Wyatt Earp is a fascinating ride to a West where darkness and heroism mingle, a triumph for Kasdan, Costner, Quaid and the company. It shows how, in this frontier crucible, love and death, honor and slaughter, friendship and a walk toward doom, are all linked together as well. [24 Jun 1994, p.F]

Perhaps blackmail isn't an easy subject to warm up to, or robbery the best ground to rebuild a relationship on, but with a little care, some added ingredients and a bit more spice, Getting Even With Dad could have been a satisfying meal and not just an afternoon snack. [17 Jun 1994, p.H]

It bears repeating that The Lion King is quite entertaining as children's fare goes these days. But Disney has established a standard so high on animated features that anything less than a classic leaves you feeling that something's missing.

City Slickers II, perhaps, isn't really special. But it's the kind of movie Hollywood should churn out more often: a professional, ebullient, formula entertainment that doesn't insult your intelligence and hits its marks with ease, wit and good humor. Unlike most current mega-movies, it's classy, smart, sometimes gaudily tasteless fun-done with such zest and skill that it often makes you smile. And laugh. And maybe even smirk.

We know exactly where this picture is going at all times. Holding our attention, however, is a cast of fresh talent among the trainees. [03 Jun 1994]

If you are offended by jokes about sex, sex organs, sex, bodily functions, sex, the L.A. riots or sex, you should probably stay far away. But if you're up to the challenge, you should find Fear of a Black Hat to be a clever piece of work-a nasty satire with savvy and sass. [17 Jun 1994, p.J]

You might not think of this as a family film, but it is a great one. [27 May 1994, p.B]

The movie contains its moments, charms and felicities-even its sharp stings of pleasure and pain. [20 May 1994]

Too rich, too loaded, Maverick may have misplayed its cards, kept its eyes on the pot instead of the players. In movies, as in poker, you can't always trust a pat hand.

It's a movie that's so personal, naked and vulnerable that you can understand why some of its humor seems rough, some of its visuals excessive. But Crooklyn has a quality not as obvious in any Lee film since "Do the Right Thing": the sense of a whole world opening, rich and real, before your eyes. [13 May 1994, p.A]

The Crow imbues its comic brutalism with emotion and satire. Too raw and pulpy, it probably shouldn't be regarded as a memorial to Brandon Lee. But as an obsessive rock 'n' roll comic book movie shocker of loony intensity, it stands, or flies, by itself.

A sincere but clumsy attempt to capture the pain of a man trying to cope with loss and divorce through the ages. [06 May 1994]

Kika is kind of a mess. But it's a charming, stimulating, talented and ingratiating mess, none-the-less.

Junk food laced with testosterone.

Kazan does have his father's fierce erotic curiosity, that sense that once you unravel a story's real lusts and greeds, you've solved it.

The Favor is a sex comedy without sex-and pretty much without comedy. [29 Apr 1994]

It's not much more than a collection of clever sight gags and one-liners that leaves the door wide open for another, better film about political correctness on the quad. [29 Apr 1994, p.D2]

One of those comedic pieces that steps off smartly but about halfway through starts to stumble home as it disintegrates into farce and squishy sentimentality. [23 Apr 1994, p.19]

Once "Backbeat" catches the beat, it keeps it up, drives right through to the last soul-shattering coda and fadeout. [22 Apr 1994, p.01]

Serial Mom is a typically funny and cheerfully outrageous John Waters' comedy about the conjunction of suburbia and hell, perfect families and serial killers. [15 Apr 1994, p.C]

A racily entertaining, wonderfully sly and goofy comic film noir with more twists than a mountain road-or, to darken the metaphor, than a cartrunk full of rattlesnakes.

More explosive laughs from Leslie Nielsen, Pricilla Presley, and friends (George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson) in another madcap police farce that is often so funny you lose track of the terrorist story. Alas, the comic pace is not sustained to the finish, but maybe it couldn't be. [18 Mar 1994, p.C]

Thanks to director Howard's casual grace and humanism and the cast's talent and agility, The Paper is an entertaining show. But, maybe the reason it looks so real and sounds so phony is that, while it's set in the world of today, it really wants the kick of the old movies, and it never hits the right fluctuating tone between drama and farce. It may have tabloid ambitions and a tabloid look-even a tabloid soul. But it doesn't have tabloid reflexes. [18 March 1994, p.A]

It's a gleamingly cracked tale of romance gone mad played out on a moonlit ocean voyage that turns into a bizarre, floating nightmare of slapstick perversion. [08 Apr 1994, p.A]

In The Hudsucker Proxy, the filmmaking Coen brothers make dark, startling, wittily extravagant sport of the American Dream. The movie is opulent and wry, a bitingly intelligent fable about business and romance. [25 Mar 1994, p.A]

Sirens is a brazen, luscious Australian sex comedy full of nature and nudity, flesh, food and fantasy. With its theme of erotic awakening on a painter's sunny Blue Mountains estate, and its frequent scenes of lush female models scampering around naked, it's often a pretty silly film. But it's also an immensely enjoyable one: a fairy tale in which everything-fashions, scenery, badinage, music, even moments of angst-becomes a kind of goofy aphrodisiac. [11 March 1994, p.C2]

Some of LaGravenese's dialogue crackles, but it's a dry crackle, a hollow cough. And that's despite Leary-and in spite of Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey, two of the best actors around these days.