High Heels becomes mired in its own best intentions - primary colors and all.

Stone makes it virtually impossible to leave the theatre convinced, beyond all shadow of doubt, of the lone gunman theory.

One wishes Beatty would stay out of the epic business, but in that poor man's defense, he's become too large, too much of an icon on the screen to do much else. Perhaps he's doomed to play cartoon characters as he did last time out in Dick Tracy. His Bugsy is not anything close to a fully realized character. Bening, as his starlet/moll, does a better job, but her role doesn't give her much to work with.

Producer Joel Silver and Willis keep trying to remake Die Hard. This time they call in Top Gun director Scott. The result is mildly interesting, but there are so many weird and gratuitous scenes of insane violence that the effect is drained of impact.

Though mildly interesting for their individual merits, there is little sense of their connection to each other as a film and to us as an audience. It's as though this cab ride of a movie keeps moving forward with no clear destination or purpose.

Hook has you marveling at the nuts-and-bolts work of producers and assistant directors, but never at the intrinsic imaginativeness of the story. It's as if Spielberg calculatedly set out to make a perennial classic -- certain folly if ever there were.

One of the dullest films of the sextet thus far.

Of course, the selling point of this movie is the boy wonder Culkin, making his first screen appearance since the inexplicable megahit Home Alone. Relegated to a supporting role, Culkin is natural and appealing, a picture of blue-eyed innocence. What a more interesting movie you'd have if it were entitled My Guy.

Hearts of Darkness gives a privileged glimpse of the artist's hell, but it also says something about grace.

This movie achieves a rare grace: it tells a story that could only exist in the form of a movie (or, perhaps, as a piece of poetry). The story is told not so much in customary narrative structures, but in glimpses, hints, and intimations. It has a way of taking the solid and making it chimerical.

Beauty and the Beast, one of Disney's latest animated features is even better than The Little Mermaid. At the same time, it's vaguely disappointing.

Truthfully, it's hard to imagine a better screen adaptation of this queer household. Addams would have been proud.

Humor is a key ingredient in Kafka, though it definitely leans toward the wry and quirky. The movie loses some of its clarity and narrative force in mid-story however, though it never abandons its original visual style and focus.

If this is Scorsese's bid for the commercial big time, then let the cash registers ring.

Although Scott Frank's screenplay has more than a few holes in it...they're forgivable, mostly because this movie is so utterly likable. Little Man Tate is a small movie by industry standards, but it nevertheless stands pretty tall.

The acting is terrible,with Connery, at his lowest common denominator, stealing the show. For those of you who worry that MTV video art will destroy cinema, the ineptitudes of this film vividly detail the radical difference in forms. It sucks. But it would have made a great comic book.

While The People Under the Stairs may leave some horror fans unsatisfied and other horror detractors repulsed, it ought to satisfy those viewers who appreciate a thoughtful and visceral movie entertainment.

Life Is Sweet observes this constellation of people without ever really commenting on their lots. Very little occurs and thus, if you don't find yourself drawn to these characters, you will find yourself wondering when it will all be over.

It's a daredevil's ride that keeps you glued with fascination.

Frankie & Johnny is an episodic romantic comedy of opposites attracting; there's a real joy in watching the courtship of these lovers and the consummation of their undeniable attraction for one another.

Although the scares in this movie are minimal, Ernest Scared Stupid nonetheless offers the frightening prospect of yet another installment of the Big E's misguided antics.

Homicide may not be Mamet's most accessible film, but it combines those elements of the playwright/director's work -- theatricality, stylization, rough poeticism -- that might be most off-putting to the typical movie audience with enough tension and mystery to keep them in their seats.

It's staged like something straight out of King Kong with the look of an old 1930s Universal horror movie where the lightning flashes strobe across the undulating coils of tubing in the mad scientist's laboratory. There's a lot of really ugly violence in Ricochet, the kind of images and thoughts that just make you feel scummy to be involved with, no matter how passively.

By trying to be about so little, telling a simple fragile romantic story, Dogfight is about so much -- war and peace, love and romance, sex roles and cultural myths. What it understands is that to be really anti-war, rather than glitzy moralizing, a film should just be full of life, its characters so richly nuanced and detailed that they resonate with energy.

Mulligan has an impeccable sense of where to place the camera in each scene, positions that disclose without interfering and reveal without unveiling. His sensibility guides this movie with just the right tone and understated emotion.

I wish that movies, like scholastic football, could be judged on a "no pass, no play" basis.

A Better Tomorrow isn't his best film ever -- that title remains securely attached to The Killer -- but it is required viewing for anyone remotely interested in Hong Kong cinema. After all, there might not be any filmmaking in Hong Kong come 1997.

A fanciful spiral of mythology, madness, cynicism and salvation.