Insidious and provocative, Safe refuses to lend a hand, avoids taking sides or pointing the way. Everything that happens in this beautifully controlled enigma is open to multiple interpretations, and that extends finally to the title's meaning as well.

Working as much like a circus ringmaster as a director, Joel Schumacher has brought several critical qualities to the mix, starting with much more of a pop culture sensibility and a sense of fun than Tim Burton, who directed the first two pictures, and he has a stylish visual sensibility as well.

Made under unique and wrenching circumstances, it gained poignancy and a kind of purity from its troubles, and an already affecting film ended up suffused with emotion.

Not only have bothersome plot changes been made, but the entire tone of the book has been transformed from tension to tongue-in-cheek with dismal results.

Party Girl has the courage of its own no-braininess.

LaGravenese... has understood that the worst of Bridges is not in its dialogue but in the silent musings that occupy its characters' minds. By keeping those thoughts unspoken, by allowing the camera to show instead of having words tell, much has been accomplished.

Maybe if "Fluke," which might have been better as an animated feature, weren't such a lavish, big-deal production and closer to the modest level of the recent -- and pleasant little -- pig movie "Gordy," it wouldn't seem so overwhelmingly, at times even laughably, foolish. [02 Jun 1995, p.F6]

Director Brad Silberling and screenwriters Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver can't figure out how to play a lot of this material. They pour on the sentiment and then they pour on the dopiness. The ghosts in this movie aren't the only ones who lack resolution. So do the filmmakers.

Considering the void at the center of his character, Reeves isn't bad. He's worked up some tricky robotic movements but his dialogue can't match their invention. [26 May 1995, p.F1]

Never tries to confuse our loyalties or question the strategies of our hero or bring home the all-embracing soul-destroying horrors of war for all sides. Braveheart may be rip-roaring, but it isn't all that brave.

Cuaron perfectly understands how a combination of simplicity and restraint help to create a sense of wonder on screen. Under his sure, quiet direction, A Little Princess casts the type of spell most family films can only dream about. [10 May 1995, p.1]

The "Die Hard" series was never exactly big on nuance, but this new installment relentlessly zeros in on sensation. It's almost sadistically single-minded. [19May1995 Pg.F.01]

Hartley turns what might have been a lurid pulp thriller into a freeze-dried art thing. He squeezes all the juice out of pulp. [19 May 1995]

Gray hasn't filled out the emotional terrain he's surveyed here. He hasn't quite grown into the emotions he wants to put on screen. When he does, he'll come up with something lasting.

Crisp as the creases in its naval officers' uniforms, this tale of seething conflicts aboard an American submarine on the eve of nuclear war is strictly by-the-numbers, but hardly ever are traditional elements executed with such panache.

The film perfectly understands the tentative experimentation and frequent self-loathing of adolescence, the difficulty of knowing whom to trust and how much to trust them, as well as how incendiary an age this can be, with uncertain psyches ready to explode at minimal provocation.

French Kiss tries to be a glass of pink champagne, but some of the fizz has gone out of the bottle. But director Lawrence Kasdan and screenwriter Adam Brooks cram so many potshots into the piece that, after a while, it makes you laugh anyway.

When it comes to unflinching, riveting looks at a compulsive artist who can't be other than who he is, nothing comes close to Crumb.

The Underneath doesn't add up. Made with polish and assurance, capably acted and intricately constructed, its overall impact is less than these parts would indicate. It is good but, against all logic, it is not good enough.

Village of the Damned is a good-looking, well-wrought film with some knockout special effects, some dark humor and crisp portrayals.

It's the right format for this scattershot jokefest, which at times resembles a vaudeville act crossed with the kind of goofy bludgeoning antics that sometimes make it into gangsta MTV videos. [26 Apr 1995]

It's a movie about the warm feeling you get when you belong to a family, and, throughout, the thermostat is turned up high.

The Basketball Diaries is a lose-lose proposition. Although it masquerades as a cautionary tale about the horrors of heroin, this epic of teen-age * Angst is more accurately seen as a reverential wallow in the gutter of self-absorption.

Swimming With Sharks, the latest Tinseltown dig at Tinseltown, is being advertised as a jokey spoof, but it's something quite different: a dark slice of retribution that recalls Stephen King in his Misery mode.

With a fine piece of work in his hands, Schroeder has brought all his skill to bear on Kiss of Death, and it has made all the difference.

Al Franken is good enough, he's certainly smart enough. So, doggone it, why is "Stuart Saves His Family" so mediocre?

Though audiences will leave theaters with an increased appreciation of this pair's talents, they will also leave pondering the perennial Hollywood question: How come so little of interest could be found for performers who are capable of so much more?

Depp is rather sweet in portraying Don Juan's self-delusions, but his performance is hampered by the role.

Working with cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub, director Caton-Jones has givenRob Roy a beautiful wide-screen look, filled with gorgeous vistas. But this film is like a color Xerox copy of the real thing: hard to tell from an original until you look closely at the details.

The martial-arts sequences are zesty, a description that applies to this well-crafted movie as a whole.

Directed by Kevin Lima and produced by Dan Rounds, it moves briskly, and, if it doesn’t make a star out of Goofy, it doesn’t trash him either. It lets Goofy be Goofy.

A wax-museum movie that is both bland and reverential despite its focus on the great man's love life, Jefferson is hampered by its disconnected protagonist.

Farley reminds us just how liberating an agile, uninhibited, out-sized comedian can be in these times of caloric restraint...Tommy Boy is a good belly laugh of a movie.

Watching Tank Girl is as disorienting as waking up in someone else's bad dream. You want to get out as fast as possible, but all the exits seem to be blocked.

Director Taylor Hackford brings an appropriate level of pulpy energy to the telling, and star Kathy Bates... gives a better performance than the film deserves as the grumpy and possibly homicidal title character.

While Major Payne is too predictable for most adults, it's an ideal entertainment for youthful audiences that allows Damon Wayans to be at his best in a dream part.

Atom Egoyan has made one of his most accessible films to date, a haunting and complex fable of loss and desire with wide implications.

Director Bill Condon has a sense of style but a heavy hand with actors -- you can all but hear them telling themselves to hit their marks and punch out their lines. [20 Mar 1995, p.F2]

It's sweet and winsome and a little pat, done with just enough feeling to lift it out of its class. [15 Mar 1995, Pg.F5]

Wickedly mocking but empathetic, able to laugh at its characters while paying attention to their sorrows, this subversive comedy about self-esteem resists the notion that films have to timidly remain within tidy genre rules.

It's a B-movie with A-accouterments.

Hooper could have also made at least a token attempt to create one interesting or sympathetic character and shot more than one take per scene--even by horror standards, the acting here is lame. Call it "The Bungler."

By choosing to bludgeon the audience with ever-worsening tales of woe, Once Were Warriors paradoxically blunts its power, though the truth is that people may be too shell-shocked to notice. [03 Mar 1995, p.F1]

More successfully silly than non-Brady fans will expect.

Disney's new kidpic Heavyweights plays it both ways: It says it's fine to be chubby and then goes ahead and makes all the usual chubby jokes. It's a case of having your hi-cal cake and eating it too. [17 Feb 1995, p.F4]

If the movie had been about Sullivan it would have kept its viewers awake nights. But audiences for Just Cause will be able to sleep soundly, perhaps even catch a few winks in the theater.

Director Tamra Davis and screenwriters Sandler and Tim Herlihy scatter the bad jokes like fertilizer. Nothing sprouts.

The Quick and the Dead is showy visually, full of pans and zooming close-ups. Rarely dull, it is not noticeably compelling either, and as the derivative offshoot of a derivative genre, it inevitably runs out of energy well before any of its hotshots runs out of bullets.

Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge (who is a physician!) keep the action spurting forward, but their approach is oblique. We seem to be catching the odds and ends of scenes; it's as if the filmmakers wanted to make a movie in which all the expected high points were skimped.

It's so shamelessly obliging that just about every audience of whatever stripe will find something to like in it at least some of the time. It's a confoundingly enjoyable movie because, by all rights, it should be terrible.

In the Mouth of Madness is a thinking person's horror picture that dares to be as cerebral as it is visceral.

Though its protagonist is a 10-year-old girl, it is a crackling good tale with a sense of wonder and mystery strong enough to captivate any age group. [03 Feb 1995, p.F1]

There's nothing much to the movie, except for the amiability of the actors and the layers of feeling Linklater provides, but that's just almost enough.

Highlander: The Final Dimension is elementary and vague, but this purportedly last installment works well enough on a comic book level. Music video veteran Andy Morahan, in his feature directorial debut, has the right idea: Go for as much energy, pace and visual panache as possible. [30 Jan 1995, p.F8]

Director Zwick orchestrates everything with welcome gusto, and though the result is not as meaningful as it would have you believe, it is undeniably pleasant to have this kind of production to kick around. [23 Dec 1994]

As always with Newman, we never quite feel he could have been as bad a guy as the script insists he was, he remains the reason to see Nobody's Fool. The film's various difficulties inevitably fade from memory, but his performance lingers, as the great ones always do.

Based on the quality of the screenplay alone, “Demon Knight” is strictly a direct-to-video affair; with “Tales From the Crypt” tacked to the title, the budget expands exponentially to accommodate state-of-the-art special effects--most of them featuring dismemberment, naturally.

The power of “Ladybird, Ladybird” is inseparable from its weaknesses. Loach brings us up close to the misery but, in a larger sense, he stands back.

Despite a weakness for trying to tie things up with melodramatic violence, Singleton remains a fluid filmmaker who works well with actors. He may not be there yet, but he is on the road.

As if to prove that the unlikeliest material can make for the best films, The Madness of King George, directed by Nicholas Hytner from Alan Bennett's prize-winning play, has taken this footnote to history and transformed it into one of the triumphs of the year--potent, engrossing and even thrilling to experience.

Not clever or polished enough to be successful as farce, unwilling to supply any reason to care about any of its characters, unable to make the points about the role of fashion in society it thinks it is, "Ready to Wear" is madness without the usual Altman method.

Matthau has the best role, but Robbins and Ryan are finally simply too good for their material, which is not nearly inspired enough to do justice to their talent.

Jungle Book provides both rowdy thrills and old-fashioned family entertainment.

The strength of Foster’s spooky performance makes Nell more effective and worthwhile than it otherwise deserves to be. And it is just because we come to care about that unusual young woman that we wish she were in a better movie, but that was not to be.

If the story isn’t quite incoherent, then De Souza’s klutzy direction renders it so.

Towering over one and all, not surprisingly, is Finney as the increasingly tormented but brave Alfie. [22 Dec 1994]

Mixed Nuts is a farcical whirligig that doesn't whirl. It's energetically unfunny, like "Radioland Murders," and, like that film, it boasts top-flight talent. Maybe the idea of making a comedy about a suicide prevention center just got to everyone-it's a bummed-out comedy about being bummed out. [21 Dec 1994, p.1]

Armstrong, screenplay adapter/co-producer Robin Swicord and their colleagues have got everything just right. [23 Dec 1994]

Richie Rich presents an irresistible Macaulay Culkin in a wonderful part and bursts with the gadgetry that many adults thrill to as much as children do. At the same time, it never loses touch with its humanity, directed by Donald Petrie with humor and panache.

The idea that sexual harassment is about power, not sex, and that a woman in power can potentially misbehave just like a man may be news to certain segments of the population, but they are not news enough to light a much-needed fire under this production. [9 Dec 1994, p.1]

Without anyone to care about, Cobb's script problems become increasingly intractable. Confronted by Cobb's volcanic personality, the film is completely nonplussed, unable to decide if it should be amused, piteous, reluctantly admiring or just plain disgusted.

It holds its audience hostage for an unconscionable 111 minutes with a rambling, unfunny, thickly sentimental comedy that plays like third-rate Frank Capra. [02 Dec 1994, p.F6]

Directed by Alan Rudolph and co-scripted by him with Randy Sue Coburn, Mrs. Parker is a real odd duck of a movie. It seems to have been made both as tribute and put-down. The sporty conviviality of the Algonquin Round Table is celebrated, and yet there's a hollowness to the confabs.[21 Dec 1994, p.4]

Effective, but despite the trio's fine efforts Junior can't get past lightly amusing, never manages to work up a sustained comic head of steam.

Talkington not only has style but also a terrific way with actors, giving them the confidence to go over the top while having fun doing so.

Going boldly where no one has gone before is not what it used to be. Contentedly settled into a prosperous middle age, the "Star Trek" series now seems more comfortable retracing its own footsteps, carefully offering its horde of fans interludes that aspire to do no more than fit snugly into the patterns of the past.

Sprightly and engaging, it unfolds with clarity and makes excellent use of its voice talents, most notably that of Jack Palance as the villainous Rothbart; the colorful witty, familiar menace of his voice allows him to all but steal the show. [18 Nov 1994]

This ability to get inside hysteria and obsession, the skill to make us feel sensations as intensely as its protagonists, is what makes “Creatures” memorable.

Although he works his hardest at the part and doesn't embarrass himself, even with the help of Stan Winston's vampire makeup Tom Cruise is plainly miscast as Lestat. [11Nov1994 Pg. F1]

All of the film's technical and creative contributions are top-notch, but as it should be, it's the people who win us over. [11 Nov 1994 Pg. F10]

David Mamet's Oleanna, adapted from his two-character play, is about sexual harassment, but it's the audience for this movie that gets harassed. Mamet must mean for this movie to be as enjoyable as fingernails scraping a blackboard. For both men and women, watching it is intended as an act of penance for all our sexist, elitist, feminist, patriarchal ills.

Even if the vivid Whale/Karloff version had never been made, this treatment of the Shelley novel would be a loud and tacky disappointment.

This Gramercy release, expertly aimed at youthful audiences, is another instance of an exceedingly elementary plot played against production design and special effects of awe-inspiring imagination and sophistication.

Without Davidson Stargate might seem clunky and routine, but he gives it a weirdo charge. It may be a lousy movie, but it's a more enjoyably lousy movie than most.

Though it is effective in fits and starts, this third version of that sturdy tale (the fourth, if you count Sleepless in Seattle, which it in part inspired) never manages to be more than a reasonable facsimile of its progenitor.

Though the politically incorrect language is tough enough to have earned Clerks an initial NC-17 rating (re-rated R on appeal), its exuberance gives it an alive and kicking feeling that is welcome and rare. [19 Oct 1994]

The writer-director appears to be straining for his effects. Some sequences, especially one involving bondage harnesses and homosexual rape, have the uncomfortable feeling of creative desperation, of someone who's afraid of losing his reputation scrambling for any way to offend sensibilities. [14 Oct 1994]

By focusing on the personal side of the city game, Hoop Dreams tells us more about what works and what doesn't in our society than the proverbial shelf of sociological studies. And it is thoroughly entertaining in the bargain.

Freddy Krueger fans will exult and horror movie mavens will not be surprised: Wes Craven's New Nightmare is much better than the usual run of scare pictures. [14 Oct 1994, p.F4]

What we want from Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is a giddy mix of gruesome horror and campy humor. What we get is less massacre than mess. [29 Aug 1997, p.F16]

See How They Fall"shows an ambitious director well on his way to being the master of his game.

This single joke rapidly gets pretty tired; you soon wish you could tell Moretti to try slapping on some calamine lotion--and getting on with his life. But stringing us along--with varying effectiveness-- is his life.

Having abandoned for a while the portrayal of real people, Streep demonstrates here that what great actresses do is show us ordinary people in an extraordinary light.

Turns out to be a thoroughly entertaining if eccentric piece of business, wacky and amusing in a cheerfully preposterous way. [28 September 1994, Calendar, p.F-1]

Even though this is supposed to be a kindlier Van Damme vehicle, his movies couldn't exist without his trademark ability to deliver the kind of accurate, powerful kicks any World Cup team would envy. All his soulful glances notwithstanding, Timecop still depends too much on violence to make it appealing to the uninitiated or the unwary.

It's nearly impossible to put together a picture about ennui without dramatically succumbing to it in a big way. Michael Tolkin, talent that he is, isn't yet the movie maker to meet the feat.

So it is an especial triumph that Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford and written by Paul Attanasio, turns that footnote of television history into a thoughtful, absorbing drama about moral ambiguity and the affability of evil. Sticking moderately close to the facts and using real names whenever possible, it succeeds by pulling back and looking at the situation through an unexpectedly subtle and wide-ranging lens.

If this installment is just slightly less laborious than Karate Kid II or III, it's not from Mark Lee's surprise-free script or Christopher Cain's placid direction, but because young Swank really might be a find. Early on, she's such a convincingly testy teen that parents may flinch, but she does seem to blossom before your eyes.