Only director Apted`s admirably low-key, matter-of-fact approach to the material keeps it from becoming unbearably artificial.

It's a funny, frequently rousing film, with a warmly appealing acting partnership at its center-between basketball hustlers Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

With last week's elections in South Africa finally pointing the way toward a dismantlement of apartheid, it can't be said that the timing of "The Power of One" is particularly astute. But this is a film with no particular relationship to the real world in any case. [27 March 1992, p.M]

The movie has a big, warm, fuzzy heart - and not a bellylaugh in sight. [30 March 1992, p.5]

A genial if predictable romantic comedy about a couple of mismatched ice skaters who come together to try to win an Olympic medal in pairs figure skating. Oh, yes, they also fall in love. What results is sort of "Dirty Dancing on Ice," with Moira Kelly as a wealthy, spoiled, teenage ice princess with her own rink, and D.B. Sweeney as a rough-and-tumble hockey player at the end of his career. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser - yes, Starksy - directs cleanly, but the chemistry between the co-stars makes it work. [27 March 1992, p.C]

Verhoeven does not explore the dark side, but merely exploits it, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Very little sense of the performers' humanity emerges from behind their stage roles, perhaps because Bogdanovich has directed the supposedly spontaneous dialogue to sound just as forced and theatrical as the scripted lines. [20 March 1992, p.2]

A good-hearted comedy of clashing cultures. The film finds great fun in coaxing out and mocking a range of regional differences, from mutually impenetrable accents to radical variants in dress codes, but miraculously never descends to broad, dismissive caricatures.

The story, however, was interesting and the minor characters, as well as the photography, were enjoyable to watch. Not to mention you get a preview of what may be next in home entertainment. [13 Mar 1992, p.N]

The movie`s underlying message seems to be that racial harmony can best be achieved by allowing white boys to beat the stuffing out of minority kids- that`s what really earns their love and respect. There must be a better way.

Despite the superficial Hitchcock trappings, from the Bay Area locales to trains and high places, the comedy thriller is neither particularly comic nor particularly thrilling, and after this outing, director Carpenter (Halloween, Starman) may wish to stay out of sight as well. [28 Feb 1992, p.B]

Medicine Man is a sympathetic project that gets done in by an excessively aggressive screenplay - one that keeps manufacturing artificial conflicts and false climaxes where some more relaxed character work would have gracefully done the trick. [07 Feb 1992, p.3]

What is genuinely chilling about Final Analysis lies not in the foolish plotting but in the completely callous attitude of the director and writer, who are interested in their characters only as compositional elements or, at best, game pieces to be pushed around a board. It`s a cold, distant work of no compassion and, finally, no importance.

The movie assumes its multiculturalism with grace and humor, moving between its various worlds with a delighted eye for distinguishing features and a rich sense of character. [14 Feb 1992, p.B7]

It's meant to be uplifting, but the material is so undernourished that bench-pressing a phone book already seems beyond it. None of the characters has been filled out beyond the underlying conventions and the few distinctive mannerisms contributed by the actresses who portray them.

It's a perfectly competent film, but the title quantity is the one thing this dry and earnest movie hasn't got.

Zanuck seems unsure whether to swoon or to scold, and the distance she preserves between herself and the characters occasionally feels smug and exploitative. Still, Leigh preserves her integrity throughout, adding an inflexible reality principle to the often extravagant goings-on. [10 Jan 1992, p.J]

A ridiculous futuristic adventure film starring Emilio Estevez as a race-car driver who is captured by forces in the near future - 2009 to be exact - and used in a world-controlling power play. Mick Jagger co-stars, wearing a dyed mop of hair. An indecipherable plot isn't worth the effort. [24 Jan 1992, p.C]

Ynpretentious and efficient, Curtis Hanson`s suspense drama The Hand That Rocks the Cradle suggests, after the monstrous ego trips of this past holiday season, that some sense of professionalism continues to reside in Hollywood.

For all of Schrader's capacity for spectacular self-laceration and spiritual agony, Light Sleeper finds him able for the first time to express a certain peacefulness, and the effect is delicate and discreet.

Though much of Naked Lunch is flip, hip and hilariously funny, it never wanders far from a profoundly melancholic undertone - Cronenberg's unshakable sense of loneliness, isolation and anxiety. [10 Jan 1992]

Throughout the film, cinematographer Arthur Jafa brings in lovely, imaginative photography, showing a remarkable eye for light and composition, while Dash provides crisp, sensitive direction in putting together a moving work about a simple but proud people immersed in a distinct culture and ritual as they try to "touch their own spirits."

Part Oscar bid, part vanity project and all pretty silly. Only Nick Nolte, as Tom Wingo, the psychologically blocked Southern high school teacher who is Conroy's protagonist, transcends the circumstances to deliver a performance of skill and commanding sympathy.

It's an admirable attempt, though a less than completely successful one. The film's disappointments lie not so much in Almodovar's controlled, respectful direction as in the strange gaps and displacements of his screenplay, which never seems to supply the scenes we most want to see. [20 Dec 1991]

The film's real subject is the unacknowledged intensity of the father-daughter bond and the difficulty of separation, though Shyer, true to his name, shies away from the more painful implications of the material. [20 Dec 1991, p.B]

Does JFK capture the truth? Possibly, in a poetic sense. Is it a compelling film? Most assuredly. [20 Dec 1991]

Extracting a meat-and-potato slickness from the screenplay by James Toback (a sucker for facile laughs), director Barry Levinson (Rain Man) provides a good chunk of entertainment if not much creative risk. Fast-paced in its first half, Bugsy eventually slips into a stall, especially in the clumsy scenes where the protagonist tries to handle domesticity with his long- suffering family.

The Last Boy Scout will win no year-end awards, but at least it delivers the goods-which is more that can be said for most of this year's holiday releases.