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.