, but satisfying, visit with a special man.

The scariest thing about Graveyard Shift is the money, time and energy - however minimal - invested in its creation. If you're looking for a good rat scare, the alleys near Haymarket might be a better place to invest your time. [27 Oct 1990, p.11p]

El Camino is enjoyable as a kind of epilogue to “Breaking Bad.” It’s unnecessary, but it’s good enough to offer two solid hours of pleasure to anyone who loved the mother ship.

Downey's cameo is one of the few unexpected - even terrorful - moments in this entirely pedestrian sequel, which like its predecessor is almost but never quite frightening. [21 Nov 1990, p.38P]

There's action aplenty in The Rookie, but director and star Clint Eastwood supplies his tired cop-buddy formula with an oddball tone that lifts it slightly above the genre. [07 Dec 1990, p.53p]

Poison is at once disturbing and beautiful, a cereus blooming in the darkest of night. Uncompromising and heady with ambition, Haynes likes to make his audiences think. Poison succeeds in this goal, and increases in power the more you look back on it. Like the most potent movies, it creeps on you. [19 Apr 1991, p.41]

"Star Trek VI" is one of the weaker additions to the Enterprise enterprise. It merely goes through the motions, including requisite moments that feel obligatory and uninspired. There's nothing gravely wrong here - no embarrassing scenes or egregious plot gaffes. There's simply nothing new, and certainly nothing fresh or reinvented. [6 Dec. 1991, p.53]

Miss Piggy may not be Babe, but she sure packs a good oink. Her garish performance in the last third of "Muppet Treasure Island" is one of the highlights of this pleasant, cuddly addition to the world of Muppet fantasy. [16 Feb 1996, p.55]

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is the "Fatal Attraction" of child care, but it's too rigged and anti-climactic to send real shivers up your spine. Which is not to say there aren't satisfying moments along the way, mostly watching Rebecca DeMornay camp it up as the avenging nanny out to destroy young mother Annabella Sciorra. [10 Jan 1992, p.74]

Eating is an eventful afternoon with a bunch of colorful characters. They're oh-so-enlightened, and they're oh-so-miserable. [10 May 1991, p.29]

It's nearly over the top in the compassion department, but Random Harvest nevertheless has its satisfactions. [16 Oct 1992, p.38]

Exquisitely painful look at how Hollywood turns its hopefuls into whores. [03 May 1992, p.B35]

Since each member of the 10-man crew is given his small equal share in the movie's script, none of them is able to add emotional weight to the realities of soldiering. That means that actors like Matthew Modine and Eric Stoltz have no place to go with their talent. Like the movie, no one is bad, really, but then no one is good. [12 Oct 1990, p.29p]

Not Without My Daughter creeps up on you like an icy chill. Not since Midnight Express in 1978 has imprisonment in a foreign country been so alarmingly and intimately conveyed on film. [11 Jan 1991, p.69]

Carrie meets Clueless, with a few good campy moments, some attractive cinematography, and an entertainingly lurid performance by Fairuza Balk, whose mascara, lipstick and spikey dog collar give the movie a decidedly Vicious (Sid, that is) twist. [03 May 1996, p.52]

Brain Candy may be too safe a venture for the Kids in the Hall, but it still has more oddball charm than most Lorne Michaels-produced comedy on the big screen. [12 Apr 1996, p.68]

If there is potential in a film that ridicules the John Singleton-styled black-men-are-doomed movies like Poetic Justice, Jungle Fever and Straight Out of Brooklyn, Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood squanders it on a series of repetitive gags and sexist jokes. [13 Jan 1996, p.28]

While The Last Boy Scout covers no new ground, and while it features one of the heftier plot missteps in recent junk-movie history, it's far from the worst of shoot-'em-ups to burst onscreen lately. [13 Dec 1991, p.55]

If you like your revenge slow and cliched, you may like Ricochet. The plot, which by now may be too stock even for TV police dramas, is about an escaped convict bent on torturing the cop who put him behind bars. [05 Oct 1991, p.10]

Only the Lonely is an unflashy romantic comedy, one that is mildly romantic and mildly comic - though not enough of either to make it fully satisfying. [24 May 1991, p.48]

No matter how hard Richard Gere huffs and puffs, his performance as the hunky manic-depressive known only as "Mr. Jones" won't blow you away. Bouncing foolishly from super-duper euphoria to catatonia and back, Gere expends too much energy to ever be believable. [8 Oct 1993, p.56]

An inferior, though quite respectable, follow-up. [22 Mar 1991, p.73]

Along with Cusack's marvelously natural performance, True Colors offers a premise deeper than most twentysomething-audience movies. The ethical conflicts between Spader and Cusack are thought-provoking, if simplistic and exaggerated. At the same time, True Colors seems to scream Cultural Statement. It's self-consciously anthemic. [26 Apr 1991, p.74]

The humor in Leave It to Beaver is doggedly bland, with a conventional story line that's no more inventive than watching four episodes of the TV show scrunched together and interwoven. [22 Aug 1997, p.F6]

There's about one TV commercial's worth of funny gags in PCU a poorly executed one-joker about political correctness on campus...But any laughs quickly become redundant and wear thin, and the uselessly involved plot spirals off into absurdity. [29 Apr 1994, p.49]

It's a neighborhood comedy for kids that squanders the high energy of a group of young actors on a stubbornly unimaginative script. [25 July 1997, p.C5]

Like "Fire Birds," another recent special-team flick, Navy SEALs is a transparent attempt to showcase adventure sequences. Plot? Character? Who has time for subtlety amid all those dangerous maneuvers? It's all an excuse for the action - but even the action in Navy SEALS is dismal. [20 July 1990, p.32]

There are two entertaining small characters in Freejack - Amanda Plummer as a gun-toting nun and Johansen as Estevez's exploitive pal. As the lead, Estevez is appealing, if bland. He takes his future shocks in stride. [18 Jan 1982, p.12]

Never quite scary, never funny for long, never enough over-the-top. It's never compelling plotwise, either, especially toward the sloppy ending, when Mantegna is inexplicably erased from the plot. [26 Oct 1996, p.F3]

This remake of The Desperate Hours, the 1955 Humphrey Bogart criminal-on-the-lam suspenser, is crisp and atmospheric - and doggedly ordinary. [05 Oct 1990, p.46p]

There are the obligatory bonding scenes, including a boxing match and an early morning heart-to-heart, but without tension and warmth. Jones manages to be lovable, but he and Cage never manage a chemistry. [25 May 1990, p.50p]

The dullest and shoddiest action-adventure flick of the year, with only a few cute Sean Connery moments to rescue it from total, sheer and utter bogosity. [01 Nov 1991, p.29]

With little going for it except its references to part one, The Neverending Story II is a neverending disappointment. [09 Feb 1991, p.11]

The problem with the realization of this concept, Drop Dead Fred, is its lack of subtlety. The filmmakers go too broad. Where there should be whimsy, there is grating farce. The character of Fred is like "Laugh-In" comedian Alan Sues doing Monty Python comedy skits on Billy Idol for "Sesame Street." Whenever he's onscreen, he's picking his nose and slinging food and muttering insults. Early into the movie, he gets on your nerves. [24 May 1991, p.52]

Cool as Ice ends up seeming tired as well as twisted. The man whom promoters call the rap-era Elvis has negative charisma. [19 Oct 1991, p.11]

It's a movie Playboy spread, with irksome misogynist overtones. And, as the camera swoops liberally along the tropical seaport, it's hard to imagine how such a lovely spot was made to seem so tawdry and so tedious. [28 April 1990, p.8]