Alive represents one of Hollywood's increasingly rare attempts to create a religious drama, but that novelty aside, the film is stiff, overlong and frequently risible. [15 Jan 1993, p.F]

The inconsistencies of Nowhere to Run make it finally unsatisfying, but the film leaves little doubt that Robert Harmon is a major talent, though one still waiting for a project equal to his abilities.

Miller's finely crafted, highly moving new film, seems meant as a new beginning, grounded in an entirely different kind of material and told in an entirely different manner than anything Miller has attempted before.

The film is finally impersonal, almost anonymous; it's a chilly, lumbering project that carries little of the mark of lived experience. [25 Dec 1992]

One of the few remaining Hollywood filmmakers who can function at this level of pure cinema, Hill delivers here with a renewed force and assurance. After a string of tired films (including the exhausted "Another 48 HRS."), Hill seems revitalized. [25 Dec 1992, p.C]

One of the most mawkish films ever made.

Works because it's able to draw so many side issues into its central conflict, spreading its concerns culture-wide. [11 Dec 1992]

A talky, plodding film that seems likely to bore children and adults in equal measure. [11 Dec 1992, p.B2]

It has a few good laughs in it thanks to Murphy, but mainly depends for its appeal on an uncomfortable manipulation of racial stereotypes. [04 Dec 1992]

A crackling good movie. [18 Dec 1992]

The steady Costner gives a competent enough performance this time out as he dances with foxes, or at least one, while Grammy winner Houston is quite impressive in her feature debut, displaying both hot and cool emotion as well as performing six new songs...Unfortunately, she is assigned to handle lines like, "You're a hard one to figure out, Frank Farmer," and "I've never felt this safe before." Unfortunately, too, the romance gets in the way of the thriller, and when the two principals finally take to their bed, so does the movie. [25 Nov 1992, p.C2]

Although the film in no way measures up to the features made under Disney's personal supervision, it does contain some far more imaginative and adept animation than the last several post-Walt titles.

For Keitel, this is the Scorsese film that Scorsese never gave him, in which he gets to elbow Robert De Niro away from center stage and take the best part for himself. He seizes the opportunity: Bad Lieutenant immediately becomes one of the defining roles of his career. [22 Jan 1993, Friday, p.C]

The new film does little but repeat the gags and situations of the first movie, with a slight change of venue. [20 Nov 1992, p.A]

Coppola has raised the stakes, promising the definitive version of the vampire story. What he has created, however, is fresh and original yet boring, an exercise more in art direction than storytelling. [13 Nov 1992, p. C]

With most of the action confined to the body of the plane (though there is a brief stopover at a Louisiana airfield), the screenplay poses some significant challenges in staging, none of which Hooks seems to recognize or accept. [06 Nov 1992, p.B]

It's to Robinson's personal credit - though probably to the film's commercial debit - that he doesn't emphasize the exploitation elements of the story. By current standards, the violence is relatively sparse and discreet, though there does come a moment when the blind and vulnerable Thurman - or at least, her body double - must strip down and stretch out in a bathtub as a mysterious figure hops around, silently (!) taking flash pictures. [6 Nov 1992, p.C]

While Intervista will appeal mostly to the dedicated cineaste who can appreciate its many inside jokes, Fellini displays such a ravishing range of technique and assurance that even more casual moviegoers must view this film with awe. [26 Mar 1993, p.J]

Erotically charged American films invariably are spiked with criminal danger. So "The Lover" - a movie about a young French girl's sexual awakening in colonial Vietnam that relies entirely on cinematic effects to evoke the sensuality of its time, place and events - is refreshing evidence that we don't need fear to trigger arousal.

Robert De Niro's characterization is too jokey, a knockoff of his Rupert Pupkin ("The King of Comedy"), and Irwin Winkler's direction is earnest but lethargic. Jessica Lange does better as a barmaid who wants her own saloon. [23 Oct 1992, p.CN]

Dr. Giggles strains for the kind of charnel house humor that once was the glory of 1950s horror comics like Tales from the Crypt. But Coto's imagination, like Dr. Giggle's rusty scalpels, isn't all that sharp, and the picture soon peters out into a flat, predictable series of stomach-churning unpleasantries. [26 Oct 1992, p.5C]

As a film, "Consenting Adults" has little to distinguish itself from the other entries in the genre, apart from an entertainingly hammy performance from Spacey and the clever production design of Carol Spier, with its emphasis on bold color effects (the interior of the Otis house is painted an infernal red) and complicated architectural spaces. But this, of course, is the kind of filmmaking that defines success by its adherence to the norm, not in dangerous departures from it. [16 Oct 1992, p.C]

A River Runs Through It emerges as hopelessly middle-brow-the kind of diluted, prettified art traditionally associated with PBS and the Academy Awards. [09 Oct 1992]

For its first hour is as exciting an action picture as the Die Hard films. The tension and humor level tail off a bit toward the conclusion, but Steven Seagal and Chicago director Andy Davis clearly declare themselves as top-flight talent.

Given the current political climate, it's hard to see how any film about Christopher Columbus could make everybody happy, and indeed, Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise seems unlikely to leave too many ticket buyers smiling.

An okay kids' picture about a bunch of misfit hockey players who are brought together to play in the Big Game by a cynical, Yuppie coach (Emilio Estevez) doing community service. [02 Oct 1992, p.C]

But the biggest surprise is that Sinise steals scene after scene from Malkovich who has the flashier role. His work also has a quiet power, a tribute to the minimalist acting style that knows the camera can function as an X-ray if the characterization is true. [2 Oct 1992, p.C]

Davis and Garcia are both fine, and Hoffman gives an entertaining performance that still smells a little much of acting. But it's in the supporting roles that Frears makes his taste and talent felt, guiding such performers as Kevin J. O'Connor, Tom Arnold and Cady Huffman to quick, quietly efficient characterizations. [02 Oct 1992, p.B]

Tarantino's debut directing job acknowledges the sloppiness and silences that are typically squeezed out of most crime films, but we get the point early on and the remainder is macho posturing. [23 Oct 1992]

It's a well written, well staged and well acted piece, though there is something musty in its aesthetic - that of the huge, bellowing method performance, plastered over a flimsy, one-set world. [02 Oct 1992, p.A]

Never mind the gorgeous wilderness backdrop, the 18th-Century details, the carefully voiced and subtitled American Indian dialogue. From its very first frame until seconds before closing credits, "Mohicans" is an action movie. [25 Sep 1992]

An awful vampire comedy from John Landis ("Animal House," "The Blues Brothers") that is enlivened only by the eroticism of French actress Anne Parillaud ("La Femme Nikita") who is willing to disrobe for her first Hollywood film and major payday. She plays a vampire who feasts on Italian mobsters in Pittsburgh, falling in love with Anthony LaPaglia along the way. The neck-biting and gunplay are gross. Don Rickles is a sore thumb as a mob attorney. [25 Sept 1992, p.C]

Nobly intended and about half baked, School Ties is a slightly glorified ``Afterschool Special`` that might function as an introduction to the evils of anti-Semitism for sheltered teens.

South Central treats its violent, often melodramatic storyline with a spareness and deliberation that lends the material an unexpected, quiet power. [18 Sep 1992, p.F]

There is something new here, and very fresh.

Australian Judy Davis, one of our finest actresses, gives a brilliant comic performance as a bitter spurned woman venting her spleen on a hapless blind date. Sydney Pollack proves surprisingly effective in a brutal scene where he abuses a bimbo. Husbands and Wives dosen't break new ground in arguing that not breaking up is hard to do; it simply raises the debate with a mix of fine writing and tragic real-life parallels. [18 Sept 1992, p.C]

Wind is a vigorous and colorful piece of filmmaking that never quite shakes free of an embarrassingly trite, formulaic screenplay. [11 Sep 1992, p.H]

This movie has more parable than paranoia, more metaphor than roar and gore. [16 Sep 1992, p.3C]

All of the kids have wonderful skin, unblemished by the slightest pimple and never coarsened by the California sun. As sordid as the material may be, Rocco can't help but prettify it. [11 Sep 1992, p.C]

Aided by a splendid, understated score, by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, Brother's Keeper captures the story of how Munnsville saved Delbert from the slammer with probity and elegance. It also slyly suggests how the experience, even the presence of the documentary camera, socialized Delbert and his brothers. [26 Mar 1993, p.C2]

Like a relentlessly charismatic political candidate offering the moon, stars and a viable health-care plan, Bob Roberts promises much but ultimately fails to deliver.

The details of this Twin Peaks are slight and repetitious, and their meanings are numbingly obvious. Behind small town America's facade of sweetness and light, there exist darkness and evil-news that is a day late and about $7.50 short. [28 Aug 1992]

A sometimes very funny comedy. [28 Aug 1992, p.C]

Slickly executed and dramatically engaging.

The Living End is not a movie even vaguely interested in attracting a wide public. It's a movie meant to please its own niche audience, and at that it seems likely to succeed.

Schroeder brings a decidedly un-Hollywood approach to the material, which is both the source of the film's greatest aesthetic strength (it is unusually attentive to questions of character and form) and most crippling commercial weakness. American audiences, used to nonstop action, will probably grow impatient with Schroeder's slow, nuanced approach.

Wretchedly unfunny. [14 Aug 1992, p.18]

Individual scenes work, but the movie seems overstuffed-why is the Harris character necessary-and halting.

A miserable ripoff of The Karate Kid with three whitebread young-uns taking lessons from their Chinese grandfather on how to be upright and horizontal ninja warriors. They get their kicks trying to knock off a Steven Seagal imitation who is running drugs.

Following on the abject failure of Bonfire of the Vanities, director De Palma seems to have seriously lost his way. [14 Aug 1992, p.C]

Kuzui has imposed a heavily block-lettered feminist message on the movie, suggesting that Buffy discovers her empowerment as a woman by driving huge, phallic stakes through the hearts of her enemies. In this case, having it all means being feminine and bloodthirsty, too. [31 Jul 1992, p.B]

Insistently grotesque, relentlessly misanthropic and spectacularly tasteless, Death Becomes Her isn't a film designed to win the hearts of the mass moviegoing public. But it is diabolically inventive and very, very funny.

Buoyed by Rex Maidment's fine, lush photography - it was shot around Portofino - and uniformly superb performances, Enchanted April is a wonderfully lovely, sweet, bright (and sometimes funnny) BBC film that is uplifting without being sappy. [7 Aug 1992, p.L]

The satire is finally too thin and familiar (and not just from The Player - most of the observations here have been staples of the Hollywood comedy since the early '30s) to support the movie's pervasive tone of sourness and disgust. [21 Aug 1992, p.J]

A fatally compromised, half-realized execution. [ 10 Jul 1992]

The film is actually fairly well made, with a brisk tempo pace, a professional look and enough competently staged action.

At times, though, the appealing but uneven film seems rather disjointed, with Anders not quite getting a handle on her material, which is weakened by a sometimes-murky storyline (some of the minor characters drift in and out for no apparent reason) and pretention (there is a lot of talk at the end about the desert being a kind of metaphor for hope and renewal). Still, Anders decidedly is a director worth watching. [6 Nov 1992, p.J]

Charming and gentle and steady-on, it contains few dramatic moments (except for one notable scene involving two children), even fewer surprises, and lacks the judgmental harshness and bite of Bergman's most celebrated creations. [14 Aug 1992, p.B]

The best thing I can say about "Prelude to a Kiss" is that it seems fresh, daring its talented performers to play a couple in love. In 1992, that seems very bold. [10 Jul 1992, p.C]

Boomerang, a sleek, confident and very funny urban comedy that may not entirely overcome Murphy's more discomfiting tendencies, but at least manages to put them to good use. [01 Jul 1992]

Penny Marshall, the sitcom actress ("Laverne and Shirley") turned filmmaker ("Big," "Awakenings"), manages to make even such elementary material seem labored and phony. The film, which was shot in and around Chicago last summer, is a major disappointment.

But after introducing these issues, director Jonathan Kaplan ("The Accused") takes the easy, unimaginative way out by turning Liotta's character into a complete lunatic in the manner of the psycho-husband who terrorized Julia Roberts in "Sleeping With the Enemy." How much more interesting "Unlawful Entry" might have been if his character had been played brighter and less easily dispatched than simply with a bullet. [26 June 1992, p.C]

Our rooting interest is not for any macho act by Batman to save the city but for each character to achive some sort of emotional peace. That makes for a strange but refreshing action story.

Though the characters played by Martin and Hawn - a lonely architect and the confidence woman who moves into his country home, claiming to be his wife after a one-night stand - don't have much inside them but sawdust, their surface reactions are entertaining and engaging enough to make Housesitter a winning romantic comedy. [12 June 1992, p.C]

Adapted by Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm") from Tom Clancy's best seller, "Patriot Games" is an uncomfortably angry, completely bald-faced fantasy about violence as an answer to middle-class, middle-age ennui. Sadder still, it isn't a very effective one. [5 June 1992, p.C2]

Not much of Class Act makes any sense, which is all right, but not much of it is funny either. [05 Jun 1992, p.B]

Director Ardolino and his unnamed colleagues should be given a couple of swift raps across the palm with a ruler.

Far and Away, a mildly old-fashioned romantic melodrama that has as many charming moments as embarrassing ones. Much of the charm is supplied by the earnest performances of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. [22 May 1992]

A major problem is that "Encino Man" clings to a shopworn coming-of-age formula instead of taking advantage of the far more original idea that sets it in motion. Dave's story is constantly overshadowed by the potentially much more entertaining spectacle of the caveboy's adjustment to contemporary life. The subtext has pretty much gobbled up the movie's center, leaving it severely out of whack. [22 May 1992, p.B2]

A bizarre, dreamlike, surrealistic thriller, Zentropa is one of those films that is easier to admire than like. Creatively crafted and finely tuned, it is also an extremely cold, nihilistic work - as starkly efficient as the imperious railroad company that forms the centerpiece. [03 Jul 1992, p.C]

They once again trot out the same cynical, numbing formula: bullets, bonding and bravado tempered with self-congratulatory humor.

Mixing moments of genuine terror with offbeat comedy, writers Tom Epperson and Thornton have created a script that jumps along wih the energy of "In Cold Blood."

A rash and prurient tale, full of the sort of stylish venom that could almost elevate it to artful kitsch. Almost. [29 May 1992, p.C]

While entertaining and often genuinely frightening, thanks to a remorsefully blue cast to the cinematography, this thick stew can be tough to swallow under Tony Maylam's bumpy direction. [3 May 1992, p.C7]

The movie is full of dead ends, logical gaps and bizarre inconsistencies. Yet Donaldson is deft enough, both in his composition of shots and his direction of actors, to create a scene-by-scene sense of competence and control that carries the picture across some very rough spots.

A string of slapstick sequences at the end of Brain Donors...finally unleashes its potential for subversive hilarity. But the wait is long and not altogether compensated by Turturro's smooth delivery.

Deep Cover is a rousing entertainment but also a cunningly subversive piece of work, one that burrows from within genre conventions to defeat expectations and undermine smug certainties. It`s a movie that gets under your skin in a way that no amount of speech-making can.

As much as the film may try to peddle warmth and solidarity, it remains disturbingly cold and impersonal, limited by the formulaic writing of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and stymied by Ortega's apparent distance from his cast. [10 Apr 1992]

Garris, filming mainly in a bobbing and weaving, hand-held camera style, keeps the scenes pared down to their functional essentials, wisely substituting speed for nuance. Sleepwalkers gets the job done. [13 Apr 1992, p.5C]

FernGully is surprisingly courageous in its politics and adventurous in its stylistic choices.

What "M.A.S.H." did to service comedies, what "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" did to westerns, what "The Long Goodbye" did to detective pictures, The Player does the to Hollywood success story. [24 April 1992]

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's "Delicatessen" is an exuberantly wacky, perversely droll black comedy with an ample dose of gentle whimsy-"Eating Raoul" out of "Mr. Hulot's Holiday." [17 Apr 1992]

Only director Apted`s admirably low-key, matter-of-fact approach to the material keeps it from becoming unbearably artificial.

It's a funny, frequently rousing film, with a warmly appealing acting partnership at its center-between basketball hustlers Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

With last week's elections in South Africa finally pointing the way toward a dismantlement of apartheid, it can't be said that the timing of "The Power of One" is particularly astute. But this is a film with no particular relationship to the real world in any case. [27 March 1992, p.M]

The movie has a big, warm, fuzzy heart - and not a bellylaugh in sight. [30 March 1992, p.5]

A genial if predictable romantic comedy about a couple of mismatched ice skaters who come together to try to win an Olympic medal in pairs figure skating. Oh, yes, they also fall in love. What results is sort of "Dirty Dancing on Ice," with Moira Kelly as a wealthy, spoiled, teenage ice princess with her own rink, and D.B. Sweeney as a rough-and-tumble hockey player at the end of his career. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser - yes, Starksy - directs cleanly, but the chemistry between the co-stars makes it work. [27 March 1992, p.C]

Verhoeven does not explore the dark side, but merely exploits it, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Very little sense of the performers' humanity emerges from behind their stage roles, perhaps because Bogdanovich has directed the supposedly spontaneous dialogue to sound just as forced and theatrical as the scripted lines. [20 March 1992, p.2]

A good-hearted comedy of clashing cultures. The film finds great fun in coaxing out and mocking a range of regional differences, from mutually impenetrable accents to radical variants in dress codes, but miraculously never descends to broad, dismissive caricatures.

The story, however, was interesting and the minor characters, as well as the photography, were enjoyable to watch. Not to mention you get a preview of what may be next in home entertainment. [13 Mar 1992, p.N]

The movie`s underlying message seems to be that racial harmony can best be achieved by allowing white boys to beat the stuffing out of minority kids- that`s what really earns their love and respect. There must be a better way.

Despite the superficial Hitchcock trappings, from the Bay Area locales to trains and high places, the comedy thriller is neither particularly comic nor particularly thrilling, and after this outing, director Carpenter (Halloween, Starman) may wish to stay out of sight as well. [28 Feb 1992, p.B]

Medicine Man is a sympathetic project that gets done in by an excessively aggressive screenplay - one that keeps manufacturing artificial conflicts and false climaxes where some more relaxed character work would have gracefully done the trick. [07 Feb 1992, p.3]

What is genuinely chilling about Final Analysis lies not in the foolish plotting but in the completely callous attitude of the director and writer, who are interested in their characters only as compositional elements or, at best, game pieces to be pushed around a board. It`s a cold, distant work of no compassion and, finally, no importance.

The movie assumes its multiculturalism with grace and humor, moving between its various worlds with a delighted eye for distinguishing features and a rich sense of character. [14 Feb 1992, p.B7]

It's meant to be uplifting, but the material is so undernourished that bench-pressing a phone book already seems beyond it. None of the characters has been filled out beyond the underlying conventions and the few distinctive mannerisms contributed by the actresses who portray them.

It's a perfectly competent film, but the title quantity is the one thing this dry and earnest movie hasn't got.