The picture is willfully gross, fundamentally stupid and in no way worth the discomfort of watching it. Yet it may be the most well-crafted piece of garbage this year.

It's dull in the precise way that life can be dull. To watch it is like sitting in on a staff meeting, listening to people talk on and on and on. Professors are used to talking nonstop, and in a few cases in At Berkeley it's rather astonishing to hear them repeating the same ideas over and over, instead of just coming to a point and stopping.

Earnest, heartrending look at the divide between religious fundamentalists and their gay relatives. It's also heavy-handed and devotes too much time to bigoted views.

Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, teaming for the first time on the big screen, are moderately fun but suffer from what looks like a case of too-calculated Hollywood packaging.

As Hunt’s life unravels, so does the movie, though the story maintains a certain baseline of interest just by virtue of being sordid.

Segerstedt's anti-Nazi stand is the only reason to be interested in him, and yet half the movie is about his domestic life.

Really, the only thing kinky about this movie is its title.

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

Blue Caprice tells its story in fragments, a provocative strategy that sometimes works to chilling effect, sometimes not.

Polanski attempts a precarious mixture of drama and comedy here -- seesawing between a serious look at sexual obsession on the one hand and an antic, spoofy tone on the other. It's a bold risk, but it rarely works because we usually don't know if Polanski is being intentionally funny, or merely inept. [25 Mar 1994, p.C3]

From moment to moment, Rumours is almost entertaining. But for it to work, you pretty much have to root for it. The movie invites you not to enjoy it so much as to appreciate the effort.

The documentary They Call Us Monsters tries, and mostly succeeds, at putting a human face on teenage criminals facing life in prison.

Zellweger takes an otherwise passable mainstream comedy and all but ruins it with her lack of effort.

There's something in Ned Kelly' that's lost in the translation from Australia to America, and the overly emotional film score is just a symptom.

Loses momentum midway into the boys' journey.

For the most part, it's fairly pleasant and interesting enough to be there.

The documentary isn't particularly thrilling, or even very informative, but it's almost certain to lower your blood pressure for 83 minutes.

It is aimed primarily at children, and its affectionate treatment of animals is certain to please most of them.

Woo's aggressive, cartoony attack in the film, which makes for its biggest delights, also wipes out whatever chance it might have had of making an emotional impact.

In a way the faults of New Nightmare are the faults of the horror genre as it now exists. Once you get the set-up, the rest of the film is just incidents leading up to the big confrontation. The problem is not in knowing what will happen, but in waiting for it to happen. [14 Oct 1994, p.C3]

Director Leon Ichaso (A Kiss to Die For) is intent on presenting the Harlem story in near-operatic terms, but ultimately the beautifully rendered, photographically engaging Sugar Hill is crippled by its own self-importance. [25 Feb 1994, p.C1]

For the most part, this film has the disadvantages of Chinese action films, without the advantages. That is, it overdoes the action and it’s short on character, without attaining the manic, wild heights of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early ’90s. Still, it’s nice to see Chan once again in a Chinese environment.

As a romantic comedy, Cease Fire is more annoying than amusing.

As a movie, Charlie’s Angels has serious problems, but the new Angels trio is promising and shows there’s life yet in the old formula. There’s something going on here. It’s just not quite there yet.

There are just so many ways Carine Roitfeld can say she loves fashion in Mademoiselle C, a somewhat interesting documentary that brings us into the inner workings of a magazine, but harps a bit too much on her ideas of fashion and style.

In Elemental, we have a visually splendid and absolutely gorgeous rendering of a half-baked idea. For some of its running time, it can get by on looks. But ultimately, things like story and making sense start to matter, and that’s when the movie takes on water.

Story pitches are made. Coke is snorted. There is lesbian sex. Fellatio. An earthquake. A murder. Just another day in Hollywood.

Only when it makes the claim for Page as a pivotal figure in American culture does it overstate the case and become tiresome.