With Heavenly Creatures, we're always on the outside looking in. And if that view is far from boring, it lacks some of the high drama that a more inside perspective might have offered. [23 Dec 1994, p.26]

First-time director Claire Denis (a Frenchwoman who lived in Africa as a child) wants us to know that colonialism is a bad thing. Would anyone care to argue the point? Like German director Wim Wenders (with whom she worked on Wings of Desire), Denis achieves some ravishing images but is committed to using a deadeningly static camera. [30 Mar 1990, p.16]

Casino Royale is just swell when Bond is busting up bathrooms in Prague, busting up embassies in Madagascar and busting a move in Nassau. But when he gets to, well, Casino Royale (here, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro), the film goes utterly flat.

The movie may have been so structured to offer whites in the audience a central white figure with whom to identify. But it's the ultimate irony that moviemakers who want to call attention to the historical accomplishments of blacks feel that they can only do so if the hero of their film is white. [12 Jan 1990, p.6]

Brando's confusion is understandable. The Freshman is, as he said, a bit of a stinker. But it also contains those moments of high comedy he spoke of. Add Brando's statements together, divide the total by two and you have the right answer about this movie.

Spike Lee's ambitious, occasionally brilliant new film about an interracial relationship might have been a masterpiece if only it had been integrated. Thematically integrated, that is. The cast of Jungle Fever is racially integrated, but there's so little holding the diverse elements of the movie together that Lee could have called it Jumble Fever.

His movie is only partly satisfying. [23 Feb 1996]

Sid & Nancy is an honorable try, but it could have been better had Cox found a way to imbue the movie with some of the sheer zaniness of his Repo Man.

There's another, more important reason why Stand By Me isn't for kids. Its perspective is that of a knowing adult, which is to say that though the film is frequently affectionate and funny, it contains a drop too much condescension to be entirely successful.

The comedy - it's too cautious, really, to be called a satire - just sort of tap-dances along, hitting all the usual marks without ever straining too hard.

Fitfully amusing or not, the whole demented enterprise of Rango comes into question when you're that tone-deaf about what's appropriate for children.

The movie's dark themes, unhurried pace and talkiness make it something of a gamble for many children. But older children - especially those who have been asking specific questions about death - may find some nourishment in this garden.

Notwithstanding the hero's Superman similarities, Hercules isn't quite super. But it's strong enough to get the job done. [27 June 1997, p.17]

Miami Blues is more interesting than any bad movie I've seen in months, but it is still a bad movie.

JFK is a limp, semi-coherent, boring movie. [20 Dec 1991, p.21]

Egoyan makes you pay dearly by subjecting you to large doses of film-festival-strength ponderousness. [14 Apr 1995, p.19]

The bottom line is that The Crow is a somewhat-better-than-average exploitation flick that has received an extra shot of hype from the untimely and dramatic demise of its star performer.

It's a movie of thematic dead-ends. Director Azazel Jacobs and writer Patrick DeWitt give us a slow SLOW and somewhat morose tale that isn't remotely funny or profound enough to sustain that pace and tone.

Where Fargo was cool and wryly detached, the zany new film is aggressively antic - more like parts of their Barton Fink or The Hudsucker Proxy. On occasion, in fact, the Coens' anything-goes approach can begin to get on your nerves. [6 March 1998, p.17]

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome isn't a bad movie. It has entertaining sections, decent performances and more than a few provocative images. But it also has a major shortcoming: It's too darned sane.

Even if your expectations were not especially high, chances are that you would be disappointed by Into the West. [17 Sep 1993, p.21]

It's as disquieting as it is unsatisfying, a slog through gender issues, surgery and violence - sexual and otherwise.

This superficially engaging movie leads you to expect something more - something that would suggest how the experience of playing professional ball changed the lives of the women in the league, and how the league itself may have helped to alter the general public's notions of women and sports.

Otomo's movie, set in the usual sci-fi post-apocalyptic world, has all the narrative fascination of a Godzilla movie (not much). The filmmaker does have a vivid visual imagination, but this imagination has more to do with composition and color than with motion (i.e., animation). [01 Jun 1990, p.7]

The most jarring casting mistake (even more jarring than the miscasting of Dangerfield) involves Keith Gordon, who plays Thornton's son. Gordon, who has shown himself to be an intense and quirky actor in such films as Christine and Dressed to Kill, is a smoldering presence in what ought to be a light, comic role. His psycho-killer eyes just don't fit here.

Frankly, the original was never one of my favorite Disney cartoons - pleasant enough, but uninspiring. The sequel, I'm afraid, isn't much of an improvement. [16 Nov 1990, p.8]

Filmmaker Haynes has brought forth a punishing little movie, but he fails to make the case that the viewer deserves to be punished. Poison really wants us to suffer - which, come to think of it, is also the underlying aim of many exploitation flicks. For all their cheap thrills, they are basically soul-deadening - and so, ultimately, is this earnest little message movie. [17 May 1991, p.6]

Backhanded compliments are pretty much the only ones The Boy Who Could Fly deserves. The subjects, here, are childhood and illness: topics that otherwise tough-minded people are inclined to approach with uncharacteristic sentimentality. But though the film is both sappy and cliched, it's not as sappy or cliched as might be expected. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse.

The Russia House is one of the most gorgeous-looking movies currently in release and also, unfortunately, one of the dullest. If it were a travelogue, it would be great. But it isn't. [21 Dec 1990, p.9]

An awkward blend of ultra-realistic violence, boundaries-bending satire and low comedy.

It begins with such promise, a kinky modernist twist on a classical sci-fi morality tale. That it degenerates into conventional, genre horror is all the more disappointing.

The love scenes turn out to be the most appealing sequences in this otherwise uninspired movie. [05 Feb 1993, p.17]

Actually, the rating fits. The movie isn't quite enough fun to qualify for the "average" category, yet not quite lame enough to deserve to be called "poor." [28 June 1991, p.6]

It's still a short-enough time-killer of a thriller -- not the worst of the summer, but a long way from the current state of the art.

If The Prince of Tides has a saving grace, it's the acting. In what is probably the most subdued role of her life, Streisand is remarkably graceful and charming: This woman who has so often been accused of self-infatuation hands much of the movie over to her co-stars.

It's a fairly effective melodrama with an inventive visual design, swift pacing and convincing performances by Liam Neeson (as Westlake/Darkman), Frances McDormand (as Westlake's girlfriend) and Larry Drake (as the heavy). [24 Aug. 1990, p.4]

The laughs - Doug tries to take up the pipe, a la Sherlock Holmes - are on the flat side.

If Winkler's heart is in the right place, his head is often somewhere else. There's a great movie to be made about the blacklist period, but this just isn't it. [15 Mar 1991, p.8]

Once you get past the cliched Spanglish dialogue and the sentimental tone of the early acts, A Better Life settles down into something both involving and moving.

While we may ogle Tamara, blush at her charms and revel in her world, in the end Tarama Drewe is just a bit of Brit tease that doesn't come off.

This thriller is so completely worked out that it might have been devised by paranoids. Not even the most demented Kennedy-assassination buff could be more thorough about making sure that everything fits with everything else.

It Could Happen to You does present a life-affirming message about keeping your word - a message that undoubtedly will lead somebody to proclaim it the "feel-good movie of the summer." Yes, it's nice. Very nice. But nice ain't always enough.

The new creature feature Monsters is an intriguing mash-up of "District 9," "The Host" and assorted recent post-apocalypse road pictures.

Its grisly violence and ridicule-religion tone make it sort of the anti-"Exorcism of Emily Rose."

Cute, bordering on cutesy, yes. Light and shallow and inconsequential in a lot of ways. But funny? Rarely.

These Elvis clones are just one aspect of the zany atmosphere in this sometimes-entertaining comic romp.

Green Zone isn't so much a bad movie as a misguided one.

A routine action drama, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book contains qualities of both forgettability and painlessness.

Although the second half of the picture (which could have been called Single White Females Can't Live Together) is mostly a waste, the early scenes are tantalizing enough to be worth a look. [14 Aug 1992, p.17]

How bad is Something to Talk About? Well, it's not the worst movie I've seen this year, but it is the biggest waste of talent. [4 Aug 1995, p.18]

Movies like this one - with its spoofy jokes, vacant characters and indefensible plotting - do nothing to keep the western form alive. Deal me out of this con game.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is a serious film, but is it a great one? Not as far as I'm concerned. Overall, I'd say it's only pretty good, though parts of it are much better than that. [30 Apr 1990, p.D1]

But this movie is no more interested in Cleveland than it is, really, in baseball: It doesn't have the passion for the sport's curiosities that Bull Durham has, nor the feeling for the sport's heartbreak of Eight Men Out. Watching Major League may be better than watching no baseball at all. But its place in the annals of baseball-moviedom is bush league at best.

Aside from Robert De Niro and his totally inappropriate performance, the cast is a mixed bag.

But as useful as it is to chew on ideas that don't hew to climate change dogma, Cool It leaves big questions about Lomborg unanswered.

Somehow, the new production fails to sustain the creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky and altogether ooky visual sweep that held the first film together.

A well-acted tale of an underdog's triumph that sorely lacks an underdog, it teeters between pleasantly generic film biography and rank manipulation.

But weird as that is - and as insensitive as the studio's decision about the film's release date may be - the big question for most people is whether Unlawful Entry is a good movie. I think it isn't - not because the film exploits the Rodney King incident specifically, but because it is so exploitative generally. [27 June 1992, p.E1]

Though the film does contain a few other humorously erotic moments, it's mostly a listless exercise in intentional camp.

At two hours and 15 minutes, the new Karate Kid takes an absurd amount of time to get to that “big match.”

To watch To Wong Foo is finally to be reminded that camp-meisters often have a weakness for sentimentality that is far more appalling than anything they do in the name of outrageousness. [08 Sep 1995, p.17]

For an hour or so, Bigelow (Near Dark, Blue Steel) gets by on that great eye of hers. But about halfway, Point Break breaks down. The plot, which has been unimpressive but not irritating, becomes maddeningly implausible. And the performances, which had been generally engaging, lose their edge.

Possibly the most disappointing sequel since "Jaws 2". [10 Dec 1993, p.19]

Truth be told, J. Edgar drags, even when it pays homage to the widely discredited urban legend that the guy liked to dress in drag.

The movie's biggest sin, however, is that during its crucial final half-hour, the action is shot in a confusing way that renders it virtually incomprehensible. This section is almost a series of random images, which is no way to build suspense, let me tell you. That this movie's director has previously specialized in music videos and that he has never before directed a feature film, may explain why this section is so very chaotic. [22 May 1992, p.19]

Mr. Holland's Opus pretty much plays things straight. There are occasional jokes, but, basically, it's a clumsy tear-jerker. The biggest laughs in this one aren't intended. [19 Jan 1996, p.24]

Although the film is watchable and, at times, even borderline entertaining, it has its share of problems. Mainly, the filmmakers seem to have had trouble deciding just what kind of movie they were making. [22 May 1996, p.E1]

Memphis Belle simply doesn't fly. [12 Oct 1990, p.4]

This Paranormal doesn't tamper with the formula that worked in the first two films. It lacks the "money" moments that those films delivered and ends with a finale that is downright conventional. "Paranormal" reveals itself for what it has become, the "Saw" of found video thrillers.

A production that's strong on atmosphere but weak in the plot department. Watching this often-tedious film, you begin to feel as if you've been kidnapped - which is appropriate, anyway, since the story concerns an abduction.

Director Andrew Davis (Seagal's Above the Law) and screenwriter J.F. Lawton (Pretty Woman) handle the early scenes fairly well. As the villains are putting their plan into place, the plot is involving and the pacing brisk. It's only after the bad guys take over the ship that the film begins to degenerate. The staging falls apart almost immediately, and, before long, it's not clear exactly what is happening and where. [06 Nov 1992, p.24]

Forever After still goes down like warmed-over porridge. You don’t have to be Goldilocks to think that this time they’ve cooked their Golden Goose.

Gene Hackman, who plays Hambleton, has always been a master of understatement, an actor whose quiet authority forces you to pay close to seem just a little too subdued had the movie not also featured some broader, more obviously lively performances. [14 Feb 1993, p.56]

While the movie's visuals are complex and suggestive, the plotting and dialogue are merely congested and muddled. Hill and the writers get caught between political correctness, historical fidelity, dramatic license and simple movie nostalgia. [11 Dec 1993, p.E1]

If it's not the most awful thing I've ever seen, it's close enough to make me wince.

Like "The Living Daylights", Licence to Kill definitely has its moments. But also like "The Living Daylights", the new, two-hour-plus picture goes on too long and is encumbered by a needlessly complicated plot.

Oz is a bit too impressed by the story's enchantment - too inclined to dwell on Omri's astonished gaze and too eager to fill the soundtrack with Randy Edelman's ain't-it-awesome? musical score. [14 July 1995, p.17]

The latest 007 extravaganza has enough plot developments, double-entendres, emotional underpinnings and, of course, Bond girls, action scenes and explosions to furnish at least a couple of Bondfests, with plenty left over for an episode of Nash Bridges.

If the movie isn't a total loss that's because Jordan, Bugs (voice by Billy West) and their friends have an undeniable charm and because some of the classic gags that director Joe Pytka (a TV-commercial guy), producer Ivan Reitman (Twins, Junior) and the screenwriters have adapted from the Looney Tunes shorts are hard to spoil completely.

A barely serviceable romantic comedy.

What's surprising about Not Without My Daughter (which was adapted from a book that Betty Mahmoody wrote with William Hoffer) is how effective it is despite its obvious shortcomings. As a conventional thriller along the lines of, say, a Mission: Impossible episode, the movie actually manages to be borderline entertaining. [11 Jan 1991, p.9]

I must admit that, all things considered, it's not bad. In fact, I liked it almost as much as the first one, which I thought was vaguely enjoyable, if somewhat too long. [23 Aug 1996, p.17]

What it all comes down to is that Kaufman gets the hard things right and messes up the simple stuff. If there isn't a Japanese saying for that, there certainly ought to be.

In a lot of ways, Die Another Day is a return to Bond's bad-old-days, the early 1980s, when the plots were outlandish and haphazard, the stunts were fake and the whole enterprise was being treated as a cartoon.

After "Zombieland," The Crazies struggles to find novelty and laughs, and must battle the overwhelming sense that we’ve been here, seen this too often and too recently to experience any real surprises.

This new Sabrina stresses the material's Cinderella love story - the part, that is, that was corny and somewhat dated even in the '50s. What director Sydney Pollack and his screenwriters (Barbara Benedek and David Rayfiel) have done is a little like redesigning the Ford Pinto and keeping the unfortunate old gas tank. [15 Dec 1995, p.19]

Jackman gamely does his best, Levy keeps the kid just shy of insufferable and just this side of kid-appropriate in his behavior and language.

It's a solid, engrossing thriller, but a slack one.

It's so sentimental and sweet that you can almost forgive the kids' comedy Ramona and Beezus for not being nearly funny enough.

If you tried to remake a cheapie zombie flick with a big budget and an eye on the mass audience, you'd end up with something like Death Becomes Her. This new horror-comedy has to be one of the most heartless mainstream pictures ever made. [31 July 1992, p.17]

Easily the best thing about Shag: The Movie is its soundtrack, which combines newer music with such golden oldies as ''Easier Said Than Done,'' ''Up on the Roof'' and the ever-weird ''Alley Oop.'' These tunes (some of which are performed by the 15-member Voltage Brothers) do a lot to keep the mood light and to cover the lapses in the narrative, of which, you can be sure, there are more than a few.

Most of the names in My Girl are meant to seem a little peculiar. In fact, everything in My Girl is meant to seem a little peculiar. Which, I would say, is the problem with the movie. When eccentricity becomes as insistent as it does here, it's not really eccentricity any more, it's affectation. My Girl, which opens today, is a festival of affectation. [27 Nov 1991, p.E1]

An odd duck of a thriller. Quiet, talkative, with the occasional explosion of violence, it has ghosts and characters philosophizing, quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald or blurting insensitive non-sequiturs.

Manages to deliver a striking, nicely detailed, visceral thriller built on a corny, old-fashioned script.

A Walk in the Clouds does have its problems, but it looks good enough to eat. [11 Aug 1995]

Failed attempts at satire aside, John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. is basically a routine action picture. [09 Aug 1996, p.22]

When the dust clears, Blue Steel turns out to be just one more violent movie whose basic theme is women as victims. [16 Mar 1990, p.3]

A confident, cocky and often comic promenade down the same primrose path.