Aside from Caine (who must labor under some secret contract that forces him to appear in every movie made with an English-accented role), the all-star cast plays like an inside joke, more made-for-television than anything else. [20 March 1992, p.41]

The splendid cast embodies the characters so fully that the events actually seem to be happening to them, instead of unfolding from a screenplay.

The movie was mostly shot on two difficult locations: The streets of East L.A., and inside Folsom Prison. It knows these worlds. The language, the clothes, the attitudes, are all shown with the understated conviction of a director who is sure of his material.

My Cousin Vinny is a movie that meanders along going nowhere in particular, and then lightning strikes. I didn't get much involved in it, and yet individual moments and some of the performances were very funny. It's the kind of movie home video was invented for: Not worth the trip to the theater, but slam it into the VCR and you get your rental's worth.

Brosnan is convincing as the workaholic doctor who must stop his monster and Fahey is good illustrating the rise from cretin to creator. There is little more to this movie, but still, not bad future shock stuff. [10 Mar 1992, p.2-29]

Once Upon a Crime is not grand larceny, but not good enough to qualify for much more than rental viewing. [10 March 1992, p.27]

What he has here is a story that probably cannot be believed in any conceivable level, and yet, to give him his due, he tells it with such conviction that it works anyway.

This material is intriguing enough that I wish there had been more of it. Comedy consists of the application of logic to the absurd, and there are many more opportunities here than the screenplay takes advantage of.

A lot of rock stars and other showbiz heroes have the notion that because they’re successful in other areas, they can direct a movie, too. Usually they’re wrong. But Mellencamp turns out to have a real filmmaking gift.

The movie wants to be a laffaminit extravaganza like the Zucker & Abrahams productions, but with slyer humor, more inside jokes, throwaway references and just plain goofiness, as when the characters occasionally break into their own language.

All of the elements are here for a movie I would probably enjoy very much, but somehow they never come together.

Final Analysis is the kind of movie that's a lot more fun to look at than to think about. Maybe that's the point.

All of these serious questions linger just under the surface of Mississippi Masala, which is, despite its subject, surprisingly funny and cheerful at times, and generates a full-blown romanticism.

Fried Green Tomatoes is fairly predictable, and the flashback structure is a distraction, but the strength of the performances overcomes the problems of the structure. I especially liked Mary Stuart Masterson's work, but then I nearly always do (see her in Some Kind of Wonderful). And I enjoyed the vigor with which Jessica Tandy told her long-ago tale, about a woman not completely unlike herself.

There is a real terror in the faces of these kids as they realize that people have died, that guns kill, that your life can be ruined, or over, in an instant.

It is the first directing effort by Lili Zanuck, co-producer of Driving Miss Daisy, but feels like the work of a more experienced director, especially in the way she gives full measure to the many strong supporting performances in the film.

There are some wonderful special effects, but, alas, the movie bogs down with shooting, car chases and plot twists that make it a bit tiresome. Still, it's some fun, especially watching Jagger, Hopkins and the supporting cast tangle with a future in which fried rats seem delicious. [21 Jan 1992, p.27]

The male characters are uniformly weak (Solomon is only the least articulate of the lot) and all the women, ultimately, are strong or aggressive. [10 Jan 1992, p.32]

Guncrazy is a consistently sharp and observant retooling of Joseph H. Lewis' 1949 B classic, Gun Crazy. Davis has a gift for breathing quirky new life into an old genre and not overstating her American themes. She also makes wonderful use of her settings and gets first-rate performances from her cast. [12 Feb 1993, p.39]

Light Sleeper isn't about the help he can get from psychics, however; it's about desperation that makes him project healing qualities upon anyone who is halfway sympathetic. The movie is familiar with its life of night and need. It finds the real human qualities in a person like the Susan Sarandon character - who, in a crisis, reacts with loyalty and quick thinking.

While I admired it in an abstract way, I felt repelled by the material on a visceral level.

The film doesn't tell a story in any conventional sense. It tells of feelings. At certain moments we are not sure exactly what is being said or signified, but by the end we understand everything that happened - not in an intellectual way, but in an emotional way.

In a time when our cities are wounded, movies like Grand Canyon can help to heal.

An assured and very serious love story that allows neither humor nor romance to get in the way of its deeper and darker subject.

The movie itself, unfortunately, is not as compelling as the tempest that went into its making.

An Almodovar film is always an exercise in style, but High Heels also generates narrative energy and mystery, and provides what was, for me, a genuine surprise at the end.

It's one of the movies with a lot of smiles and laughter in it, and a good feeling all the way through. Just everyday life, warmly observed.

Stone and his editors, Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia, have somehow triumphed over the tumult of material here and made it work - made it grip and disturb us.

He’s a real smoothie, Warren Beatty, and when he plays one in a movie he is almost always effective. But his title role in Bugsy is more than effective, it’s perfect for him - showing a man who not only creates a seductive vision, but falls in love with it himself.

The Last Boy Scout is a superb example of what it is: a glossy, skillful, cynical, smart, utterly corrupt and vilely misogynistic action thriller. To give it a negative review would be dishonest, because it is such a skillful and well-crafted movie.

Jarmusch is a poet of the night. Much of Night on Earth creates the same kind of lonely, elegaic, romantic mood as Mystery Train, his film about wanderers in nighttime Memphis. Tom Waits' music helps to establish this mood of cities that have been emptied of the waking. It's as if the minds of these night people are affected by all of the dreams and nightmares that surround them.

Poignancy. Lessons to be learned. Speeches to be made. Lost marbles to be rediscovered. Tears to be shed. The conclusion of Hook would be embarrassingly excessive even for a movie in which something of substance had gone before.

The beauty in this film is in its directness. There are some obligatory scenes. But there are also some very original and touching ones. This is a movie that has its heart in the right place.

We feel for once we are witnessing the true story of how a movie got made.

There is a long central section in the film which is a triumph of narrative technique.

Beauty and the Beast reaches back to an older and healthier Hollywood tradition in which the best writers, musicians and filmmakers are gathered for a project on the assumption that a family audience deserves great entertainment, too.

This is the kind of film that isn't as much fun to see as it is to hear about.

Kafka, as subject or character, simply doesn't fit into the world of this film. Soderbergh does demonstrate again here that he's a gifted director, however unwise in his choice of project.

Impressive moviemaking, showing Scorsese as a master of a traditional Hollywood genre.

Little Man Tate is the kind of movie you enjoy watching; it's about interesting people finding out about themselves.

Highlander 2: The Quickening is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I've seen in many a long day - a movie almost awesome in its badness.

There are scenes here that are funnier than those of any other movie this year, and other scenes that weep with the pain of sad family secrets, and when it's over we have seen some kind of masterpiece. This is one of the best films of the year.

There is no mechanical plot that has to grind to a Hollywood conclusion, and no contrived test for the heroes to pass; this is a movie about two particular young men, and how they pass their lives.

The movie crackles with energy and life, and with throwaway slang dialogue by Mamet, who takes realistic speech patterns and simplifies them into a kind of hammer-and-nail poetry.

Dogfight isn't a love story so much as a story about how a young woman helps a confused teenage boy to discover his own better nature. The fact that his discoveries take place on the night before he ships out to fight the war in Vietnam only makes the story more poignant.

The Man in the Moon is a wonderful movie, but it is more than that, it is a victory of tone and mood. It is like a poem.

“At the Max” is a rock concert brought to a point approaching virtual reality.

I’ve seen versions of the plot of “Necessary Roughness” in almost every other movie ever made about an underdog sports team - but I fell for it again this time, because it was well done, and because the movie doesn’t try to pump itself up into more than it is, a good-humored entertainment.

A disorganized, rambling and eccentric movie that contains some moments of truth, some moments of humor, and many moments of digression.

It's impressive, how thoughtfully Penn handles this material.

The movie is filled with life and energy, and the music is honest. The Commitments is one of the few movies about a fictional band that’s able to convince us the band is real and actually plays together.

If "Henry V," the first film [Branaugh] directed and starred in, caused people to compare him to Olivier, "Dead Again" will inspire comparisons to Welles and Hitchcock - and the Olivier of Hitchcock's "Rebecca."

A black comedy in the tradition of David Lynch, Luis Bunuel and the Coens themselves...an assured piece of comic filmmaking.

Pure Luck is a bad movie, all right - with leaden timing, a disorganized screenplay, and stretches where nothing much of interest seems to be happening.

The movie has slick production values and a few clever lines, and is an invaluable illustration of the Principle of Evil Marksmanship. This principle, you will recall from my Glossary of Movie Terms, teaches us that in the movies the bad guys can never hit anything with a gun, and the good guys can hardly miss.

I was expecting Doc Hollywood to be a comedy. And it is a comedy. But it surprised me by also being a love story, and a pretty good one - the kind where the lovers are smart enough to know all the reasons why they shouldn't get together, but too much in love to care.

Return to the Blue Lagoon aspires to the soft-core porn achievements of the earlier film, but succeeds instead of creating a new genre, no-core porn.

What I saw was a successful attempt by the outsiders to dramatize how success and status in the world often depend on props you can buy, or steal, almost anywhere - assuming you have the style to know how to use them.

Hal Hartley is on his way to creating a distinctive film world, and although Trust is not a successful film, you can see his vision at work, and it's intriguing.

It has its laughs, but it’s a more thoughtful film, more softhearted toward its characters. It’s warm and poignant.

A riot of visual invention and weird humor that works on its chosen sub-moronic level, and on several others as well, including some fairly sophisticated ones.

Has maturity and emotional depth: There are no cheap shots, nothing is thrown in for effect, realism is placed ahead of easy dramatic payoffs, and the audience grows deeply involved.

The plot of Point Blank, summarized, invites parody (rookie agent goes undercover as surfer to catch bank robbers). The result is surprisingly effective.

It's so neat, so formula, so contrived, I was thinking about "The Graduate" instead of about characters I had spent two hours with. So, I suspect, was Nichols.

The point is not really what is said, but the tone of voice, the word choices, the conversational strategies, the sense of life going on all the time, everywhere, all over town.

The key element in any action picture, I think, is a good villain. Terminator 2 has one, along with an intriguing hero and fierce heroine, and a young boy who is played by Furlong with guts and energy.

The plot exists to be disregarded, the characters are deliberately constructed of cardboard, the sight gags are idiotic, and the dialogue is dumb. Really dumb. So dumb you laugh twice, once because of how stupid it is, and the second time because you fell for it.

The movie lacks the wit and self-mocking irony of the Indiana Jones movies, and instead seems like a throwback to the simple-minded, clean-cut sensibility of a less complicated time. That doesn’t mean The Rocketeer is not entertaining. But adjustments are necessary to enjoy it.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a murky, unfocused, violent and depressing version of the classic story, with little of the lightheartedness and romance we expect from Robin Hood.

City Slickers comes packaged as one kind of movie - a slapstick comedy about white-collar guys on a dude ranch - and it delivers on that level while surprising me by being much more ambitious, and successful, than I expected. This is the proverbial comedy with the heart of truth, the tear in the eye along with the belly laugh. It's funny, and it adds up to something.

Watching the movie made me think of those subteen career novels I used to read in grade school, with titles like Brent Jones, Boy Reporter. They were always about how some kid got a lucky break and got hired by a newspaper, where of course he quickly learned the ropes and scooped the world on a big story, after which he got a telegram from the president and went off to college with a rosy future ahead of him. Those books came from a more innocent time, but Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead has been made in the same spirit.

Jungle Fever contains two sequences - the girl talk and the crackhouse visit - of amazing power. It contains humor and insight and canny psychology, strong performances, and the fearless discussion of things both races would rather not face.

If it doesn't work, it fails spectacularly, but it does work, and it succeeds in making its plot clear even though the basic story device is unending confusion.

What I regret is that all of the expertise lavished on this movie couldn't have been put at the service of a more intelligent story about real firemen, real working conditions, real heroism, and the real craft and art of fire-fighting.

Truly, Madly, Deeply, a truly odd film, maddening, occasionally deeply moving.

Although the movie seems happiest when it is retailing potential scandal, its heart is not in sex but in business, and the central value in the film is the work ethic.

Sarandon and Davis find in Callie Khouri’s script the materials for two plausible, convincing, lovable characters. And as actors they work together like a high-wire team, walking across even the most hazardous scenes without putting a foot wrong.

There should be a special category for movies that are neither good nor bad, but simply excessive.

If Edwards had somehow found a way to really grapple with the implications of his story - if he had pushed to see how far he could go - Switch might have been a truly revolutionary comedy, on the order of Tootsie but more sexually frank. Unfortunately, he seems determined to make everything palatable to the sensibilities of the kinds of people who probably wouldn’t attend this kind of movie in the first place - and, in the process, he takes a daring idea and plays it safe. Too safe.

Toy Soldiers, a film with earnest performances and professional production values, is constructed out of characters, situations and gimmicks that will be instantly recognized by the weary viewer. There is nothing new here.

This is Matt Dillon's first film since Drugstore Cowboy, and demonstrates again that he is one of the best actors working in movies. He possesses the secret of not giving too much, of not trying so hard that we're distracted by his performance.

Alan Rudolph’s Mortal Thoughts is a movie just like the true crime stories I enjoy the most.

Like a John Cheever short story or a sociological snapshot by Tom Wolfe, The Object of Beauty is about people who have been so defined by their lifestyles that without those styles they scarcely exist.

The movie is funny in a warm, fuzzy way, and it has a splendidly satisfactory ending, which is unusual for an Albert Brooks film 

The movie is ultimately not quite successful; when it was over I felt there was some additional payoff or explanation still due. Perhaps the arbitrary, unfinished nature of the story is part of its purpose. But I felt that characters this interesting should not be allowed to remain complete ciphers. Still, in individual moments, The Comfort of Strangers has an eerie, atmospheric charm.

The film appealed to me for two reasons. First, because of its unabashed, lurid melodrama, in which the days are filled with scheming and the nights with passion and violence. Second, because of its visual beauty.

Today's kids are learning from the Turtles that the world is a sinkhole of radioactive waste, that it's more reassuring to huddle together in sewers than take your chances competing at street level, and that individuality is dangerous. Cowabunga.

The screenplay by Carolyn Shelby, Christopher Ames and Samantha Shad contains dialogue scenes so well-heard and written it's hard to believe this is a Hollywood movie, with Hollywood's tendency to have characters underline every emotion so the audience won't have to listen so carefully.

Guilty by Suspicion is about a period that is now some 40 years ago (although some blacklist members did not work again until the 1970s). But it teaches a lesson we are always in danger of forgetting: that the greatest service we can do our country is to be true to our conscience.

True Colors requires more than the willing suspension of disbelief; it demands a willful abandonment of incredulity.

Surprisingly touching.

The movie isn't a comic book that's been assembled out of the spare parts from other crime movies; it's an original, in-depth look at this world, written and directed with concern—apparently after a lot of research and inside information.

The experience of watching The Doors is not always very pleasant.

It has been a good long while since I have felt the presence of Evil so manifestly demonstrated as in the first appearance of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs.

The film is astonishing in the amount of material it contains. It isn't thin or superficial; there is an abundance of observation and invention here.

Because the opening scenes of Sleeping with the Enemy are so powerful, the rest of the movie is all the more disappointing. The film begins as an unyielding look at a battered wife, and ends as another one of those thrillers where the villain toys with his victim and the audience.

It's a strong, intelligent performance [by Gibson], filled with life, and it makes this into a surprisingly robust Hamlet.

Movies like this are an antidote to the violent and defeatist thrillers a lot of younger moviegoers seem to be hooked on. It's an adventure, it's exciting, it stirs the imagination, and there are scenes of terrific suspense.