Buoyed by Rex Maidment's fine, lush photography - it was shot around Portofino - and uniformly superb performances, Enchanted April is a wonderfully lovely, sweet, bright (and sometimes funnny) BBC film that is uplifting without being sappy. [7 Aug 1992, p.L]

The satire is finally too thin and familiar (and not just from The Player - most of the observations here have been staples of the Hollywood comedy since the early '30s) to support the movie's pervasive tone of sourness and disgust. [21 Aug 1992, p.J]

A fatally compromised, half-realized execution. [ 10 Jul 1992]

The film is actually fairly well made, with a brisk tempo pace, a professional look and enough competently staged action.

At times, though, the appealing but uneven film seems rather disjointed, with Anders not quite getting a handle on her material, which is weakened by a sometimes-murky storyline (some of the minor characters drift in and out for no apparent reason) and pretention (there is a lot of talk at the end about the desert being a kind of metaphor for hope and renewal). Still, Anders decidedly is a director worth watching. [6 Nov 1992, p.J]

Charming and gentle and steady-on, it contains few dramatic moments (except for one notable scene involving two children), even fewer surprises, and lacks the judgmental harshness and bite of Bergman's most celebrated creations. [14 Aug 1992, p.B]

The best thing I can say about "Prelude to a Kiss" is that it seems fresh, daring its talented performers to play a couple in love. In 1992, that seems very bold. [10 Jul 1992, p.C]

Boomerang, a sleek, confident and very funny urban comedy that may not entirely overcome Murphy's more discomfiting tendencies, but at least manages to put them to good use. [01 Jul 1992]

Penny Marshall, the sitcom actress ("Laverne and Shirley") turned filmmaker ("Big," "Awakenings"), manages to make even such elementary material seem labored and phony. The film, which was shot in and around Chicago last summer, is a major disappointment.

But after introducing these issues, director Jonathan Kaplan ("The Accused") takes the easy, unimaginative way out by turning Liotta's character into a complete lunatic in the manner of the psycho-husband who terrorized Julia Roberts in "Sleeping With the Enemy." How much more interesting "Unlawful Entry" might have been if his character had been played brighter and less easily dispatched than simply with a bullet. [26 June 1992, p.C]

Our rooting interest is not for any macho act by Batman to save the city but for each character to achive some sort of emotional peace. That makes for a strange but refreshing action story.

Though the characters played by Martin and Hawn - a lonely architect and the confidence woman who moves into his country home, claiming to be his wife after a one-night stand - don't have much inside them but sawdust, their surface reactions are entertaining and engaging enough to make Housesitter a winning romantic comedy. [12 June 1992, p.C]

Adapted by Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm") from Tom Clancy's best seller, "Patriot Games" is an uncomfortably angry, completely bald-faced fantasy about violence as an answer to middle-class, middle-age ennui. Sadder still, it isn't a very effective one. [5 June 1992, p.C2]

Not much of Class Act makes any sense, which is all right, but not much of it is funny either. [05 Jun 1992, p.B]

Director Ardolino and his unnamed colleagues should be given a couple of swift raps across the palm with a ruler.

Far and Away, a mildly old-fashioned romantic melodrama that has as many charming moments as embarrassing ones. Much of the charm is supplied by the earnest performances of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. [22 May 1992]

A major problem is that "Encino Man" clings to a shopworn coming-of-age formula instead of taking advantage of the far more original idea that sets it in motion. Dave's story is constantly overshadowed by the potentially much more entertaining spectacle of the caveboy's adjustment to contemporary life. The subtext has pretty much gobbled up the movie's center, leaving it severely out of whack. [22 May 1992, p.B2]

A bizarre, dreamlike, surrealistic thriller, Zentropa is one of those films that is easier to admire than like. Creatively crafted and finely tuned, it is also an extremely cold, nihilistic work - as starkly efficient as the imperious railroad company that forms the centerpiece. [03 Jul 1992, p.C]

They once again trot out the same cynical, numbing formula: bullets, bonding and bravado tempered with self-congratulatory humor.

Mixing moments of genuine terror with offbeat comedy, writers Tom Epperson and Thornton have created a script that jumps along wih the energy of "In Cold Blood."

A rash and prurient tale, full of the sort of stylish venom that could almost elevate it to artful kitsch. Almost. [29 May 1992, p.C]

While entertaining and often genuinely frightening, thanks to a remorsefully blue cast to the cinematography, this thick stew can be tough to swallow under Tony Maylam's bumpy direction. [3 May 1992, p.C7]

The movie is full of dead ends, logical gaps and bizarre inconsistencies. Yet Donaldson is deft enough, both in his composition of shots and his direction of actors, to create a scene-by-scene sense of competence and control that carries the picture across some very rough spots.

A string of slapstick sequences at the end of Brain Donors...finally unleashes its potential for subversive hilarity. But the wait is long and not altogether compensated by Turturro's smooth delivery.

Deep Cover is a rousing entertainment but also a cunningly subversive piece of work, one that burrows from within genre conventions to defeat expectations and undermine smug certainties. It`s a movie that gets under your skin in a way that no amount of speech-making can.

As much as the film may try to peddle warmth and solidarity, it remains disturbingly cold and impersonal, limited by the formulaic writing of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and stymied by Ortega's apparent distance from his cast. [10 Apr 1992]

Garris, filming mainly in a bobbing and weaving, hand-held camera style, keeps the scenes pared down to their functional essentials, wisely substituting speed for nuance. Sleepwalkers gets the job done. [13 Apr 1992, p.5C]

FernGully is surprisingly courageous in its politics and adventurous in its stylistic choices.