Fascinating footage goes beyond the boxing ring to document Ali's brilliance as a public personality.

Barry Levinson's filmmaking style is often imaginative. The story contains horrific scenes of sexual torture as well as sadistic killings and other disturbing material, though.

The basic plot of Thomas Hardy's great novel "Jude the Obscure" comes through accurately enough, but its sublime irony and sardonic wit apparently got lost in the misty English countryside.

Hackman gives a powerful performance as the killer, and the storytelling is often gripping. But the film contains much extremely offensive language and gratuitous depictions of violence, some of it aimed at children, not needed to get the plot across.

Liam Neeson and Alan Rickman give sturdy performances, but Neil Jordan's historically based drama seems oddly cool and distant with regard to its incendiary subject.

The suspense sequences are straight from the standard Hollywood blueprint, and the movie as a whole is so sloppily assembled that it's almost incoherent at times.

Nothing short of amazing. [25 Oct 1996, p.13]

Larry and Andy Wachowski directed this lurid, sexually explicit thriller.

Tom Hanks makes his directorial debut with this likable comedy, which shows that while pop culture is a business like any other, enthusiasm and high spirits can lead to satisfaction even if major success proves elusive.

The action is gripping and the story raises important issues about medical ethics in a high-tech society. Gene Hackman is in excellent form, and Hugh Grant does the most finely tuned acting of his career to date.

The dialogue is often silly but Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn deliver it with enough crackerjack energy to keep audiences laughing.

Nature specialist Carroll Ballard directed this eye-dazzling family film, which has superb airborne cinematography to compensate for some soggy spots in the story. [13 Sep 1996, p.13]

The screen-play was derived from long sessions of improvised acting, and some scenes are more like acting-class workshops than fully developed dramatic episodes. But the material is powerful and most of the performances are excellent. [13 Sep 1996, p.13]

Ron Shelton's romantic comedy has no more visual excitement than a televised golf tournament, but the climax is truly surprising, and there's solid acting by Don Johnson and Cheech Marin.

Written and directed by Julian Schnabel, himself a gifted painter, this is one of the rare art-world movies that succeeds as both human drama and visual artistry.

Hal Hartley's innovative comedy-drama is more ambitious than successful, but it deserves credit for trying something genuinely unusual.

Gwyneth Paltrow is enchanting as a self-confident young woman who decides to wile away her time by playing matchmaker for a friend whose romantic life would fare much better without interference.

But the drama's attack on racism would be more persuasive if it rejected vigilante justice and recognized that hatred and violence of all kinds must be condemned if evils like bigotry are ever to be eradicated.

It's not easy to sit through the movie spawned by this notion, though, proving once again that a picture can be simultaneously high in concept and low in entertainment value. [18 July 1996]

The action is fast, furious, and loaded with explosive effects, but the theme is a regrettable return to the us-against-them paranoia that dominated much science fiction in the cold-war era.

John Turteltaub directed the drama, which lapses into medical jargon and new-age clichés near the end, but it scores telling points with its respect for intelligence and optimistic view of human potential.

Eddie Murphy has impressive energy, but he needs mountains of makeup and special effects to accomplish what Jerry Lewis did with sheer talent in the original 1963 version of the comedy.

Daft, excessive, boring.

John Sayles's offbeat western shows how public controversies often overlap with private grudges and conflicting memories.

The picture is effectively made, but viewers will want to erase the horrific violence that erupts in scene after scene, leading to an unusually mean-spirited finale.

Bernardo Bertolucci's romantic drama has great visual beauty but little new to say about life or love.

Can a mild-mannered toxicologist and an eccentric Alcatraz veteran stop him before it's too late? Learning the answer means sitting through more than two hours of violence, vulgarity, and all-around excess, served up with high-tech trimmings by director Michael Bay.

Written and directed with uncommon sensitivity by James Mangold, a strikingly talented newcomer.