With considerable passion and more than a little anger, Cronicas argues that our appetite for an increasing coarse and sensational type of news programming has skewed our inner compasses.

The film's opening credits are terrific, and the first 10 or 15 minutes -- in which Ford and Arthur speedily load up on beer at the local pub -- are absorbing and funny. It's such a promising start that it's doubly deflating to realize that once they land on Zaphod's spaceship, the humor vaporizes.

The film has good actors and enough quirky moments to keep it interesting.

Scott Cooper, who directed and co-wrote Out of the Furnace, empathizes with people who feel their lives have hit a dead end (his previous film, "Crazy Heart," earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar as a washed-up country singer who had given up on himself). These are difficult characters to dramatize.

Mistress is a black comedy about the trials and tribulations of a writer/director trying to get his film financed, and if it had been released last year, it might have seemed better. But memories of Robert Altman's The Player, which deftly covered similar ground, are still fresh, and Mistress suffers badly in comparison. [30 Sep 1992, p.E7]

Dear Frankie is a small movie with a big soul and no easy formula for the happiness of its big-hearted characters.

Cachorro's main flaw is in its ending, which seems somewhat abrupt and unfinished, but these characters have become so endearing by then that it hardly seems to matter.

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.

Wright's film is visually stimulating to be sure, but he never loses sight of the raw human emotions that make Anna Karenina a classic.

Strip away the off-screen hype, and Bad Influence comes off as a mildly compelling yuppie descent into decadence, a sort of Bright Lights, Big City with teeth. [09 Mar 1990, p.5]

Turns out to be a lot less tiresome than it sounds, aided by a wonderfully appealing cast and a strong message.

Chéri never fulfills its emotional promise.

The movie is pleasant overall and occasionally comes up with a big laugh. When the movie's over, though, it evaporates from memory, just like a one-night stand that didn't go nearly as well as you'd hoped.

Is it about a moment in history and how the life of a sexual predator fits into that moment? Or is it just about a director's sexual fantasy? The answers are somewhat fuzzy.

The movie is sweet and reflects Disney's usual care, but there's nothing in it to match that title. [23 June 1989, p.H11]

The more hellish the story gets, the sillier and less involving the movie becomes.

This is a film about depression, though, and it comes awfully close to trivializing its subject by suggesting that all Craig needed, really, was a cute girl to like him back.

Not all of the characters in the movie get just and fair send-offs, but Virzi’s stylish picture argues that’s the price we pay when a capitalist society trains us to place our own selfish interests above everything else. It’s a rat race that ultimately has no winners.

The movie is visually stunning, expansive yet intimate.

Cannot sustain the level of comic insanity the filmmakers hoped for -- no movie could -- although it's bound to play much better on late-night cable TV, especially when accompanied by a few beers and the occasional bong hit.

The movie asks tough, unflinching questions about America's responsibility to maintain world peace -- and the price we are willing to pay in order to accomplish that. Timely stuff, indeed.

The movie's ''bless the beasts and the children'' moralizing is simplistic and skews a wee bit too young, but it's hard to fault a film whose greatest vice is sentimentalizing an animal humans have pushed almost to the brink of extinction.

A lazy, self-satisfied piece of work -- a comedy made by people who think so highly of themselves, they assume they'll get a laugh just by showing up in front of the camera.

It's a gritty, realistic police procedural about the Internal Affairs Division of the Los Angeles force (the cops who watch the cops). It's also a taut, eerie thriller in which the conflict and tension are hidden -- but still effective. [13 Jan 1990, p.E1]

The movie has an epic sweep but an intimate, personal feel. If Changeling lacks the knockout power of, say, "Million Dollar Baby," it proves that Eastwood continues to seek out stories that take him places he hasn't been before -- and the audience along with him.

The movie fares less well when the plot and Simon’s neuroses come to the surface, but there is some tremendous suspense in the movie’s final scene.

The World According to Garp is another of those films that fairly cries out for Robert Altman, who makes movies the way John Irving writes books. Altman doesn't seem to be making movies any more, so this is as close we're able to get to Garp, and it's not close enough. [23 July 1982, p.D10]

It doesn't spoil any of the story's surprising twists to say that Three of Hearts ends up uncovering some poignant truths about the nature of love, the pressures of commitment and the limits to the compromises we are willing to make for the people we care about.