Brosnan has toughened up emotionally for his second outing. He's been teamed with Asian action star Michelle Yeoh as Chinese agent Wai Lin, and he's been given a script that provides more fun than the lethargic "GoldenEye." [19 Dec 1997, p.11E]

What makes the film watchable all the way through (and it is watchable, though never remarkable) is mostly the stunning scenery and the performance of Hopkins. [26 Sep 1997, p.9E]

She's So Lovely comes from a story by John Cassavetes, who specialized in character studies of amiable lowlifes. Director Nick Cassavetes, his son, has lovingly framed a picture around John's idea, even crediting his dad (who died eight years ago) with the screenplay. But the movie remains an idea - a little idea. [29 Aug 1997, p.7E]

Career Girls is a chamber piece: intimate and direct, two voices performing monologues and duets of irony, despair and hope. [29 Aug 1997, p.11E]

Maybe Hollywood has used this "uptight guy liberated by free spirit" idea too many times. Either way, this is a form of recycling that no longer pays off. [9 May 1997, p.1E]

Writer-director Theodore Witcher fills his debut with jazz-cool atmosphere. He's got a fresh-faced but mature cast: Nia Long, Larenz Tate, Isaiah Washington. But once he's staked out the territory, he falls back into the most conventional kind of storytelling. [14 Mar 1997, p.4E]

One Fine Day is a fluffernutter. Half of it is as down-to-earth, satisfying, even nourishing as peanut butter. The rest of it is gooey, dense and indigestible. [20 Dec 1996, p.4E]

If the spate of action movies must continue, especially at Christmas, let more be like "Daylight." [6 Dec 1996, p.13E]

Ryder puts fire into both Abigail's pants and her belly, aided by makeup that makes her seem as much victim as victimizer. [20 Dec 1996, p.1E]

If you want the cold, honest truth about "Space Jam," prepare yourself for the shock: It's average. It's broadly funny in spots, but without any edge. It'll make kids giggle, but it makes a minuscule effort to appeal to adults. Special effects are sometimes imaginative, sometimes just the same explosions and pratfalls Warners Bros. has done for half a century. [15 Nov 1996, p.1E]

It'll hearten anyone who believed Lee had insights and merely needed to find the right vehicle to express them. Bus is that vehicle. [18 Oct 1996, p.1E]

Kilmer is adequate, though he's always more interesting when allowed to play a character with a dark side; Patterson's too squeaky-clean for Kilmer to exploit the most useful part of his range. [12 Oct 1996, p.4G]

Alas, this is one of those movies where a clever character must suddenly have an attack of doltishness for the plot to proceed, and Spader becomes the victim of bad writing. [27 Sept 1996, p.5E]

John Bailey's cinematography goes beyond the norm: Darkened rooms full of conspirators are as unsettling as Luthan's descent into an unlit subway tunnel. Danny Elfman, a mainstream film composer now that his alternative rock career is over, adds an apt score; he's angling for the late Bernard Herrmann's spot on Hollywood's scare scale. [27 Sept 1996, p.6E]

The movie takes countless liberties, including the addition of the 13-year-old girl. But authenticity doesn't matter much; we're watching a fairy tale about trust, maturity and beating the odds, and those plot threads are woven tightly together. [13 Sep 1996, p.6E]

The best acting comes from the enigmatic, always urbane Freeman, who has recently enlivened the likes of "Outbreak" and "Moll Flanders." But so what? Acting with dignity in mediocre pictures turns you into Vincent Price. [2 Aug 1996, p.4E]

Seamless, funny and startling. Anybody who thinks Keaton always does tiny variations on the same sardonic character - making him a bit more tight-lipped, say, when donning a Batsuit - will be surprised by the variety of his skills here. [19 July 1996, p.3E]

Writer Lou Holtz Jr. and director Ben Stiller (who has a funny cameo as an accused killer) needed to make the film scarier, turning Cable Guy into a veritable demon. Instead, they vacillate between comedy and attempted thrills like a TV set with a broken vertical hold. [14 June 1996, p.1E]

Dragonheart is all dragon, no heart. [31 May 1996, p.3E]

De Palma makes us sweat; slow, quiet scenes are as nerve-bending as occasional explosions and the final, frantic battle. He calls himself a director for hire on projects such as this and "The Untouchables," where he has little input before shooting. But his skill at maintaining tension is his main asset, and he uses it to the max here. [24 May 1996, p.1E]

Executive Decision, a film as generic as its title, follows its 'subdue the terrorists' template by the numbers - but they're numbers that can work over and over, when handled as competently as they are here by director Stuart Baird. [15 Mar 1996, p.8E]

The movie misses Henson's good-hearted inventiveness, but there's ample evidence that the second generation of Muppeteers are almost as good at pulling the strings as the first. [17 Feb 1996, p.8G]

City Hall is more Cusack's movie than Pacino's, and he gives a more interesting performance. Cusack never reveals himself right away: With his watchful eyes and tight lips, he seems to be deciding whether he can trust the audience with his deepest thoughts. He warms up thoroughly in this Jimmy Stewart-like role, though he never gets a handle on a Louisiana accent. (Calhoun couldn't have come from Chicago, like Cusack?)[16 Feb 1996, p.1E]

We can all share frustration with a process that frees the Doobs of the world, but this heavy-handed movie won't provide catharsis. The filmmakers treat subtlety as a sin - unless Schlesinger thinks he's being subtle by showing us O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark for only a couple of seconds on a TV screen. [12 Jan 1996, p.4E]

Romance has its place in movies - there's too little of it these days - but this remake of the 1954 film leaves an odd taste in the mouth. It has the trappings of a grand affair: tuxedoed men pursuing elegantly gowned women, helicopter flights to Martha's Vineyard, croissants and coffee in Paris. Yet it carries a mercenary message. In most fairy tales, riches are a reward for sacrifice or hard work; in the new "Sabrina," they're proof you have value as a human being. [15 Dec 1995, p.3E]

Directed by William "When's the next chase scene?" Friedkin, acted by comatose David Caruso and monotonous Linda Fiorentino and Chazz Palminteri, Jade is more like "Jaded." [13 Oct 1995, p.11F]

Larry Clark's documentary-like direction and Harmony Korine's undeviatingly dull screenplay make it possible to believe these useless lumps of flesh exist. [1 Sept 1995, p.3F]

Roberts, perhaps the nation's most fresh-faced actress five or six years ago, now seems to be a pair of tear ducts mounted atop a thousand-watt smile. Whether anything is going on behind that assembly remains to be seen, but there's not much proof here. [4 Aug 1995, p.1F]

Writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris must figure the blinking lights on Angela's screen will cloud our brains. They ask us to ignore plotholes the size of craters... Nor does director Irwin Winkler shoot scenes suspensefully. [28 July 1995, p.9F]

The movie satisfies a basic need to see pageantry, pomp and pennants flying over the Cornish countryside. But if you're expecting a story that sticks to the Arthurian legend, this is Scam-a-lot. [07 Jul 1995, p.1F]

Director Michael Bay surrounds them with action scenes cut as rapidly and irritatingly as a Gap commercial. At points, we can't tell one darting car from another, a drug triggerman from a cop. [7 April 1995, p.1F]

The director is strong on setups, and the hunt for the virus is tense. [10 Mar 1995, p.1F]

Some writer-directors would have squeezed pathos from this story until the corn turned to pone, especially in a post-Christmas release. Writer-director Robert Benton (Places in the Heart) keeps a gentler grip on the proceedings and makes 10 times the impact. [13 Jan 1995, p.1F]

No, I don't recommend it. But it kills fewer brain cells than daytime talk shows. [5 Feb 1996]

Kids might get a charge out of the mayhem. I got the vapors.

Chaplin's pathos was (at its best) touched with irony. Lane's isn't. [19 Jan 1990, p.68]

All that matters is that emotions be real, and so they are: wracking grief, harrowing madness, unquenchable hate. Composers have tried and failed to turn "Lear" into a workable opera, but Kurosawa has found the visual equivalent. Yet the last image of a man, solitary and silent, is more haunting than all the destruction. [10 Aug 2001, p.7E]

(The Coens have) never again achieved the one-two punch of Blood Simple and "Raising Arizona" - the first darkly cynical, the second light-headedly comical.

That Testament doesn't wallow in cheap sentimentality or grisly detail is a testament to the talents of first-time feature film director Lynne Littman, her superb cast and screenwriter John Young. [20 Jan 1984, p.4C]

Just as moving, uplifting and funny as ever in its slightly modified form. [2002 re-release]

Watching it again reminded me how remarkably the sound engineers did their jobs. Listen to the subtly amplified heartbeat - Ripley's? the ship's? - that pulses under the soundtrack through the last 15 minutes.

Even Wilder's most ardent admirers split on 1970's little-seen, much-edited adventure-comedy "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes", but all agree it is one of his most personally felt movies. [18 Jul 2003, p.11E]

The songs are pure joy, for them and for us.

A fairly ordinary (for Wilder) adaptation of a play with a great performance by Lemmon as a French cop who falls for hooker Shirley MacLaine. [18 Jul 2003, p.11E]

Marty is full of magic; all through the show you find yourself thinking, "That's me up there." [15 Aug 1955, p.4B]

The collaboration started with a bang with 1950's "Winchester '73", which makes most lists, including mine, of the best of the genre. [09 May 2003, p.11E]

A fairly standard story for the period, about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who ends up living the good life as a gangster's moll, but Crawford gives an astonishing performance. [17 Jun 2005, p.13H]

Any Preston Sturges comedy explodes American ideals, and this one mocks everything from patriotism to motherhood. [14 Jun 1998, p.1F]

It's one of those films in which even the dog is funny. [14 Mar 2004, p.9E]

Don't let the spectacle and the hugeness of the film scare you -- it's good entertainment. [02 Jun 1936, p.19]