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]

Ultimately, it's just too long and redundant, too violent and unpleasant, too stupid and full of itself. But otherwise, lordy. [19 May 1989, p.4D]

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.

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.

What the movie can't quite get over, no matter how hard the filmmakers try, is the story's built-in limitations.

Compellingly watchable horror-spectacle.

A faithful, technically brilliant, but also dramatically malnourished film of J.G. Ballard's popular World War II novel. [08 Dec 1987]

At least the models' avarice and teasing provide a chuckle or two, as their dates line up panting at the door. Purely by default, their contribution makes this a slightly better working-woman romance than "The Wedding Planner."

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

Ron Howard's The Paper starts out as a seductively overstuffed edition with breezy stories, a diverting layout, color-packed supplements and a strong editorial viewpoint. Eventually, it becomes more like the Jumble Puzzle on page 64G. [18 March 1994, p.4D]

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]

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]

Crystal is such a panic - and normally uptight Patinkin is so attractively relaxed as a Spanish swordsman - that Bride's charms just can't be ignored. [25 Sept 1987]

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

A case of smart and talented people trying to jam a Cold War square into a Gulf War circle. You can feel the chafing, to say nothing of the burden this capably crafted shrug has taken on.

The only things missing from making this showdown worthy of a Western is Murrow's sheriff's badge, a dusty street and maybe a spittoon for McCarthy's infamous invectives.

Pocahontas catching us off-guard with an impromptu cartwheel isn't the knock-you-down brainstorm of Naomi Watts juggling for King Kong, but it's still deliciously inspired. Trouble is, the bit lasts two seconds, while the movie is a long "might have been" that's doomed to be buried in a flurry of strong late-year releases.

The film has its moments as a mood piece.

This grade-A sleeper sends you out with an unexpected smile. [25 Nov 1992]

The movies are so much fun that even detractors of Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu) and Raquel Welch (taking pratfalls as "Constance") readily admit that both carry more than their load here. [01 May 1998]

A movie just good enough to keep nurturing rooting interest as you watch it.

Thanks to fuzzy motivation, snicker-bait melodramatics and craters in logic, Calm quickly disintegrates into a might-have-been. [07 Apr 1989, p.6D]

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]

There's no real dazzle in Bedazzled.

Give Dozen a slight edge to the mournful "Yours, Mine & Ours" as a holiday season bottom-feeder, because Martin and Levy are better at slapstick than Dennis Quaid.

Irritates in the early going when many of the current-day interviews are so intentionally underlighted that we can't see what the group members look like.

His (Cameron) movie may not be perfect, but visually and viscerally, it pretty well is.

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

Mostly avoids being cloying but flirts with being precious. Yet Boyle is enough of a stylist to make it all passable. It's one of those films for which fans and detractors can see the others' viewpoint.

To crystallize its fundamental flaw, here's a movie about Manhattan that takes 75 minutes just to get to Manhattan - followed by another 15 that could just as easily have been shot (and possibly were) in some East Topeka alley. [31 July 1989, p.4D]

Modest yet pleasing musical pastiches that typified post-war Disney. [05 Jun 1998, p.6E]

Viscerally juicy....The movie is effectively cast. [25 July 1997, p.D2]

As far as acting goes, neither Olsen is ready for Euripides' Medea, yet each projects well enough in their shared big scene.

What we get is a tweaked variation on the litany of men-disguised-as-women comedies: "Some Like It Hot" and "Tootsie," just for starters. Obviously, this sassy farce sounds recycled and certainly appears to be in the coming attraction. Yet it's also funnier than expected in ways you wouldn't expect.

Paradis is a most striking subject, but the movie is a winner as well, starting with a story full of black-comic possibilities exploited fully by the great French director Patrice Leconte.

A timeless story. [07 Oct 2005, p.8E]

There is enough mirthful good will generated to justify even another sequel. May we suggest: "License to Shag," "You Only Shag Twice" or "Thundershag."

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]

Superstars usually avoid movies this spiritless, and it's tough to believe anyone could read this script and fail to realize the movie wouldn't end up going anywhere.

Let's just say that if you loved Dana Carvey in Opportunity Knocks, you'll thrill to Taking Care of Business. [17 Aug 1990]

This smashingly filmed and performed one-shot is (uh, so to speak) the year's best romantic comedy. [8 Dec 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]

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]

When it isn't funny, it's embarrassingly obvious - and it's almost never funny. [24 Dec 1990, p.1D]

Great cinema - and also a whopping good time. [19 September 1990, Life, p.1D]

This is intelligent grown-up entertainment on both a political and a humanistic level.

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

Bout No. 2 is among the best closed-quarters screen fights ever, as good as (and longer than) Frank Sinatra vs. Henry Silva in The Manchurian Candidate. And Hannah does more for an eyepatch than anyone since the late Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan.

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]

A minimally tolerable excuse to splice one or two perfunctory scenes between song cues.

Spotty and uneven, Wedding shouldn't even have the embarrassed guffaws it has, and it probably wouldn't were it not for a robust cast.

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.

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.

Even surly moviegoers may discover how pleasant it can be to actually like movie characters.

This is one movie in which you don't feel the long-ish running time, in part because there always seems to be a surprise (as well as a new street guerrilla) around every corner.

Fans of the stars should be satisfied. Those allergic to car chases, casual killings and the phrase "Oh, s - - -!" may suffer hives. [7 April 1995, p.3D]

Is this a comedy, action pic or sensitive Belushi-Harris romance? Director Rod Daniel never establishes a definitive tone, though he comes close in the scene where James Brown's I Feel Good hits the sound track after some canine fornication. You don't need a dog to smell this. [28 Apr 1989, p.4D]

All three actors give it their all, but Monaghan stands out with a sexy yet oddly down-to-earth variation on the Midwest girl gone wrong, thanks partly to a dark dysfunctional family secret.

A flop in its day despite France's rhapsodic reaction, but a movie I've always loved even before its knockout finale, which even detractors admit redeems a lot. [29 Jun 2007, p.10E]

With a half-dozen characters sorting out life's woes, the pacing is a couple of beats faster than languorous — just enough to sustain one's interest.

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. is half-a-good movie, three-quarters of a good debut, and an even better showcase for its live-wire lead performer. Even so, a protracted, then pat, wrap-up saps much of the goodwill reflected by these promising components. [23 Mar 1993, p.10D]

With enough plot to take in a mercy killing and massive train wreck, Cecil B. DeMille's extravaganza is often cited as the worst movie to have taken the Oscar, as if a lot of lackluster picks (from Cimarron to Crash) were half as entertaining. [07 Apr 2008, p.10A]

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]

Even though Batman's Tim Burton is a better filmmaker than Beatty will ever be, Dick Tracy is the movie - of all screen attempts - that most convinces me I'm watching a live-action cartoon. [14 Jun 1990]

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]

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

Even with Burns' smoothest performance yet as a lead, Confidence is on a level with Steven Soderbergh's blah remake of "Ocean's Eleven." But because no one is expecting much, it seems a little better.

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]

The warden implores the prisoners to relinquish their weapons, and out of the cells come flying a zillion blades of all sizes. In a Mel Brooks movie, this bit would be funny. Here, it sums up the chilling situation in five seconds.

Engrossing up to a point, the movie ends up being another mild disappointment from a filmmaker who last put it all together with Passion Fish -- seven years and four movies ago. [04 Jun 1999]

Neeson is earnest, but this is a Foster we haven't seen before, a transformation that extends to her appearance. There's a showy aspect to her performance that raises my eyebrows, but it's a pretty good show. Better, to be sure, than the movie. [14 Dec 1994, p.1D]

Michael Mann , directs with his standard prejudice toward the sheer physical. The result, almost musical, has only a couple recent movie precedents. [25 Sep 1992, p.1D]

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

Cameron Crowe's Singles is such an unabashed joy that some viewers may find themselves blinking. Can a ''twentysomething'' comedy so modestly conceived offer up captivating memories for days? It can, it does, and it figures. [18 Sept 1992, p.5D]

Filmed during that great early period of his career when he played heels better than anyone ever had, Kirk Douglas is the morally tortured 21st Precinct New York cop who lets unbridled hatred for street scum poison his marriage. [28 Oct 2005]

Even if a lot of adults have problems following this picture 100%, look for computer-savvy teen-agers to guarantee this sometimes original but too often derivative time-killer a shelf life.

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

One of those movies that goes for a jarringly new emotion every 30 seconds or so while the story's foundation is collapsing.

Valiant is voiced by Robots' Ewan McGregor, an actor apparently no longer in a "Trainspotting" mood.

Proves there are Holocaust stories still to be told.

This meaty Irish stew isn't arty or elliptical. It ought to connect with anyone who's survived sibling tension or romantic fence-sitting. [9 August 1995, Life, p.5D]

Action star Chow Yun-Fat's latest is as thin as the buzz cut he sports in Bulletproof Monk.

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]

Salvaged by its rally, Reloaded seems less tired than "X2," its current sequel rival. But since its creators have said it's only half of a movie, we won't really know until The Matrix Revolutions arrives Nov. 5 whether this chunk is fizzle or sizzle.

Thanks in part to McQueen, you can almost mention this in the same breath with director Don Siegel's best. [30 Mar 1990, p.3D]

Cult director Don Siegel bookended Dirty Harry with this esteemed toughie. [08 Mar 1996]

The movie is so silly I found myself snickering a couple of times, just before slumping down in my seat in mortified embarrassment.

Though there must be a dozen U.S. presidents who have never had a documentary made about them, the late Tupac Shakur could rate his own section in video stores, placed between "music" and "action."

One of the greatest mixes ever of gritty war drama and roll-on-the-floor hilarity. [29 Mar 2002, p.2A]

Usually, I'm as slow as the pacing of a movie in figuring out who's done it. If you can't solve this mystery with an hour to go (as I did), better call for a transfusion so a better type of blood will start flowing to your brain.

Life is a crock -- or something like it.

If Hairspray is clean and sweet, don't cry sellout. Taken as a pointed burlesque of a serious racial issue, this is what Spike Lee's School Daze should have been. It's also a PG (for "Pretty Darn Good'') simply on its own.

Bugsy is a gangster film around the edges, a '40s love song down the middle, and the year's breeziest live-actor movie through and through. [13 Dec 1991, p.1D]

A smooth mix of humanism and keen filmmaking instincts.

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]

Director Joel Schumacher, whose pastel color schemes vitalized St. Elmo's Fire, gives this a sensual, at times even erotic, sheen. And a few subplot issues - single motherhood, runaway kids, midlife dating - hint that at least someone involved with this project intended to go after bigger game. [31 Jul 1987, p.4D]

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 Crucible shrewdly saves its most potent ammo for the end, audience-friendly showmanship to further signify a bang-up movie. [27 Nov 1996]

An intimate three-hour epic adapted less from Frank's diary than the Broadway version. [06 Feb 2004, p.6E]

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.

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

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.

As in "Arachnophobia", director Frank Marshall can't decide whether he's making a thriller or a laff-it-up lark. [09 Jun 1995, Pg.03.D]

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]

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

This is a deceptively low-key movie with emotions visibly raw. Tomei (and Slater, too) give it the heart it sorely needs. [12 Feb 1993, p.8D]

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

Viewers who like clean storytelling may not be happy. Those who savor ironic wrap-ups will be.

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]

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.

Almost by himself, Jackson transforms the film's final chapter into a serviceable view -- faint praise, perhaps, but a crumb to savor, given what has come before. [11 June 1999, Life, p. 6E]

Lovely “memory'' film. [2 March 1990, Life, p.4D]

It's modest - but within its own framework, tough to beat. [14 Aug 1991, p.4D]

The rawest, most sustained screen portrayal of 20th century combat.

With a little sex, some mystery, a little sex, an appealing title and a little sex, France's Swimming Pool has what it takes to become an art house audience magnet, especially amid the heat of summer.

This is a movie that makes it exclusively on star power -- when it's making it at all. [22 Dec 1998, p.4D]

Even if audiences can get by the tasteless shock title, it's tough to figure who will ever watch this movie - even when it's on cable.

Disappointing. [6 Mar 1991, Life, p.9D]

Sexy, snotty, vulnerable and above all contentious, she's (Winslet) the catalyst in a movie that creates more man-woman electricity than any other movie this year.

This is a rare twisted crowd-pleaser for longtime fans as well as novices -- or for those that don't know an arachnid from an insect.

Philandering pilot Cliff Robertson overprotects sister Jane Fonda's virginity in a comedy as queasily dated as Ask Any Girl, Shirley MacLaine's 1959 office politics primer. It probably rates a few points for skewering the sexual double standard, and the era's New York locales are still as attractive as Mel Torme's title tune. [04 Oct 1996]

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.

A fresh-slant Vietnam picture in which lead Tom Cruise achieves indisputable greatness, July is otherwise a "more often than not'' achievement. But though it's as full of itself as Stone's watchably windy Talk Radio, the film's roundhouse punches propel you into remote Mike Tyson-land when they connect. [20 Dec 1989, p.1D]

The First Wives Club has a femme casting coup for the ages, and sometimes it only takes the right performers interacting to give sprightly fluff indispensable showmanship. [20 Sep 1996 Pg.01.D]

Begins sinking in the shallow end almost at once.

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

Recapturing magic proves elusive -- or maybe the late Darren McGavin was just irreplaceable -- in an OK follow-up to 1983's beloved A Christmas Story. [11 Aug 2006, p.15D]

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.

I.Q. is a limp period comedy essentially distinguished by two of its haircuts, with Meg Ryan sporting a pert peroxided trim and Walter Matthau decked out in a free-form Albert Einstein coiffure. Fortunately, in the latter case, Matthau is actually playing Albert Einstein. [22 Dec 1994, p.3D]

Colorful. [1 December 1995, p.D13]

Brosnan and Rush are a smooth fit, playing off each other like a snappy shirt and tie.

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.

Poison is better visually than verbally, though some dialogue in Episode 1 (a missing-kid parody called Hero) got hearty laughs from paying customers in my theater. What 'makes' this exercise, as far as it goes, is polished editing. [12 Apr 1991, p.2D]

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]

The two m's in 8MM could stand for "messy melodrama." [26 February 1999, Life, p.5E]

David Mamet handled such small-town whimsy better in 2000's "State and Main." Hackman could play his role in his sleep, but Romano IS asleep. Result: Welcome to Mildport, and that's being kind.

There's not a cliché that isn't nailed.

This movie has a little something, and part of it is subtext. Walken, who wants to use drug money to build hospitals, is embraced as a New York celebrity; this rings true. Plus, King reunites director Abel Ferrara and screenwriter Nicholas St. John of Fear City/Ms. .45 cultdom. [1 Oct 1990, p.5D]

Well, maybe some of the performances are more serviceable than all-out spirited, but this is certainly not true of the two crucial ones. As soldier Benedick and his spat-match Beatrice, director Branagh and Oscar-winner Thompson (sporting an attractive tan) are all anyone could wish for. If the classiest married couple in movies today can't make the Bard multiplex-accessible, it'll be time for Tom and Roseanne to suit up for Macbeth. [7 May 1993, p.4D]

Jumps at chance to be silly.

The new version has a few jolts, some occasionally effective smoke-and-mirrors photography and a lead (7th Heaven's Jessica Biel) who could teach a grad course on walking provocatively in blue jeans.

This is by far Kaufman's worst outing since becoming a major filmmaker more than a quarter-century ago, and the fact that his only other stinker from this period is 1993's "Rising Sun" means that maybe he ought to stay away from cop melodramas.

Mostly engrossing and always worthy of respect, it still hasn't quite the big-movie sweep to make it a tell-the-world experience. [8 Sept 1993, p.1D]

When have we seen the same performer playing both parts in a sexual situation? It happens here, not once but twice.

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

The movie isn't without style, but the material can't remotely sustain 100 minutes.

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

A movie that rudely flings feces at the breakfast table isn't for everyone.

There's a familiar feeling to the movie even beyond its twinkle-eyed martial arts melees.

The three-hour dramatics are occasionally stilted, but here's the real non-CGI deal. [01 Feb 2008, p.6D]

A Johnny Cash biopic equally packed with music and frustrated love, Walk the Line goes from compelling to enthralling.

As an artsy but minimally bohemian type, Russo maintains her dignity, an extraordinary accomplishment.

The plunk-ing of a rap/disco soundtrack onto a movie about debtors' prisons and 18th century British highwaymen?

Oliver Stone's Nixon humanizes a reviled but respected subject for over three hours - dynamically at times, but finally so solemnly that it becomes a grind-you-down dirge. The maker of Natural Born Killers actually concludes with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Shenandoah - without irony. [20 Dec 1995, p.1D]

Though not exactly dynamic, the movie offers insights into a specific culture. Ashley Rowe's photography is exquisite, and Driver has never been better. [14 Aug 1998]

Tim Robbins plays the working dad, and the movie misses him once he bails out early.

Emma is the peak of the recent Austen pack and a star-maker, too -- an antidote to a summer in which even good movies have subordinated writing and characters to special effects. [02 Aug 1996, Pg.01.D]

Thankfully, this time Eastwood flirts (and ogles) but stops just short of going completely over the top. [19 March 1999, Life, p.13E]

Truth be told, the movie isn't among the worst sequels of this summer.

One would be hard-pressed to name another submarine movie that lingers so little in the memory two days after seeing it.

The result is far from perfect, but to its many merits, add timing. You never get a movie with this kind of story in mid-August.

Consistently fun, and even sporadically powerful. [08 Dec 1989, p.3D]

An equitably rude comedy about abortion, brazen by definition but also fairly droll. It's probably too schematic to reward more than a single viewing, but as a provocative one-time surprise it may become a specialized sleeper. [13 December 1996, p.4D]