Rita Kempley

Smits can't wrench free of this tangle of cliches.

It's certainly harrowing to sit through. Talk about your grizzly misadventures.

If laughter is the best medicine, Patch Adams is but a sugary, fitfully amusing placebo.

With it's many knotty connections and complex exposition, the movie is definitely something of a muddle, but for that matter so are most conspiracy theories.

Without a doubt, mainstream moviegoers will be revolted by the nastiness of it all.

Firefox may sound bright, hot and racy, but it browns out. Eastwood has an energy crisis as director, producer and star. [18 June 1982, p.15]

Clan's greatest fault, however, is simply that it is an epic bore. [28 Feb 1986, p.11]

This is hardly your same old trough of slop. Babe nonetheless prevails, demonstrating once again "how a kind and steady heart can heal a sorry world."

Mulan may be exotic, but it's hardly a risky enterprise, what with its sentimental show tunes, wholesome morals and plucky teen heroine.

The X-Files movie is really just a two-hour teaser for the series's sixth season. And little else. You will feel exactly like Mulder when he says, "How many times have we been right here before, Scully? So close to the truth?"

A John Hughes movie without Pretty in Pink director John Hughes, sure makes you appreciate the teens' auteur. Frankly, Steve Rash, who directs this copycat comedy, another nerd-gets-the-cheerleader romance, isn't fit to wear Hughes' hightops. Rash only tinkers with adolescent angst, without the progenitor's empathy for his audience.

It's plenty entertaining, but the ending is disappointing, given the buildup.

With its callow cast and playful tone, there is nothing dangerous about Forman's variation on the novelist's schemes.

Sans emotional depth or narrative drive, Lee's latest flick is little more than a profane litany punctuated by Oscar-caliber orgasms.

[A] wacky but eminently watchable kitsch-mobile.

Profound, powerful Czech import takes a tragicomic approach to the Holocaust, though unlike Benigni's film, the movie does not sentimentalize those caught up in the Nazi dragnet.

Many of the visual effects are stunning, but others are downright cheesy -- especially an attempt to fuse the Rock's head onto a scorpion's body.

Director-star Kevin Costner falls head over heels in love with himself in this nihilistic, post-apocalyptic clunker about a loner who becomes a reluctant sperm donor, role model and inevitably a godsend to what's left of America.

A drama about strong, giving, funny women, Fried Green Tomatoes seems plucked from the same patch as the play-turned-movie Steel Magnolias. It's not exactly a successful hybrid, but you could get a craving for it anyway.

The result is cutesy but harsh, a hybrid of saucer-eyed anime and square-jawed angularity that brings to mind an edgier "Pokemon."

Though shot in four weeks on a low budget, Stephen King's Children of the Corn, while not on a par with "Carrie," sure beats "Christine," "Cujo" and "Dead Zone." It's terse, tense and the sound is effective as auditory terror.

A downright entertaining combo of mystery, melodrama and action adventure.

Alice, which seems like child's play after last year's sober Crimes and Misdemeanors, finds Allen at his most optimistic and sentimental since Radio Days. His pen is not as sharp nor his wit as keen as it has been, but he has become accessible to a broader audience in this whimsical entertainment.

Racing With the Moon is the second directorial effort for Richard Benjamin, whose first film was the ribald My Favorite Year. He tries and overwhelmingly succeeds at masterminding a more dramatic style. Slowly paced, it's nonetheless a film on track for patient, compassionate viewers. [23 Mar 1984, p.23]

The brothers, who have always seemed fond of their characters, have never taken quite so overt a stand for life's simple joys.

The remake, alas, must mask its failings with Julia Ormond's toothsomeness, Pollack's poky pacing and the uninspired scribblings of writers Barbara Benedek and David Rayfiel.

In the hands of director Julie Dash and photographer Arthur Jafa, this nonlinear film becomes visual poetry, a wedding of imagery and rhythm that connects oral tradition with the music video. It is an astonishing, vivid portrait not only of a time and place, but of an era's spirit.

It just isn't a Meg Ryan movie unless she's got male.