Mike Clark

Writer/director Julie Dash pours on sounds, music and costuming for a tone more impressionistic than dramatic - and more somnambulant than either. She might have gotten away with it for 80 minutes, but merciless Dust closes in on the two-hour mark, a structural shambles in the too-earnest American Playhouse tradition. [1 April 1992, p.6D]

Even when the movie works, it's so much like having Daffy Duck assault your face that you want to buy a box set of elevator music for the calming drive home.

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]

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

I don't mind that Nights is a potty-mouth benchmark; crude verbiage is appropriate to the leads, as well as the film's subject matter. This is, however, an amazingly mean two hours. Even the funniest gag involves Murphy's fatal shooting of three men. [17 Nov 1989, p.6D]

Hoffman stores the plane fuel in his house and even enjoys sniffing it. The movie might be a lot more fun as a suspense pic were he to take on a roommate who chained-smoked.

The movie falls short of achieving its apparent goal: being the "Raging Bull" of the art world.

Young directed under his preferred nom de plume (Bernard Shakey), and you'll either want to see this or you won't. Will it influence your decision to add that Devo - yes, Devo - plays nuclear power workers who glow? [01 Sep 1995, p.12D]

The problem is the letdown you feel when these glorious morsels (film clips and soundtrack) end, and it's back to three morose schlumps.

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]

Hong Kong's China-born cult director makes his U.S. debut here, serving up so many briskly staged and edited action scenes that you'll wager Sam Peckinpah somehow figured in his gene pool. Forget grenades and assault weapons (though they're here, too); Target deals in bows and arrows, a serpent booby-trap and even one portly hero (Wilford Brimley) on horseback. All this and Brimley's Cajun accent, too. [20 Aug 1993, 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.

Waterlogged trip to nowhere. [13 February 1998, p. 3D]

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

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.

Thing's opening hour is fast-paced, though not fast enough to obscure the reality that "American Graffiti" and "Diner" had sharper writing and certainly more psychological depth. [04 Oct 1996, Pg.01.D]

This Lynch-ian knockoff is moodily monotonal, but the sameness is wearying.

You keep waiting for there to be more, but there never is -- other than the fact that it all gets gorier and uglier as the dyspeptic look on Jones' face progresses from a four- to a six-a-day scotch-and-peppermint schnapps hangover.

Thunderheart, which concerns tragic in-fighting between factions of the Oglala Sioux, lands with a sound that duplicates the name of the Indian chief who harassed Howdy Doody in less ethnically sensitive times. Thunderthud. The movie is so dramatically stillborn that it may be unfair to single out Val Kilmer, but that is Kilmer's name atop an acting lineup that includes Sam Shepard, Fred Ward and Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves). [3 Apr 1992, p.8D]

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

But this isn't Diceman's feat of clay. Instead, Ford Fairlane runs fairly well on high-octane silliness. [11 Jul 1990, p.4D]

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]

A Casablanca-influenced love story set against a French Resistance backdrop in Martinique. [07 Nov 2003]

David Lean's classic Cliffs Notes telescoping of Charles Dickens took Oscars for Guy Green's black-and-white photography and John Bryan's art direction, and you know right off that this is going to be a visual stunner as you watch fleeing prisoner Magwitch (Finlay Currie) dart across Green's spookily lit marshes. [22 Jan 1999]

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

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.

This dispensable comedy has a few unexpectedly loopy surprises, including an outlandishly gay detective (played by versatile actor William Fichtner), who loves the Ice Capades but loathes insurance fraud.

You can't accuse this film of bogging down in cheap psychology, yet you come out dissatisfied and without a clue about what made this person tick.

Under Capricorn is still stigmatized by its terrible reviews and whopping financial losses, but with one of Ingrid Bergman's best performances, a grabber setting (1831 Sydney) and Technicolor cinematography by the era's greatest color specialist (The Red Shoes' Jack Cardiff), a lot of current movies should be as lacking. [27 Jun 2003]

Despite implied fidelity, we might as well be watching William Shakespeare's The Cable Guy. Yet the film's skewed stylistic flourishes capture enough of the original's spirit to provoke more respect than rejection. [01Nov1996, Pg. 01.D]

Bedroom succeeds with performances that get some of their power from imaginative casting.

A summer crowd-pleaser worthy of its wind.

This also is the rare combat movie that deals substantially with mourning widows on the home front.

A 2-hour classic wrongfully stretched into three.

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

Whatever reason Denzel Washington may have had for deigning to grace a melodrama as scummy as Virtuosity, the actor has wound up with something that is even worse than 1991's Ricochet in his otherwise creditable filmography. [4 Aug 1995, p.4D]

If it isn't flawless, neither is "Fantasia"... Here's a live-action/animated marvel with no screen antecedent; “Chinatown” may actually come closest. [22 June 1988]

The movie establishes good will (or even great will) in the initial scenes because it's so gorgeous, but the rest is such a slog.

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]

The satire is surprisingly tepid.

Tolerably tepid.

The tone is consistent, but consistently uneventful. [06 May 1994]

Its interpersonal dynamics are constructed with care to equal chef Lung's elaborate concoctions. [19 Aug 1994]

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.

Oft-touted as director Walter Hill's best film, this is probably tops of umpteen Westerns about the James-Younger-Miller outlaw clans. [24 Feb 1995, p.14D]

Despite an 87-minute running time, the movie takes a long time to get rolling, and even fellow Leigh enthusiasts may wonder whether the payoff is worth it, though reaction could well divide along sexual lines. [7 Aug 1997, p.3D]

Can't stars attract better scripts than this?

Campion's script is very well received, but the film finally makes it on cinematics: bleakly beautiful photography, haunting score, and good acting. [12 Nov 1993]

This sleeper never caught on with the masses but became a cult movie after making a lot of the year's 10-best lists. [19 Sept 1997, p.13D]

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

MTV addicts may want to check out Shore, whose sound effects (akin to electrical interference) amuse for maybe five minutes. Otherwise, Encino Man is even worse than Medicine Man, which came from the same studio. In a just society, both of them would go the way of Atlantis Man. [22 May 1992, p.12D]

The movie is so fun that it wouldn't need the mystery to be top-notch entertainment.

Kevin Smith shows up briefly as a lab technician in the miserable Daredevil, and that's a pity. This is a movie that desperately needs the presence of Smith's trademark sidekicks Jay and Silent Bob, with Smith as Bob, ragging worse than ever on his old pal Ben Affleck.

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]

It's all very slight and only sporadically amusing, and it makes Allen's "Celebrity" from last year look even more underrated than it already is.

Shyamalan's style is so exaggerated, with its long pauses and exacting rhythms of sound- vs.- silence, that it easily can engender eye-rolling and snickers.

Close your eyes during this miserable romantic comedy.

The movie has more on its mind than its delicate frame can handle, but Finney remains an actor of importance and prodigious charm. [27 Dec 1994]

A race-car drama full of flashy but empty images and a soundtrack that makes you feel as if you're being shaken on a motel rumblebed.

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

A movie this diminutive can be easily oversold, but we might see it on some year-end best lists. It eats at you, just like renewed love.

SpongeBob barely rates as OK when compared with "The Incredibles."

A worthy companion to Towne's underrated 1982 portrait of female runners (Personal Best), Limits may face a similar challenge attracting mass moviegoers, which was certainly the case of the barely released Prefontaine. [11 Sep 1998]

But purely as an exercise in style, this movie has its moments.

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

Welcome to the summer's first pleasant surprise. [20 July 1990, p.1D]

At least this movie has flashes of humor, thought nearly all come courtesy of Newman. [12 February 1999, Life, p.8E]

Spielberg's must-see is so wondrous at depicting things that go crunch in the night that its human characterizations and pokey exposition seem astonishingly halfhearted… On a "people" level, Park isn't “Jaws,” but on a jolt level - oh, yes, it is. [11 June 1993, Life, p.1D]

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

Clumsy, miscast thriller.

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.

At its best, hard-hitting grown-up cinema (rare these days) and a movie blessed with a villain (Big Tobacco) for which all gloves can be removed and heaved into the next county.

Though Robocop is too well-crafted to be entirely loathsome, it's at best an amoral goof. Yet like the comparably silly Lethal Weapon, it cynically pushes all the right action-audience buttons. Better duck - here comes a monster hit. [17 Jul 1987]

Underdrawn and overheated, Cool World will leave you cold. [13 Jul 1992]

You still get Tim Curry in drag, young Susan Sarandon in her skimpies and an enthusiastic score. [16 Nov 1990, p.3D]

Spike Lee deserved a vacation after putting himself through the grueling emotions of Clockers, but Girl 6 is too flimsy to excuse even as cinematic R&R. Frenetic but lazily conceived, it's like one of those puny low-budget toss-offs Brian De Palma used to spring on us when he thought nobody was looking. [22 Mar 1996, p.4D]

co-directors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro know their craft; of the films here, only Othello has a more trenchant visual style. [30 Apr 1992]

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

It's fairly solid fun, though, without breaking any new ground, just as January's remake of "Assault on Precinct 13" was.

This critical smash was graphic, yet laced with macabre humor. [30 Oct 2007, p.2D]

It saves its clunkiest scene for the finale. No fair telling, but the key words are "political," "propaganda," "outdoors" and "orphans."

Preposterous to the extreme.

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

This unbearable cross-generational fantasy, with Coreys Haim and Feldman, has one bit that sums up its overall ineptitude. It's a romantic interlude featuring the great Sinatra standard Young at Heart; instead of the 1954 hit version on Capitol, the filmmakers use the 1962 Reprise remake - photographed on a revolving turntable (and with the wrong label) as a 78! A 78 in the era of Gene Pitney? - what preschool did the filmmakers graduate from, anyway? [8 Sept 1989, p.3D]

Though admittedly a minor delight, this is the only movie whose end credits identify the film's grip, then credit Martha Raye for Poli-grip, then define ''grip'' for millions who want to know just what a grip does. For such small favors, Gun 21/2 has the smell of box office. [28 June 1991, p.5D]

Director Richard Rush's unique moviemaking saga is one of the consummate screen treats of its day, though its offbeat subject matter and tone caused it some problems. [23 Nov 2001, p.8E]

At its weakest, Miss Firecracker seems as calculated as Henley's co-scripted True Stories; laughs, though, are a great equalizer. Director Thomas Schlamme's outdoor location work gives an extra boost in the final (and superior) third - enough to give this oddity snap, crackle and pop, if not quite the ultimate ka-bam. [28 Apr 1989, p.4D]

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

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]

With danger in every woods, elevator and hospital corridor, Joel Schumacher's by-rote direction will likely give audiences what they want: slick, superficial escapism with casting punch - ironically, virtues associated with the current flop I Love Trouble. To its credit, The Client moves faster and adds suspense, but ultimately seems as negligible. [20 July 1994, p.1D]

Coy to a fault, the movie collapses under its own weight with 90 minutes to go, despite Robby Muller's impressive black-and-white photography, which puts the film on a higher artistic plane than other equally unbearable movies. [16 May 1996, Pg.06.D]

Even so, the film's incest theme seems more symbolic than literal in what is, at heart, a comedy about escaping the womb; throwaway gags are wicked enough throughout to keep the taboo plot twist from knocking this hit-and-miss black comedy off the track. [26 Jul 1994 Pg. 08.D]

Marc Rocco directs with a little more passion than one might expect from the perpetrator of 1989's dreadful Dream a Little Dream. Yet the ultimate result - respectable, but no big deal - is an odd mix of the sick and the slick. [11 Sep 1992, p.8D]

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.

The best news the G rating has had since the ratings system was instituted in 1968.

If you can't find a more scintillating brand of dirty to enjoy during your own nights (Helena or Hoboken), you're not trying very hard.

With tangy Fisher equaling the leads in a sometimes scene-stealing role as Moore's mom, the actors emerge unscathed. Brosnan's part, in fact, is among the actor's most convincing non-Bond characters.

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]