I.Q. has a commendable idea. Brains aren't everything. You should follow your heart. Fine. Agreed. But just like E=MC2, you gotta prove it. With brains and heart.

This is nothing more than a half-hour Ramar of the Jungle episode, blown up to motion-picture length.

There's something so charged and beautiful about Jodie Foster's performance as a Smoky Mountains wild child in Nell that it carries you past a lot of glossy bumps in the movie. [23 Dec 1994, p.C]

It is beautifully shot and the production design is first-rate. Another strong point is the presence of some excellent actors in small roles. Unfortunately, they all have to work opposite Van Damme, who keeps trying to be witty and smart, but still comes across as a bit of a lunk.

Director Suri Krishnamma, depends on Finney for its power. His great performance carries the film over its shallow spots, its wish fulfillment, its pull toward caricature. [03 Feb 1995]

It's hard to create snap-crackling languor or laid-back frenzy. And there's also something condescending in the entire conception of Mixed Nuts. [21 Dec 1994, p.7]

Armstrong and screenwriter Robin Swicord have pared the work's sentimentality and bolstered its intellectual content, [21 Dec 1994]

In Richie Rich, the cliches are generic, and the film runs out of gas early on. [21 Dec 1994, p.7C]

Disclosure is pure and simple trash masquerading as significance. [9 Dec 1994, p.B]

Jones lets it all loose here. It's the performance of a lifetime: full of menace and venom, eloquence and fire, rot and pathos, crackling rawness and realism.

Perhaps if writer-director George Gallo ("29th Street") had tried to simplify this potentially sweet story, instead of mucking it up with all sorts of chases and shtick, it might have worked as a modern Christmas fable, complete with charity, kindness, and Three Not-So-Wise Men. But instead, we are presented with a Christmas buffet of overstuffed fruitcake and overspiked punch. Too stale, too sweet, too much. [02 Dec 1994, p.J]

Mrs. Parker is a comedy even though it's sad, and a sort of tragedy even though it's funny, with such foggy borders between the two that pathos and humor seem to smear all over each other, like makeup running with tears. [23 Dec 1994, p.N]

It's a shiny, glib, hollowly good-looking movie that always seems to be cooing at us-coldly. [23 Nov 1994, p.9C]

The performances are all superb, but special mention should go to Melanie Lynskey, a first-time film actress, who brings a frightening calm to the role of Pauline, and Sarah Peirse as Pauline's mother, whose main fault seems to be exhibiting too much care and concern for her strong-willed and imaginative daughter. [25 Nov 1994, p.M2]

There's so much emotion and so many ideas in this film that it's both angering and exhilarating. The acting is fine, the writing superb, the production crisp.

By using the author's name [Branagh] sets us up for something closer to the text of the Gothic thriller than James Whale's classic 1931 horror film. But Branagh's version is too respectful and ultimately, well, lifeless.

Perhaps if you are a Sega-head or Nintendo freak, and your mission in life is to rack up awesome scores on Double Dragon, you may find this loud and tedious movie more enjoyable than I did. But I doubt it. [04 Nov 1994, p.M]

The arrival of Ra (Jaye Davidson), bearing sci-fi cliches, changes Stargate from a merely hokey movie to one that is truly ridiculous.

This is a good movie, made by splendidly talented people-including Beatty, Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn, co-writer Robert Towne, designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and composer Ennio Morricone-but it fumbles some gems, hearts and flowers on the way to the fadeout. [21 Oct 1994, p.C]

Pulp Fiction isn't just funny. It's outrageously funny. [14 Oct 1994]

Hoop Dreams has the movie equivalent of all-court vision. It picks up everything happening in the gym, in the stands and even outside. It gives us the thrill of the game, but it doesn't cheat on either the vibrant social context or the deep human story.

Visually, the movie is a knockout. Craven-who, along with George Romero and David Cronenberg, was one of the real masters of post-'60s low-budget horror-never made a scarier picture than the original "Nightmare." But he's probably never made a better one than this-one that was more fun to watch or had a more satisfying conclusion, that slammed the door on hell with such panache.

The River Wild is more of a family movie, a thrill-ride where all the crazier dips and turns are straightened out by the ride's end. Hanson keeps the action clean, the tensions simmering. As a family movie, it's actually pretty good. [30 Sep 1994, p.C]

Moretti weaves us in and out of high seriousness, crazy satire or sarcasm, political commentary, melancholy reverie and goofball japes. And though Moretti lacks the cartoonish physical presence of a Benigni or a Nichetti (or a Woody Allen) his unextraordinary demeanor-tall, bespectacled, lightly athletic, trim-bearded-fools you again. [25 Nov 1994, p.L]

One of those rare films that communicates the exquisite joy of the moviemaking process. [7 October 1994, Friday, p.B]

Van Damme is compelling only when he takes his clothes off, which he doesn't do often enough here.

The film is organized in episodes, each one leading pretty much to the same conclusion, which is these are not folks we want contributing to our gene pool. Once that's understood, The New Age settles into a tiresome repetitiveness. Even its wittier turns-and, as "The Player" demonstrated, Tolkin has a caustic wit-play curiously flat. [23 Sept 1994, p.N]

Quiz Show is one of the year's very finest films. [16 Sept 1994, p.B]