Mike Clark

Hopkins' Hannibal is no longer mysterious, Clarice is no longer vulnerable, and the overextended Florence scenes dash any hopes of early momentum, even if Giancarlo Giannini is perfect as the cop.

The movie meanders without a rudimentary sense of the dramatic, yet it remains intermittently interesting thanks to a surprisingly voluminous cast of usual suspects from the world of independent cinema. [14 Aug 1996 Pg.09.D]

2-1/4 hours of MTV-produced tough love, with a dance break and pool party to relieve -- momentarily -- a series of motivational rants from lead Samuel L. Jackson.

For novelty value, you can do worse than seeing Sean Penn in a rare chance to don evening-wear on screen, but this isn't a sight to sustain a two-hour haul.

The chief delight is Kasdan. “Body Heat” was appropriately slick, but “The Big Chill” and “Silverado” too much so. Tourist is edgier - also the work of a genuine craftsman. Frankly, I didn't think Kasdan had it in him. [23 Dec 1988, Life, p.1D]

There's at least one plot element too many here; let your own taste determine which one. Yet until it dissolves into conventional melodrama during a climactic fracas, this fast-paced story is never less than watchable.

Rob Reiner's self-congratulatory Ghosts of Mississippi portrays Medgar Evers' slaying from the viewpoint of a white guy and can't even do a capable job of that. [20 Dec 1996]

Director Roman Polanski co-stars with and directs wife Sharon Tate in their only collaboration. That's one reason this box office bomb, which came out less than two years before Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's crew, has picked up a following. [08 Oct 2004, p.4E]

Snipes seems lost. A key player in the novel by virtue of his first-person narration, Snipes' character - now third-person - is all but a non-person. Mostly, he reacts Watson-style to Connery's Sherlock Holmes musings; an attempt to incorporate Snipes' street buddies into a car chase is the film's weakest scene. [30 July 1993, p.1D]

A lot of cinematic ineptitude and moral turpitude can be forgiven in the final 40 minutes, when Halicki redeems his movie by staging one of the greatest car chase scenes in history -- one without much, if any, fakery. [01 Dec 2000, p.8E]

The middling result, diverting while it lasts but too silly to recommend, is merely this week's funhouse action pic. [21 Jun 1996 Pg.01.D]

By contrast, other Hornby screen adaptations are "About a Boy" and "High Fidelity"- superb comedies both and, in Fidelity's case, a treatise on male obsession with far more depth and even more laughs.

It's amusing, but also rather silly - offering still more evidence that Wenders seems to have seen a few hundred Hollywood genre pics too many. [30 Dec 1993, p.4D]

The Two Jakes turns out to be a surprisingly rich movie - if you're willing to spend 138 minutes on what is essentially a psychological study. [10 Aug 1990]

Hopped-up Falling Down is a technically proficient grabber that exploits white-male angst while adeptly juggling two stories filmed in contrasting styles. Slick, maybe facile, and with a nasty streak, it is nonetheless 1993's first consistently engrossing movie. [26 Feb 1993, p.1D]

A two hour aquatic pursuit pic with bruising stunts, fun-to-watch performances, a dozen good chortles and imposing Panavision renderings of post-apocalyptic crud, Waterworld clearly has the makings of a cult movie.

But certainly this is a movie for fans of Willis-style action with a little James Bond and probable instant obsolescence thrown in.

As stuffed with beguiling performances - some of them unexpectedly good - as its script is overstuffed. And though even the beguiled may feel manipulated the next morning (or when hitting the exits), the players put it over by a nose. Happy holidays.

Another of director David Cronenberg's queasy early horror films that, like The Brood and Videodrome, gets under your skin. [04 Jun 2004]

A disciple of David Lynch's, Roth packs his story with horror, humor, hillbillies and sex. Roth caps his fast-moving story with a joke that's as oddly left-field as it is funny, but truth to tell, it is funny.

The skating scenes are their own reward: It's hard to think of a movie since 1950's "Sunset Boulevard" that has gotten more dramatic impact out of a pool.

The five stories in The Five Senses flawlessly and even artfully create a unified mood.

A ludicrous medical thriller operating on the supposition that readers and moviegoers have forgotten about "Coma". [27 Sept 1996]

Regrettably, it's the movie version of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a book still thumping its chest on the hardback best-seller list after more than three years.

This handsome movie works thanks to its lack of pretension and an atmosphere somewhat akin to the gentle wackiness of director Bill Forsyth's better works.

Flashily nihilistic Killers is easier to admire than love, but credit Stone for putting it on the line with a yarn tailor-made for his hopped-up vision of media-engendered white-trash immortality. [26 Aug 1994, p.1D]

There's no substitute for bad taste. And this one has it double-barreled, both in the timing of its release and as a movie, one said to be loosely based on fact.

It's slick, melodramatic, even inherently trashy - but a blue-chip moviegoer investment. [11 Dec 1987, p.1D]

On both technical and conceptual levels, Bamboozled is a movie that will leave Spike Lee fans bewildered.

There is no tension here. Actually, The Minus Man is minus a lot - intensity, a point of view, maybe even a point - and that equals an unsatisfying film.

Superficially gritty yet soullessly slick melodrama.

One Fine Day is two formulaic hours, but they do illustrate how two attractive leads and a lickety-split narrative can elevate meager material into something this side of bearability. [20 Dec 1996]

Jumbo budget and the same talent notwithstanding, the element of surprise is missing. And ghostbusters, it seems, need that every bit as much as their targets. [16 Jun 1989, p.1D]

A less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend.

The movie, which has a rusty photographic veneer, is monotonous and drags toward the end.

Poor Ben Stiller can't distill the darkness, slapstick and fantasy into a consistent directorial tone, but the leads' expert give-and-take make the movie far from unbearable. [14 June 1996, p.1D]

Rain is a 126-minute genre movie stacked for effect; when you see Douglas racing his motorcycle at the beginning, you know what the climax will be. Scott, though, may be the definitive state-of-the-art moviemaker right now - and violent Rain is the most aggressively cinematic movie in a while. [22 Sep 1989, p.1D]

The movie keeps you mildly interested all the way up to an elaborately staged final scene, yet it might give viewers the same queasy fooling-with-the-Holocaust feeling some felt for Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful."

An overlong guilty pleasure. [12 Oct 1990, Life, 4D]

His complex personality comes through in this surprisingly affecting minor pleasure, though perhaps one shouldn't be surprised when two of Hoop Dreams' key makers reunite for another smart sports pic. [24Jan1997 Pg.03.D]

Nothing but set pieces, snoozes between its scenes of carnage.

The situations are mighty broad, but exuberance counts for something in the movie with perhaps the year's most double-edged title.

Valmont, to my surprise, isn't the best movie of Choderlos de Laclos' novel. Blame overripe material, as well as Forman's benign approach to an essentially nasty yarn. [17 Nov 1989]

But when material is this fragile, virtually every scene is obligated to click for the result to become something special. Ultimately, this walking and talking comes perilously close to becoming a gab-fest treadmill. [26 Jul 1996, Pg.04.D]

Linney remains a full-blooded character so memorable that she's worth watching - even in a less-than-memorable movie.

Transforms Charles Dickens into a Chuck. Ground Chuck, unfortunately. [30 January 1998, p. 7D]

There may be no crying need for this movie, but we could use the laughs.

A baseball nostalgia piece all weirded-out by flashes of supernatural horror, this early-'60s remembrance is like sitting through a double bill of Field of Dreams and The Goonies. [7 Apr 1993, p.8D]

Casting, in fact, is Rob Roy's dominant virtue, a hedge against its overlong 2 1/4-hour running time and some initial reluctance to get rolling. [7 Apr 1995, p.01.D]

Despite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, a deserving flop about modern-day cattle hucksters; at times here (call the rest home), I think Newman sounds like Wally Cox. [01 Mar 1991, p.3D]

Ivan Passer directs with the kind of objective integrity that's rare today, but the script doesn't jell. [14 July 1989, p.3D]

More Mexican mayhem with a you-know-what in 1957's The Black Scorpion, with effects by Harryhausen's mentor, Willis O'Brien. [24 Oct 2003]

Though a tacked-on fisticuffs finale has its charms, it rather contradicts the preceding. Mere subtleties are beyond Stallone and returning Rocky I director John G. Avildsen. [16 Nov 1990, p.4D]

As this year's literary adaptations go, Horses comes a lot closer to being a truly bad movie than "The Perfect Storm" did, yet it would be hard to argue that the two are not the year's most disappointing in terms of trampled hopes.

Don't underestimate the appeal of a heart-tugger that's this well mounted.

A precisely modulated and mostly mesmerizing 2¾-hour suspense movie, in part because it's one of the most bravely disturbing screen works ever attempted about thoughts withheld by even the most devoted marriage partners and the ramifications of voicing them.

Critics overpraised Stanley Kramer's doomsday drama in a year when they undervalued North by Northwest and Rio Bravo, and it's still dramatically mushy. [16 July 1993, p.3D]

This movie will remind a lot of people of John Ford's masterpiece, "The Searchers," without the rowdy humor and, yes, without the greatness. But it's an admirably solid effort that's as mean as it has to be, which is plenty.

An easy movie to pick apart, but it lives, breathes and switches moods from humor to despair better than any American release this year.

We all know grossly moronic behavior can, in the right situation, generate hearty guilty-pleasure guffaws - at least until overkill wears out the welcome.

Worth a look. It's easy to overrate -- but just as easy to undervalue.

Coach Torn adds to a palpably violent undertone by heaving wrenches at their heads and crotches, making The Three Stooges' poking and slapping look downright tame.

Live dies around the time Carpenter allows 10 minutes of gratuitous Piper-David eye-gouging, an apparent bone to wrestling fans. Forget the amusing premise; a full crate of magic glasses couldn't make this a bearable movie. [7 Nov 1988]

Obviously armed with more gangster-of-love opportunities playing Pablo Picasso than he had playing Richard Nixon, Anthony Hopkins ends up opting here for wit over full-blooded passion, but it proves to be enough. [23 Sep 1996]

The Package could be the most forgettable movie title since Michael Caine and Richard Gere did Beyond the Limit; with luck, audiences will even forget the film itself was made. And why was it? Possibly to prove that Gene Hackman, at 58, can still survive as many lousy movies as Caine. [25 Aug 1989, p.4D]

In lieu of a toga party, one scene treats us to an octogenarian fraternity member wrestling two topless townie lookers slathered in KY Gel. Hey, there's no stopping progress.

There's a fine line between darkness and glumness, one that "Spider-Man" bounced off buildings to avoid. The Hulk lumbers across it.

Has a three-way split personality, which happily includes an action-packed middle to ease the pain of its early protracted exposition and later action so slow that you'll be asking "Gotta match?" to the person next to you.

Harold Ramis frequently keeps slapstick, human comedy and surreal elements jelling. [13 Apr 1995, p.6D]

True to the book's squalor but also finding honest humor where it can.

As for the breathless 45-minute climax, no screen fantasy adventure in memory can match the showmanship.

Here's Jackie Chan playing twins separated at birth, though not as separated as English is from the actors' lip movements in this silly, speedy, wretched dubbed action goof. [16 April 1999, Life, p.8E]

The granddaddy of prison pics opens with a lecture on overcrowding and ends with a high mortality rate, in which Chester Morris, a bald Wallace Beery and stoolie Robert Montgomery (Elizabeth's father) are players. [24 Jun 1994, p.3D]

Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (who created Back to the Future), this is director Walter Hill's best movie since 48 HRS. - unless you're among the cult fans of 1989's Johnny Handsome. [07 May 1993, p.3D]

To be charitable, the film's point of view is consistent, and there's a clever bit (very late) involving construction equipment. There isn't however, even a fourth-cousin to a laugh in this very strange public suicide. [29 July 1991, p.4D]

This is a comedy far funnier in its throwaway asides and extraneous bits. [30 July 1993, p.5D]

A little of this will go a long way.

Smart, satisfying and compact but so modest in scale that only true-blue fans will sense - immediately - that it's Woody Allen's best outing in many years.

If it's not conventionally speedy, it is almost always gripping.

Fans, at least, should enjoy the realistic touches. The cast is full of real players, announcer Dick Vitale is obnoxious here, too, and that's really coach Bobby Knight in the big game vs. Indiana (though his tan betrays Chips' summer filming schedule). And though O'Neal can barely grunt dialogue, it's fun to watch the Orlando Magic superstar make Nolte look like David Cassidy whenever they share a frame. [18 Feb 1994, p.5D]

For director/co-writer John Carpenter, it's a chance for career renewal. For eyepatched lead and co-writer Kurt Russell, it's a fitfully amusing lark, a harmlessly retro career move and a second audition for any future Rooster Cogburn parts. [09 Aug 1996, p.3D]

There's definitely some paradiso in watching Malena walking, but not enough to sustain almost two hours of cinema.

Unexpectedly, one of the better F-man outings. [11 Aug 1989, p.2D]

Blue Steel is unpleasant and wearily predictable, a near-unbearable 103 minutes even for fanciers of urban cop films. Its one distinction, lead Jamie Lee Curtis aside, is its backhanded bone-toss to feminists: Now we know that women, too, can direct serial-killer crumminess. [16 Mar 1990, p.4D]

Copycat, despite two tough-babe leads to kill for, flies in more directions than scattered kitty litter. [27 Oct 1995, pg.02D]

Contrived or not, this suspect premise is made acceptable by four perfect leads, as well as by other nicely modulated performances further down the cast. Boyle is as good as he's ever been, Lloyd perhaps the best he's been, and if Keaton is the star, he wisely blends in, as Jack Nicholson has always been willing to do. Which may be why, like Nicholson, Keaton just keeps getting better. [07 Apr 1989, p.1D]

It won't be a waste of time to watch these people — on cable, and probably not too far in the future.

If Gooding can't get another "Boyz N the Hood" or "Jerry Maguire" soon, his career will need its own cork.

A handsome but riotously cluttered melodrama with maybe 145 subplots, it's the latest and least in a soulless string of preordained multiplex hits from the John Grisham warehouse. [24Jul1996 Pg. 10.B]

We've known for years there is a hillbilly heaven because Tex Ritter used to sing of one. Now, thanks to Next of Kin, we know there's a hillbilly hell. [24 Oct 1989, p.4D]

This one's aimed at those airheads who, like George, have been swinging on a grapevine and slamming into too many trees. [16 July 1997, p. 3D]

Feels like an especially grisly Twilight Zone stretched to five times its length, features Das Boot's Jurgen Prochnow as missing author Sutter Cane and such screen-schlock reliables as David Warner, John Glover and Bernie Casey. None remotely remedies Mouth's bad breath. [03 Feb 1995, p.4D]

If there can be a best-selling novel with a cult following, Margaret Atwood's feminist-futuristic The Handmaid's Tale qualifies. I'm not sure if the screen version has the stuff to become a cult movie - but if so, credit timeliness, visual style and a few performances. Most of all, timeliness. [07 Mar 1990, p.4D]

Begins sinking in the shallow end almost at once.

The movie is so aggressively ingratiating that it's probably not to be fully trusted, yet it works suprisingly well on its own limited terms[14 May 1999, p. 8E]

Peter Hyams, who merely wrote, directed and photographed this loose remake, has refined (and in many ways, improved) the material by adding a helicopter-car pursuit and other nifty boondocks action. But mostly, it's Choo Choo Ch'Boogie - just as it is in the punchy RKO original, a 70-minute staple of cable TV. [21 Sep 1990, p.6D]

Credit McGlone for humanizing and even making funny one of the most insufferable big-screen boors in recent memory. Cheating on his wife, doing what he can to undermine his older brother's already rocky marriage, McGlone is setting himself up for a fall. Burns' lower-key acting style makes him a cool straight man during their frequent bandyings, into which dad Mahoney (also abandoned by his wife) always adds his own two cents. You probably have to love a guy who claims that his failure to believe in God isn't enough to keep him from being a good Catholic. [23 Aug 1996]

Frigid soul or not, it's the most unforgettable supernatural comedy since Brazil. Could be it's time for the Coens to drop the pretense, and embrace sci-fi head on. [11 Mar 1994, p.4D]

Two constants: good acting and an old-fashioned preachiness that backfires.

Annaud's epic might have worked better dramatically as a smaller, more focused picture. The best scenes simply involve Law and Harris playing sneaky professional games (less cat-and-mouse than cat-and-cat) with each other.

So unwatchably creaky that it's hard to believe director Mitchell Leisen filmed Murder at the Vanities (with its wildly demented Sweet Marijuana production number) the same year. [04 Dec 1998]

With heavy HIV subtext and a couple of actors who have scored in other films, this La Bohème spinoff about fatal illness, drug addiction and eviction ought to be less of a slog than it is.

This too-belated reprise from the same filmmaking duo isn't any model, but it ought to amuse fans of the original. [23 July 1993, p.5D]

Within a certain narrow range, Hartnett shows some comic flair -- though not enough to carry the picture over its considerable rough spots.

George A. Romero, less Living Dead here than dying artistically, adapts Stephen King in a movie without a good half. [23 Apr 1993, p.4D]

The 15-minute squall is spectacular and the movie's partial redeemer - the minimum you'd hope for in a movie called White Squall, don't you think? [02 Feb 1996]

Isn't tough to take as long as you've paid a matinee price.

Think of a B-grade "Bulworth" with lesser talents than A-listers Warren Beatty and Halle Berry.

It's to these Angels' credit that they, like the movie, are at least intermittent fun.

At least 2 Fast is self-aware enough to know that it's trash, which is worth half a bonus point. Lack of pretension helps the viewer get over the fact that this is just another retread.

Though Bond may never die, this time he's on life support. [19 Dec 1997, p.3D]

Only a smattering of the potential is realized in this tolerable disappointment, which is so unworthy of getting angry about that it will still become a knee-jerk hit.

Eastwood gutsily stages the extended opening slowly and methodically... [But u]nintentional yuks litter an otherwise somber political thriller adapted from David Baldacci's novel.

Though Hour 2's heavy emphasis on physical and emotional confrontations stimulates dramatic momentum, this respectable superstar meeting is finally, of all things, ordinary. [26Mar1997 Pg04.D]

It's at once funny, exciting, tearful and tuneful. [13 Nov 1991, p.1D]

Compellingly watchable horror-spectacle.

Snipes gives a looser, cooler performance this time around, though emotionally, it's closer to dead than undead. Blade II is for the horror faithful only; others will be grasping their crucifixes.

Predictably, the derivative title here is a jumping-off point for another derivative slasher-revenge pic. [17 October 1997, p.5D]

Hanks is a standout again, in a film that otherwise doesn't work. [24 March 1989, p.3D]

Dark Territory is back to familiar territory, and the payoff is moronically comfy [17 July 1995, p.6D]

This twisted space opera serves up carcasses in six-digit figures but is foremost a sendup for the ages.

This is a slow if stylish slog through familiar terrain.

One of the most violent opening scenes in screen history…Yet given such a visually adept exercise, the rest seems transparently off-the-cuff. There are obese trailer-camp porn stars, heavenly visions, a climactic rendition of Love Me Tender and no-point references to The Wizard of Oz - all of which top this two-hour farrago like a soggy tarp. [17 Aug 1990, Life, 4D]

Peter Pan is the boy who wouldn't grow up, and Hook is the movie that grows unbearable once a grown-up Peter arrives in Neverland with a merciless 90 minutes to go. [11 Dec. 1991, p.1D]

Though there are helmets deeper than this movie, you do have to admire the level of screen showmanship .

The wrap-up feels tacked-on and too good to be true, with emotions the story really hasn't earned.

Yet another Alan Alda unoriginal original. [22 Jun 1990, p.2D]

Consistently compelling without being truly memorable.

It's a mess with sporadic flashes of creativity. Someone should have gone back to the drawing board. [19 July 1996, p.13D]

Already too long. It makes you want to start moving globs of dirt to tunnel out of the theater as the movie ends with the famous theme to "The Great Escape."

Clunkily stagebound but gorgeous to look at in VistaVision and Technicolor. [07 Oct 2005]

The first moral of the faithfully amoral remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway is that Steve McQueen is irreplaceable. Second: Slavish faithfulness can be risky if the original is only middling Peckinpah to start. Third: Married co-stars sometimes reserve their sexual heat for off-camera Malibu mattresses. [11 Feb 1994, p.4D]

Dolly lost a fortune and helped to all but kill the genre, yet this famed musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker is more fun than its rep indicates. [15 Nov 2005, p.8D]

A John Hughes movie is 15 minutes of material stretched into a 90-minute feature by a rec-room rack from the Karloff estate; the only question is whether the 15 have their comic compensations. Uncle Buck has a few, though they're typically compromised by the cut-and-paste nature of the rest. [16 Aug 1989, p.4D]

To its credit, the film isn't foolhardy enough to challenge the unbeatable Errol Flynn version on its own star-power turf. Gritty in most ways, broadly comic in some, and with a dose of the morbidly supernatural, this is a knowing variation at odds with quaint vintage-Hollywood reverence. [14 June 1991, p.1D]

John Singleton's bizarre but viewable Boyz N the Hood follow-up is surprisingly gooey going. [23 Jul 1993]

Because snowboarding is younger than skateboarding and surfing, Descent lacks the poignancy of past surfer/skateboarder portraits that have shown participants reaching middle age.

Capably made and certainly impresses by carrying its length, but it doesn't expand 60 years of World War II screen literature by very much.

The script is so bereft of real surprises that it's best to keep the lid on what few there are.

For the first time in years (even counting his excellent work in “Internal Affairs”), Richard Gere's acting gears aren't too obviously apparent; Julia Roberts, though the breadth of her emotional range remains in question, is beautiful and can act - a not-bad blueprint for continued employment. [23 Mar 1990, Life, p.4D]

With special effects so convincing you don't even think about them, a head-case hero and a three-dimensional villain who is his equal, socko Spider-Man 2 has something for everyone.

Eddie Albert's Oscar-nominated slow burn as the loathing father in The Heartbreak Kid is the funniest portrayal of Midwestern WASP-ism in movie history. [08 Feb 2002]

Brothers never catches fire the way Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" did. And you almost feel during subpar special effects that sweaty stagehands are pushing the trees around.

I hated the original, but like this easygoing sequel. And unlike Home Alone, the filmmakers don't have to wreck real estate to earn some holiday- movie smiles. [21 Nov 1990, p.2D]

It's easier to take Hi-Heel Sneakers by Tommy Tucker- more seriously. [20 Dec 1991]

Glorious picture-postcard photography. [10 July 1998, p.8E]

An authentic-looking Jeff Bridges goes for the grit in an incoherently arty rendering (full of fuzzy-focus black-and-white flashbacks) filmed by action veteran Walter Hill. [01 Dec 1995, p.13D]

The actress may get an Oscar nomination for the wrong movie -- "Moulin Rouge" over "The Others" -- but it would be a double misfortune for audiences to overlook a performance that boosts its movie from moderate to memorable.

Until its dopey coda, the film never all-out stumbles, but always exudes Pakula's trademark chilliness. [17 Dec 1993 Pg. 01.D]

There's, say, a 20-minute stretch where this slapstick works; there's also a subplot about N!Xau's lost children (cute, but shruggable), and a real pace-killer involving two rival soldiers. Uys' shots often fail to match, and the monotonic narration really grates; it drones on like a junior high science film on plant blight. [16 Apr 1990, p.9D]

To cut Noe a break, it does become evident that he has a viable narrative concept. Told backward, á la "Memento."

A few bits are filler, albeit funny filler. But those who would rather laugh than cry at weddings ( will say "I do'' to Bride. [20 Dec 1991, p.1D]

It's gratifying to see a comedy can have no redeeming social value yet be full of hearty laughs.

There isn't any kind of dance you can compare to Robert Duvall's latest as an actor/director, though a slo-mo minuet might come close.

An instant merit barometer of any farce this contrived is the creativity in and conviction of the exposition. It takes an empty half-hour just to get Goldberg into the convent, and even then the payoff is mild. [29 May 1992, p.5D]

As spent screen series go, Star Trek: Nemesis is even more suggestive of a 65th class reunion mixer where only eight surviving members show up -- and there's nothing to drink.

If you savor movies about sleazy plea bargains and other lawyer hardballing, Death has its moments. Otherwise the latest from director Barbet Shroder is only a movie of moments - much like his last: Single White Female. [21 Apr 1995, p.7D]

It's a case of actors and strong writing coming together, and it's uncommon in contemporary movies.

There's nothing very rockin' about seeing Gene Hackman give a rare indifferent performance as a Navy admiral trying to effect a rescue for which his hands are tied.

Though there are scenes in Always (both intimate and spectacular) I love, the film does seem a bit asking-for-it-weightless following an Indiana Jones sequel. Yet if, as I suspect, many reviewers elect to carve up Always, the film will pick up its devotees - now or down the road. [22 Dec. 1989, p.1D]

The final third is slower until a somewhat contrived finale that's still the funniest thing in the movie.

Cadillac Man has a shabby transmission, but a decent wax job - or maybe it's the other way around. In any event, it's a vaguely amiss near-miss, despite the inspired teaming of Robin Williams and Tim Robbins. [18 May 1990, p.4D]

It's fast, easy on the eyes, full of funny putdowns and cast well enough to have two memorable villains.

Wow, dudes. Pu-trid. (1989 February 20, p.4D)

Couldn't be murkier or less emotionally involving if it were "The Matrix 8," a natural observation because Keanu Reeves stars in both.

The pace is fast, many of the performers are attractive, and even the end-credits montage is zippier than usual.

Worth stumbling into on cable not all that far into next year.

Thanks to a disproportionately superior second hour, Fat Man and Little Boy improves on its historically valid, but commercially suicidal, title. It is not, however, even the screen's second best chronicle of atomic bomb development in wartime Los Alamos, N.M. [20 Oct 1989, p.4D]

Though Walt Disney's Peter Pan once implored us never to smile at a crocodile, the Irwins' own home movie is worth a couple of chuckles. Shivers, too.

Despite overlength, this acceptable outing has its moments, most of them in the second half. [17 Nov 1989]

McConaughey will never be an actor who lets you into his soul, but he's credible as a good ole boy.

The result is two or three cuts above genre standard.

Like it or not (it's hard to dislike), it's less a movie than a concept searching for one. [9 Dec 1988, p.6D]

There's nothing super about the movie, aside from a loopiness that affords it a certain guilty-pleasure cachet.

The beauty here is in the set-up, which offers Hugh Grant a role to match his star-making turn in "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

Kapur's stodgy style halts the momentum of young actors who have impressed in other movies.

Dull and unpleasant.

Though he's highly irresponsible, this Alfie is not quite a calculating heel, which makes the material go down easier while blunting the point.

Engrosses if it doesn't fully convince. [18 October 1996, p.1D]

Director Frank Sinatra (on screen, he's a medic) was probably going for Kurosawa-like profundity here. Unfortunately, the other actors include Clint Walker and Tommy Sands. [05 Apr 1991, p.3D]

The old seems old - but the result isn't unpleasant, and moviegoers just might go for it. [22 May 1992]

Some of James Wong Howe's photography is lovely, compensating for the rear-projected fish. [12 Jul 1996]

Great Balls of Fire! doesn't shake your nerves or rattle your brain; at times, though, it gets on your nerves. Even so, it's a just-tolerable junk-food chronicle of the brief era when Jerry Lee Lewis threatened to heist Elvis' ''King'' crown. [30 June 1989, p.5D]

By any reckoning, director Paul McGuigan and writer Mark Mills seem mighty ground down trying to buck these medieval odds.

Those who teach public speaking sometimes advocate telling your audience what you're going to tell them, then actually telling them, then telling them what you've told them. Sidewalks reproves this isn't a wise path for movies.

Moviegoers accustomed to Hollywood action probably won't find this contemplative adventure so appealing.

Linney is a match for Neeson, and the only thing that might keep Lithgow from getting a supporting-Oscar nomination is the brevity of the part.

At least the horror premise here has a hook - a house can spread its curse like a plague to adversely affect all who enter.

The director is Rowdy Herrington , whose penchant for the silly in Patrick Swayze's Road House will serve as able cross-reference. Among the capable actors wasted are Dennehy, Robert Loggia, Ossie Davis and Cuba Gooding Jr. from Boyz N the Hood. Soft-spoken Heard is supposedly an ace traveling salesman, but won't be doing Music Man revivals soon. [6 March 1992, p.4D]

Preposterous yet solidly entertaining.

Inventing the Abbotts would be a lot more fun were it a trashy Troy Donahue-Diane McBain vehicle ground out by Warner Bros. in 1960, the year this hormonally motivated high school-college romance mercifully concludes. [4 April 1997, p. 4D]

There's no real dazzle in Bedazzled.

Too langorously European for slasher fans, and too dopey for others, Vanishing 2 may fall between the cracks. See it to savor Bridges playing a heavy. [05 Feb 1993, p.5D]

Colorful. [1 December 1995, p.D13]

Director Richard Rush, who later made the classic The Stunt Man, overindulges the arty bike footage. But this is certainly an artifact of an age, photographed by Leslie (later Laszlo) Kovacs, who became one of Hollywood's best cinematographers. [02 Jan 2004, p.4E]

Bogdanovich, again adapting Larry McMurtry, can't find the tone to replace Show's wistful nostalgia; given our lack of nostalgia for 1984's Texas-oil bust, he opts for gallows-humor that's beyond him. [28 Sep 1990, p.9D]

Flies II improves as it progresses, especially in the surreal, fireswept climax. But overall, it seems like an afterthought. [16 Mar 1990, p.4D]

Don't blame an aptly chosen cast headed by cute newcomer Mason Gamble, but this film isn't for viewers old enough to fantasize about chaining Barney the dinosaur to a freeway U-Haul. Its mental-age cutoff point is maybe Pampers-plus-5; grown-ups are cautioned to bring along alternate entertainment - even a Walkman tape of old Dennis Day ballads. [25 June 1993, p.2D]

Large budget notwithstanding, the movie is such a blip on the year's radar screen that it's tempting just to go with it for the ride. But this time, the old MIB label stands for Milder Isn't Better.

Just going through the motions here (and mild ones at that), both Chan and the movie should have stayed at home.

Martin, Keaton and cinematographer William A. Fraker put this retro fluff over better than expected early on, but hour 2 is only for those who don't want their equilibriums rattled by surprises. [8 Dec 1995, p.1D]

We never get the scenes we really want to see, like the teacher-initiated slander trial or their snotty accuser's comeuppance. Instead, we get too many strained conversations. [21 Dec 1990, p.3D]

A year ago next week, Debra Messing's "The Wedding Date" arrived DOA. And now this. In terms of movies that matter, it looks as if the wedding-funeral motif will continue.

Sharon Stone rides into a Western dust hole bent on revenge. Gene Hackman, virtually reprising his Unforgiven heavy, gives this goofy genre-bender some authenticity. [17 Feb 1995, p.4D]

It's the kind of material that is either going to make your day or not.

Though the plot ends up taking some potentially compelling twists, its telling always feels manipulative.

It does survive its 40-minute test drive before turning into a lemon.

The time might be right for the Scary movies to quit on top, even though, alas, there are no term limits for sequels.

The chuckles here come from the leads' interplay, crying on each other's shoulders and cheering each other up.

Pro orchestrator that he is, Altman at least gives the illusion of a three-ring circus, but he's working third-rate material without a net. [23 Dec 1994, p.10D]

Visually impressive but woefully dumbed-down.

It's reduced to glorified refereeing of family squabbles discomfortingly magnified by his frequent use of close-ups.

There are only so many times you can see a slow-motion kickboxing scene or a figure sail off a skyscraper before you want to spend a nice, cozy evening with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Hollywood must still have some wheezy hacks capable of gleaning a few chuckles out of the hoary Convicts-Disguised-as-Priests movie premise. But to paraphrase Groucho Marx, Someone, please, get us a hack; David Mamet's We're No Angels script can't find them. [15 Dec 1989, p.6D]

Timecop's conversation piece is the scene in which Van Damme springs into the air amid hand-to-hand combat, finessing a perfect split atop his kitchen counter. Though definitely ooo-and-aaah stuff, it falls short of landing Timecop the 3-star review earned here by Van Damme's Hard Target. [16 Sep 1994, p.5D]

The one movie families search for every Christmas for an outing, the way "Something's Gotta Give" was last year and "Jerry Maguire" was in 1996.

Except for its muddier than necessary photography, there aren't any surprises, which probably won't matter to the target audience.

There are seven 13-year-old sitters in all, and Melanie Mayron (directing her first theatrical feature) doesn't always flub it when any two interact. But the film's nature and even its title peg it as an ensemble work, and Mayron's group footage looks like crude camcording of a ninth-grade picnic. [18 Aug 1995, p.11D]

With one of the year's busiest scripts, Little launches 76 zippy minutes.

Exhale and enjoy Keenen Ivory Wayans' culturally disreputable I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, a sendup of black street comedy that's equally crude, funny - and sentimental. [26 Jan 1989, p.2D]

Every performer puts vigor into an otherwise limp exercise, as if word were out that this would be the last comedy ever made about late-adolescent concerns.

On paper, this sounded like a winner. In reality? We have met the Enemy at the multiplex, and he's silly. [08 Feb 1991, p.4D]

The movie just gets by on heart and a conversation-stopping finale. [28 Jul 1995, p.5D]

It's no crime the movie has one or two endings too many, given that many thrillers of the past quarter-century have had the same. But Judd's latest is too harmless to be anything but a misdemeanor.

The movie is shrewd by giving the bulk of its piggish dialogue to Alexander, an actor incapable of projecting genuine cruelty on screen.

The new version has the zip of a 96-yard punt return and all the ingredients to inspire the celebratory crushing of empty beer cans.

Just about any golden age Hollywood hack could have made a zestier drama about one of the greatest rescue missions in U.S. military history.

All you get here for paid admission is a long and terrific avalanche scene -- state of the art, no question. Then it's over and ready to melt away, much like memories of this movie.

Even in the junky potboilers that John Travolta has persisted in making since his "Pulp Fiction" comeback (all 5,000 of them), you usually get the sense that he's acting in his bailiwick.

Director Richard Attenborough's Chaplin is catastrophic only partly because it tries to squeeze in topics, subtopics and more. [24 Dec 1992, p.3D]

An OK mood piece but story-hungry murder mystery that flubs its whodunit fundamentals.

A comedy without much zing but with an occasional zing-er that enables the film to pick up . . . well, if not nine yards, maybe an inch or two on the gridiron.

A mildly satirical but essentially sweet, benign comedy.

This come-down of a series capper is so arch and pompous amid its clanks and collisions that you can only snicker at the verbal wind that obscures the din of marauding machinery.

Clean up the language, and this little roach of a movie could play the bottom half of a double bill with Rowan and Martin's “The Maltese Bippy.” [26 March 1999, Life, p.9E]

There's nothing like dumbing down a movie grown-ups love so it can be "sold" to teens who aren't going to go anyway. The savvy flyer will proceed to the gate marked The "Aviator" instead.

There has been a need for a big-screen feature about firefighter heroics since Sept. 11, but as drama, Ladder 49 falls short of even the second rung.

Top-flight cast.

One thrilling shot of land's discovery - so good it's reprised at the end - hints at what might have been. But despite production values that advertise a first-class journey, 1492 is a long haul in steerage. [09 Oct 1992, p.8D]

Stilted film squanders an intriguing premise.

As a forum for its actors and for the big-screen directorial debut of multi-Emmy winner Gregory Hoblit, the film is up to the job.

Packed with digs at Bush-Cheney that even Democrats could find heavy-handed, the movie's lumbering approach reminds us that, OK, Emmerich did "Independence Day" -- but also 1998's "Godzilla," which began sinking back into the sea in week two.

Of all things, this movie has the same problem "Ghostbusters 2" had, which is this: You can't take bigger-than-life screen types and toss them into everyday, regular-folk situations.

Sometimes laughably incoherent.

Not too many R-rated revenge pics depend on "Uptown Girls'" Dakota Fanning for the stronger scenes. Yet once the 10-year-old star exits the picture, Man on Fire starts blowing a lot of smoke.

Though not much of a movie, Loaded probably will bring fleeting satisfaction to audiences who don't know Dean Jones from Spike Jones.

But Game really isn't a performer's movie. And the climactic contest (in which the Americans amazingly eked out a 1-0 win against England, considered by many to be the world's finest team at the time) is only serviceably staged.

Borderline ponderous in hour one, Wyatt Earp picks up once it reaches Dodge, thanks in part to drolly delivered guffaw lines from sunken-cheeked Dennis Quaid, who lost 43 pounds to play tubercular Doc Holliday. [24 Jun 1994, p.1D]

Director Iain Softley employs intriguing camera angles to heighten some of the suspense. It's too bad the movie goes over the top and falls apart in the last third.

Pleasant but not more than recycled jock piffle.

Somewhere within all of this there really is a homicide -- a hip-hop industry rub-out that may someday make this movie half of a passable DVD double feature with Nick Broomfield's documentary Biggie and Tupac.

You don't get the sense that too many enthusiasts are hanging up wanted posters for the ho-hum-ish U.S. Marshals. [6 March 1998, pg. 04.D]

This family entertainment hard sell lags far behind even "Dr. Dolittle 2."

Thornton is excellent and now seems genetically incapable of being anything less than great in any role he takes.

Untantalizingly reverent remake. [7 December 1998, p.4D]

The worst of '88's major Christmas pics has scientist Dan Aykroyd inadvertently beaming Kim Basinger to Earth in a bum experiment; the result is as tired as its title, though Basinger gives another smooth comic performance. [09 Jun 1989, p.3D]

Only the Lonely comes close enough to being halfway watchable that some may call it a Candy triumph. [24 May 1991, p.7D]

The sad truth is that Cadillac is still another of the amiably lazy efforts that Eastwood and his band of production regulars have been mass-producing for too many years. (And by now, it's decades.) [26 May 1989, p.4D]

Garnering a chuckle or two, but no more, are Donal Logue from "The Tao of Steve" (now there's a comedy) -- and, as a desperate magnet for both the slacker and "dude" demographics, Jon Heder from Napoleon Dynamite.

Still, there are some funny surprises, from skewering overdone Christmas decorations to casting Chris Klein as a creep.

Newsies' drag is its predictable script.... It's not a bad hook, but the treatment is uninspired, despite a fairly engaging turn by Bale. [08 Apr 1992]

Marvin leavened his sociopathy with a hint of little boy naivete or innocence -- Gibson is merely a frequently funny thug. {5 February 1999, Life, p. 11E]

The result isn't pretentious, but is the tongue-in-cheeking ever slight. The murders are treated as jokes, there's a horror-motif rock video, and Harry dodges enough bullets with Patricia Clarkson to arm Sands of Iwo Jima. [13 Jul 1988, p.1D]

The young Pigeon turks who no doubt think they've made a hip black comedy should be forced to see it in a theater of non-sycophants, where only an occasional exasperated exhale signifies the audience isn't dead yet. [25 Sept 1998]

At its worst, Toy Soldiers is just an action variation on the old Rooney- Garland musicals - you know, let's-get-a-buncha-kids-together-and-put-on-a-counterinsurgency. At its best, it's surprisingly bearable for a movie so easily typed. [26 Apr 1991, p.4D]

Designed to be a date movie, Rules could have stronger male appeal than many comedies of its ilk.

Spacey's brazen casting isn't as beyond the pale as it ought to be. In fact, it's hard to imagine this strange and only occasionally successful movie without him.

Knoxville is functional only when the movie needs a bravura comic performance, but The Ringer is easy enough to take.

This movie is a howler as well -- possibly even intentionally -- but if it is a black comedy, the joke is overextended by far too many arms and legs. [19 March 1999, Life, p. 13E]

Kafka is in glorious black and white, except for an extended color sequence near the end that recalls the visual transition in "The Wizard of Oz." The comparison is even more apropos: This middling pigmentary stunt has a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of mood, and too much put-on wizardry at its center. [4 Dec. 1991, p.5D]

Recalls the pumped-up energy of "Pump Up the Volume," as well as its casting prowess.

Though the movie is more mediocre than abysmal, Ryan's recently banged-up filmography (remember In the Cut) could use what every fighter needs at ringside: a good cut man to stop the bleeding.

For better or worse, but surely satisfying novelty needs, Jerry Bruckheimer's King Arthur is set much earlier than usual and against the crumbling Roman Empire, which may even (or not) be historically legitimate.

Michelle Pfeiffer has made a lot of memorable movies, including many that undeservedly failed to connect with the public. Never, until Dangerous Minds, has she had to flail her way through a movie beyond all redemption, including even the prehistoric "Grease 2". [11 Aug 1995, Pg.04.D]

Woody Allen is good for his funniest screen romp in a while, thanks to a few evenly spaced standout scenes of laugh-out-loud intensity.

Becomes exceedingly disgusting when it wallows in the psychological torture of a child, a no-no under any circumstances.

Overproduced and essentially charmless.

The movie is repetitious in some ways and superficial in others. But though Penn doesn't always seem to know where he's going, his movie doesn't altogether miss its destination. [15 Nov 1995, Pg.05.D]

Connery fares better as a medicine man here than he did in Medicine Man; but Beresford was a better director in Africa with 1991's Mister Johnson. [09 Sep 1994, p.8D]

Full of love, Spaceballs is full of laughs; after 13 years of screen disappointments, Brooks has almost delivered another Young Frankenstein. May the box office be with it. [24 Jun 1987, p.1D]

Tolerably tepid.

A blanket indictment like this has to be either satirically trenchant or a roundhouse punch to the gut. Tom Matthews' script takes a mushy middle ground, and the result seems less mad than just a bit addled or hacked off. [07Nov1997 Pg08.D]

'Burbs is a messy mix of Gremlins, Neighbors, Rear Window and Arsenic and Old Lace. [17 Feb 1989, p.6D]

Were some group to launch a rival to the Oscars called The Wackys, it could do worse than make crazed Crazy its first recipient.

So fluidly visual that only a deathbed finale can flag its pace, it's the first Panavision music video to run 21/4 hours, the monotony finally sapping its staying power. [23 Dec 1996 Pg.01.D]

Hunt is coldly clinical rather than emotionally resonant; so is the measured ensemble work of a super cast. [2 Mar 1990, Life, p.1D]

Why would a distributor suddenly yank an animated family film from its intended wide December opening until mid-January? Could it be that the advance word of mouth wasn't very good-winked?

The Chamber merits some respect for daring to be gloomy, for facing the capital punishment issue head-on and for the quality of Gene Hackman's performance. [11 October 1996, p.1D]

There will always be an audience for the escapist rewards this type of movie always dangles.

Mediocre terrorist melodrama turned even punier by real-life events, and that's before we scratch our heads at its lead-actor choice.

It's never enough of a grabber to keep the mind from wandering to the romance it apparently sparked.

The movie, though, is more of the same: another current comedy with want-to-see elements that fails to deliver the goods. [01 Jul 1992]

Two films in one: an intriguing child-disappearance mystery and an uncommonly affecting domestic drama realized by four terrific central performances.

Were the material not so thin, it would be even more fun than it is seeing Fiennes get to be loose on screen for once. He's pleasant, but we never feel this guy could get elected. Whenever he smiles, Fiennes brings to mind the title of Disney's deluxe new DVD: "The Complete Goofy."

Kline is one of the rare major actors not afraid to look like hell. And given his character's plight, his willingness to get physically unpleasant matches the emotion he brings to the part.