Mike Clark

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]