A sleek little meditation on beauty, desire, love and time. Now and then, it's fairly sophisticated stuff.

While Scott's movie has a consistent aura, it lacks a consistent tone. What are we to make of the movie, gauzy as a mist-shrouded lake and brutal as "Lord of the Flies?"

Effie Gray is peculiarly compelling, even if the issue of sexual repression, all the Victorian manners, seem light-years gone and close to unfathomable.

Hidalgo is the first Middle East western.

A lush, lovely snooze-fest.

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]

As the film devolved from satire to slapstick horror, I didn't believe in it at all. But in his beetle-browed intensity and tremulousness, I completely believed in Minghella's Jerome.

Finally - and the news should really come as a relief - here is a role Streep should not have tried, in a movie that should not have been made.

Sparkle is a solid entertainment with a winning debut by Jordin Sparks in the title role.

Completely unhinged, a garish and gonzo walk on the wild side.

This should have been an easy knockout. Yet the pieces just don't fit together. Hands of Stone lurches back and forth between well-crafted dramatic scenes and shabby, cliché-ridden sequences that sap the viewer's energy.

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]

The dialogue rings tinny in the ear, as if enunciated in the phony arc of a stage light.

Only in its aggressively imaginative profanity is the film consistent.

A crude, cringe-worthy, and intermittently funny affair that triggers the gag reflex. I sincerely can't tell you whether I was choking with laughter or keeping from choking.

Puccini for Beginners, which takes its title from its heroine's passion for opera, isn't just another trendy toe-dip in sexual experimentation. It may not be the real world of New York, or even of most relationships, but it's worth a visit.

All that's missing is the spirit and the anarchic humor of the sitcom created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. The result is an overdressed, carefully stitched scarecrow of a comedy.

She (Hunt) is perfection even when her movie falls a little short.

Feels stagy, stiff and entirely unnecessary.

A goofy combination of screwball farce and Dogma-style verite grit and gloom.

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]

One of the most uncinematic pieces crafted by an otherwise fine stylist, Cymbeline befuddles with its ineffective blocking and lack of art direction.

There's whimsy and raunchy humor here, but also an underlying sense of darkness and despair.

In returning to what is basically the same premise, Carpenter gives us an update as well as a sequel. [09 Aug 1996, p.5]

A triumphant, feel-good, laugh-out-loud, sports biopic.

Bobby has its heart in the right place (on its sleeve). But it doesn't have its screenplay anywhere - or at least, anywhere near the heft that its subject demands.

A sweet, if predictable, kids' comedy. But you have to overlook the conveniently inconsistent behavior of all the characters - except in Garner's case. She never establishes a character.

Gives audiences something more than just a heart-stopping beauty to contemplate.