Aa bit too familiar an American tail. [19 December 1997, p. 82]

Tomorrow Never Dies delivers the goods with tongue in cheek, if not Bond's tongue in someone else's cheek.

You'd never guess this just-off-center movie was directed by indie hero Gus Van Sant. Maybe, like Will, he's casual about his gifts and feels no need to trot them out.

Children may get a kick out of Flubber's lowest-common-denominator antics. They may not recognize that Williams' prodigious talent has been reduced to something sub-blobular. [26Nov1997 Pg 38]

Winterbottom uses effective imagery to establish the horror and absurdity of war. [26Nov1997 Pg.39]

It wastes no time getting to the punching, kicking, stomping and zapping that passes for a cinematic event. [22Nov1997 Pg. 35]

Nevertheless, Bean has been a huge hit in Europe, where it opened last summer, and it may contain enough laughs to work here. Well enough, one hopes, to produce a funnier, sharper, better crafted "Bean 2." [07Nov1997 Pg.63]

Unfortunately, Mad City merely pumps up the volume on material that has already been picked clean. [07Nov1997 Pg 74]

This aggressively "sincere" movie is without a single authentically lived moment a sense exaggerated by Brian Tufano's overcomposed cinematography, which imitates the glossy hollowness of fashion photographs. [24Oct1997 Pg 51]

It's killer, dude! [17 October 1997, p. 52]

Virtually plotless, the movie does its best to be offensive, but not in the service of any particular theme. The use of mentally impaired youngsters as actors is cheap and exploitative. You can only wonder about the emperor's new clothes, and how much Hollywood paid for them. [17 Oct. 1997, p.52]

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has perfectly wedded form to function by filming Boogie Nights in a style suggesting the grainy texture of porn and the ambivalence of the era.

A cleverly written thriller in which he and Jim Belushi portray corrupt police detectives whose actions unleash an unpredictable chain of sometimes dire, sometimes hilarious events. [8 Oct 1997, p.32]

A juicy noir stew of amorality that's the best thing since "Chinatown."

Desplechin's film sustains its running time by continually revealing new aspects to its characters that reverse our initial judgments.

Jacques Audiard's amusingly stinging A Self-Made Hero toys with the subjectivity of historical truth by presenting one Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz), loser, cipher, liar. But a brilliant liar. [12 Sept 1997, p.44]

"On Deadly Ground," "Out for Justice," "Marked for Death" these are the last times Seagal gave us nothing. With Fire Down Below, he outdoes himself. [6 Sept 1997, p.32]

The movie then becomes John's story, making an unbelievable leap of psychodrama to do so.

The film is slow-moving, overlong and never more ambitious than a TV feature, though younger kids will probably respond to O'Neal's amiability. [16 Aug 1997, p.24]

Simple, joyful and downright innocent movie.

Career Girls reaches a little too often and unconvincingly for convenience... But Leigh remains one of the few film makers today to make movies that are solely character-driven, in which personal insight is its own reward. [8 Aug 1997, p.46]

If you like your burger well-done, you're in for a disappointment.

With destitute and disillusioned Mexican laborers much in the news lately, Star Maps is timely, and Spain is effective and affecting in the lead role. The movie's efforts at realism, however, are undermined by a cast of scenery chewers starved for attention. [23 July 1997, p.45]

Delirious in its excess, but never less than ferociously intelligent and operatically emotional, Underground represents one of those rare, exhilarating moments when an outsize artistic vision is fueled by an apparently unlimited budget. Not to be missed.

La Promesse believes that decency is an innate human quality that can surface from any rubble. [16 May 1997, p.47]

At least Williams and Crystal, old pals off the screen, seem to be enjoying themselves.

A few well-timed laughs and a lot of filler.

Irma Vep is a glorious mishmash, like the medium it celebrates.

The tone remains uneasily divided between lightly realistic character comedy and the darkest, chilliest kind of farce.

An ingratiatingly sincere attempt to deal with the complications and contradictions of modern romance.

It's a mad whirl, and Rodman his hair changing color like a traffic light seems right at home in it. [4 Apr 1997, p.49]

Despite choreography by the late Gene Kelly and six original tunes by Randy Newman, the song-and-dance numbers here are merely congenial and definitely not rousing. [26 Mar 1997, p.42]

As filmed by Steven Soderbergh with appropriate visuals for a movie about perceptions, Gray's quest for ocular health leads from an Indian sweat lodge to a Filipino psychic surgeon. [19 March 1997, p.39]

Dunye's salvation is her sense of humor. She's good at creating light, bantering dialogue, and there are a couple of sharp, satirical scenes.

A formula movie that is way beneath Murphy's talents.[17 Jan 1997, p.45]

Builds to a splattering finale that should leave genre fans highly satisfied.

Playing a pair of antagonistic one-term Presidents thrown together in a flimsy chase plot, Jack Lemmon and James Garner trade insults that aren't exactly in Lincoln's league.

While Pfeiffer is a stickier subject, Clooney is so game he could have chemistry with a sandbox. [20 Dec 1996, p.61]

Working from his own original screenplay, Crowe builds a story line full of unexpected twists and digressions.

Daylight sets a record for implausible scenarios and lack of character development. But let's face it if you're going to be stranded in a fireball, you might as well be stranded there with Sylvester Stallone. Twenty years after "Rocky" punched him into the limelight, Stallone presents a more human-scaled character, and he's charming, even gracious. His acting range may not span Manhattan to Jersey, but he inspires confidence even in material as pre-fab as this. [6 Dec 1996, p.59]

Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed and stars in this compassionate, occasionally funny, character-driven movie about a mentally unstable man who takes the best interests of children very seriously.

Ryder is particularly impressive in her destructive passion. [27 Nov 1996, p.39]

A sublimely uplifting movie.

A smashing success on its own terms, though as a transcendent love story it lacks the firm foundation in human reality that characterizes Lars Von Trier's superior "Breaking the Waves."

Although "Jam" is clearly a marketing tool with not much to say beyond "be the best that you can be," it strives to preserve the humor that made Looney Tunes so popular among adults.

One of the most emotionally devastating movies of the decade.

Holland's direction is functional, as befits the kind of cable fodder Thinner is destined to be.

It's a "First Wives Club" for single guys, giving voice to a whole range of authentic, if not always responsible, attitudes and emotions.

Buscemi wittily captures the desperation of lives gone downhill in prettified surroundings although, like the Trees Lounge patron who suddenly stops breathing, the audience feels the life force slowly being sucked out. [11 Oct 1996, p.70]

The movie mostly sustains its excitement of the hunt. But the real star is the panoramic, beautifully composed cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond. Whether he truly loved the African locations or is cursed with "a gift" doesn't matter; the dynamics of the story often flag, but the visuals lend a palpable excitement. [11 Oct 1996, p.49]

The film's confused moral sense is summed up by the contrast between the Aiello and Spader characters. Though both are professional killers, Aiello is somehow coded as "good" because he takes time to make pasta, and Spader is "bad" because he plays mildly kinky games with his mistress (imposing South African model Charlize Theron). [27 Sept 1996, p.43]

Sarah Jessica Parker makes an unflatteringly tense appearances as a nurse who knows more than she's telling, and David Morse dredges up his hulking soulfulness as a maverick FBI agent. But no one involved in "Extreme Measures" is displaying a commitment beyond showing up for work. [27 Sept 1996, p.42]

Does the testosterone fly? Not as fast as the potty jokes. Ditto the homophobe jokes zing! zing!

The performances are all on-target. Shelley Long and Gary Cole reprise the lady and her fellow, with Tim Matheson as the interloper, Christine Taylor as the hair-obsessed Marcia and Jennifer Elise Cox as Jan, the mouth-breather.

The comparison to Woody Allen is obvious, not only in the New York setting and the characters' comic approach-avoidance to sex, but in Burns' casting of his real girlfriend to play his screen girlfriend. Uh, Eddie big mistake there. [23 Aug 1996, p.41]

This movie is not just bad, it is breathtakingly, spectacularly, awesomely bad. You might want to see it out of curiosity. [23 Aug 1996, p.40]

It’s hard not to like these characters, or to come away without a little more sympathy for the nonlinear ways teenage girls can react to a world that often makes no sense and offers no apologies.

Jazz is a good metaphor for Robert Altman's movies they're often improvisational, free-form and full of unexpected dissonance. Unfortunately, his movies also fall prey to the hazards of jazz they can be boring, screechy and endless. Thus, Kansas City. [16 Aug 1996, p.49]

Chain Reaction never develops a sense of mounting energy. The action sequences are thinly conceived and too spread out by dramatic filler (mainly involving the crises of conscience of Morgan Freeman, as the project's enigmatic chief fund-raiser) to create much momentum. [2 Aug 1996, p.45]

A finely performed, breezily directed, very funny comedy. [17 July 1996, p.33]

Based on the comic strip created in 1936 by Lee Falk, The Phantom is a handsomely produced, numbingly impersonal adventure film that fails to do anything new with the format. [7 June 1996, p.49]

The movie comes alive in bursts such as a train-top fight hampered by gale-force winds. Cruise's star wattage may hog the show, but it insures that Mission: Impossible won't self-destruct easily.

With its sense of what can be accomplished on a small budget, The Craft suggests the classic B-horrors of the '40s particularly The Cat People and The Seventh Victim.

Nolte does his standard lovable-lug routine with his usual ease and assurance, though a more daring producer might have allowed Madsen, stranded again in a second-banana role, to step up to the lead. This crafty, insinuating actor has been ready for his closeup for a while now. Can't somebody make him a star? [26 Apr 1996, p.47]

In a movie theater, at least, there are other people to hear you laugh, and the film of MST3K already seems a more communal, less onanistic experience.

Combining the sports obsessiveness of "SNL's" venerable "Da Bears" routine with the buddy bonding of Wayne and Garth, Mike and Jimmy might make great sketch material. But as the central characters in a feature film, they wear thin quicker than a cheap suit. [19 Apr 1996, p.65]

The Substitute is just engaging enough that you won't wonder until after the movie why Mr. Smith is apparently the only teacher in the entire school. [19 Apr 1996, p.65]

A handsome, entertaining though emotionally thin animated feature.

Experimental in form, it's also open and appealing in its vision of romantic redemption, an avant-garde romp that's also a great date movie. [8 Mar 1996, p.40]

Schaeffer thickens the general air of narcissism by directing Parker's Lucy essentially as a female version of himself, with the same puckish sense of humor and undertone of self-pity. Stiller's Bwick is an entertaining invention, an art-world variation on The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince though he, too, turns out to be mainly a foil to Joe's wonderfulness. Clearly, Eric Schaeffer has at least one really big fan. [8 March 1996, p.40]

City Hall can't decide whether to be melodrama or sociology. In the end, it isn't enough of either. [16 Feb 1996, p.49]

ALTHOUGH IT DOES HAVE a plot of sorts, Black Sheep isn't really a movie it's more like a series of "Saturday Night Live" sketches highlighting Chris Farley's fumbling fatboy shtick. [2 Feb 1996, p.36]

Ken Kwapis' Dunston Checks In contains not a single surprising moment. But it is well crafted enough to squeak by. Kids should get a few laughs from it. Accompanying adults will be only moderately bored. [12 Jan 1996, p.33]

No amount of computerized razzle-dazzle can make this insipid sequel worth logging on to. [13 Jan 1996, p.21]

Directed by John Schlesinger, Eye for an Eye is a repellent, cynical piece of work a movie that exploits violence while pretending to deplore it. [12 Jan 1996, p.33]

Though the slow, obvious "Two If By Sea" probably won't do much to advance Bullock's standing as America's current sweetheart, it shouldn't do irreparable damage to it, either. [13 Jan 1996, p.21]

This movie is not as intricately rewarding as Zhang's others. But because it is so Westernized, it could do even better at the box office. [21 Dec 1995, p.60]

The cinematic equivalent of comfort food it soothed when you were younger and, in its familiarity, it soothes again.

The film is a celebration of youthful romanticism and youthful nihilism, two philosophies that are often indistinguishable from each other where Nadja is set: Manhattan's East Village, with its tiny, secretive bars and tumultuous street life.

A Walk in the Clouds might have been helped by a more charismatic starring couple. They lack the character to stand up to such veteran scenery chompers as Quinn and Giannini. Instead, Reeves and Sanchez-Gijon seem like quivering Bambis in a lion's den. [11 Aug 1995, p.37]

Highly original and filmed with perfect assurance, River of Grass is one of the finest independent films of recent years.

Beyond its baby-sitting capabilities, Power Rangers doesn't morph into anything special. It hasn't a single fresh idea.

Using telephoto lenses to bring us close to the characters, Techine directs Wild Reeds with an impeccable sense of tempo, unhurried by narrative pressures. The actors seem to find exactly the right, internal rhythm for each scene the leisurely rhythm of people discovering each other and discovering themselves. This is certainly one of the year's best films. [30 June 1995, p.54]

The plot line quickly becomes incomprehensible, and the movie, directed in sleek music-video style by Michael Bay, comes to suggest a very long night on Fox-TV. [7 April 1995, p.56]

Once Were Warriors has more to say than the traditional TV-movie about spousal abuse. But some viewers will have to pay a price: This is a movie that requires strength and fortitude to sit through.

Pure, eye-popping pleasure.

The whole movie is something of a country-music clich, and it takes all of your imagination to be as enthusiastic about the characters' singing as they are. But The Thing Called Love is worth a look on the big screen. [16 July 1999]

It's not his most satisfying, full-bodied work, though it does provide many of the Woo pleasures. [18 Jun 1993]

Unforgiven is a high-caliber movie, a gripping and haunting work of art that should finally establish Eastwood as one of America’s best directors.

The movie is both wonderfully tender and wryly funny. [05 Feb 1992, p.31]

Sidewalk Stories manages to expose the modern-day realities of New York while at the same time recapturing the sentimentality and charm of the classic films of the silent era. [03 Nov 1989, p.47]

Audiences of all ages are bound to fall in love with this bubbly, thoroughly enchanting fish story.

In the final analysis, the best thing one can say for Lee is that he takes risks, like all true artists. For unlike most of today's film makers, he's not afraid to really challenge a movie audience to do some serious thinking.

A combination homage, living obituary and darkly moody piece of cinematic poetry.

This mercilessly intense movie is definitely not for the faint of heart. The atmosphere remains highly charged from beginning to end. There’s no letup, nary a suggestion of humor to break the tension. The viewer remains as stunned and repelled by the action as the movie’s well-bred narrator, an idealistic young volunteer (played effectively by Charlie Sheen) who naively expects to find himself by sharing the mud with the mostly poor and uneducated grunts.

The flight sequences in “Top Gun” may arouse aerial buffs. Still, this movie approaches its subject in such juvenile, superficial way that it’s clear the producers were merely in a hurry to cash in on Hollywood’s new wave of Rambo-style patriotism.

As irresistibly sweet as cotton candy. Even though the poor-girl-meets-rich-kid plot is older than the Hollywood hills, and this romantic comedy lacks the cheeky humour of Hughes' first outing, "Sixteen Candles," the film definitely warms the heart.

Out of Africa is still an absolute knockout. It provides such an enchanting glimpse of the paradise that Dinesen tragically lost that audiences will completely understand her other grand passion for Africa itself.