Class of 1999 swiftly short-circuits on unspeakable, incessant brutality and bloodshed.

There's a hushed, rapturous quality to its best parts, though, and the emotional interplay between Ricky and Marina has a scary immediacy that the movies rarely achieve. Almodovar dares a lot in this film. [4 May 1990]

As a horror show, it's a cut--or a slash or a bloody whack--above most movies of this type: cleverly written, cleverly cast.

Edel’s empathy with actors--which he showed in 1981 with the harrowing heroin saga, Christiane F.--is further strengthened by the remarkable performances here.

This movie makes sexual adventurism seems so ludicrous, that it might have been made by Puritans in disguise, trying to portray hedonists as a pack of fatheads.

William Friedkin's shocker is supposed to be primally terrifying, but primally silly is more like it. [27 Apr 1990, p.F4]

It's Nolte's boldest, most spellbinding performance; his subtleties in playing this Irish-American monster who believes himself on the front line of "us against them" are profound. [27 Apr 1990, p.F1]

A tedious, frenetic and sour business in which humans and Martians alike are all pretty stupid, except for the local sheriff’s pretty, peace-loving daughter (Ariana Richards). Even the special effects aren’t anything special.

What makes Miami Blues unsettling, in spite of itself, is the sense that the garish ultra-violence we're witnessing is just a species of high jinks. Armitage, adapting Charles Willeford's smart, nasty 1984 novel, doesn't provide the kind of moral dimension that might make Junior's sprees cumulatively frightening. The film careens along as a blithely funky shoot-'em-up. It might have been made by a sociopathic Chuck Jones.

Lisa isn’t ineffective. It’s shaped in the usual sadistic way that leaves some audiences howling with blood-lust by the climax. But it’s basically a nasty movie that tries to end up nicey-nice: a house-cat of a sex-thriller that wants to claw the hell out of you and then curl up to warm milk and velvety hugs.

The satiric idea behind Crazy People deserves a better movie.

The wonder is that anything in a country this exotic, full of such potential wonder, could be made this enervating.

The pace of the direction and-especially-of the screenplay by playwright-television writer John Kostmayer-begins to crawl, weighing down everything. [06 Apr 1990]

Greenaway is a man of distinctive ideas and insights who this time out has expended his abilities and perceptions -- and those of many others -- on an exercise in grossness that depresses rather than enlarges the human spirit. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is sensational, all right, but hardly entertaining. [13 Apr 1990, p.F12]

Whether you're won over depends on your own taste for ineptitude. Like the others in the Worrell saga, Ernest Goes to Jail is a movie with couch-potato stylistics and switching-channel logic. Watching it is like sitting with a lukewarm TV dinner for an hour or so, while somebody tries to pound you into a Smurf. [09 Apr 1990, p.F12]

In this sleek but grisly and far-fetched thriller of the supernatural, [Resnikoff] means to terrify us but winds up leaving us merely numb, the usual effect of contrived exploitation fare. [09 Apr 1990, p.F6]

Watching it is a bit like checking out a grade-school talent show on parents’ night. The eagerness of the performers, their flat-out verve and innocence, wins you over. For a while at least...Finally, the film wears you down.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never rises above its marketing-hook origins. It's a product, a commodity, a toy tie-in, a trailer for the comics, an advertisement for the cereal. It's a naked sell.

When Side Out gets to its “meat"--intercutting the beach with the law firm, intercutting frantic lovemaking with a tough volleyball loss, intercutting the beach with life, intercutting bikinis with more bikinis--we know we’re dealing with shameless button-pressers.

Nothing works, except perhaps the sight of Julia Roberts' lean, well-tempered midsection and her roughly eight yards of legs that, in this frail comedy, are worked until they're almost a story point of their own. [23 Mar 1990, Calendar, p.F-14]

The Fourth War doesn't make much sense, but it's powerfully acted and beautifully directed. [23 Mar 1990, p.F4]

What’s remarkable is that you come away from the movie laughing at Graham’s murderous indiscretions and yet you’re frightened by them too. Caine makes you taste the ashes in this black comedy.

Unfortunately, style needs a little substance to keep it from careening around looking empty, and the story of Blue Steel is lofty, implausible twaddle that sinks whatever ideas Bigelow hoped to investigate.

This version not only doesn’t surpass or match Brook’s, it makes the material look bad.

Blind Fury is a rehashing of movies you passed on the first time, like, uh, Over the Top.

This movie has a rhythm. It's exaggerated, loud and consciously vulgar, but the breezy self-assurance carries it along.

Romantic and preposterous all at once, it's actually a funny, endearing fable about courage, love and faith...So endearing that the flatness about its last few minutes manages not to sink the picture. [9 March 1990, p.C1]

If sex, lies, and videotape hinted at Spader's fascination, Bad Influence confirms it; he is one of a handful of startling young American actors whose range has barely begun to be tapped.