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.