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.