The air stuff, aided by 10 Army and National Guard units, is super-duper and excitingly filmed. The ground stuff is choppy and perfunctory. Jones is good, Young is OK, and Cage looks distracted for most of the film. [02 Jun 1990, p.C08]

Lumet's films are always well-acted. Q & A is no exception. And the story has more than enough rich, lively characters to go around. [27 Apr 1990, p.R13]

Spaced Invaders is a cute comedy-- cuter and funnier than you might expect. [02 May 1990, p.E07]

It hasn't the flash and style of Fatal Attraction or Jagged Edge, but its contrived finale is better than those contrived finales. [21 Apr 1990, p.C08]

Paul Reiser is fine as Emory's tense partner; so is Mercedes Ruehl as a good therapist. J.T. Walsh, always a mean guy, is good here as Emory's venal boss. [13 Apr 1990, p.R13]

As before, Uys succeeds in creating uncomplicated, largely visual comedy through clever contrivance in a simple landscape that is somehow full of surprises. [13 Apr 1990, p.R13]

The film nicely maintains its tone, somewhere between satire and farce. [07 Apr 1990]

Clearly based on the Japanese film series about Zatoichi, the blind samurai, Blind Fury is also openly tongue-in-cheek. It is little but violence and gags, but the violence often is so cleverly and improbably staged that it's funny too. [19 Mar 1990, p.B08]

It is full of the farcical, irresponsible, sometimes outrageous things kids can do -- especially in a raunchy comedy. At the same time, House Party is an uncompromising, un-footnoted slice of black American life. In a way it is like "The Godfather," so immersed in the ethnic world it depicts that it is almost a foreign film. [23 Mar 1990, p.R11]

Despite its familiarity, Tale is well-staged and well-acted. Richardson makes Kate a real person, and her tale is suspenseful to the end. [16 Mar 1990, p.R07]

It's depressing to see attractive performers like Alley and Larroquette work so hard to such little effect on their vacations from TV. [16 Feb 1990, p.G14]

Directed and co-written by Ron Underwood, Tremors maintains a good, steady tongue-in-cheek tone while working nicely as a suspense thriller. [22 Jan 1990, p.D5]

Sidewalk Stories is nobly intended and has many moments of humor and ingenuity. But it's ultimately a sermon with a point so general as to be almost meaningless. And it sure ruins the fun. [25 Nov 1989, p.C08]

All this pain and growth occurs in a story whose plot elements turn over so rapidly that it's hard to track them. One furiously violent episode follows another, each seeming to step on the heels of the one ahead. [29 Dec 1989, p.F09]

Always has the benefit of likable characters and actors. Dreyfuss, Hunter and Goodman are good. But several scenes seem needlessly slow, and the film as a whole would be better if it had been pared down from 120 to 90 minutes. At times it seems the title and the running time are one and the same. [22 Dec. 1989, p.R13]

Freeman and Tandy are the whole film, and their interplay is marvelous to watch and hear. [12 Jan. 1990, p.G7]

Family Business isn't really bad. It is thought-provoking throughout and has many fine moments. Unfortunately, most of those moments are in the first third. [18 Dec 1989, p.C05]

Dad is something of a sitcom soap opera in which tragic and desperate things happen, and the participants can always snap out a one-liner for the occasion.[28 Oct 1989, p.C08]

Branagh's Henry is inevitably darker and more violent than Olivier's, but also even more youthful and energetic at times. He is generally far more direct, with fewer sly implications. [17 Dec 1989]

while the conception of bear behavior is false and sentimental, the bears' performances are perfect, through a combination of training, staging and editing. [27 Oct 1989, p.F15]

Joffe does a good job of making a complex project comprehensible to a mass audience with no memory of World War II. Moreover, he infuses drama into an often cerebral project by highlighting the tensions among the characters. [20 Oct 1989, p.E13]

For fans of Monk's music, the film is a must-see. [20 Jan 1990, p.C09]

This remarkable film by Jane Campion has a distinctive photographic style perfect for this tale of a very odd family dominated by a corpulent and crazy daughter. [24 Feb 1990, p.C06]

Kickboxer is a film for the truly undiscriminating. It exists for one reason, to display the physique and kickboxing style of Jean-Claude Van Damme. Compared to Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone is Laurence Olivier and Chuck Norris is John Malkovich. [13 Sep 1989, p.C05]

About an hour after an engaging, suspenseful start, Millennium seems to thrash itself to bits. [26 Sep 1989, p.D04]

It's as beautifully acted throughout as it is photographed, and it has a quizzical tone somewhere between sociological documentary and farce. [22 Aug 1989]

For all the film's patness and lame predictability, Candy gives it a strange charm. He seems to be inherently funny, and his subtle weirdness, so useful on SCTV, is handy here as well. It helps make seeing Uncle Buck marginally worthwhile. [18 Aug 1989, p.E13]

Shrunk is a sometimes funny, occasionally clever comedy adventure. But the fun stuff consumes only about one-fourth of the film, nowhere near enough for a feature-length movie. [24 June 1989, p.C06]