Boring and banal, overwrought and undercooked, Hudson Hawk is beyond bad. [24 May 1991]

Truly, Madly, Deeply, which takes on bereavement and regeneration, uneasily straddles the delicate line between the charming and the cloying. [24 May 1991, p.L]

Mayall`s hyper portrayal of Fred, while psychologically sound, is dramatically torture.

Candy is indisputably charming. A master of timing, he also is adept at doing a kind of verbal doubletake after saying the wrong thing, and, like Jackie Gleason, carries his weight with style and grace. The problem is, he can't carry the whole film. [24 May 1991, p.B]

As she says in one of the film's more blatant thesis statements: "I'm not the world's best singer or best dancer, but that's not the point. I'm interested in pushing buttons." Madonna's doing just that in Truth or Dare, but what she chooses to reveal remains far more revealing - and entertaining - than almost any comparable self-portrait. [17 May 1991, p.C]

A broadly played, by-the-numbers comedy that pits your consummate classic nut case against your quintessential screwed-up shrink. [17 May 1991]

Stone Cold has a basic proficiency, despite some notably awkward edits. Director Craig Baxley paces the story well, and Walter Doniger's script follows the classic formula for the genre: the more evil the villains, the greater hero the star and the more justified the film's gore. [20 May 1991, p.4C]

FX 2 is entertaining enough, but lacks the zip and wit of the original.

Switch is highly recommended for Barkin's work, which has to be considered on a par with Steve Martin's similar comic turn in All of Me. [10 May 1991, p.C]

Toy Soldiers is a movie that appeals at once to adolescent self-pity and adolescent anger-a film that takes feelings of rejection and inadequacy and transforms them into a violent revenge fantasy, directed against all those distant daddies. It's hardly the first teenpic to do so, but it's certainly one of the most thorough, the most methodical and, not coincidentally, the least fun.

Despite the holes in the script, Fatal Attraction writer James Dearden moves the action along competently and has two compelling young actors in Dillon and Young. [26 Apr 1991, p.C]

Director John Landis' comic timing is a little slow in spots - we get the joke before he thinks we will - but Oscar generates a solid pace of rolling big laughs and winds up as a pretty good time at the movies. [26 Apr 1991, p.C]

In lesser hands, Mortal Thoughts could have been another well-intentioned, star-studded lesson about how women tolerate and rebel against physical abuse. But as directed by Alan Rudolph, the film is more of a nightmare of half-baked schemes hatched by dim-witted characters. [19 Apr 1991, p.C]

The action sequences, when they arrive, are so poorly staged and absurdly one-sided that they contain no excitement or suspense. Again and again, the film finds the huge, hulking Seagal beating up on flabby middle-aged men - and even then, resorting to such questionable techniques as wrapping a cue ball in a handkerchief and using it as a club. [15 Apr 1991, p.C7]

Poison is not a film that will play the shopping malls, but it remains a most imaginative, exquisite and compassionate piece of work.

When the film at last reaches its supposedly shocking conclusion, it resembles an overinflated balloon that has finally burst. It is a film that demands that you pay close attention, then rewards none of your diligence. [12 Apr 1991, p.4]

A beautifully directed melodrama similar to Hollywood pictures of the golden era. [22 Dec 1991, p.5C]

This premise is not a complete loss, and the movie is not badly written. But all of its various elements (Whaley and Connelly's friendship, their battles with the two criminals who come to rob the store, Whaley's quest to make something of himself, etc.) end up being thrown together like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This makes the movie messy and uninteresting. [5 Apr 1991, p.J]

The new film is a fast, funny, engagingly unpretentious 88 minutes that, moving between martial-arts dustups and random satirical jibes, achieves a more successful mix of action and humor than the first. There is plenty for adults here as well as children.

Class Action occupies itself with long passages of family melodrama, most of it as familiar as the courtroom drama but far less entertaining. [15 Mar 1991]

Guilty by Suspicion isn't a bad movie, but it isn't compelling entertainment either. [15 Mar 1991, p.C]

The setup is so startlingly unlike the rest of True Colors, so moody and visually ambiguous, that it hits you both with the force of the moment and with regret for what this movie might have been. [05 Apr 1991, p.D]

In adapting the novel by Fred Uhlman, Pinter has created a screenplay that slogs along in a predictable, perfunctory manner and has fashioned a dramatic ending that's too tidily honed.[14 Apr 1991, p.6C]

Besson is an accomplished technician, and his choice of shots-with an emphasis on bizarre, low angles, darting camera movements and large, abstract color fields-is consistently entertaining if not particularly expressive. [3 Apr 1991, Tempo, p.3]

The movie has no sense of temptation and no real taste for revolt-it's a good little film that knows its place. Van Peebles' direction has a by-the-numbers competence but no discernible personality.

Hysteria, however skillfully maintained, should never be mistaken for art-a caution that applies equally to Stone and his subject. [01 Mar 1991]

It's the sort of film that can only be watched in stunned disbelief, as it lumbers from one misfired, unpleasant sequence to the next. The nicest thing that can be said about Nothing but Trouble is that there is nothing else like it, thank goodness. [19 Feb 1991, p.7C]

Billed as one of the most frightening, depraved films ever made. Would that it were so. Instead, this is a case of much ado about nothing. [15 February 1991, Friday, p.C]