The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a perfect thriller. It may not be as good a movie as ''Cape Fear,'' which is a sort of cinematic extravaganza, but in many ways I liked it more. It's stripped- down and lean, without a moment wasted, and the plot works like a delicate machine. [10 Jan 1992, p.C1]

The Man Who Sold His Skin may not be entirely believable, but its many great metaphors for multiple social ills create their own, withering truth. The film doesn’t ask us to turn our gaze away from the world’s ugly realities, but to see them in the very handsome images they inspired Ben Hania to make.

Wildly ambitious, unwieldy epic.

Most of the time, the movie is appropriately gritty and plenty engaging.

Director Byung-gil Jung, a trained stuntman, is an expert in staging action set-pieces, and for fans of dazzlingly violent shootouts on motorcycles and buses, this brutal revenge tale should be right up your alley, even if the proceedings often get sidetracked with a confusing back story.

It takes a while for this powerful, funny movie to grab you, but once you get hooked, it feels like you're swimming in a wonderful stream of humanity, bathed in intimacy, romance and, not a little bit, delicious fun. Fried Green Tomatoes is as likely as any film around to carry your heart away and leave you with a wonderful glow. [27 Dec 1991, p.D1]

Makes an unpersuasive case that humans are to blame for the shrinking ice caps.

The feature film Everest provides soaring visuals, but it’s a distant second in terms of storytelling depth and narrative impact.

Although this story line’s turns are easy to anticipate, the seriousness with which Fellowes approaches it is refreshing in an otherwise lightweight film.

Director Edward Zwick tried to make a great movie, but somewhere in the process he forgot to make a good one.

Unfortunately, the inspired concept is coupled with weak screenwriting, and the movie turns out to be much more fun to think about than it is to watch.

Techine doesn't have much of a story to tell, so instead of moving the narrative forward, he expands it laterally.

Overall Freedom Writers is a noble effort. At a time when New Year's resolutions to change already are falling by the wayside, you can't help but be moved by a group of young people who followed through on their resolve.

This feast of fantasy is worth it.

A witty, energetic adaptation.

The film rarely matches Crudup's performance, appearing confused itself about whether it's farce or drama.

Disarmingly intelligent if scattered documentary.

A typical vehicle for Ferrell's atypical humor.

For a while, you can feel like a part of the golden circle.

“Meat’s meat and a man’s gotta eat” is the kind of line that makes this an offbeat horror treat. Some moments are satirical of other horror films, yet they carry a horrific impact, so you may not have much time to laugh before fright sets in.

The biggest betrayal of The Traitor is its crime against the usually compelling Mafia movie genre. This is an offer you can refuse.

The Anthrax Attacks conjures the terror and paranoia afresh and, with the hindsight of 21 years, asks the viewer to consider how effectively the crisis was handled.

Gladiator II coasts: never good, never terrible, always a little disappointing, with speeches that fall flat and gladiator battles that are like watching the World Series when your team isn’t in it.

Each time Something New touches on something controversial, it quickly retreats to some silliness.

In the Taken movies, the hilarity of mild-mannered Neeson going on a family vacation with hand grenades in his suitcase was never acknowledged, but it was there and part of the fun. Here, the comedy is closer to the surface, thanks to the wit of Kolstad’s screenplay and of Ilya Naishuller’s direction.

Best of all is Richard Harris as Paddy O'Neil, an IRA spokesman. With his deeply lined and very Irish face, Harris has a wonderful look for the part. [5 June 1992, p.D1]

The film is good enough to inspire viewers to learn more about Fela, but it should be better than that.

Provides a powerful look at the complex condition of autism and family dedication.

These scenes of raving nonsense might have seemed radical in, say, the 1970s. Now they’re just tiresome.

The best thing that can be said for “Kinds of Kindness” is that it’s never quite boring, despite being 164-minutes long and lacking much of a story.

Futuro Beach is part of a welcome wave of European and South American films that center on gay characters, yet deal with universal themes and offer a certain sensibility that would please any art-house enthusiast.

It’s good to see Spielberg, at 71, still finding new forms of cinematic language with which to express his humanism. It also should be said that though Ready Player One wears a cheerful face, there are none of the usual heartwarming, classic Spielberg moments. That’s because, second to “Munich,” this is his most pessimistic film.

Ideally It Could Happen to You should be fun all the way, with the audience confident things will turn out right. Instead it's mostly annoying, with an ending that feels tagged on.

A goopy Gwyneth Paltrow movie.

Star Trek: Insurrection is out there where the imagination collides with roaring spaceships, exotic planets, wonderfully nutty costumes, a few choice jokes and some fascinating ideas.

Spielberg uses a more conventional format than he did in the stripped-down black-and-white "Schindler's List,'' and delivers a film that veers between stoic political correctness and mushy pop-Hollywood platitudes.

A successful work of art. To see this movie is to feel that you've lived it.

A wish that there were more Michael Caines and fewer Muppets kept cropping up during The Muppet Christmas Carol, a movie whose mechanical cuteness becomes a too-complicated veil -- and a smothering one -- for the classic Charles Dickens story. [11 Dec 1992, p.C1]

A dazzling retelling of the J.M. Barrie tale, offers accomplished acting, splendid visuals, and in the role of the boy who won't grow up ... an actual boy.

Consists of long stretches of boredom, banal dialogue and contorted metaphors, interrupted by flashes of ugliness. See it if you want to be put off of sex for a month - longer if you're older, and perhaps for years if you're very young.

Clearly, an effort was made to create a serious, thoughtful movie.

It's over pretty fast, just 75 minutes, but it has its grisly moments and a few underwater sequences that are pretty creepy.

Robots never stays in the same gear for long, and the abrupt shifts in tone kill the movie's chances of becoming a classic.

The richness of characters make this movie shine. It's just that, somehow, a certain sense of fire is missing.

One can argue the movie's finer points, but in the end, there's no escaping its creeping pile-up of evidence that Mother Earth is critically dehydrated - and we need to do something, fast.

The director succeeds most at giving an inkling of the real Chase, now somewhat frail in his 80s. But she also makes a case that at past points, when the public consensus was “God, he’s being an ass again,” the truth may have been rather more poignant.

The Apprentice is an anti-Trump movie, depicting his early career as a real estate developer in New York City, but it treats Donald Trump with a modicum of sympathy.

All of which is to say that, when it’s Hanks steering the ship and fighting the Nazis, it means something extra. It’s not just happening to him, or them, but to us. And so, we can better imagine what it cost those guys, who had to make that back-and-forth ocean voyage in the awful months before their leaders figured out how to sink the U-boats.

The pace is slow and the story neither takes off nor arrives anywhere.

It doesn't analyze or explain it; it just presents it. The result is funny and disturbing at the same time.

Fraser and Bugs Bunny are the highlights of this pleasant but unoriginal film.

The film has a sweetness that stops short of sentimentality.

There may be no more unusual movie around than Vengo.

Has the three elements we've come to expect from Eastwood: the steady pace, the shadowy cinematography and, of course, the presence of the Big Guy.

Murphy is wonderful -- I wouldn't begrudge him an Oscar nomination -- but The Nutty Professor is a mess.

As Westerns go, Silverado delivers elaborate gun-fighting scenes, legions of galloping horses, stampeding cattle, a box canyon, covered wagons, tons of creaking leather and even a High Noonish duel. How it manages to run the gamut of cowboy movie elements without getting smart-alecky is intriguing. But on the important issues, like real character development, Silverado flakes apart. [10 Jul 1985, p.52]

It's a handsome and entertaining small-scale picture with nice acting, some crisp (and some crude) dialogue and effective direction.

A charming if unoriginal coming-of-age story.

Mitchell may be another Russ Meyer -- a dubious honor -- but he's no Tony Kushner.

A handsome but gabby take on the standard survivalist thriller that's more concerned with lofty metaphysics than which poor blockhead is about to bite it next.

It’s a film sure to delight fans and make new ones of one of the movies’ most special personalities.

For all the filmmaker's good intentions, Fast Food Nation isn't a particularly good movie. It doesn't hold together or grip you the way a documentary might have.

If anything, the fun character dynamics laid out in the first two acts make it all the more disappointing when the final third tips over into noisy excess. But on balance, this ends up being a small complaint.

Awesome, awesome action. Skimpy, skimpy plot.

A film that's hard to watch and hard to recommend.

The Salvation is one of those movies that deservedly (and desperately) requires a do-over. Unfortunately, what you see is what you get.

It's a very funny movie, perfectly paced. [15 Apr 1994, p.C1]

A mostly incomprehensible, occasionally inspired slice of misanthrope from acclaimed French provocateur Jean-Luc Godard, is as crotchety as its legendary director.

The film raises an intriguing issue not generally addressed by science-fiction films: time traveling into the past while white is one thing; time traveling while Black is something else entirely.

It's so joyful and confident in its own premise that it practically dares you not to walk out of the theater with a smile on your face, strutting like a peacock.

An experiment that rarely works this well.

Naked Gun 33 1/3 is a feast of pointless, shamelessly silly, almost consistently funny gags. Another comic gem. [18 Mar 1994, p.C1]

Apocalypse also doesn’t excel in the teen angst department, because the characters are not fleshed out enough. The love triangle is not convincing, and except for Anna and her father, we don’t care a whole lot about what happens to the characters, perhaps because we didn’t get enough time to know them in the beginning.

A thrilling, audacious work.

A John Hughes-inspired comedy-drama — think “The Breakfast Club” set in rural Korea — starring a group of teenagers coming to terms with the passionate feelings and issues that evolve with impending adulthood.

Another urban action thriller that's better than some, worse than most and so forgettable that it's possible to forget it while watching it?

A charming and wise film.

The film underscores the paradox in this man's life: the split between the mild-mannered New Yorker and the fearless vagabond who joined an Arakmbut hunting raid.

Though Mom is ditzy and, at times, irritating, we come to recognize her as the family's most original creative spirit.

Greenwald is fine at creating the texture of early mountain life but loses her footing by embracing several plot points at once.

Annoying, soporific and singularly humorless.

It's that rare kind of movie that comes along only a handful of times each year -- gut-level entertainment that's oddly profound.

We may not get to argue both sides of the debate, but Under Our Skin stirs the deepest emotions and reveals the most unsettling truth: We're all vulnerable to a tick bite, sure, but it's the health care system that really gets us in the end.

None of the advance hype on Kids can prepare you for the raw, stripped-down reality that Larry Clark captures in his astonishing first film. Nothing can prepare you, because no other film has ever caught the recklessness, sweat and tingly heat of teenage sexuality so effectively.

An arty, ruminative and slow-paced film that's being marketed as a big ol' alien-invasion flick. Just don't expect an invasion flick.

If The Creator were any more slanted, any more in the tank for the coming AI onslaught, you would think it was produced, written and directed by AI.

Considering all the possible ways BackBeat could have been really ridiculous, it's all the more impressive that it should turn out to be an intelligent, sincere and entertaining piece of work. [22 Apr 1994, p.C3]

There’s not enough of a story, and it’s a film that we end up admiring more than liking.

Ignoring these lapses in logic, The Parent Trap' is hugely enter taining and more relevant than most family entertainment.

The similarity between the children is the most striking part of the movie.

Nobody Else But You takes a novel concept and a willing leading lady and squanders both through drab, lifeless storytelling.

The movie benefits from the frankness that filmmakers were allowed in these pre-censorship days. Dvorak, in her best showcase, is sympathetic as a woman bent on self-destruction, because we appreciate that she has desires she can’t contain.

With Woo, violence is not just a means to an end. It's something pretty; it's fascinating. His talent is an original and peculiar one. Woo brings an esthetic sensibility to bear on the phenomenon of a good guy beating people up -- and to the spectacle of a violent shoot-out. Explosions aren't just impressive but beautiful. [20 Aug 1993, p.C1]

A melancholy Spanish drama that’s competently made and checks off all the boxes defining a contemporary art-house movie. But it lacks the spark that separates top-of-the-line films from the pack, and watching it becomes something of a slog.

It takes just the first shot to get sucked into Breaking News, the latest bit of destruction from mayhem master Johnnie To, and it's a doozy.

A shrewd thriller that takes the time-honored plot about an innocent man wrongfully accused and gives it a film-noir twist.

This is an acerbic examination of erotic obsession, told from different perspectives, with wit, suspense and cold-blooded detachment.

It provokes nothing but yawns, and the sex it explores is stuff everybody knows about and says, "So what?"