At its best the film evokes the palpable terror of a city where uniformed thugs could arrest or kill anyone at any time with impunity.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is the "Fatal Attraction" of child care, but it's too rigged and anti-climactic to send real shivers up your spine. Which is not to say there aren't satisfying moments along the way, mostly watching Rebecca DeMornay camp it up as the avenging nanny out to destroy young mother Annabella Sciorra. [10 Jan 1992, p.74]

Mirren holds the film together with her narration, but she can’t save the film from Forster’s penchant for overdoing emotional scenes or from Thomas Newman’s intrusive score.

When the action shifts inside the ropes, which happens often, "Gladiator" pulses with energy, and Marshall shines. Boxing purists may wince at the freewheeling fisticuffs - there is enough kicking, eye-gouging and head-butting going on to make viewers wonder why anyone bothered with a referee - but the electricity in these scenes is undeniable. [6 March 1992, p.31]

At least a plot point about “secret formula” is sort of clever. The rest comes across as gibberish.

Considering the sunny, relatively pleasurable romantic business that precedes it, the elderly stuff seems dark, morbid, and forced upon us.

An honest, honorable indie chamber drama that, if anything, errs on the side of caution. It benefits from a scrupulously observed performance by Kevin Bacon.

Hearts Beat Loud is gentle, funny, humane, and predictable, kept from becoming tiresome by a cast of pros that includes not only Offerman but Toni Collette as Frank’s landlady and possible love interest and a frisky Ted Danson as a philosophic stoner who owns the neighborhood watering hole.

The thing barely makes a lick of sense. Rapturous on a scene-by-scene basis and nearly incoherent when taken as a whole, the movie is idealistic and deranged, inspirational and very, very conflicted.

Its animal spin on unlikely-buddies interplay is amusing enough, but hardly as inspired as the teaser promised.

So, yeah, Kin is a bit of a biker movie, too. More important, it’s also a family drama. In their first-time feature-directing effort, twin brothers Jonathan and Josh Baker — speaking of kin — turn Cain and Abel inside out and upside down. Why be east of Eden when you end up that far west of Motown?

Put Christian Bale behind the wheel, and Hit & Run would make a billion bucks - except then there'd be no room for Shepard, and that movie would hardly be worth watching.

Ham-handedly manipulative film.

The result is kitschy entertainment that wants to celebrate Lucas's chutzpah and acumen while loosely condemning what they wrought: "Scarface" with a ghost of a conscience.

Miami Blues is just good enough to make you wish Demme would come back with Ward and direct another film based on Willeford's deceptively casual you-saw-it-here-first laser-beam vision of Miami as surreal American litmus. [20 Apr 1990, p.31]

Worth staying with for the respect it pays to its characters' emotions.

Spike Lee has been treading similar terrain with both greater cogency and fewer similarities to Bertolt Brecht. Manderlay, though, is mad and perplexed in its own inscrutable, schematic way. The trouble is the angrier it gets, the more infuriatingly banal it becomes.

Achache's direction is deft and assured. She lends the film a nice, easy rhythm that conceals the story's alternating whimsy and melodrama and almost compensates for them (almost).

Perhaps Poe’s tone poses a problem; the edge-of-hysteria voice does not hold up well over the course of a feature-length film.

Fly Me to the Moon is a crummy movie for kids, yet it still holds out the prospect of past wonders and future marvels. It's one small step for a housefly, one giant leap for 3-D.

The stylishly crafted film mostly succeeds in its engaging (and tagline-ready) ambition to chronicle “how mankind discovered man’s best friend,” even if its naturalistic strengths are swapped out for an exaggeratedly epic tone in the later going.

The Accountant keeps you hanging on all the way to the looney-toon ending, well past the point where your higher brain functions have called it a night. It’s not a good movie but it’s not a bad way to kill a few hours.

A brilliant production of a mediocre play.

One nice thing about Mila Kunis’s portrayal of a heroin addict in Rodrigo García’s Four Good Days is that the vanity’s up front, in the character and in the star’s nervy embrace of a woman who has become human wreckage.

And there you have the problem with The Zookeeper’s Wife: Dialogue and plotting that keep this inspirational, mostly true story earthbound by hitting every note with a hammer.

It’s an understatement to say that Tcheng is drawn to this material. He revels in it. Yet he’s too clear-eyed to turn Halston’s story into a morality tale.

The debut feature from 26-year-old director Richard Kelly shows plenty of promise, but it's somewhat self-involved and won't appeal to audiences who like a straightforward -- even if fantastical -- narrative.

Ultimately, cast and crew conjure up horror that’s more efficient than terrifying.