A sly and gleeful comedy showcase that pokes clever fun at the American musical, amateur theatricals and anything else that's not nailed down.

A charming mess with moments of hilarity.

Though it is always pleasant and agreeable, this film has the bland and undemanding texture that characterizes movies made for network TV.

The slapstick and the sight gags come thick and fast, as they have throughout a hundred years of screen comedy, yet director Dennis Dugan and writers Mark Feldberg and Mitch Klebanoff keep everything light and bouncy.

No effort has been stinted in polishing this painfully derivative picture as if it were a diamond instead of strictly paste. Director Thomas Carter keeps things moving, Fred Murphy's camera work gleams, but at three minutes short of two hours, "Metro" seems drawn-out and wearying. Well, here's something, at least: It does leave you mildly curious as to why the bad guy is called Michael Korda--the very name of a noted author and editor in his own right.

Hyams the director ("Sudden Death," "Timecop," "The Star Chamber") operates at too much of a fevered pitch for things not to eventually get out of hand -- accelerating violence and horror eventually hit maximum velocity and warp into nonsense, no matter how erudite the script.

We’re presented with another movie in the “Mississippi Burning” tradition that focuses on a heroic white person getting his eyes opened about the nature of his own and society’s racism.

Provocative and engrossing.

Without real dialogue and believable connections between actors, Evita is limited in its effectiveness, and all the crying for Argentina in the world can't change that.

Director Nora Ephron and her co-writers, sister Delia plus Pete Dexter and Jim Quinlan (the latter two wrote the original story), bring a smart contemporary sensibility to the hokum, hilarity and heart-tugging that have made for many a classic Hollywood entertainment.

Thieves further assures Techine's place in the front rank of international filmmakers. [27 Dec 1996, p.F2]

The Portrait of a Lady may not be up to this high standard, but it is never less than absorbing either.

It's sensational in both senses of the word: a bravura, provocative sendup of horror pictures that's also scary and gruesome yet too swift-moving to lapse into morbidity.

Successfully brings to the big screen those no-brainer nerds who have brought laughter to living rooms around the world for nearly four years.

My Fellow Americans is a gang-written comedy that doesn't have a political bone in its body, or much evidence of a funny one, either.

It would be nice to say that One Fine Day lives happily ever after, but it's difficult to take as much pleasure in the finished product as the casting anticipates. Directed by Michael Hoffman, this film does not care to be original, falling back on cookie-cutter plot elements that give the finished product an unbecoming mechanical sheen. [20 Dec 1996, p.F1]

Though comedy is an intrinsic part of the play, director Zaks has not found a way to translate it effectively on screen.

First-time director Anjelica Huston's frightening film about child abuse is a jolt. And be forewarned: The violence is brutal and the molestation and rape scenes of a child are repugnant. [15 Dec 1996, p.3]

A wholly unexpected film, as heady and surprising in its humor as in its emotional texture.

Not as much fun as it should be. Few of its numerous actors make a lasting impression and Burton's heart and soul is not in the humor but (remember the "Batman Returns" backlash) in deadpan postmodern horrors, of which this film has a few.

Payne cops out, and the result is off-putting, despite a sparkling cast headed by a fearless Laura Dern in the title role.

Yet another silly disaster movie, where the special effects are believable and the characters aren’t.

Catches you up so firmly in its world that you find yourself accepting whatever Thornton presents right up to its deeply ironic finish.

Fluffy and mild to the point of somnolence, it can't even get the full benefit of its strongest asset, Glenn Close's performance as the grasping virago Cruella DeVil.

But whenever a film has hysteria as its subject, as this one does, the danger exists that it will become hysterical itself, and “The Crucible,” all its promise notwithstanding, falls into that trap with a demoralizing thud. Rife with screaming fits and wild-eyed rantings, this film is too frantic to be involving, too much an outpost of bedlam to be believable.

Blessed with clever plot devices and a villainous horde that makes the once-dread Klingons seem like a race of Barneys, First Contact does everything you'd want a "Star Trek" film to do, and it does it with cheerfulness and style.

It's 80 minutes of frantic mugging, of silly pratfalls and clown fights, of ideas lifted from other children's movies, design schemes from Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and characters from Toys R Us, all patched together without an innovative stitch of its own. [22 Nov 1996, p.F6]

Witty, intelligent and quintessentially French, it is an unusually involving costume drama that takes us into a decadent world few will know existed, a place where “vices are without consequence but ridicule can kill.”