The Program tries to travel light and heavy, and the combination of noggin-banging action and deep-think doesn’t gel. Latham, who has previously bestowed upon us the ersatz pop reportage of “Urban Cowboy” and “Perfect,” doesn’t tunnel very deep into the world of college athletics. What he and Ward come up with is fairly standard stuff that seems derived mostly from old movies.

A beautifully done adaptation of the novel, polished, elegant and completely cinematic. It is also a bit distant, a film that doesn't wear its feelings on its sleeve, but given the effects it's after, that would be counterproductive. [17 Sept 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]

Packed with keening witchery and wild delight, Into the West should delight the susceptible, even as, perhaps, it annoys the jaded.

Striking Distance opens and closes with a pair of jolting high-speed chases, the first over Pittsburgh streets, the second over the rivers that encircle the city’s center. In between is a lively mystery thriller that hurtles past plot contrivances and unintended laughs to deliver the goods as a satisfying escapist diversion. Like a paperback purchased at an airport just before you board a plane, it serves well its time-killing purpose but isn’t designed to stand up under close scrutiny.

The occasional action scenes are as appropriately tortuous as the tired teen-out-of-water plot is torturous. This is a kid-flick that’s speed-skating on one leg.

It’s a difficult movie to get a fix on, but the difficulty is what makes it special.

It is hard to say what is more dispiriting about True Romance the movie itself or the fact that someone somewhere is sure to applaud its hollow, dime-store nihilism and smug pseudo-hip posturing as a bright new day in American cinema. [10 Sept 1993]

Overbroad, underdone.

If The Joy Luck Club doesn’t make you cry, nothing will. In an age of contrived and mechanical sentimentality, its deeply felt, straight-from-the-heart emotions and the unadorned way it presents them make quite an impact. No matter how many hankies you bring with you, it won’t be enough.

It was probably worth every costly cent for Kim Basinger to get out of doing the dreadful Boxing Helena -- but you have to wonder whatever there was about it that persuaded her to do it in the first place. [3 Sept 1993]

Daring in its willingness to risk looking maudlin by dealing with extremes, Blue doesn't hesitate to explore spiritual and psychological states that are beyond many films.

For a film that first seems a throwaway, it has unusual intensity and grip. It’s not another over-reaching, under-financed “Terminator” or “Total Recall” wanna-be.

It has ideas as well as jolts, themes as well as special effects, characters as well as gore. But, as adapted by writer W. D. Richter and director Fraser Heston, these Things seem disappointingly diminished, squeezed and stuffed into a box too small.

This series ran out of steam long ago, and director Blake Edwards hasn't exactly rung in a new era by casting Italian superstar comic Roberto Benigni in the title role. He seems to have caught the director's lassitude: He's frenetic in a charmless, groggy way. His squiggly mimetic movements don't add up to a character, just a conceit.

At 100 minutes Careful begins to bore, whereas at half that running time it might well have been unalloyed fun. [05 Nov 1993, p.F12]

Minor reservations aside, The Man Without a Face is a moving and substantial achievement. [25 Aug 1993, p.1]

though it has its share of boggling action sequences and will serve as an acceptable introduction to domestic fans not familiar with Woo’s work, “Hard Target” is an awkward mixture, not on the level of the director’s best work, and leaves open the question of how well his style can adapt to Hollywood.

Clever and amusing though it often is, “Murder” is also Allen’s whiniest film to date, and your appreciation of its pleasures will fluctuate according to your tolerance for his Angst .

On the movie's feeble plus side are Richard Gant's acting (as the coroner), Manfredini's music and one funny joke in the last half-minute. On the minus side: ludicrous characters. Garbled nonstop gore. Persistent loud, clanging noises that give you the impression of being trapped inside a malfunctioning radiator. Shadowy lighting that makes you feel as if you're staggering around in the dark. [16 Aug 1993, p.F3]

Rather than a fresh breeze, it's the stale air of gilded calculation, the uncomfortable feeling that things are excessively just so, that overhangs much that is genuinely appealing about this film.

As a director, Mak must have a remarkable capacity for inspiring a trust in his actors that would permit them to appear in one uninhibited scene after another; to his credit, he never makes fools of them -- and he furthermore gets terrific performances from them in the most potentially embarrassing situations.

Soft-core porn dressed up in a silly story about a murder at a sex-therapy clinic. [5 March 1993, p.F20]

It wins a few, loses a few. It makes us laugh, gets mileage out of the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man.” In the end, the actors save it, especially two of the actors: star Robert Downey Jr., who may have moved into the Robin Williams-Steve Martin-Whoopi Goldberg category, and supporting actor David Paymer, who never hits a false note.

Writer-director Steven Zaillian proves as much of a prodigy as his chess-playing subject, turning out a film that is a beautifully calibrated model of honestly sentimental filmmaking, made with delicacy, restraint and unmistakable emotional power. The feelings it goes for are almost never the easy or obvious ones, and the levers it presses are all the more effective because of that.

It's worth recalling here that Carpenter made two of the better horror films of the modern era (Halloween and the vastly underrated The Thing), but career-nadir Body Bags is best zipped up quickly and abandoned along the comeback road. [07 Aug 1993, p.F16]

A super-adrenalized stemwinder, a crisp and jolting melodrama that screws the tension so pitilessly tight it does everything but squeak.

As poignant and pointed as it is funny (and it is very funny), it dresses up familiar forms with modern twists and ends up an assured and amusing comedy of manners. [04 Aug 1993, p.F1]

Rising Sun has gotten everything backward. Mystifying when it should be clear and clear when it should be mystifying, it is the murkiest, most unsatisfying of thrillers. And the biggest mystery of all is how a project that appeared to have so much going for it could have gone so determinedly astray.