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 you're looking for quality prepackaged, predigested Hollywood family fun this summer, you could do a lot worse than Despicable Me 2.

Tonally, the film from director Anurag Basu has more personalities than Sybil. Basu strictly observes the B-movie convention of giving the audience an embrace, explosion, or chase sequence at regular intervals. If you don't like the genre, wait three minutes.

All of the elements that made The Matrix a mass-cult phenom -- breathtaking physical gymnastics wedded to the brain-cramping mental and spiritual kind -- resurface in Reloaded.

Ted is really a rather sweet examination of loyalty, friendship, and love. Wahlberg and Kunis are charming together (though not exactly in a Cary Grant / Audrey Hepburn kind of way), and both manage to play this thing - at least the challenges-of-a-serious-relationship part of this thing - straight.

Not an entertainment but an experience. And a kind of cinematic sensitivity training.

The Woman in Black has lovely period atmosphere. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much else besides atmosphere.

If The Golden Bowl -- isn't charged with electric emotion, well, that's not what Henry James or James Ivory is about.

It's still a submarine movie, confined by the ship, the sea, and a convention-laden script.

Despite a strong cast and a willingness to lampoon the fundamentals of fundamentalism, Saved! isn't as funny, or as wicked, as it should be.

A diverting family comedy that at its best aims to be a live-action "Incredibles" and at its middling a live-action episode of "Kim Possible."

Cool, clinical and not altogether convincing.

It's not impossible to address grown-up issues of commitment, of responsibility, of love, and have some fun, and some profanity, while you're at it.

Spiced with melancholy and magic, Micmacs is an imaginative live-action film with the playfulness of an animation like "Ratatouille." Similarly, it is a fable of subterraneans who change how life is lived above ground in a Paris that is both retro and modern.

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]

The line between ha-ha funny and sorrowful reverence has been crossed - more deftly than you'd think.

Like its characters, it has its faults. But overall, it is a movie of imaginative sympathy that gets into the skin of its characters, into their hearts, and, ultimately, into ours.

It's a view filtered through a prism of memory and emotion, but one well worth investigating.

Works its way under your skin, and then into your heart.

Despite its penchant for the crude and lewd, is gooey in ways that have nothing to do with bodily fluids.

Fails to bring Giger to life in any kind of illuminating way.

After nearly three decades of misfires, major and minor, William Friedkin, the creator of "The French Connection," "The Exorcist" and "Sorcerer," is back in true form with Bug. And heaven help us for it.

It's not often that Chinese cinema tackles same-sex relationships, and rarer still to see a film of such stark, muted emotion coming from mainland China.

This eccentric fairy tale with the feel of "Our Town" has a number of remarkable performances.

Far-fetched and utterly humorless, with a literally tacked-on conclusion (yes, more text on the screen), the only thing that's surprising about Unbreakable is how lame it is.

The Last Mountain, more than anything, asks us to consider where our energy comes from, and how we can bring about changes that benefit all of us and the planet we live on.

Like the old and creaky Belafonte, the film itself seems forever on the brink of drifting away. But it's the kind of drifting that's nothing but enjoyable. In fact, it's beyond enjoyable - heading into waters full of whimsy, mystery and odd, psychedelic fish.

Although there's nothing funny about addiction, Zahedi - a thin, bug-eyed fellow with the air of an R. Crumb sad sack - brings wit and self-deprecation to his tale of obsession and woe.