As directed by the Briton Mike Figgis ("Stormy Monday"), "Mr. Jones" is a muscular sort of movie, imposing action on characters who are feeling much but actually doing very little. Figgis' constant camera cuts are almost as animated, as jazzy, as Jones' highs. The director shows a daring sense of rhythm in his edits and, for this story, anyway, it works. [8 Oct 1993, p.D]

Some movies can lay claim to being the best thing around in a week, a month, a year. Robert Altman's Short Cuts is closer to being one of the all-time bests, among the finest American films since the advent of sound. [22 Oct 1993]

M. Butterfly, David Cronenberg's visually stunning but oddly cold and sparkless adaptation of the much-prized David Henry Hwang play. [08 Oct 1993]

A lame comedy about the quirky true story of the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team that competed in the Calgary Winter Olympics...The intelligence level of the comedy insults preteens. [1 Oct 1993, p.C2]

Slick but forgettable. [01 Oct 1993, p.C]

Still, it's the bits and pieces of this movie, the eccentric asides, that rescue it-when they work. [1 Oct 1993, p.L]

For a while, I resented the sexist, cruel behavior in the film, much of it revolving around the hazing of underclassmen. But gradually, I saw the movie turn into a brash expose of stupid adolescent traditions. [24 Sept 1993]

Bopha!, a movie about emotional and political turbulence tearing apart the family of a black South African police officer, is good, but a little disheartening. Not because of the injustice and misery it reveals-but because you want it to be better.

But once the action wanders off the playing field, "The Program" shows all the cleverness, originality and depth of the Chicago Bears' offense.

It's a beautiful story that extends past the boundaries of time. [1 Oct 1993, p.M-2]

This movie is glum, murky, dour, takes place mostly in the dark, doesn't make much sense and has a surprise climax so ridiculous you may watch it with perverse, astonished respect - the kind you might grant the Joint Chiefs of Staff if they showed up for a press conference wearing lampshades on their heads and yodeling. [17 Sept 1993, p.F]

Airborne is a fairly shameless little picture, but at least it follows the First Rule of Cinema. It gives us something interesting to watch: the climactic hill race, with the largely unidentifiable racers zooming and hurdling one another on hairpin hillside curves...Unfortunately, Airborne also follows the First Rule of Bad Movies. Instead of telling a story, the filmmakers follow an outline (or, in this case, an in-line).

A stupid, stylized road picture. [10 Sept 1993]

As directed by a button-pushing Herbert Ross, "Undercover Blues" operates under the credo of "Grin, and the world grins with you." The ever-chipper Turner and Quaid try their damndest throughout, with Quaid often resembling a Cheshire cat whose face froze that way. throughout, with Quaid often resembling a Cheshire cat whose face froze that way. But all the pep in the world couldn't save this nonsensical mixture of low-rent espionage, low-ball slapstick and low-reaching cuddly family moments, like the baby's first steps captured in what looks like a Polaroid ad.

The Joy Luck Club may be stylistically rickety, but Wang does a good job with the logistics of the movie, integrating multiple time periods, dialogue in two languages (English and Mandarin), two locations (San Francisco and China) and overlapping casts - several characters require two and even three actors to play them at different ages - to make a watchable whole. This is not a movie to be watched lackadaisically. Blink twice and you could lose the train of narration. [17 Sept 1993, p.C]

Not as worthless as you may have heard. [10 Sept 1993]

Slow-paced and repetitive, Needful Things is overlong and overwrought, and the whole thing should be promptly exorcised. [27 Aug 1993, p.A]

Poor Roberto Benigni, the Italian comedian who has been given the unenviable assignment of filling the shoes in which Peter Sellers stumbled so effectively. In Son of the Pink Panther, Benigni works from a real dung heap of a script.

The best things about The Thing Called Love are its cast, style and mood. It has a snap, pace and rhythm we don't ordinarily see in today's movies. The dialogue scenes have a headlong pace and crackling self-confidence reminiscent of Howard Hawks, and the three- and four-way love combats recall Ernst Lubitsch.

The story is full of good feelings, but as one sits there it all seems so predictable that you can't help but ask the point of it all. [27 Aug 1993, p.C]

One super non-stop thrill show, it is also a dishearteningly detached and grim piece of work. [20 Aug 1993, p.C]

Manhattan Murder Mystery is of absolutely no consequence save for the regular laughs it provides. However, it provides enough so that even the most virulent Woody-haters may smile, if they can bring themselves to the theater in the first place. [20 Aug 1993]

The Secret Garden is as much a movie for adults with keen memories of childhood as it is a children's movie.

This medical miracle scene is by far the best in the film. Not because it is sexy or, perish the thought, Zen-like, but because it is pretty hilarious-a bizarre blend of the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges and Keystone Cops, with a little raunch dressing on the side. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is mostly a lot of grunting and groaning.

But while Downey is up to the material, and then some, the material is not up to him. The film plods along with the sort of creaky literalism that blunts its attempts at other-worldliness. It says something that Elisabeth Shue, in a bit part as Downey's frustrated girlfriend, has more presence than anyone else in the movie. Her sphere of real time and space is credible; the fantasy world the film attempts to create is not. [13 Aug 1993, p.C]

An uncommonly good sports film about an uncommon sport as far as film is concerned - chess. [13 Aug 1993, p.C2]

I've already seen The Fugitive twice. I'll probably see it again.

The Wedding Banquet benefits especially from the performances of seasoned Taiwanese actors Sihung Lung and Ah-Leh Gua as Wai-Tung's parents. [27 Aug 1993, p.C]