Mike Clark

Though Maclean's bedrock prose is perfection in print, the film may be another case (like actor Redford's "The Great Gatsby") in which text defies translation. [09 Oct 1992]

Hip-hoppish Honey is in the harmlessly junky "let's put on a show" tradition of "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," minus electricity but with a budget for supporting-cast navel rings that 1984's break-dance sequel certainly didn't have.

The movie wouldn't be imaginable without its commanding star. Nicholson is in virtually every scene underplaying to great effect

Movies of this genre don't often engage fresh concepts, but you have to give Wong major points for dreaming up "tan-line flambé."

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]

Without making a big deal of it, this film says a lot about assimilation and the ability to change. [05 Feb 1992, p.5D]

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

The most un-MGM movie that the studio ever made gave Dracula director Tod Browning the chance to tell a story that horrified audiences. [13 Aug 2004, p.4E]

Overproduced and essentially charmless.

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]

It sounds like fun, but this quasi-continuation of the Nightmare on Elm Street series is a half-hour too long, running 112 minutes when less than 90 would suffice. [14 Oct 1994, p.4D]

The picture is solidly crafted, performed to the hilt and full of humor.

If the script were half as witty as its production design and Danny Elfman's score, the film might be a classic; instead, it recalls the “Beetlejuice” half that doesn't have Keaton. [7 Dec 1990, Life, p.4D]

This time, Lee fails to do the right thing, but he may have come up with a cult film. And compared to too much of this summer's sludge, that's almost mo' better enough. [03 Aug 1990]

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.

Gives Dennis Quaid one of his best screen showcases.

Sky High gets Kurt Russell back to his retro Disney roots, and he's still in good enough shape at age 54 to wear a supernatural hunk's cape.

This is 90 minutes of gags of the lowest order, yet Poirier occasionally injects them with more energy than anything in "Heartbreakers."

What works in a quirky foreign film can look silly with expansive Hollywood treatment. Crowe is smart enough to know this, so it's baffling he chose Vanilla over richer cinematic tastes.

So with its smart writing delivered by an in-synch quartet, savor Duplicity as the ideal spring gift.

Destined to be on DVD by the time 2004 reaches the 50-yard line, Ten is more stale than it is ungodly.

Victor Mature became a star in the 1940 original, which was simply called One Million, B.C. Happy New Year, Vic, but nothing in your version can compete with a blond Raquel Welch -- she wearing the latest '60s open-navel cavewoman garb here [27 Dec 1996, p.3D]

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]

Produced by HBO but too good not to play theaters, this soon-to-be minor classic is the best movie about society's untrendiest since "Ghost World" exactly two years ago.

It's hard to recall the last movie that has left such an emotionally searing question dangling in the mind: "What if ... ?"

Rafael Sabatini's 17th-century surgeon goes from slave to swashbuckler, Michael Curtiz directs to Erich Wolfgang Korngold music, and a major studio takes an unprecedented gamble on two unknowns to star: Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. [15 Apr 2005]

More than anything, The Grifters isn't dramatically shot; black-and-white would have made a huge difference. [5 Dec 1990]

If you're going because you want to see an entertaining horror movie, good luck.

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 Paramount release doubles the insult because it rips off the title of one of the studio's best-remembered Jerry Lewis comedies.

Both leads and young Harris make Crooklyn an exasperating might-have-been, especially given the movie's surprisingly affecting wrap-up. There's no dearth of human feeling here, but a dearth of craft. [13 May 1994, p.8D]

Do yourself a favor and resist The Italian Job, a lazy and in-name-only remake of 1969's G-rated Michael Caine heist pic.

The movie, which ends on an unexpected note of wistful humor, also gleans gentle and non-derisive chuckles out of Fin's physical state.

Cold and cut to the bone, the film is a primer in screen virtuosity. Standard action film clichés, like a face getting hit with a chair, get turned inside out; both film and actors somehow manage to seem realistic and stylized at the same time. [21 Sept 1990, Life, p.6D]

An intimate portrait of the Bringing It All Back Home Bob Dylan during his final acoustic tour through England, it hits with escalating emotional force as the decades go by, capturing a fleeting musical period as brilliantly as any movie ever has. [07 Jan 2000]

The filmmakers, who include the hitherto ace action director Jan De Bont ("Speed", "Twister"), have neither hearts nor minds in gear. [13Jun1997 Pg.04.D]

Though some have taken this '94 film fest fave fairly straight, it strikes me as eerily arch and quite the sly hoot as it connects maybe two-thirds of the time. [07 Mar 1995, p.4D]

The most provocative miscarried-justice movie ever. [26 Aug 1988]

A contrived, unpleasant and very drawn-out affair.

Writer-director Andre Techine, who's been on a recent roll with Wild Reeds and Ma Saison Preferee (also with Deneuve and Auteuil), is in even better form here. [23 Dec 1996]

Vincente Minnelli and Pat Boone didn't work together every day, which is only one of the factors here to titillate fanciers of oddball cinema. There's also a dreadful but thoroughly offbeat script (from George Axelrod's play) about a male screenwriter who's shot by a jealous husband, only to be reincarnated as a woman. [07 May 1999]

Breakdown exploits so many traditional thriller situations that any suspense fan vet can easily devote a hand to counting off the predecessors it plunders. [02May1997 Pg 12.D]

Sci- fi classic. [20 Dec 1991, p.3D]

Eventually evolves into a murder mystery that isn't very compelling.

Dealing tangentially with Las Vegas gambling's formative years (lots of matte work here of mountains in the desert), this crackling melodrama was inspired by Bugsy Siegel's relationship with Virginia Hill. [17 Jul 2005]

Donen (previously Hepburn's director in Funny Face and Charade) gets everything out of a brainstorm romantic teaming that didn't - and doesn't - spring automatically to mind. [05 Nov 1993, p.3D]

Director Taylor Hackford is so enthusiastic reminiscing on an alternate soundtrack that he almost convinces you that this diminutive cult movie is better than it is. [27 Dec 1996]

Dickerson's direction seems more assured as Juice progresses, but by then, the film has become less a dilemma movie than a melodramatically conventional revenge piece. [17 Jan 1992, p.4D]

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]

With gorgeous Australian outback photography and minimal dialogue co-defining it as "pure" cinema, Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece was once designated by Premiere magazine as its "most wanted" movie on video. [04 Apr 1997, p.3D]

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.

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.

Though arguably not to the film's overall advantage, physical splendor is the overwhelming factor in this unintimidating film of John le Carre's best seller. [19 Dec 1990, p.4D]

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.

Now that we no longer expect the world from any of them, the movie is an amusing 88-minute trifle with Beatty in a gigolo mustache and Nicholson with Art Garfunkel curls. [05 Jun 1998]

Compelling and provocative -- though not memorable.

Occasionally very funny, the picture tends to coast on its cosmetics. A first-rate script might have made it a twisted masterpiece.

Flowers is smartly observational -- but a little screen heat would be worth a bouquet.

Neither the actors nor their characters engender much affection.

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]

Rodman is more fun to watch here than either co-star, given his array of earrings and nose rings, plus hair that changes color more frequently than the first lady changes her do.

The best fictional movie about skiing. [27 Nov 2009, p.13D]

Despite a cast and production that seem to promise one of the year's first movies of any note, Cool never translates its promo-photo flashiness into authenticity on screen.

None of this is erotic, but it is pretty silly. Silly enough to make this the low point of the movie year so far. [30 Apr 1990, p.1D]

Even the special effects alone aren't worth the price of admission.

Sporadically amusing but sometimes slogging.

Every movie year has one, and now it's Britain's Mike Leigh who's conjured up the professional reviewer's worst nightmare: the picture so original, well-acted and witty that it must be given its ample due - despite being heavy on components guaranteed to bum out all but the most frequent moviegoers. [23 Dec. 1993, p.5D]

The skiing scenes are lively enough, and one avalanche scene is even better - but cliches, overlength and jarring lapses in continuity mean that Barbra Streisand needn't spearhead a boycott of this Aspen. It can clear theaters all by itself. [25 Jan 1993, p.2D]

There is cinematic art, and there's a good evening out; this is the latter. [15 Mar 1991]

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]

Who, though, would assume rambunctious humor would be served up as well? Dickens meets the Beverly Hillbillies, and the movie is handsome, too. [10 May 1996, 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]

In a possible breakthrough role, Law would seem to be the big winner.

This is a movie to be knocked, chewed and gummed, but not dismissed. It's the first 2001 release I've rushed to see twice.

Like too many others, I resisted seeing (or at least, rushing out to) this film, fully expecting a stolid, respectable bummer; what I found, without the filmmakers ever having cheapened the material, is one of 1989's most entertaining movies. There is even, I swear, a barroom brawl that's out (and worthy) of John Ford. [3 Jan 1990, p.4D]

Uneven but also unflaggingly lively, the movie presents F. Murray Abraham as a corseted and bewigged Stalin in expository bits whose broadness recalls the Billy Wilder-scripted Soviet satires ("Ninotchka" and "One, Two, Three") without being as funny. [16 May 1997, Pg.02.D]

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

Once you're onto its wavelength (it doesn't take long), Linklater's passing parade starts to ring true. [15 Aug. 1991, p. 5D]

The film never makes total sense, but at its best (the first half-hour), it comes closer to solidly junky titillation than the hapless Final Analysis. [20 Mar 1992, Life, p.1D]

Structured loosely enough to work in all the excrement and incest jokes necessary to seem hip these days.

This giggle does for dog shows what Rob Reiner's "This Is Spinal Tap" (in which Guest plays Nigel Tufnel) did for heavy metal.

Secret isn't the usual romp, but it's Almodovar's most committed work in years. [7 Mar 1996]

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]

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]

You feel some of the strain in this immaculately shot, designed and costumed farce, but it's fast and the cast is lively, even though a lost-looking Broderick rarely gets to shoot his patented bewildered look.

Thompson has had the good sense and sensitivity to get Austen right, while letting Winslet steal the show.

The result is almost enough to make an audience levitate.

Robert Altman's first movie after M*A*S*H introduced Shelley Duvall and was among the director's personal favorites. All kinds of icons are satirically skewered, from Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz to Steve McQueen's sweater-clad Bullitt character. [04 Jan 2008, p.11D]

Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia labors ambitiously on two socially conscious fronts - relating the story of an AIDS-afflicted lawyer while exploring a much broader issue. Unlike almost any other Demme movie - it's a film where you feel the gears struggling to mesh. [22 Dec 1993, p.1D]

Though this is a tough movie to dislike, it plays more like a second draft than a final product.

Conceived as froth with an edge and a smash on both counts. [11 May 2007, p.4D]

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

Some of the movie's best scenes -- knockouts, in fact -- involve musical interludes.

The film is funnier off court than sizzling on it, the preferred balance in a broad farce that's only in it for the laughs. Irrelevant to real life but performed with enough gusto to justify somebody's 91 minutes, it at least allows the actors to hold their heads up. Not with pride, but not with shame, either. [19 Apr 1996]

Set in mid-1944 France, it's a contest of wills between a Resistance railway inspector and a smooth Nazi general (Quiz Show's Paul Scofield) over purloined French art treasures. Filmed on location, often in inhumanly cold weather, the film eschewed the use of railcar models - running real trains into each other and off the track when the script frequently calls for it. [30 Sep 1994, p.3D]

Pearson's scenes with Garfield are among the most supercharged ever. [28 May 2004, p.6E]

Fanning and Russell make this watchable family entertainment, if not necessarily at today's prices.

Of all unlikely possibilities, the team has finally made a movie that, for them, is on the tepid side.

Pleasant but not more than recycled jock piffle.

Naked Lunch is so well-acted and so amusingly warped that it's a shoo-in to become a cult movie. [30 Dec 1991]

Spaced Invaders (grave emphasis on the first ''d'') is the kind of kids' piffle Touchstone/ Disney turns out in its sleep once or twice a year. This time, slumber segues into a heavy coma, halfway into 102 criminally overlong minutes. [01 May 1990, p.4D]

Double the Van Damme equals double the dopiness in the August dog-days exploitation pic Double Impact. And though it falls somewhat short of being double the pleasure/double the fun, the film is made for one of those round-the-clock theaters with Doublemint gum stuck to the floor. [09 Aug 1991, p.5D]

Often a cinematic marvel and often the year's most pungent movie medicine, Beloved always feels as if it's carrying the world's weight, and maybe it is. [16 October 1998, p. 7E]

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]

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]

Lumet (who also wrote the script) seems to feed on lousy cop-precinct furniture, political showboating and confrontations between street-savvy adversaries played by synergic actors. [16May1997 Pg.01.D]

The film doesn't preach against the government in Rock's behalf, but does sympathize with her plight - a genuinely loving mother and former child-abuse victim who probably is unable to live up to her maternal aspirations. [09 Dec 1994, p.8D]

A good little movie dominated by a great central performance that's likely to endure. [30 Jan 1998, p.D2]

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

Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, with a script by playwright David Rabe, is the most overwrought (and likely to be overrated) Vietnam movie since The Deer Hunter. Or maybe since Robert Altman's film of Rabe's Streamers. Or maybe (why split hairs?) ever. [18 Aug 1989, p.4D]

Tepidly tolerable to under-8s. [15 July 1994, p.5D]

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

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

The longer the movie drones on, the queasier it gets. [6 June 1997, Life, p.3D]

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]

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

It'll never be fast food, which is probably both its virtue and limitation. [26 June 2009, p.12D]

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]

Too lingeringly creepy to ignore. [23 Oct 1992]

Violence is in the spirit of the hardest-hitting film noir offerings from the '50s, but far more explicit. It's also in the spirit of the Western.

You do get conscientious Hanks' miscast floundering (it's not pretty); Bruce Willis' lazy performance (it's beyond miscasting) as a hack journalist; showoff camera pyrotechnics; the thudding of dialogue that was hysterically funny in the book; an appallingly wrongheaded ending (even to non-readers); and the most numbingly needless and stupid off-screen narration yet. [21 Dec 1990, p.1D]

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

Unfaithful doesn't push the melodrama the way "Attraction" did, but it lingers in the mind as much.

A movie that is easily likable.

A sentimental comedy about mental illness (complete with a sitcom family), wobbly Bob offers further evidence that Disney itself may be afflicted with encroaching schizophrenia. [17 May 1991]

Though there's something mildly disarming about a movie this unpretentious, a few more like it might end up turning The Rock into a TV actor.

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]

Geronimo: An American Legend offers both sides of the protracted battle between the U.S. Army and Chiricahua Apaches in 1885-86, which means that the film's most abject villains are Jason Patric's vacant performance and Matt Damon's droning voice-over. [10 Dec 1993, p.9D]

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

The movie Weaver has to carry has so many nagging imperfections that Academy Award attention looks like a long shot.

Writer/director Frank LaLoggia's chiller about the dark underbelly of an idyllic small town is so effectively heartfelt yet also creepy that it's surprising he couldn't parlay it into more assignments.

Anyone who sees this movie is going to be 20 minutes ahead of it, though there won't be that many after Weekend 1. With domestic disturbances, someone calls the cops. With this DOA, someone had better call the coroner.

The picture is all Lawrence and Zahn, whose dynamics get something going, though not enough (please!) to spark a buddy sequel.

Overall, this Dead is zippier than 1995's retake on "Village of the Damned" and somewhat less junky than the recent remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Geared to 16-year-olds who can't name the governor of their state, this movie ought to be closed down by the health department.

The movie itself IS dull, however. The characters never engage our interest, and the relentless violence grows monotonous.

Lean, mean and mordant black comedy.

Another 48 HRS. doesn't offer a whole lot beyond Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, and Walter Hill's action-scene flair, but are you telling me the first 48 HRS. did? Bottom line: Eddie-Nick enthusiasts and Paramount accountants won't cry 96 tears. [8 Jun 1990, p.1D]

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

Truth is, Idaho is nothing but set pieces; tossed into a mix whose meaning is almost certainly private. [27 Sept 1991]

Humphrey Bogart went out with one of the best swan songs a major star ever had in this anti-boxing screed, from a novel by On the Waterfront scripter Budd Schulberg. [12 Jul 2004]

The plan in A Simple Plan grows exponentially complex once the first dollar is purloined, an act that makes this unpretentious parable one of the season's better 'what's-going-to-happen-next?' movies.

The character played by lead Paul Giamatti is a dead-on Shyamalan protagonist: emotionally distanced and something of a train wreck.

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

White Palace, ultimately conventional, doesn't play like any spring chicken, either. [19 Oct 1990, p.4D]

Potty humor to spare. [26 July 1996, p. D4]

Older youngsters not threatened by PG-13 levels of intensity might pester Mom and Dad to let them see this cinematic fluff-head. For everyone else, it simply is what it is -- which, despite a budget that could feed Star Wars' Jabba the Hutt for life, isn't very much. [07Feb1997 Pg 04.D]

Hard Candy, a highly original psychological thriller/revenge fantasy, can be bitterly hard to take and uncomfortably intense, but it's well worth consuming.

Remarkably, the plot has much in common with "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," yet that bundle of fun has enough vision to make even its Barry Manilow interlude seem appropriate.

This is one of those movies in which a strong ending might have made all the difference...But the wrap-up is unsatisfying, with too many questions unanswered.

There isn't much Napoleonic grandeur in this Idaho-set high school comedy, which in spite of its most condescending instincts, does have its moments.

With songs Triplets, Dancing in the Dark and Shine on Your Shoes, it's my fave musical. [18 Mar 2005, p.6E]

What do you call a filmmaker who thinks imitating a screen benchmark can make up for emotions that are evading her actors -- Clueless.

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.

Buried under an avalanche of action. (1996 June 7, pg. D1)

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]

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.

Even if this movie wasn't based on a computer game, Starship Troopers' reputation would still have just shot up another 50 notches. [19 March 1999, Life, p.11E]

It's also as good as "Out of Africa."

Some will lazily compare West to the ever-magnificent The Black Stallion, but just for starters, it hasn't the same exquisite outdoor photography. Instead, it's been shot in varying degrees of rust, with varying masses of grain floating around the image. [17 Sep 1993, p.4D]

Inside Deep Throat, an NC-17 documentary that deftly chronicles the fallout -- with about 15 seconds of hard-core footage -- has some surprise credits.

Based on a popular children's book by Chris Van Allsburg and directed by that "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" guy Joe Johnston, Jumanji is a calculated but very entertaining special effects extravaganza. [15Dec1995 Pg. 01.D]

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

This subject demands consummate screen treatment and now has absolutely gotten it from director/producer Spike Lee. [10 Jul 1997, Pg.02.D]

Part of the appeal is the underlying theme of the torch being passed between generations. Think how disappointing it would have been had Dana become an insurance actuary instead of a surfing filmmaker.

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

The recent model for this kind of surreal jazz-riff comedy is Doug Liman's 1999 "Go," a neo-classic. But you know already from the director (Dude, Where's My Car?'s Danny Leiner) if this movie is for you. Leiner has cornered the recent market on low-rent farces.

Minnelli's other Oscar-winning perennial. [19 Sep 2008, p.4D]

It's the actor/director's best movie - and the best Western by anybody in over 20 years. [7 Aug 1992]

The starship Enterprise is back, piloted for the first time (from behind the camera, that is) by William Shatner. Though he doesn't exactly parallel-park Star Trek V: The Final Frontier into a meteor, the journey is (at best) an amiably lazy Sunday drive. [9 June 1989, p.4D]

It's likely to be overrated by some and underrated by others, and both contingents will be wrong. One can't, however, overrate the performances, with auntie ruling the roost in more ways than one. [29 Mar 1996, p.4D]

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

The movie gets a mild boost when her escape briefly takes it from just another crummy supernatural thriller into an OK escape melodrama, albeit one dependent on a whopper of an unlikely occurrence.

A Hitchcockian chase...A crowd-pleasing airport-pursuit pic. [27 Dec 1995, p.D1]

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.

Jade recalls Sliver (even before its fizzled finale) by reuniting Eszterhas with producer Robert Evans, the faded genius and ill-pegged comeback producer who fared better with last year's lively autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture. Judging from his last two movies, the aging kid stays on the D-list, too.

Some will think this film silly; my guess is that Kaufman has himself an upscale cult movie, a la Women in Love or his own Unbearable Lightness. [05 Oct 1990, p.4D]

Not since "Memento" has a movie served up such a provocative mind-bender, and the Sundance winner by first-time filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has the advantage of being true.

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]

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

This is a fascinating movie experience. [30 June 1989, Life, p.1D]

These swashbuckling romps are packed with the kind of slapstick and throwaway asides you may not expect before noting both were directed by Richard Lester, the man who molded the Beatles on screen. [01 May 1998]

Blethyn is so astonishing that you forget you're seeing a performance.

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 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]

With Todd Haynes' direction suggesting a Twilight Zone full court press, this uncommonly rigid movie is either bloodlessly objective or so subtly droll that the joke is beyond comprehension. But given that Haynes previously utilized a cast of Barbie dolls in the brazenly daring Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, it's tempting to give him the benefit of the doubt. [21 June 1995, p.7D]

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

Quiz Show is half-a-dozen movies, nearly all exceptional, and a lion's share assemblage of the year's top male performances. A watershed scandal revisited, it's also a riveting revenge story motivated by seething resentment. [14 Sept 1994, p.1D]

Though it seems even spottier today than it did in '68, Cassavetes' most acclaimed work rebounds impressively after a near-unbearable opening half-hour. [29 Mar 1996]

Hostage is really about sleek Bruce - buff, bald and clean-shaven - as he goes to town on two sets of assailants.

The movie's biggest drawback is a failure to deliver what's promised.

It's a tough entry into the tough black-comic genre; don't be surprised if it becomes a classic. [31 March 1989]

A Little Princess is the first of its progeny to blend brains with entertainment. This stylish sleeper easily outpaces the studio's starchy updates of "Black Beauty" and "The Secret Garden", and even betters Shirley Temple's 1939 take on Frances Hodgson Burnett's Princess perennial. [18 May 1995, 12D.]

Exceedingly well cast and assembled with flashy visuals and pacing by Harron, this period piece is diminished by its relative pointlessness.

Amazingly, the film grows monotonous because Heller and Schmiderer can do nothing, via archival footage or even novel camera placements, to vary the program.

Disclosure should slickly satisfy people who like movies about advanced computers, topical themes, hardball attorney mind games, office politics, sex and sweet revenge. [9 Dec 1994, p.1D]

And novel insights notwithstanding, this is a plain old good movie, too.

No movie this year has covered a larger canvas than director Chen Kaige's 2 1/2-hour spectacle. [29 Oct 1993, p.4D]

A notably undynamic treatment of Protestant Elizabeth I's ascension to the British throne.

So much luck is pressed with an absurdly overblown finale that 60 seconds will likely be Swordfish's shelf life after a couple of noisy opening weekends.

Drivers congest highways, while many of their cars inevitably end up as twisted scrap. The final Monsieur Hulot comedy from France's Jacques Tati couldn't possibly be more topical. [18 Jul 2008, p.13D]

A rote variation on Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper that is marginally salvaged by those spunky Olsen twins from ABC's Full House. [17 Nov 1995]

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]

Though less than the sum of its brilliant parts, the Coens' latest will still be must viewing in 32 years. [21 Aug 1991]

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.

Kid's tone is off 100% of the time. The young actors are irredeemably bland, and two of the adults (Michael Des Barres' bank president, James LeGros' Storm Trooper-like security guard) are hammy enough to make James Brown seem controlled.

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]

What it isn't ... is a particularly compelling contribution to the impressive and by now enormous collection of Holocaust movies.

Lumet remains a great director of actors, one of several reasons why this very iffy movie grabs you - up to a point. [27 Apr 1990, p.9D]

A chilly oddball that's easier to admire than love.

Drollness on screen can sometimes be had cheaply, but a perfect cast is tougher to bankroll. Hal Hartley's new comedy has both - enough to defuse the smugness that seems to linger in its soul. [15 Aug 1991]

Fury, I Am a Fugitive, Wild Boys of the Road and Emperor of the North come immediately to mind as definitive Depression movies. This little gem, which may get overlooked, deserves to be on the same list. [20 August 1993, p.5D]

The movie-calendar equivalent of last July's "Six Days, Seven Nights," this star-powered romance overcomes a shaky start to outpace that passable confection by several runaway laps.

The story's presentation is easy to take. And lot of this is because of Lathan, who is funny by not trying to be.

The problem here isn't grimness but a failure to make grimness wrench the heart. [18 Oct 1996]

Anything goes, though director Ronny Yu keeps the idiocy on a fast pace.

Kilmer seems less dangerous than Morrison, but it's a blessing in the most uncompromising bio of a please- don't-move-next-door type since "Raging Bull." [01 Mar 1991]

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.

It's probably the weakest Alfred Hitchcock of the '50s. But that may be the greatest decade any director ever had, so this isn't the slam it seems. [28 Sep 2004]

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

A comic-fantasy nightmare of the wickedest kind. [22 Jul 1992, p.4D

This cult movie for the ages suggests a Twilight Zone episode taken to gruesome extremes. [09 May 1997, p.3D]

A showcase for Vince Vaughn's rantings and Owen Wilson's standard but affable chum act.

Melissa Mathison, who wrote E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial and co-authored The Black Stallion script, isn't one to louse up a modern classic with overkill. [14 July 1995, p.1D]

If Sandler felt compelled to take on a role immortalized by Gary Cooper, at least it wasn't as "Sergeant York," "Lou Gehrig" or the sheriff in "High Noon."

Has its moments - but far too many of them. It runs two hours and seems to end five times.

This is economy of style that Americans get only in Woody Allen movies -- and even that's not a guarantee.

Despite the unsexy title, it's one unusually well told. [11 Aug 1993, p.1D]

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

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]

Crystal is in top form, and if laughs are all you want, this movie has them.[7 June 1991, p.2D]

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.

But for an epic set up to trace two life stories, there's a lack of dramatic focus, and the leads fail to evince any particular chemistry as friends who come to have a deeper emotional connection. [31Dec1997 Pg.02.D]

It has an elusive, haunting quality, but it's too long at 133 minutes, and there aren't many movies these days that get more involving as they progress.

The murkiest-looking movie since Ben Affleck's “Daredevil” and about as lacking in charm.

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]

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.

Moviegoers of rarefied sensibilities will easily identify this anti-captain-of-industry as a "typical Eric Stoltz role," just as moviegoers of extremely rarefied sensibilities will pick up on Kicking's "typical Chris Eigeman role." [23 Oct 1995, Pg.06.D]

Fast and slick, it recalls The Buddy Holly Story - perhaps the last pop bio that was this much fun to watch. [7 May 1993, p.4D]

The result is passably speedy on the level of other TV retreads that seem miscast on the big screen.

Emmerich might have had a masterpiece, but he'll have to settle for what comes close to being a must-see movie today.

No situation could be more human, and it's one the youth-dominated film industry rarely touches.

John Mellencamp's screen debut showcases his acting and directing, then limits his singing to off-camera filler. [05 Mar 1992, p.6D]

Shot in semidocumentary fashion, it builds to a more visceral climax than one initially expects. [26Nov1997 Pg.09.D]

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

This is the kind of movie in which even the sex scenes are soulless.

Rock actually rocks out as one of the year's most purely entertaining movies (just keep thinking: Bill Murray as a ventriloquist).

The focus is limited to Young's longtime Crazy Horse colleagues -- in other words, forget Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- but even on this level, there's a lot of rambling and disinclination to answer questions. A substantial number of viewers will likely be ground down, and certainly there's nothing here to make Young's 1979 concert film, Rust Never Sleeps, an obsolete view. [07 Oct 1997, p.3D]

For a movie that generally delivers the goods while you're watching it, mild irritants abound. Arachnophobia is soft at the center, but at least it won't traumatize (and thus repel) the mass audience. [18 July 1990, p.1D]

Bites may have a bit more on its mind, but it never equals even the weakest scene in Cameron Crowe's "Singles". [18 Feb 1994, p.5D]

A cautionary tale very well-told.

It's a heart-wrenching portrayal of unfulfilled Wyoming love, but this time, we don't mean Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur in "Shane."

Hollywood's oddest movie in a while, which means that however insignificant this primer in flight-attendant training is, causing boredom isn't one of its transgressions.

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.

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.

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]

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

This tough and unsparing film feels authentic; the cops are ever-railing against the FBI, and have sickly skin tones that probably result from too many bad burgers on the run. Homicide is provocative and, in its first hour, even hilarious. Its prestigious closing slot at the just-completed New York Film Festival was deserved. [10 Oct 1991, p.4D]

Until it cools off some with a full half-hour remaining, Tequila Sunrise packs the solar heat the credits and premise promise. Yet a three-quarter success does a good Mel Gibson movie make - even if his co-stars steal it. [2 Dec 1988, p.1D]

One of those movies in which pacing, dialogue and the right actors enliven a familiar story.

Impressive yet always self-conscious, Perdition has more class and less sass than any movie in a while.

Never enough goodies to keep the two-hour running time from seeming like three.

The story keeps reinventing itself (some of the later plot twists are among the funniest), but a little goes a long way at 112 minutes - maybe 25 minutes more than this sporadically pointed conceit really needs.

You don't envy the three soldiers who get shot for desertion, but you do identify with their desire to flee.