The special effects are surprisingly good. And the too-numerous fight scenes have a certain flavor, since Ivan's henchmen always explode in ooze when they are destroyed, which brings out the eeewww in the audience.

Though Haynes' methods are austere and his style dry, the terror of his narrative becomes more palpable as the film unwinds. The picture's eerie delicacy, meticulous technique and rapt formality may distance us, but they also steadily strip bare the panic at its core.

there's no joy in this movie. It's a safe, compromised, even preachy, fable; a wannabe hip romp that never gets going. [07 Jul 1995]

Streep is an actress known for her uncanny ability with accents, but her quiet performance in "Bridges" proves that she would have made a world-class silent-film star, too.

What charmed me most about the movie was the interaction of the dogs themselves. [02 Jun 1995, p.J]

The film is an epic treatment of a childhood curio. It's also the kind of elaborate movie stunt you can't imagine someone really pulling off. [26 May 1995, p.C]

At its best, it's an exhilaratingly grandiose Highland fling. [24 May 1995, Tempo, p.1]

This is a picture that may sound sappy but probably will enrapture audiences lucky enough to catch it. [19 May 1995, p.L]

Little Odessa is a portrait of New York subcultures, the Russian immigrant community itself and the orginizatsya, or Russian mafia, that employs Joshua. The cityscapes are wintry and menacing. The characters have a strong pulse.

The tone and feel of Wild Reeds keeps shifting between irony and sentimentality, violence and tenderness, rebellion and acceptance. And those oscillations fit the volatile nature of its subject: young love and friendship. Together with his attractive and excellent cast, Techine recalls and invokes the mood swings of youth, the intensity and bursts of near-delirious passion.

In French Kiss--a picture that isn't unusually funny or original but that has expert actors, smooth direction and ravishing French locales--we can get pleasure from the sheer, relaxed polish of it all, the effortless swing. It's a good time passer. [5 May 1995, p.C]

The splendid new documentary Crumb, a sympathetic yet woundingly candid portrait, catches the artist with much the same skill. [26 May 1995]

Soderbergh pretty much failed in trying to evoke a noir-like nightmare world in the 1919 Prague of "Kafka," his 1991 terror film. But here, he dazzlingly hews out a noir landscape in more unlikely territory: modern-day Austin, Texas. [28 April 1995]

It's more of a pastiche, a montage of brutality, a slow descent into Dante's Inferno until we reach the subbasement of a boy's soul. [21 Apr 1995]

There is much that is hilarious about this bleak house of horrors, based on the real-life traumas of writer-director George Huang. Most of the humor surfaces early--including a clever opening restaurant scene--as Buddy (Kevin Spacey, in a terrific performance) gives his new assistant, Guy (Frank Whaley), a harsh lesson in subjugation. [12 May 1995, p.H]

This movie might be better-maybe even a classic-if it were less urbane, if the New York tiger that Nicolas Cage and Richard Price unleashed could bare all his fangs, and not just fill the theater with his magnetic growl. Then Kiss of Death might really be a killer. [21 Apr 1995, p.C]

Exceedingly clever and very sharp. [12 Apr 1995, p.7N]

The flabbergasting scenes here-written by a team of "Tonight Show" and "David Letterman Show" writers and directed by hot, young TV-commercial and music-video director Michael Bay-are slick, fast, loud, mostly derived from other movies and often senseless.

Ultimately, the weight of the film falls on Goofy's powerful shoulders. He does his best, but like Norma Desmond, he can only do so much.

But, as with any other Merchant Ivory film, this one provides pleasures beyond the ordinary. [07 Apr 1995]

Chris Farley is fine at physical gags, David Spade is snappy with wise cracks and Brian Dennehy is a good actor who has the best part in the movie-because he gets to die halfway through it. Tommy Boy, an attempt at populist comedy, has some laughs. But it doesn't really have any ideas, meaning or real feeling. This movie has a heart of plastic. It doesn't beat; it squeaks. [31 Mar 1995, p.C2]

It's a distraction: a buzz in your head that won't go away. [31 March 1995, p.HI]

The whole grand tradition of the humor of movie stupidity, from Laurel and Hardy and Mortimer Snerd to Jerry Lewis and Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, seems to crash and burn in this movie, which ends with Payne's idiotic laugh wheezing away over the end-titles. It almost sounds like the beginning of a laugh track-which "Major Payne" could certainly use. [24 March 1995, p.H]

Exotica may be a gloomy journey up river, but it's a trip worth taking. See it with a friend. One who has something to say. [03 Mar 1995, p.J]

Barker, who wasn't involved with the earlier Candyman, has never yet matched his stunning 1987 writer-director debut Hellraiser-and he never will if he keeps coming up with projects like this. [17 Mar 1995, p.J]

There's too much hardware, too little sense. Too much blood, too little flesh. Too much program, too little mind. That's the virus of the contemporary movie techno-thriller.

You may not want to accept what you see here; you may be unable to accept it. But it's doubtful you'll leave this film unmoved.

The Brady Bunch Movie, which was directed and written by at least five people whom we prefer not to embarrass, looks bad, sounds bad and doesn't make any sense. There's even something nightmarish about it. All these bad jokes and vacant sets become almost horrifying, as if the film were on the verge of proving that life itself is a bad joke on a vacant set. [17 Feb 1995, p.J]