A modest comedy that does indeed stir a few chuckles out of its knuckleheaded trio of bad boys, it grows almost shockingly disturbing when it portrays armed robbery as amusing and the implicit death threat of the firearm as a joke. In this respect, it's the ugliest movie of the year. Or, no: It's merely the stupidest. [02 Dec 1994]

The cognoscenti will no doubt follow the plot permutations a little bit more easily than those of us on the outside. But even we of the uninitiated will appreciate the cleverly escalating tension. [18 Nov. 1994, p.12]

The backgrounds, it must be said, are the most impressive features in the picture: Vibrant with color and often deeply evocative, they make you wish something a bit more lively was happening in front of them. [18 Nov 1994]

But the most piercing thing about Heavenly Creatures is Jackson's refusal to forgive the girls. He indeed understands them and empathizes with them. But when he has to, he exposes the horrid squalor and ugliness of the crime, which, after all, was a blood-soaked execution, crude as anything done in Rwanda. [9 Dec 1994]

Double Dragon may have its merits as a computerized contest of wits and strategy, but the movie is a stinker, directed with apathy (by newcomer Jim Yukich) and "written" by committee from any number of recycled movie plots. [05 Nov 1994]

The special effects turn out to be not very special and not very effective, and the movie never achieves the lunatic grandeur of the truly demented. Stargate is strictly for the peanut gallery.

Great American movies are, these days especially, few and far between, so let's everybody take a deep breath and mark the moment: Hoop Dreams, all three hours' worth, is a great American movie. It's got the sting of drama and the ache of truth; it's even got the sting of truth and the ache of drama.

The violence is muted and discreet, never appalling, and the sexual tension between Streep and Bacon has been dialed way down. What they want is what they get: a nice, tidy, polite thriller. [30 Sep 1994]

It's a small, amusing movie that's long on charming affability. [03 Feb 1995]

Fails to go into the one realm that would make it worthwhile, which is Ed Wood's brain.

Derived from the folksy, avuncular works of Jean Shepherd, it's a movie in search of a story, characters and a reason to exist. In this quest, it goes 0 for 3. It's like watching Jell-O harden, then melt, only not quite so much fun. [23 Sep 1994]

Initially an amiable sci-fi thriller that toys with the paradoxes inherent in time travel, it finally gets drunk on them. It becomes an incomprehensible stew of versions and revisions, until there's no there there and no then then.

This film feels like a desperate attempt to squeeze a few last bucks out of what was once a very obliging cash cow.

A Good Man isn't hard to find -- it's all over the place -- but it does grow hard to bear. [09 Sep 1994]

An intense two-character drama that follows as the participants in an office flirtation attempt to go up a notch toward an actual relationship, with disastrously unforeseen consequences. [11 Nov 1994]

The movie's two instincts are at complete odds with each other. The first is to portray with compassion and understanding a young man of great gifts who is twisted by a cruel society into childhood's end. The second is to provide a rousing goose of vigilante justice more appropriate to the Death Wish films. How much better if Yakin had made up his mind; the movie wouldn't feel so split.

Killing Zoe lacks the incisiveness, the tightly controlled irony, and the blank verse power in the profane dialogue that enabled "Reservoir Dogs" to transcend its admittedly horrific violence. [25 Nov 1994]

Meant to be a steamy erotic thriller, it's more annoying than anything else. Surely you will see its Big Surprise coming by the first 15 minutes, and it never begins to achieve the kind of sultry, mesmerizing fascination it so desperately needs.

If ever a project seemed utterly unguided by a compass, it's "North," the dreary new film from Rob Reiner. [22 Jul 1994]

Let's get Sarandon and Jones into another movie soon; they're wonderful. Schumacher can direct and there's probably even a part for Brad Renfro. As for Grisham, he needs a course in remedial plotting.

What's most pleasing about That's Entertainment! III is the numbers themselves. I almost wish they'd done away with the concept of "documentary" and simply offered the snippets as pure cavalcade. [29 Jul 1994]

The movie is untainted by surprise or originality. It seems built from a blueprint, not a script. Anyone who listens to sports talk radio could write just as good a movie, no kidding. [29 Jun 1994]

Culkin is -- well, Culkin is Culkin, cute and malleable, absolutely empty, absolutely precious, absolutely irritating. [17 Jun 1994]

The film is achingly conventional. [03 Jun 1994]

This peculiar film is more than one beer short of a six-pack. It's part massive folly, part screwball tract and part steel nerve, even a little heroic. [25 May 1994]

There may be a plot somewhere in William Goldman's script, and there might even have been a structure, but Mel Gibson, James Garner and Jodie Foster are so highly charged, as they slide through riffs that have nothing to do with anything except their own enjoyment in being invited to the party, that it's magnetic -- at least for most of the time.

The Crow, the death-haunted, mega-violent, pulpy, vigorous final film of Brandon Lee, may not qualify as much of a monument to a lost life -- what film could? -- but it's a hell of a movie.

This is a strange and indeed foolish film. [29 Apr 1994]