It's for those of us for whom killing people with high-powered guns in the movies is not only as good as sex but maybe better -- a sacrament for our age... [A] poorly written, badly directed film.

The movie is a corpse. It's a fish that stinks from the head. They ought to bury it in the Jersey Meadowlands. [25 Dec 1992]

It's last in laughs, last in drama but first in Murphy ego, as he gives a performance that everybody has seen before, only louder. [04 Dec 1992]

It's shallow as a puddle, but lots o' fun.

All in all, Jennifer 8 is about four bricks shy a load and two hours too long.

The whole thing is too preciously conceived. [05 Feb 1993]

Only in its final minutes does it somewhat squander its grip on the moral imagination, in a climax that seems oddly to undercut all that's come before and return us to the hallowed sense of violence as cleansing which so animates the world's true killers.

It never seriously establishes the ground rules of the principle of transference or the relationship between the two of them, and so what follows is gibberish. [14 Jul 1992]

The movie then becomes a story of salvation: how Murphy's Marcus, through the love of a better woman (Halle Berry) manages to rediscover both his decency and his humanity. And yet, pretty much, it stays funny. [01 Jul 1992]

This baby takes place in Tim Burton's id. It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

A somewhat simple-minded, overwrought mock epic. [22 May 1992]

One False Move doesn't make a single false move its own self: It's as tough and gripping as they come. It's the first movie I've seen in months where, when I was walking out, I thought to myself, "Damn! I wanna see that one again!"

After a fast, smart start, White Sands implodes like a black hole, sucking all goodwill from the atmosphere of the theater, turning those of us who started to love it into embittered cuckolds.

Deep Cover is good fun.

Newsies is a live-action musical, but it's only barely alive. Call it "Snoozies." [10 Apr 1992]

So much of "Thunderheart" is so good and its intentions are so noble that it pains me to reach the ultimate judgment that the movie is a mess.

The basketball sequences are the most magical in the film -- both Harrelson and Snipes can play -- but more to the point, he also has a great gift for evoking the needling hostility of athletes, the way the games aren't just about talent but about ego, will, self-esteem.

Except for the two stars, not much is believable in the movie. The ice skating sequences are clearly hampered by Sweeney's lack of skill, and it's crushingly obvious when a skating double has slipped into the picture. He's the guy who never looks at the camera.

Overpublicized and underbrained,Basic Instinct is a bitter disappointment, worth maybe a 10th of the hype that the media have so obligingly ladled out for its benefit.

It's hardly brilliant. But it's easygoing and occasionally quite funny and ultimately satisfying.

As a visual adventure, "The Lawnmower Man" is great fun.

No American film this year can touch it. [28 Feb 1992, p.10]

The basic trouble with The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is that it goes on far longer than it should. A film of this sort should be no longer than 85 or 90 minutes. This one is 110 minutes long, which means we have to wait much longer for the mouse to turn on the cat.

JFK is entertaining, if only because the cast of characters in the New Orleans underground is so bizarre. [20 Dec 1991]

It is the most dynamic animated film ever made, and the prance of its camera, the sense of penetration into its action, the brilliantly paced editing pyrotechnics give it a crackle of life far more abundant than any feature that's come before.

The movie is occasionally cutesy. That's the worst of it. You can't call it gross, but it is cutesy.

It inverts the typical Hollywood boy-meets-girl formula into something somehow menacing and yet ultimately moving. [29 Oct 1991]

Point Break has its areas of excitement, but on too many occasions the movie just lies there -- even when it does, however, the film still manages to look and sound good.