Funny things, images. While to depict something visually is not necessarily to endorse it, when Bigelow shows rape as she does in Strange Days, she does so from the rapist's point of view. It's kind of like making a movie about the dangers of the atom bomb that glamorizes the aesthetic beauty of the mushroom cloud. [13 Oct 1995, p.05]

As a mainstream Hollywood film about men in skirts, the assumption here is that drag queens Make Accessories, Not Love. Even if you're offended by this, or by the attitude that all of life's problems can be solved by a change in decor or lipstick color, or off-put by the assumption that every town in America between the two coasts is populated by rednecks, there are things to like about Wong Foo. [08 Sep 1995, p.03]

There's no rhythm or rhyme to it. The subplots don't organically connect to the main narrative. It's a series of brightly lit tableaux in which we see the end result of an action but never the action itself. [18 Aug 1995, p.03]

With its themes of family tradition, heated passion and parent-daughter conflict - not to mention lots of splendid preparing-the-meals sequences in the Aragon kitchen, and not to mention the contents of Keanu's case - A Walk in the Clouds could just as easily been called Like Wine for Chocolate. But anyone hoping for a second helping of the sensual romance of Like Water for Chocolate will come away disappointed. The movie's glinting incandescence is oppressive. [11 Aug 1995, p.14]

A Kid in King Arthur's Court - more precisely A California Mallrat at the Round Table, in which a contemporary Little Leaguer time-travels to the 11th century and teaches Arthur how to chew bubblegum - works too hard for its occasional laugh. [11 Aug 1995, p.05]

It is also to Khouri's credit that she has written a movie that begins with the men on Mars and women on Venus and ends with their being able to share a planet. [4 Aug 1995, p.03]

Despite Angela's skills - and Bullock's charms - director Irwin Winkler's film is so pedestrian that his movie has all the thrills of a school crossing.

It's an awkward mix, and Simon Wincer, a director with considerable experience in animal movies, can't make the ingredients work consistently. [28 Jul 1995, p.14]

Structured in three beautifully paced, keenly observed acts, Living in Oblivion is that rare picture that leaves you gasping in disappointment at the end - gasping, that is, because it's over and you don't want it to be. [04 Aug 1995, p.05]

It is the kind of film that enables adults to get in touch with their inner child - but more important, gets children in touch with their inner adult. [14 July 1995, p.03]

There is no discernible train of thought in Under Siege 2, but it serves up exactly what Seagal fans want - a movie where the body count is higher than the IQ needed to enjoy it. [17 July 1995, p.D01]

The trouble with Nine Months is not that Grant's monologues sound like an apologia to his real-life paramour. The trouble here is that not even a comic actor of Grant's skill can tickle such tired material to life. [12 July 1995, p.E01]

Among contemporary films, fans will recognize extensive borrowings from Terminator and Alien. But Donaldson makes sure we wind up with something more than Alienator: Species shrewdly manipulates some very modern fears of deadly sexual infection and touches a paranoia unimaginable back in the '50s. [07 July 1995, p.03]

Inspired by the grand Technicolor epics of Hollywood yesteryears, First Knight, despite its flaws, is engaging fun. [07 Jul 1995, p.03]

The Hornitor and Scorpitron vs. Ninja Falcon Megazord matchup, produced with a snazzy mix of models and computer animation, deftly evokes the spirit of good ol' Godzilla movies and Japanese cartoons. It'll have you standing in your seat yelling, Go! Go! Power Rangers! Or, at the very least, keep you from dozing off. [30 June 1995, p.05]

Safe, disturbing and edgy and grounded by Moore's riveting performance, resonates with uncertainty.

An astoundingly humorless, sentimental meditation on the magic wheel of life, this oddball endeavor - clearly invested with a lot of passion - is too dark for children and too dopey for adults. [02 Jun 1995, p.05]

Ricci makes all this far more palatable than it should be. She is surely helped by the dismal level shared by most allegedly more adult afterlife fantasies. The kids will enjoy the high-spirited antics, but Casper ultimately is another reason to wish Hollywood would declare a moratorium on ghost writing. [26 May 1995, p.03]

Johnny Mnemonic may aspire to be Blade Runner. It succeeds only in being a parody of Flipper. [27 May 1995, p.D09]

In Little Odessa, Gray proves that you can go down what looks like a familiar road and make it seem much less traveled. [30 June 1995, p.06]

Andre Techine creates living characters instead of sociopolitical symbols.

The premise of Village of the Damned remains wonderfully scary: that an alien life force has descended on a community, inseminated its women, and spawned a gaggle of evil brainiacs with platinum-blond hair who can read your mind and do funny things with their eyes. [28 Apr 1995, p.3]

Kiss of Death can't keep its tangled web of a plot together. The film loses momentum, it falls back on surprisingly hackneyed generic devices, and the editing gets jumpy, abrupt. In the end, the film is a lot less satisfying than its early scenes promised. [21 Apr 1995, p.10]

The contrast to Ramis' last picture, the inspired Groundhog Day, is marked. [12 Apr 1995, p.F03]

Tommy Boy is little more than another invitation from Hollywood for moviegoers to suffer fools. There's no reason to do so gladly. [31 Mar 1995, p.05]

As a bratty, punked-up sci-fi romp crammed with pop- cult references (everything from Baywatch to Batman, Stiff Records to The Wizard of Oz), Tank Girl has energy to burn. [31 March 1995, p.3]

No fewer than seven writers were recruited to create the story and screenplay for Major Payne, a textbook demonstation of how more can produce less - in this case, a comedy that has all the brio and wit of an army training manual on personal hygiene. [27 March 1995, p.D02]

In his newest film Egoyan memorably gets under the skin of the skin trade. [10 Mar 1995, p.03]

Dumber sequels to dumb horror movies, such as the Friday the 13th series, are, of course, nothing new. [17 Mar 1995, p.06]

No amount of accomplished acting and directorial skill can conceal the fundamental silliness of Outbreak's storyline, its inconsistencies, and the miraculous coincidences necessitated by its plot. [10 Mar 1995, p.3]

Plodding and virtually plotless (employee gets caught in maw of machine, blood squirts, boss tells everyone to get back to work, employee gets caught in maw of machine...), The Mangler might have been amusing if it had been played for laughs. Instead, this dreary yarn is hardly played for anything. [6 Mar 1995, p.D02]

However improbable this sounds, The Brady Bunch Movie is to the original television show what real grass is to Astroturf. [17 Feb 1995, p.03]

A frighteningly unfunny comedy. [17 Feb 1995, p.05]

Just Cause is an entertaining if overwrought death-row thriller built on the pros and cons of the capital punishment debate, and it owes most of its appeal to the presence of Sean Connery. [17 Feb 1995, p.03]

Carpenter, an old hand at this horror stuff, delivers some convincingly creepy effects, but the narrative lacks any sustained dramatic pulse - its gallery of hallucinogenic scenes doesn't add up to much more than, well, a gallery of hallucinogenic scenes. [03 Feb 1995, p.5]

Highlander: The Final Dimension is exactly what it seems - drivel. [30 Jan 1995, p.D01]

Nobody's Fool boasts the kind of low-key realism on which Newman made his reputation but that, in these days of high-decibel, high-concept fantasy, has become a lost art. [13 Jan 1995, p.3]

When the slimy creatures pop out of the ground in Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight, one of the hapless humans in their path advises that the most strategic weapon to try is "anything that destroys their eyes and frees their tortured souls." Anyone exposed to this nauseating piece of brain-dead nonsense may want the same treatment. [13 Jan 1995, p.16]

It is social criticism written with tears. [15 Feb 1995, p.E01]

By turns touching and funny, King George is the wittiest film in a long time, and anyone who savors the language will rejoice in its company. The cast is a top-flight representation of talent from the British stage and screen, but the film is dominated by Hawthorne. [27 Jan 1995, p.03]

Simplistic and corny, this adaptation by director (and co-writer) Stephen Sommers nonetheless delivers the goods: exciting animal stunts, breathtaking subtropical scenery (India and a jungle-ized Tennessee and South Carolina) and a likable if not exactly three-dimensional cast of characters. [23 Dec 1994, p.03]

Under Michael Apted's direction, Nell is a pleasingly tranquil experience, its epiphanies as understated as Richardson's and Neeson's low-key performances. [25 Dec 1994, p.G01]

The film is based on the popular video game, and plays as a pathetically incoherent attempt to accommodate all the characters kids want to see come to life on the big screen. [26 Dec 1994, p.E05]

Richie Rich has some fun with Richie's pampered life, and Culkin seems at ease with the role of a kid who has been isolated from his peers by money and celebrity - perhaps because it surely touches on feelings in his own young life. [21 Dec 1994, p.E01]

Cobb is an ironic and telling look at the machinery of myth-making and the chasm that can exist between image and reality. It is enriched by going further - into the impact on the relationship of two very different men. [13 Jan 1995, p.05]

As slapstick, it is painfully slow, so much so that one can see every overstretched rubber band and frayed shoelace keeping the film barely together. [02 Dec 1994, p.03]

As a commentary on gender roles, maternity, paternity and test-tube fertilization, Junior does manage to get in a few good yuks - but far fewer than you'd expect given the story's, um, fertile premise. [23 Nov 1994, p.E01]

In his peculiar, confused and grossly violent debut, Texas writer- director C.M. Talkington doesn't seem to know whether he is dumping on the road-movie genre (felony division) or celebrating it. [09 Jan 1995, p.D02]

Three things make the film worthwhile: Shatner's performance; the sequence involving Data getting his "emotion chip" implant; and John Alonzo's crystalline cinematography, which makes Generations the most beautiful Trek ever. [18 Nov. 1994, p.03]

There are points, most notably and predictably in the action sequences and set numbers, where The Swan Princess comes within hailing distance of the Olympian standards that are now almost routine at Disney. What the film lacks is an equal sophistication in story-telling that talks to children on an almost subliminal level about their fears and fantasies while royally entertaining them. It is that quality, as much as technical skill, that sets Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King in a class by themselves as the finest achievements of the Disney renaissance. [18 Nov 1994, p.06]

That's exactly why Heavenly Creatures is the small masterpiece that it is: because the film roots so deeply and eagerly into the psychology - and pathology - of its characters. It takes us to a lush place, defined by passion and imagination, where reality intrudes with surprising, gruesome results. [25 Nov 1994, p.03]

Oleanna is Mamet's form of intellectual hazing, and we seated in the theater are, alas, his victims. [11 Nov 1994, p.05]

The best stuff in this dopey, intermittently amusing live-action cartoon is the look that the film's effects and computer crews have given New Angeles - the ruined urbanscape of Southern California after an 8.5 quake and a massive tidal wave have sundered the city. [04 Nov 1994, p.05]

The movie devolves into a kind of high-tech Flash Gordon, with Ra as a cross- dressed Ming and Russell and Spader as the heroes required to chase big lugs with ray-guns around the inside of a pyramid. Things get pretty brainless before it's over, although Russell does get to deliver a great send-off line. [28 Oct 1994, p.5]

It is not unforgettable, like the original Love Affair. It is not An Affair to Remember, like the remake. It is not laden with ironic humor, like Sleepless in Seattle. This Love Affair is . . . fair. [21 Oct 1994, p.03]

The most moving aspect of this indelible documentary is that it chronicles its subjects' growth from instinctively going for the goal to deciding which goals are worth shooting for.

Often ingenious, funny and unnerving. [14 Oct 1994, p.14]

The River Wild is not a picture that tries to break new ground or even part fresh waters. Yet it is a crisp and exciting exercise, and while it may not be a watershed in Streep's career, she shows that you can take the plunge into an action movie and go swimming without going slumming. [30 Sep 1994, p.03]

Although it's fascinating, intelligent and scathingly accurate in its depiction of a certain milieu, The New Age is a more problematic picture than 1991's The Rapture - where Mimi Rogers played a sexually adventurous woman who finds spiritual succor in fundamentalist Christianity. [23 Sept 1994, p.03]

Because the filmmakers have framed this fame game so much like a conventional love story, the audience, like Goodwin, is seduced by Van Doren's pretty face. This is precisely what the film warns us to guard against, so the experience of watching Quiz Show is supercharged. As the wedge is driven in between what we think (lying is bad) and what we feel (that nice Van Doren boy can't have lied) - Redford and Attanasio make us aware of how readily we accept style divorced from substance. [16 Sept 1994, p.03]

All things are possible, Julie-san, Miyagi constantly encourages his young charge. All things may be possible, Miyagi-sensei, but not this movie. [10 Sep 1994, p.D9]

A Good Man in Africa, which has been adapted to the screen by Boyd from his first novel, isn't an out-and-out dud, but it too seems to have been sucked dry. [09 Sep 1994, p.03]

An examination of loneliness and the need to connect in an increasingly disconnected world, What Happened Was . . . is disturbing, funny and unpredictable in the way people themselves are disturbing, funny and unpredictable. [07 Oct 1994, p.05]

One might shudder at the occasional Yakin visual metaphor, as when Fresh and a friend enter their young hound in a dogfight. Yes, it's a dog-eat-dog world. But even more powerfully at work here is that Yakin, aided by the coolly honest performance of young Sean Nelson, makes us see that it's really a king-eats-kingpin world. [31 Aug 1994, p.F02]

It's riveting stuff, but unlike Tarantino's work - layered with casual irony, deadpan dialogue and encyclopedic pop-cult references - Killing Zoe is what it is and nothing more: a nihilistic crime film, steeped in carnage and chaos. [14 Sep 1994, p.E02]

An entertaining mess. [19 Aug 1994, p.03]

Cross Dog Day Afternoon with This is Spinal Tap and you have the concept behind Airheads: heavy metal trio seeking record contract holds radio station employees hostage, much mayhem and moshing ensues.... Airheads isn't nearly as good as its antecedents, but it does manage to produce a stream of lowbrow laughs. Or smiles, anyway. [5 Aug 1994, p.3]

A throwback to the days when gangs met in clubhouses instead of crack houses, raced go-carts instead of stolen cars and brandished slingshots instead of semiautomatics, The Little Rascals is the best 1936 movie made in 1994. [05 Aug 1994, p.03]

A sort of full-course Father of the Bride, Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman is tender without being mushy, sweet without being syrupy - and surprising in ways that can only make you smile. [17 Aug 1994, p.E01]

While all three principals are perfection, the movie belongs to Cage's Charlie, whose sad beagle eyes dance merrily whenever he sees Yvonne. His is a measured, gravity-bound performance, one that anchors many of the helium-light shenanigans surrounding him and adds melancholy shadings to the brightness of the dialogue. [29 July 1994, p.03]

Reiner, who demonstrated an affinity for storybook yarns with The Princess Bride and sensitively addressed coming-of-age issues with Stand By Me, has trouble getting beyond the episodic nature of Zweibel and Scheinman's screenplay. [22 Jul 1994, p.03]

In effect, The Client is a clever and pliant variation on the classic Hitchcock situation that puts a kid, instead of an adult, between the authorities and villainous criminals.

The kind of saccharine exercise that ought to do wonders for the cause of atheism. [15 July 1994, p.03]

Like its own hero - and so many recent films - The Shadow suffers from a split personality. At some moments, this can have a poetic impact. More often, though, it seems the result of sloppiness. [01 Jul 1994, p.05]

Next to the cheerleader grunts and aerobic struts that pass for dance numbers on most music videos, the sequences in the compilation film That's Entertainment! III are like treasures from a highly evolved ancient civilization. [06 Jul 1994, p.E01]

Getting Even With Dad desperately panders to the youth it hopes to attract. [17 Jun 1994, p.03]

It is a gorgeous triumph - one lion in which the studio can take justified pride. [24 June 1994, p.03]

City Slickers I managed to poke fun at the whole Iron John/discover-your- maleness movement at the same time the film was able to embrace it. But while City Slickers II tries for the same mix, it doesn't work. Instead, we get shots of three smelly, unshaven guys getting blubbery and hugging each other. [10 June 1994, p.03]

Though Black Hat is not as tightly structured as Spinal Tap or as pointed as the blaxploitation-movie parody I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, in its rambling way it is the ultimate comic indictment of rap as a kind of equal- opportunity opportunism. Hats off to Cundieff. [15 Jun 1994, p.F02]

It's wondrously unreal. [25 May 1994, p.F02]

Forget its dubious ancestry as a popular TV show of the '50s. The combined charms of Maverick's genial cast, its sly script and its punchy direction make it the legitimate heir to escapist crowd-pleasers such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. [20 May 1994, p.03]

If the arrival of The Crow - a visually dazzling and hyperkinetic action movie - is an occasion to mourn the loss of Lee, it is also ample reason to celebrate the protean gifts of its director, Alex Proyas.

Beneath the predictable serving of sex, lies and, yes, videotape - as his characters betray each other in and out of bed - is a satire of tabloid trashiness that is truly withering.

A hare-paced, harebrained and, for the most part, amusing update of "Animal House." [29 Apr 1994, p.03]

Would Backbeat be as compelling a story if it were about, say, Freddie and the Dreamers? Probably not. But despite mostly undistinguished acting and some directorial gracelessness, Backbeat is potent because it tells this emotionally complex and musically exuberant story from every angle conceivable. [22 Apr 1994, p.03]

Unfortunately, Turner's performance is as forced as Serial Mom's humor. Both boast false smiles but can't mask the fact that there's something sinister in the suburbs and about this movie. [15 Apr 1994, p.03]

Bringing a wily, slow-burn energy and a southern accent to the role of Lyle, Dennis Hopper adds just the right touch of warped malevolence to Dahl's film. [29 Apr 1994, p.5]

The Naked Gun 33 1/3 has the feel of a movie with too many jokes off the cutting-room floor. Through it all, Nielsen's consummate timing and ability to come through in the klutz makes things seem more amusing than they are. [18 Mar 1994, p.3]

Striking a balance between Howard's harum-scarum comedies such as Night Shift and Splash and his fuzzy family "dramedies" such as Cocoon and Parenthood, The Paper delivers the goods - and also babies and the news. [25 March 1994, p.03]

If you're in the mood for some enjoyable depravity, Bitter Moon is quite a trip. [15 Apr 1994, p.05]

Elle Macpherson? Not much of an actress, but nobody who goes to see Sirens is likely to notice her thespian endowments. [3 March 1994, p.05]

A loud, abrasive comedy that squanders the talents of its three stars, The Ref is the sort of project that stands or falls on its writing - it needs to be deep and deliciously dark. But as scripted by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss (he penned The Fisher King, this is her first produced screenplay) and directed by Ted Demme (Jonathan's nephew, making his feature film debut), all we get is superficial rage. [11 Mar 1994, p.03]

DiCaprio provides one of those tailor-made Oscar turns - cocking his head at odd angles, twitching and gesticulating with childlike awkwardness, his face a mask of sweet innocence and uncontrollable tics. [4 Mar 1994, p.03]

Their apartments are chic, the architecture is impressive, the restaurants richly appointed. And yet, while the atmosphere and cinematography of director Leon Ichaso's grandly conceived movie evoke The Godfather series (as does its theme of brother vs. brother in a criminal underworld), Barry Michael Cooper's screenplay falls short of any such epic design. [25 Feb 1994, p.03]

William Friedkin's Blue Chips, somewhat flawed but pungently honest, is one film that manages to beat the odds and stretch beyond the formula manipulations. [18 Feb 1994, p.05]

Sneakily funny and hopelessly romantic, Reality Bites speaks with the distinctive, ironic voice that marks it as The Graduate of Generation X. [18 Feb 1994, p.03]

A supremely silly eco-thriller with aspirations to Dances With Wolves. [22 Feb 1994, p.D03]

The Getaway isn't going to bore anybody, but it's not going to do anything else either. [11 Feb 1994, p.03]