I've seen Barcelona twice. It seemed deeper to me the second time. It appears at first to be about the casual lives of young men trying to launch their careers, but eventually (again, like an Allen movie) it reveals darker depths and meanings.

The movie is not so much about romance as about goodheartedness, which is a rarer quality, and not so selfish. And Cage has a certain gentleness that brings out nice soft smiles on Fonda's face.

North is one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I’ve had at the movies. To call it manipulative would be inaccurate; it has an ambition to manipulate, but fails.

The setup in The Client is done so well, it deserves a better payoff.

The director, James Cameron, is a master of action (he worked with Schwarzenegger on "Terminator 2"), and when he's doing his thing, no one does it better.

The baseball action isn't very interesting because the angels (led by Christopher Lloyd) manipulate the outcomes. And the human interest stuff is canned and unconvincing.

What a magical movie.

If you respond to film noir, if you like dark streets and women with scarlet lips and big fast cars with running boards, the look of this movie will work some kind of magic. The story itself may not be so mesmerizing, but who really cares? Style and tone are everything with a movie like this, which wants to bring to life a dark secret place in the lurid pulp imagination.

The result is a genuinely fascinating film, one that may tell more about MGM musicals, and aspects of American society, than a film devoted to still more highlights from musical numbers that did make their way into films.

Like Free Willy, The Secret Garden, Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Man in the Moon, this is a "family movie" that doesn't condescend. It takes its 12-year-old hero as seriously as he takes baseball, and nothing is "dumbed down" for the PG audience.

It's a rambling, unfocused biography of Wyatt Earp, starting when he's a kid and following his development from an awkward would-be lawyer into a slick gunslinger. This is a long journey, in a three-hour film that needs better pacing.

The movie never convinced me that much chemistry existed between the cop and the ex-con. And, for that matter, I wasn't much moved by Macaulay Culkin's performance as the smart little waif.

Basically what we have here is a drama, with comedy occasionally lifting the mood. The result is a surprising seriousness; this isn't the mindless romp with cute animals.

We've seen this done before, but seldom so well, or at such a high pitch of energy.

All of these films approach their subjects with such irony that we cannot take them at face value; "White" is the anti-comedy, in between the anti-tragedy and the anti-romance.

City Slickers II, subtitled The Legend of Curly's Gold, makes the mistake of thinking we care more about the gold than about the city slickers. Like too many sequels, it has forgotten what the first film was really about. Slickers II is about the MacGuffin instead of the characters.

Renaissance Man is a labored, unconvincing comedy that seems cobbled together out of the half-understood remnants of its betters.

Fear of a Black Hat, which treats rap with the same droll dubiousness that This is Spinal Tap provided for heavy metal, is not as fearless and sharp-edged as it could be - but it provides a lot of laughs, and barbecues a few sacred cows.

This is a great-looking movie, a triumph of set design and special effects, creating a fantasy world halfway between suburbia and a prehistoric cartoon.

The modern sequences lack realism or credibility. The ancient sequences play like the equivalent of a devout Bible story. The result is a slow-moving and pointless exercise by Bertolucci, whose “The Last Emperor” was a much superior telling of a similar story about a child who is chosen for great things.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is one of the more empty, pointless, baffling films I can remember, and the experience of viewing it is an exercise in nothingness.

The first lighthearted, laugh-oriented family Western in a long time, and one of the nice things about it is, it doesn't feel the need to justify its existence. It acts like it's the most natural thing in the world to be a Western.

Crooklyn is not in any way an angry film. But thinking about the difference between its world and ours can make you angry, and I think that was one of Lee's purposes here.

It is a stunning work of visual style - the best version of a comic book universe I've seen - and Brandon Lee clearly demonstrates in it that he might have become an action star, had he lived.

The chaos in Kika is so brilliantly orchestrated, and so gamely acted, you can't help being drawn into it. There is, truly, never a dull moment. And, in patented Almodovar fashion, the bold, kitschy colors of the costumes and settings, provide their own charm. [27 May 1994, p.43]

Who was this movie made for? Not for me, that's sure, but I have a hunch younger kids will find it satisfying.

As for Madchen Amick, a stunning beauty with an edgy intelligence, Kazan has given her a role that grows more interesting as it deepens.

The screenplay, by Sara Parriott and Josann McGibbon, has a good feel for female best-friend relationships, and the dialogue has life and edge to it.