Ynpretentious and efficient, Curtis Hanson`s suspense drama The Hand That Rocks the Cradle suggests, after the monstrous ego trips of this past holiday season, that some sense of professionalism continues to reside in Hollywood.

For all of Schrader's capacity for spectacular self-laceration and spiritual agony, Light Sleeper finds him able for the first time to express a certain peacefulness, and the effect is delicate and discreet.

Though much of Naked Lunch is flip, hip and hilariously funny, it never wanders far from a profoundly melancholic undertone - Cronenberg's unshakable sense of loneliness, isolation and anxiety. [10 Jan 1992]

Throughout the film, cinematographer Arthur Jafa brings in lovely, imaginative photography, showing a remarkable eye for light and composition, while Dash provides crisp, sensitive direction in putting together a moving work about a simple but proud people immersed in a distinct culture and ritual as they try to "touch their own spirits."

Part Oscar bid, part vanity project and all pretty silly. Only Nick Nolte, as Tom Wingo, the psychologically blocked Southern high school teacher who is Conroy's protagonist, transcends the circumstances to deliver a performance of skill and commanding sympathy.

It's an admirable attempt, though a less than completely successful one. The film's disappointments lie not so much in Almodovar's controlled, respectful direction as in the strange gaps and displacements of his screenplay, which never seems to supply the scenes we most want to see. [20 Dec 1991]

The film's real subject is the unacknowledged intensity of the father-daughter bond and the difficulty of separation, though Shyer, true to his name, shies away from the more painful implications of the material. [20 Dec 1991, p.B]

Does JFK capture the truth? Possibly, in a poetic sense. Is it a compelling film? Most assuredly. [20 Dec 1991]

Extracting a meat-and-potato slickness from the screenplay by James Toback (a sucker for facile laughs), director Barry Levinson (Rain Man) provides a good chunk of entertainment if not much creative risk. Fast-paced in its first half, Bugsy eventually slips into a stall, especially in the clumsy scenes where the protagonist tries to handle domesticity with his long- suffering family.

The Last Boy Scout will win no year-end awards, but at least it delivers the goods-which is more that can be said for most of this year's holiday releases.

In Night on Earth, Jarmusch is painting with colors he has never used before. The transformation is thrilling.

Like the massive shipboard set that is its centerpiece, the film is huge and impressive - though, again like the captain's imposing vessel, it stubbornly and disappointingly remains at anchor. Hook never sets sail.

The beautiful title song, performed poignantly by the richly textured voice of Angela Lansbury, makes the case for all lovers to look past their partners' faults and into their hearts.

The Addams Family doesn't deliver. After a while the ghoulish one-liners and macabre sight gags grow repetitive - the sadistic/masochistic interplay between Morticia and Gomez particularly grows weary - as too much of the humor comes off like unbridled Late Mel Brooks. [22 Nov 1991, p.B]

Steven Soderbergh's Kafka is a surprisingly cold, gray and flavorless follow-up to "sex, lies and videotape." [7 Feb. 1992]

Mulcahy has toned down the fancy, self-conscious camerawork of the original, which he also directed, and pushes the story forward with enough flash and pop to divert viewers from the shaky premises. [01 Nov 1991, p.F]

An off-center, lighthearted but perceptive study of people following their dreams in the only way they know how, Life Is Sweet-the title is only somewhat ironic-is a warm and joyful piece, with the tossed-off hilarity smoothly giving way to poignance in its darker final segments.

Beautifully wrought, darkly funny and finally devastating, My Own Private Idaho almost single-handedly revives the notion of personal filmmaking in the United States. [18 Oct 1991]

Frankie & Johnny manages to work as a sudsy romantic picture about big city loneliness despite an awkward performance by Al Pacino in the role of a hash-house dispenser of wisdom.

Homicide isn't easy to take, but its vision is chillingly persuasive. [18 Oct 1991, p.B]

The film, directed by Nancy Savoca (True Love) from a screenplay by Bob Comfort, is one of those sensitive dramas that defines its sensitivity by how brutally it can hammer the audience into feeling pity for its characters. [04 Oct 1991, p.L]

A film of fragile and esoteric pleasures, The Man in the Moon is not a movie that can be recommended to the general public and should probably even be protected from it. But for those who can respond to its tiny formal beauties, it is something to treasure. [04 Oct 1991, p.C]

Hector Elizondo and Robert Loggia are fine as the team's coaches. [27 Sept 1991, p.C2]

Some of the Indian imagery in the film is arch, but the story, the acting and the tension level are of the highest order. [04 Oct 1991, p.C]

To sum it up, you should see this movie if you have a burning need to waste money to find out an obscure fact about a has-been villain committing an everyday crime - namely, taking that money you just wasted. [20 Sept 1991, p.K]

It looks like director Parker, who can be quite ambitious (Mississippi Burning, Come See the Paradise), is coasting this time, merely reworking his big hit, Fame.

Jack Bender's direction, with the help of a driving score by Cory Lerios and John D'Andrea, manages to keep the level of suspense high even in the film's least convincing moments. [03 Sep 1991, p.5C]

Emerges as cutty, indistinct and confused, full of shots that don't match and spatial conceptions that would look flat even on TV. The more Branagh strains to appear “cinematic,'' the more he looks like a man of the theater. [23 Aug 1991, Friday, p.B]

An offbeat, genial western parody that has some surprisingly effective low-key humor. [30 Aug 1991, p.C2]

Predictably impersonal and uninspired.

While this production certainly ranks above Van Damme's prior efforts, it's still full of the sort of macho overkill typical of today's action genre. [09 Aug 1991, p.B]

Director Caton-Jones has given the film a few moments of charm and gentleness, though the movie would be a lot more beguiling if it weren't so sure of itself. Its charm has the practiced, impersonal touch of the professional salesman.

Jovovich and Krause are as photogenic and blandly naive as their predecessors, and their ultimate commingling is, if anything, even tamer than in the original. Veteran television-movie director William A. Graham and screenwriter Leslie Stevens have fashioned a 98-minute tropical vacation ad. [02 Aug 1991, p.B]

A rough-edged, talking-heads documentary, directed with skill if not polish by Jennie Livingston, that has found a topic almost unbelievably rich in cultural paradoxes and interpretive possibilities. [09 Aug 1991, p.C]

Trust seems ultimately a matter of touches-some cute, some surprising, some even fairly expressive, but none more than superficial. [16 Aug 1991]

But if Brooks doesn't get the sting of reality he's looking for in Life Stinks, he does succeed with the film's fantasy elements-most memorably, a dance sequence set to Cole Porter's Easy to Love and performed by Warren and Brooks in a colorful used-clothing warehouse.

Archangel is a perfectly self-contained aesthetic object, maddening in its arbitrariness and opacity, yet wholly absorbing in its flurry of urgent yet incomprehensible significations.

Boys N the Hood wants to be “The Learning Tree'' and “Super Fly'' at once, an ambition that doesn't seem quite honest. [12 July 1991]

At her best—and even in a hand-me-down project like Point Break—Bigelow is a uniquely talented, uniquely powerful filmmaker. Where the male action directors are still playing with toys-with dolls and models and matte shots-Bigelow has tapped into something primal and strong. She is a sensualist of genius in this most sensual of mediums.

It is one of the conventions of movies that maladies of the brain make people more childlike, lovable and full of life, as in, most recently, "Rain Man" and "Awakenings." But Regarding Henry drops even the marginally realistic trappings of those films in favor of pure fantasy, a fantasy of starting over, of returning to the womb. [10 July 1991, p.C-1]

Linklater`s creation is delightfully daffy-far better, as one of the slackers puts it, than a sharp stick in the eye.

A good summer movie, directed with great verve and imagination and filled with innovative, eye-popping effects. Cameron never relinquishes his grip on the audience, smoothly segueing from action sequence to action sequence and topping himself each time. [3 July 1991, Tempo, p.1]

If it doesn't make you laugh, nothing will. [28 June 1991]

Drawing purely on his technical skills, Reynolds is finally able to get some momentum going in the picture's final half-hour, when a defeated Robin musters the remains of his band and makes a last-ditch attempt on the Sheriff of Nottingham's castle. It seems to be enough to erase memories of the movie's painfully slow start and send the audience out reasonably happy and stimulated. But Robin Hood does not seem to be the defining blockbuster this summer still needs.

Women get the short end of the stick in the story, but there are big laughs mixed with some pain about growing up privileged. [7 June 1991, p.C-2]

Applegate, whose comic timing gets such a workout on TV, seems uninspired in a role that is essentially flat. What she needs - what the entire film could use, in fact - is a good dose of attitude. [07 June 1991, p.I]

Another important, risk-taking film from Spike Lee.

Boring and banal, overwrought and undercooked, Hudson Hawk is beyond bad. [24 May 1991]

Truly, Madly, Deeply, which takes on bereavement and regeneration, uneasily straddles the delicate line between the charming and the cloying. [24 May 1991, p.L]

Mayall`s hyper portrayal of Fred, while psychologically sound, is dramatically torture.

Candy is indisputably charming. A master of timing, he also is adept at doing a kind of verbal doubletake after saying the wrong thing, and, like Jackie Gleason, carries his weight with style and grace. The problem is, he can't carry the whole film. [24 May 1991, p.B]

As she says in one of the film's more blatant thesis statements: "I'm not the world's best singer or best dancer, but that's not the point. I'm interested in pushing buttons." Madonna's doing just that in Truth or Dare, but what she chooses to reveal remains far more revealing - and entertaining - than almost any comparable self-portrait. [17 May 1991, p.C]

A broadly played, by-the-numbers comedy that pits your consummate classic nut case against your quintessential screwed-up shrink. [17 May 1991]