A serious weakness for corn isn't Marshall's only problem. She's got a gift for comedy and she brings out the best in many actors, but she's juggling too many elements here -- baseball, a huge cast, a 1940s milieu -- and never finds a consistently satisfying tone or rhythm. [1 July 1992, p.E1]

With a thriller like this, details almost don't matter. It's entertaining enough to watch it get to where it's got to go. Liotta is seedy and creepy as the obsessed cop, disintegrating before our eyes. ''The only problem I have is sleazy, low-life whores like you,'' he tells a woman he picks up. Officer Pete has some hostility issues he needs to work on. [26 June 1992, p.G1]

For all the movie's richness and dazzle, for all that money dripping off the screen, Batman Returns is a gorgeous failure -- flashy, intermittently appealing but, in the end, a big mess. Batman Returns lacks a coherent story. It lacks a point of view and a focus. And so everything suffers, even the art direction. [19 June 1992, p.D1]

The few bright moments in Housesitter are supplied by Martin, who works himself into a sweat trying to make this movie work -- he even squeezes laughs out of a wedding reception scene, when he warbles an Irish melody to his dad -- and by Moffat and Harris, who give their Norman Rockwell stick figures a bumbling, simple charm. [12 June 1992, p.D1]

The real power of Society lies in its bizarre, twisted human monsters and its metaphoric message that misfits and nonconformists will be eaten alive by society. The film depicts that, literally. [20 Aug 1992, p.E4]

It's not just for people who like rap or the rap atmosphere. It's a well-paced, light comedy that can appeal to anybody. [05 Jun 1992, p.D1]

Sister Act is lifted above its formula by a strong ensemble cast. It's not just a matter of Goldberg and Smith, who are excellent. Kathy Najimy all but steals the picture as the bubbly, cheerful Sister Mary Patrick, and veteran Mary Wickes does a nice turn as Sister Mary Lazarus, a tough nun from an earlier era. [29 May 1991, p.D1]

Something kicks in about two thirds in, and Far and Away becomes exhilarating. [22 May 1992]

Alien 3 is pretentious and gimmicky by turns, resorting at times to silly B-movie tricks that undercut its seriousness and moments that can be anticipated from a mile off. [22 May 1992, P.D1]

Encino Man is so puerile and sophomoric that, by comparison, ''Fast Times at Ridgemont High'' is ''Our Town,'' and ''Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'' is ''Gulliver's Travels.'' For that matter, Pauly Shore makes Wayne and Garth, the two cable TV rec-room rockers of ''Wayne's World'' fame, seem like they belong at the Algonquin Hotel round table. [22 May 1992, p.D3]

Zentropa is a film in sunglasses and a black beret, melodramatic and formidable. It took me two viewings of the movie to realize that a compelling story emerges when its surreal settings, harsh lighting, macabre characterizations, dreamlike images and cartoonishly stilted performances are set aside. [26 Jun 1992, p.G5]

A nonstop action picture with a fair amount of laughs, car chases and exploding buildings. [15 May 1992]

Unlike other recent films noirs -- ''The Grifters,'' for example, or ''After Dark, My Sweet,'' both of which were based on Thompson stories -- One False Move lacks style and wit, and doesn't explore its characters beyond their cheap, cruddy exteriors. [24 June 1992, p.E1]

Is Poison Ivy a total waste of time? Not really: there's a nice surprise in Barrymore's femme fatale performance, and more than a few pleasures from the gifted Sara Gilbert. Long may they act. [30 May 1992, p.C3]

Unfortunately these characters are stuck in a picture that is little more than a gory mess, heavy on the smoke machines and thunderous sound track, but with no suspense and not much interest. Split Second is just a series of killings that come, one after the other, until the movie hits feature length, and then it's the bad guy's turn. Since these killings all consist of a heart being yanked out of a human body, Split Second isn't pretty. I've long since lost my weak stomach, but this movie is definitely not for the squeamish. [2 May 1992, p.C3]

An exciting thriller with good acting and a story that holds a lot of surprises and the interest of the viewer, even if it doesn't quite hold water. Or possibly because it doesn't hold water. [24 Apr 1992, p.C5]

Like the best Marx Brothers films, Brain Donors has gags for the sake of gags. There's no pretense to plausibility. It's just layers and layers of jokes; some work, some don't. [18 April 1992, p.C3]

Deep Cover is a sleazy crime picture and a peculiar and twisted moral journey. It's also a terrific movie, and once you trace its lineage you begin to see why.[15 Apr 1992, p.E1]

It's mostly entertaining, and has some strong moments, but it lacks the special magic that a musical needs, that sense of its inhabiting a parallel universe where any wonderful thing can happen at any moment, including music suddenly arising from nowhere. [10 Apr 1992]

Stephen King's Sleepwalkers represents the first time the author has ever written a story directly for the screen. The result is a nicely paced picture that unfolds gradually, with shocks and surprises throughout. [11 Apr 1992, p. C3]

FernGully: The Last Rainforest has a creeping sweetness that sneaks up on the viewer. This musical animation gets off to a slow start, and it's just as slow in the middle. But by the end, it acquires an emotional impact, and later you really feel as though you've been somewhere new. [10 Apr 1992, p.C1]

Remarkable also for the uniform excellence of its cast, and for the pleasure [Altman's] actors take in the wide berth he allows them. [24 Apr 1992]

A smirky cleverness infects much of the picture, yet some scenes are so skillfully created that it's hard not to admire them, and Dominique Pinon's sensitive performance as a retired circus man gives the movie a soul. [10 Apr 1992]

Yet with all its virtues, Thunderheart unravels after the first hour and continues unraveling until it chokes itself. The movie's complicated story, involving the FBI, the government, and the feuding tribal factions, is impossible to sort through. [3 Apr 1992, p.D1]

Starts off as a comedy about an unlikely friendship between a white man and a black man who meet over a pick-up basketball game on a Los Angeles playground. Then it switches gears and for a time seems as though it's going to be a more serious look at these men and their world. Finally, it just falls apart completely, and the last hour is a chaotic, meandering mess. [27 Mar 1992, p.D1]

An earnest, ponderous epic that tries desperately to say Something Important about disenfranchised blacks and their Afrikaans oppressors, but never does. [27 March 1992, p.D7]

Ladybugs isn't a very good movie; but it's a Rodney Dangerfield movie, and that's not bad. They used to call pictures like this ''star vehicles.'' Here the story, the plot, the other actors and everything else serve as nothing but a bland backdrop for Rodney Dangerfield's humor and appeal. [28 March 1992, p.C3]

The flashy skate-level camera techniques that conceal the actors' inadequacies on ice can't compare with a full-figure view of a championship-quality long program. An ''undoable'' medal-winning move that is pivotal to the plot is never clearly explained or depicted. And movie histrionics can't approximate the drama of real competition. [27 March 1992, p.D7]

Uninvolving. Even the sex is boring. Are these scenes supposed to be wildly erotic? If they are, they don't work. [20 Mar 1992, Daily Notebook, p.D1]

Bogdanovich films Noises Off in long, unbroken takes. Though for the most part he doesn't give us the whole stage but moves in to follow the action more closely, the camera moves as one's eyes might, while following the play. Bogdanovich does what he has to -- he gets out of the way of Frayn's original farce. And the result of his thankless toil is a movie that doesn't quite feel like a movie, and that's not quite as good as the play, but that's pretty good anyway. [20 March 1992, p.D5]

Taken a little too seriously, My Cousin Vinny can be seen as a celebration of the breadth and richness of the American landscape. Maybe the movie isn't exactly about that, but to enjoy it is, in a small way, to celebrate that richness. [13 Mar 1992, p.D3]

It's a knock-off of every science-gone-too-far cautionary tale since Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." The Lawnmower Man, for all of its au courant use of virtual reality, is alarmingly similar to a creepy '60s episode of TV's "The Outer Limits."

Few pictures that start this well go so bad so fast. [7 March 1992, p.C3]

The Gladiator script by Lyle Kessler and Robert Mark Kamen has been thought out carefully, and only during the climactic fight does it seem contrived when it becomes a parable about corruption. Ultimately, the film was designed to stir up our juices, and it succeeds. [6 March 1992, p.D1]

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is one of Chevy Chase's best movies. Though more or less a comedy, the picture gives Chase a chance to do much more than smirk and be a wise guy, while providing a good showcase for his dry style of humor. [28 Feb 1992, p.D1]

The landscape shots are impressive, and it's fascinating just to look at the native people -- but after 10 minutes, you've had the experience. Connery is crusty, twinkling and attractive, but in reciting this ham-handed dialogue, the best he can do is be a good actor trapped in a bad film. [07 Feb 1992, p.D1]

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]

Juice may be disjointed and at times amateurish, but its lack of sentimentality saves it. [17 Jan 1992, p.D1]

Rush is dour, and its danger and its spectacle of mind-melting become humdrum. Still, the film is well-acted and is painstakingly accurate in details. [10 Jan 1992, p.C3]

Freejack is the kind of picture that you watch and scoff at, and then when it's over, you leave the theater having had a good time, only mildly aware that the good time had something to do with the quality of the movie. Freejack is convoluted, a meeting of bad writing and bad science fiction. And yet, taken as a whole, it's really not bad. [18 Jan 1982, p.C3]

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]

Though the film makers would probably like us to regard Guncrazy as a commentary on alienation in the '90s, in the end the picture isn't about much more than its own style. But this commitment to style and the movie's peculiar emotional honesty make it more than a self-conscious genre piece. [05 Feb 1993, p.D1]

I think what I like best about Light Sleeper -- more than Dafoe's peculiar magic or Schrader's wise, sympathetic writing -- is the fact that it gives you so much to chew on. So many contemporary films seem to evaporate as soon as you walk out of the theater. Light Sleeper resonates. [04 Sep 1992, p.C1]

Naked Lunch will undoubtedly bring pleasure, much of it perverse, to [David Cronenberg]'s many fans - and, simultaneously, confound and repulse a huge chunk of filmgoers. [10 Jan 1992]

They ought to forgo the formalities and simply give Nick Nolte his Oscar right now for what is one of the great performances on screen, in this season or any other, in Prince of Tides, a sensitive, emotionally explosive jewel directed by Barbra Streisand, who also co-stars. The powerful, haunting drama opens today. [25 Dec 1991, p.E1]

One of the nicest things about Father of the Bride is that it's not ashamed to be old-fashioned and sweet. It's also not ashamed to get sappy and drippy and gooey, but you have to take the good with the bad. [20 Dec 1991, p.C1]

Director Oliver Stone has fashioned in JFK a riveting, dramatic and disturbing look at one of the great whodunits of history. [20 Dec 1991]

It's long; it's expensive, and it was clearly created with the intention of being a great film. I've got nothing against bloated epics, just as I have nothing against blockbusters. But as bloated epics go, Bugsy is not particularly special. [20 Dec 1991, p.C1]

The lushly photographed film skids into the gutter. It may have a certain appeal to people who like to talk mean to each other, but beyond that, it's one stupid rubber ducky. [13 Dec 1991, p.F1]

Some of the segments are more successful than others, yet all of them have the haunting quality of a completely insignificant event that someone might remember years later. Night on Earth tries to stop the clock and cast a net over the whole mystery, and while the film never loses its humor, the wistfulness, yearning and deep affection at its heart is are unmistakable. [29 May 1992, p.D1]

Hook never reaches Nirvana. It doesn't grab the audience, fling it into another world and make people forget where they parked their cars. But it does leave the viewer with a glow, and along the way it has magical moments, even if it's not fully magical as a whole. [11 Dec. 1991, p.E1]

There is none of the drippy cuteness of ''Star Trek V.'' This is the best sort of adventure story, with good characters and excitement and lots of humor. [6 Dec. 1991, p.C1]

Hard to hate, but if you actually want to love it, you've got to force yourself. [27 Nov 1991, p.E1]

Walt Disney Pictures' Beauty and the Beast is an enchanting feast of extraordinary animated film making that magically revives the classic Disney style with genial humor, memorable music, fluid grace in its drawings, and compelling romance. [15 Nov 1991, p.C1]

The story is on the weak side, and many of the jokes are just a bit flat. And yet there are enough cute bits and special-effects surprises that it will probably be worth people's while, especially if they intended to see the movie in the first place. [22 Nov 1991, p.C1]

It sounds promising, but it doesn't work. You get the feeling that Soderbergh, so early in his directing career, has exceeded his reach -- that the com- plicated logistics of making a film on location in eastern Europe, compounded with the challenge of bringing to life such a fundamentally lonely and passive figure, had stymied him. [17 Jan. 1992, p.D1]

Someday, one hopes, Mulcahy will make his masterpiece blend of action and story. Until then, Highlander 2 will have to be considered a steppingstone. [01 Nov 1991, p.D7]

Life Is Sweet, a comedy with wonderfully touching moments by off-beat British director Mike Leigh, is an absolute gem of eccentric humor about family life. Fresh and quirky, the film dishes up astonishing vitality in its look at what is ostensibly a plain, lower middle-class family in Middlesex. [22 Nov. 1991, p.C5]

Director David Kellogg tries to inject energy into the picture with speeded-up sequences and smash-bang cutting, and the art direction is bright and eye-catching. But it's just gourmet dressing on dead lettuce. The movie is unable to balance Ice's aspirations to genuine adult-level coolness in a story clearly designed to appeal to the sensibilities of pre-teenage girls, and the result is bland and often absurd. [22 Oct 1991, p.F1]

McNally takes a thin story and pumps it up, bringing in waitresses and busboys, all of them lonely, all of them broke. In the hands of director Garry Marshall, the material becomes deadly. He turns on the schmaltz, brings up the violins and shows them in their tiny apartments, alone and miserable but kinda cute, living their small, dull lives. This is the working class as viewed by the clueless wealthy -- condescension trying to pass as compassion. [11 Oct 1991, p.D1]

Homicide is a haunting picture that nags at you, days later. It provides no neat answers to the questions it raises about the merits of assimilation vs. maintaining one's ethnic, racial or religious identity, but rather captures something of the times. It might not be the most satisfying movie out there, yet there's a sense about it that, years from now, Homicide will seem even better than it does today.[18 Oct 1991, p.D1]

Original enough to keep an audience guessing most of the way. It has a strong plot that takes surprising and satisfying turns, and there's never really a dull moment. This is the kind of movie that, once you start watching, you have to finish just to see how it turns out. [08 Oct 1991, p.E1]

I loved the picture, without being blind to its faults. But you don't judge a movie with a scorecard but by what it gives you, and this one gives more than anything I've seen in months. [04 Oct 1991, p.D1]

This film is not the classic that Mockingbird has become, but it is still superior, sensitive storytelling. [04 Oct 1991, p.D5]

The premise might sound gimmicky, but it's realized honestly and specifically. [27 Sept 1991, p.D6]

So Freddy's Dead, in the hands of first-time director Rachel Talalay, pretty much tramples incoherently and unscarily across the same old cemeteries of the mind and through the same dark corridors of old, cobwebbed houses. [14 Sept 1991, p.C3]

Little rings true in The Commitments. The music, which is never lip-synched, is very good -- especially when Strong, only 16 at the time, belts Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. But the characters are shrill and two-dimensional, and the performers, most of whom had little or no prior acting experience, are made to look like pro-wrestling buffoons. [16 Aug 1991, p.F1]

Screenwriter Don Mancini, who created Chucky, has decided to rely on the same formulae from the earlier pictures. It doesn't give Jack Bender -- who directed TV's wonderful The Dream of Oz last year -- much of a chance to prove himself with his first feature. [30 Aug 1991, p.F3]

Deliciously witty and entertaining… A first-rate thriller, one that's likely to generate as much word-of-mouth as “Alien,'' “Carrie'' and “Psycho'' did in their time. [23 Aug 1991, Daily Notebook, p.F1]

It's a sad sight when two big- name stars sink this low, especially when their demoralization and embarrassment are right up on the screen. [24 Aug 1991, p.C3]

Director Nadia Tass is an Australian film maker making her U.S. debut, and she does a good job of handling the male bonding. But, this becomes a road movie with too much rambling. [09 Aug 1991, p.F1]

Doc Hollywood has its moments, including some nice comic turns by Barnard Hughes as a curmudgeonly doctor, Bridget Fonda as the local coquette and David Ogden Stiers as Grady's folksy mayor. And Julie Warner is certainly hot stuff. But Caton-Jones' approach is too facile, and his use of Southern-cracker cliches too offensive, to capture my vote. [02 Aug 1991, p.D1]

Granted, you don't expect much from a movie like this: azure seas and honey-dripped sunsets, perhaps, a little titillation and a few wicked laughs. But Robert Steadman's photography lacks the imagination of Almendros' work on The Blue Lagoon, and the rare erotic moments are no match for the dumbness of Leslie Stevens' script. [03 Aug 1991, p.C3]

Technically rough and ragged, Paris nonetheless does an excellent job of digesting a rich, multilayered subculture, and breaking it down for a general audience without oversimplification. [09 Aug 1991, p.F1]

Trust never lives up to its snappy opening. Everything is tongue-in-cheek here - yet it's never remotely clear what the point is or what's getting satirized. [16 Aug 1991]

Life Stinks will never stand with the classics -- it's basically a diversion -- but its plea for economic equality is well taken. And Brooks, after years of lousy movies, finally seems back on sure footing. [27 July 1991, p.C3]

Flows in a way that seems effortless, following its own path, arriving at its own place. Only after the movie is over are the outlines of its story apparent. I found it impossible to outguess it. [12 July 1991]

The dialogue stretches are just pauses between the action scenes, where the director gets to show her stuff. [12 July 1991, p.F1]

Ultimately, Regarding Henry has its heart in the right place, but is far too reluctant to share it with us. [10 July 1991, p.E1]

If they weren't so funny and real, and if Linklater hadn't done such a good job in writing their dialogue and casting them, their lack of ambition might seem depressing, and the movie might come off as some smug hymn to negativity. [9 Aug. 1991, p.F3]

Terminator 2 imagines things you wouldn't even be likely to dream and gets these visions onto the screen with a seamlessness that's mind-boggling. [3 July 1991, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

If anything is better about the sequel than the original, it's Leslie Nielsen, as deadpan as ever, but looking more relaxed than before, mugging and playing up his jokes with the subtlety and timing of an accomplished comedian -- which, at this point, I suppose he is. [28 June 1991, p.F1]

Kevin Costner's Robin Hood is big, sometimes exciting, funny in places and occasionally stupid, but it doesn't disappoint. [14 June 1991, p.E1]

City Slickers is a funny and affecting comedy, with wonderful jokes and a script flashing intelligence in every direction. [7 June 1991, p.E1]

Applegate gets by without a false moment in a role that's more serious and has more angles than the airhead she plays on television. I want to see the movies she'll be making in about five years. [07 June 1991, p.E6]

Despite the weakness of Sciorra's character, and the lack of development in her relationship with Snipes, Jungle Fever is a fascinating movie -- consistently provocative, brilliantly acted and written, in most cases, with a number of moments that transcend anything you've seen this year in their wit, sexual heat and emotional intensity. [7 June 1991, p.E1]

Just awful… There is probably not one interrupted 60-second stretch in which a line of dialogue doesn't clunk, an action doesn't ring false or an irritating plot turn doesn't present itself. [25 May 1991]

This latest visitation from heaven, written and directed by Anthony Minghella, isn't as sappy, slick or saccharine as "Ghost" - thanks largely to the pert performance of Stevenson and the irascible character displayed by Rickman. [24 May 1991, p.E8]

Billed as a comedy, it's draped over dreary gags and irritating manic overacting on the part of its co-star, British comic actor Rik Mayall. [24 May 1991, p.E7]

Despite its implausibilities, Only the Lonely disarms you with its innocence. [24 May 1991, p.E1]

Truth or Dare is like a detective story. You try to infer the truth by looking between the frames. The picture we get of Madonna is a contrived one, but it's revealing anyway, because it's the one she wants to present. [17 May 1991, p.E1]

It's a bomb - not the usual bomb, but a time bomb, despite a 20-minute stretch at the beginning that goes along nicely. [17 May 1991]

The main thing to like about Stone Cold is that the movie is honest enough to have things go wrong -- so wrong, and in ways that are unexpected. [18 May 1991, p.C3]

Things are generally cute in the film -- and that goes for the stars -- and it all chugs along in some curious bubblegum-chewing sort of way. But the flavor's decidedly flat. [18 May 1991, p.C3]

Gradually, FX2 ties itself into a knot it can't undo even with the most desperate of measures. Everything is left hanging, and by the end the plotting is so clumsy it's embarrassing. [10 May 1991, p.E3]

It's up to Ellen Barkin to carry the movie, and she manages until the thing just becomes a dead weight. [10 May 1991, p.E1]

In recreating the fantastic adventures of Solomon Perel, director Agnieszka Holland not only shows a lively appreciation for his anguish and his adolescent desires, but she also illuminates the mentality of mass ideological movements -- both fascist and Communist. That is a large order and Holland, a Polish-born, Paris-based director, carries it out with acute, ironic flair. [03 July 1991, p.E3]

Toy Soldiers is to terrorism what just say no is to the temptation of drugs: a will-o'-the-wisp notion that is either laughable or sad, depending upon how seriously one takes either solution to those problems. [26 Apr 1991, p.E7]