Rita Kempley

A joyous genre-blender guaranteed to crank up your karma.

Whatever its failings, Beaches speaks to women. It makes girlfriends think of calling girlfriends they haven't seen in 10, 20, 30 years. You can live without love, but "you've got to have friends," as Midler sings.

Cerebral, frenetic and funny, this chamber piece from filmmaker James Toback provides a timely if inconclusive comment on monogamy.

Filmed in the mock-documentary style pioneered by acknowledged mentor Robert Altman, it does for baby-kissing phonies what This Is Spinal Tap did for heavy metal poseurs.

South Central covers some of the same ground as Boyz N the Hood, but certainly there's nothing wrong with reiterating its positive message for black sons and fathers.

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]

Veteran Arthur Hiller, who directed Peter Falk and Alan Arkin in The In-Laws and Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in Silver Streak, proves equally adept at managing a female odd couple.

With its foibles and quirks, it's something like a Sam Shepard play by way of the Black Forest.

British director Beeban Kidron chooses screenplays that balance precariously between maudlin and quirkily comic. To Wong Foo, richer in character than story, fits right into her repertoire. Lucky for her that Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo have plenty of fashion sense.

Sneakers isn't about growing up, it's about playing games, cracking codes, inventing acronyms. It's a Twinkie for techies, an enormously entertaining time-waster.

Beautifully outfitted and moodily photographed, the movie is directed by Stephen Hopkins, the Jamaican-born Australian responsible for Nightmare on Elm Street V. He keeps the pedal to the metal but never allows the explosive action to minimize his actors.

True Stories is an Our Town for our time, a slightly surreal portrait of the fictional frontier village of Virgil, Texas, sprung from a pancake landscape and hogtied with freeways.

Flatliners is a heart-stopping, breathtakingly sumptuous haunted house of a movie.

An uncompromising, emotionally draining drama that presents the urbanization of New Zealand's Maori as a cultural disaster, one that is mirrored in the shards of a shattering marriage. This explosive first film by director Lee Tamahori focuses on the transformation of a battered wife, but its story is fueled by the machismo of the disenfranchised Maori male.

A zombie comedy that gradually builds from a teasing take-off to a genuine, gross-out thriller. It's definitely not for all audiences, but its visceral effects and old-fashioned scare tactics make it a real scream for chiller fans. [16 Aug 1985, p.19]

It's as much fun as ever, a ground-meat-and-potatoes movie, with guys beating hell out of each other to a disco beat. Stallone pulls no punches; the familiar refrain features the Rocky I score, along with its characters and moral simplicity.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, a maverick of China's "new wave," this disturbing tragedy is as unexpectedly lurid in its way as "Blue Velvet."

Kid II is an enlightening experience. It teaches you a little about courage, mercy, and the zen of movie-cycle maintenance.

A cheerful romp through a fussy New York hotel.

The Witches is a wickedly funny final bow for Muppeteer Jim Henson.

A flat-out hilarious celebration of B-moviemaking mastery. [19 Apr 1996, p.G06]

A modestly budgeted but richly rewarding look at a Tennessee housewife's search for a better life.

Outbreak is an absolute hoot thanks primarily to director Wolfgang Petersen's rabid pacing and the great care he brings to setting up the story and its probability.

More cosmetic than cosmic in its approach, it thrives on what it condemns and in its own weird, wonderfully savvy fashion, spanks the liposucked fannies of Hollywood. It's as irresistibly nasty as The War of the Roses and as cheerily Gothic as The Witches of Eastwick.