An important and interesting story, but the reform school itself never seems terribly harsh.

Amid such a strong cast hitting all the right notes, Caruso looks wan, though he's not bad enough to sink the movie. [21 Apr 1995, p.5G]

Death Sentence would be right at home as one half of "Grindhouse"'s B-movie double bill.

The best that can be said about Dead Calm is that director Phillip Noyce maintains nearly constant tension and finds a surprising number of ways to evoke menace in confined spaces. [07 Apr 1989, p.7]

Owing to a supremely engaging cast, The Client turns out to be stand-up Hollywood entertainment. Grisham's uninspired storyline can't ruin the efforts of two of the industry's best actors at the top of their form. [20 July 1994, p.E2]

It's a lot more entertaining than box office success "Scooby-Doo" and more honest, too. When Irwin plays out a scene with a reptilian, you can be sure the croc is not computer-generated.

It's cultural fast food delivered in a quick, painless package for the shrinking attention span of the MTV generation. [17 Aug 1992, p.C6]

Though far from perfect -- the film is predictable -- Satin Rouge is a refreshing view of a foreign culture.

The frustratingly uneven comedy Tropic Thunder has moments of full-on, bust-a-gut hilarity, along with long stretches where you can hear the crickets chirping in the theater.

The movie is all surface and trades on fortune-cookie wisdom.

This is an eerie, inventively mounted movie: It's a shivery fun time, filled with dark corners, deserted hallways and sudden apparitions. But it never manages to genuinely rattle you.

Swiss director and co-writer Dominique Othenin-Girard constructs his film like a carnival spook house -- something or someone shocks you every three minutes. They are familiar gimmicks, but the director adds suspenseful twists that are fun, too. [17 Oct 1989, p.C1]

Not Without My Daughter ultimately does what it's supposed to do. It makes us care, it keeps us interested (mostly), but it rarely delivers more -- despite what the producers might think. [11 Jan 1991, p.G13]

The most daring thing about Adam, the story of a young man with Asperger's syndrome, is that there isn't a scene in which someone stops to explain exactly what Asperger's IS.

Bandits isn't much more than a pleasant dawdle, one made extra-likable by Thornton and Blanchett, whose ace performances keep the film zipping along even at its most predictable.

Deadly serious, straightforward and surprisingly entertaining tragedy.

The movie is a bauble, but it's an enjoyably weird and original one, and it is anchored by Black's constantly amusing performance.

It's a gentle, occasionally smart little comedy about what happens when three furry spacemen, eager for female companionship after what seems to have been a long voyage from the planet Jhazzala, land in the backyard swimming pool of a recently jilted manicurist in Southern California's San Fernando Valley. [02 June 1989, p.DW5]

This film and Miller's vision remind us of the danger of giving in to fear.

If Dreamcatcher ultimately feels like an unwieldy pastiche, at least it's never boring.

Flight of the Navigator is a cheerfully unaccomplished little movie, a kind of E.T. for kids that recalls the Disney live-action films of a generation ago. E.T is not the only movie borrowed from here; there are echoes of Back to the Future and most of the rest of the last decade's science-fiction fantasies, though Flight of the Navigator is generous in acknowledging its sources. It's a happy knockoff. [31 July 1986, p.C5]

This is a B-movie through and through, and no less fun for that. [29 Sep 1989, p.G12]

The film's vague recycling theme strikes me as a veiled admission of recycled ideas. Maybe Zucker should have been bold and called it The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Money. [29 June 1991, p.E1]

Midler has emerged as the best funny woman on the screen. As Sandy, she makes abrasiveness appealing. But her work here can't compare with what she did in Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Ruthless People. Neither can Outrageous Fortune. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

It's a cute and clever good-vs-evil parable.

Sometimes engaging, sometimes amusing and ultimately surprising.

It's an understatement to say that The Ring is not your ordinary horror film. And never forget to rewind.

Parkland is wildly uneven, although compulsively watchable.

Crossing Delancey is a sweet, sustained mood more than a fully realized movie. An ode to romance, Manhattan and mustachioed Jewish grandmothers, it charms and amuses but it doesn't satisfy. [16 Sep 1988, p.D1]

It helps that Raw Deal works, for a time at least, as a first-rate cop movie. It is violent to excess -- more graphic by far than Stallone's films, and bloodier, too -- but it's a real movie. [07 June 1986, p.D1]

No, this isn't the stuff of a kiddie classic like "Holes." But, to quote from another movie with a vocal four-legged protagonist, it'll do.

The film remains relatively entertaining, simply because the scenario hits so close to home, no matter where you work.

Intrigues mainly for its spare style and brittle, sweat-soaked performances.

Smile feels like one man's answer to movies increasingly overloaded with sex and violence.

Given the talent involved -- Bigelow, Curtis, Red -- you figure Blue Steel will break out, show something new. Never happens. It's just a tough little thriller with a long string of plot holes. [16 Mar 1990, p.G5]

Fast Food Nation would have benefited from a longer running time -- the movie often feels like it's missing big chunks of plot -- but Linklater's cautionary message gets through.

Garner may be a study in butt-kicking intensity on TV's Alias, but here, she's an engaging comic performer who more than carries her share of what is essentially an unoriginal, mostly average film.

Generic but breezily entertaining.

Film students should be thankful that companies such as Milestone Film & Video have taken up the distribution and restoration of important silent films, and that universities and museums have decided to screen these obscure classics.

It makes the predictable journey surprisingly fun and enjoyable.

The movie takes you over, shakes you for a couple of hours and then turns you back out into the street, limp. You've grown to know a lot about its characters. But when you think about them, you realize that you don't want to know this much. They're hollow men, on both sides. [15 Aug 1986, p.D1]

Even if you don't buy the ending, however, High Tension makes for ghoulish, sick fun, and Aja, who is already at work on a remake of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, clearly takes this horror stuff very seriously. The genre can always use a few more like him.

So, even though Iron Will, about a teen who enters a 522- mile dogsled race to save the family farm, seems fresh, you can bet you've seen it before. Still, it sure is fun. [17 Jan 1994, p.C6]

A Hijacking is not quite as exciting as it should be, but its realistic examination of grit and folly are still more intriguing than swaggering action movie heroics.

The Hidden cannot be dismissed as just a police story with a couple of aliens affixed to it. In fact, without the aliens, there wouldn't be any story. [30 Oct 1987, p.D5]

In Exodus: Gods and Kings, Scott settles for sticking (mostly) to the Book, skipping the boring parts in order to dish out the razzle-dazzle. This is spectacular entertainment, practically a theme park ride, that could have used more spirituality and soul.

The first half of the movie, which alternates between hilariously vulgar, gross gags and some electric improvs and riffs by Rock and his cast of all-stars, has the crackle and pop of a live performance — it energizes you.

Obviously, House Party isn't on Spike Lee's level -- this is fluffy stuff -- but don't let your mind wander too far off. There are still some good things to be heard. [9 Mar 1990, p.G11]

Despite the increasingly annoying presence of the mugging, fatuous Cuba Gooding Jr., The Fighting Temptations pulls off what feels like a major feat: Its musical sequences could make the most hardened atheist want to go to church.

The Mighty Ducks is an upbeat, quick-paced family movie. [06 Oct 1992, p.C5]

Skin Deep works best when the director delivers his stock in trade -- slapstick and sight gags. [3 March 1989, p.6]

Poitier is Poitier, and that, after such a dry spell, is reason enough to see the movie. [12 Feb 1988, p.C5]

Based on a graphic novel, 30 Days of Night opens with a premise so promising it seems almost impossible to screw up.

The Ruins is, with one major caveat, about as good an adaptation of Scott Smith's bestselling novel as Hollywood was ever going to make.

There's little warmth or depth to the characters who, for the most part, trudge through the film with little wonder at the magical journey they're making.

There's never a question which side the movie is rooting for during the trial, and the light tone trivializes what might have been a much more intriguing exploration of the American legal system.

Fans of period drama will find things to like about The Duchess; it's not as ludicrous as "The Other Boleyn Girl," for instance, and it's not overly long or ponderous.

Unlike much of Roberts' previous work, it's a movie about characters, not high concept, and it requires her to do more than make cute faces and flash her dazzling grin. [4 Aug 1995, p.4G]

As the sexual tension builds -- and it becomes intense, culminating in a highly suggestive knife-throwing scene more erotic than if the actors had been having explicit physical contact -- Girl takes you on a thrilling ride.

Even though Howard captures the texture, the personalities, and the often-breakneck pace of a big city newsroom, the movie feels oddly light and feathery. In its last third, it briefly threatens to become a biting dark satire before settling on a disappointingly conventional path. Still, there's an awful lot of star power at work here, some of it hard to resist. The Paper is old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment: flashy, breezy, and not at all challenging. [25 March 1994, p.5]

Plot? There is no plot. You want plot, go read "War and Peace."

Sporadically engrossing in a pulpy kind of way.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler is creaky and sentimental and schmaltzy. The movie lacks any of the unhinged qualities of Daniels’ previous films (The Paperboy, Precious, Shadowboxer).

Jennifer 8 is handsome, dark and menacing, as you'd figure a big-budget whodunit about a serial killer ought to be, but it's also clean out of control. It's one of those thrillers in which the real suspense is over how long it will be before you say, "Oh, come on." [6 Nov 1992, p.G5]

There's good stuff around the edges of the film -- all that word play and all those visual gags demand that you pay attention lest you miss something even in the slow scenes. But at the center, no magic. [01 Aug 1986, p.D1]

Makes for a compelling comedy-drama about family ties. It's only when the cancer takes center stage that the movie feels like a wash.

Fans of the droll style of actor Tom Hanks will chuckle through The Man With One Red Shoe, a story that builds a comic house of cards on a mistaken identity. [20 July 1985, p.4]

It's all amiably hackneyed, but it sucks you in anyway.

The film is all very wistful, and at its best moments has an exquisite mystery to it, the lure of the memory play. And even when it isn't working, there's Turner to watch. That's something. [10 Oct 1986, p.D1]

A tad too raunchy for its own good.

What we have here is a story out of early American history as retold by American pulp fiction, staged by a director with a sure touch for melodrama. [25 Sep 1992, p.G5]

Does more than pay lip service to its subtexts.

Singles is never dull; Crowe keeps the pace moving with gimmicky devices such as direct address, flashbacks and catchy title frames to introduce new segments. The result is a chummy movie about a group of singles hurtling toward a fairy-tale ending. It's pleasant enough, but fans of Crowe will probably crave more. [18 Sept 1992, p.G5]

Seductive, ultimately frustrating.

A large part of the movie's appeal can be attributed to Wilson, more dour than he's been in ages and yet more interesting, too.

Everything that cynical moviegoers despise and the tender-minded adore.

Betsy's Wedding is as "high concept" as they come -- it's all in the title, and once you know the cast, you pretty much know where it's going and how it will go. And still, it's cute, in a forlorn, co-opted sort of way. [22 Jun 1990, p.G5]

The work of a talented filmmaker coasting on his own fumes.

This cold, generally soulless movie does feel like it was made by people who are taking themselves way too seriously. Remember the delicious anticipation you felt when The Empire Strikes Back was over? You won't feel that way when The Matrix Reloaded reaches its cliffhanger finale. You'll just feel relief.

So Doc Hollywood is warm and cuddly and not at all loathsome. It is much better suited to television than to the big screen, though it does serve to showcase Warner, who is attractive and engaging. And durn it all, you just can't hate it. [02 Aug 1991, p.G5]

At a little over two hours, Black Rain is a good half-hour too long, and the style gymnastics are eventually wearying. But Scott's work is always fascinating to watch, even as it grinds you down. And Douglas now has something heroic about him that enhances, if it doesn't quite transcend, the plot-by- numbers. It's fun watching the two of them volley. [22 Sep 1989, p.G5]

It's hard to connect with long minutes of self-pity by a temporarily has-been celebrity.

Sneakers is tremendously entertaining when the team is working to breach unbreachably secure institutions. [11 Sep 1992, p.G5]

It's not much, Boiling Point. But it's not what you expect, either. At this time of year, when the big news is Indecent Proposal, that's saying something. [19 Apr 1993, p.C5]

Deep down, this is a film about childhood dreams and the determination to make those dreams come true. With such a positive message, you can't help yodeling on your exit from the theater.

Dan in Real Life is basically a slightly less-sappy version of "TheFamily Stone."

If The Tailor of Panama doesn't quite gel, the attempt is still worth savoring.

Features the lamest story of any CG-animated feature to date.

No Small Affair, while no big movie, confirms that it is possible to tell a story about a kid in love without depending on the French-tutor contrivance or the girls'-locker- room giggle. [09 Nov 1984, p.C10]

A surprisingly ambitious entry into a genre that felt bankrupt and over more than a decade ago.

The Lookout boasts some very interesting, original performances. They make this noirish, bank-heist caper intriguing, but in some ways they actually work against making it believable.

If the idea was merely to make a high-gloss entertainment about the last days of mob glamour, Bugsy succeeds. But it leaves one final question unanswered: So what? [20 Dec 1991, p.G5]

Vol. 2 isn't exactly disappointing, and like all of Tarantino's movies, I suspect it will improve with repeated viewings. But for now, Vol. 2 leaves you pondering what could have been.

The film isn't particularly original, but its dark mood, end-of-times landscape and unique characters will seem fresher to the young audience for which it's aiming than to jaded sci-fi veterans.

For all its tangle of characters and plot twists, Van Helsing isn't the slightest bit involving, and more than once (especially whenever Beckinsale is onscreen), it is unintentionally hilarious. But it's the rare kind of movie where the badness just adds to the fun.

Delicacy bears a slight whiff of Anthony Minghella's fantastic "Truly Madly Deeply," but while Minghella's film is a romantic comedy classic, Delicacy hovers just this side of memorable.

Bogs down in a deep muck of inevitability.

This new Brideshead Revisted, though imperfectly revised, is not entirely regrettable.