The picture is in the same sappy, soapy, maudlin vein as last year's ''Beaches,'' but I didn't hate it as much as ''Beaches,'' which might mean that everybody who loved ''Beaches'' will think Stella isn't quite as good. [2 Feb 1990, p.E1]

A tough slog through emotional swamplands. It's murky when it needs to be clear. But Hedlund is the big news here.

It seems Joris-Peyrafitte can’t decide what film he is making, and as a result we’re left with a jumbled mess with a slapped-together resolution that will satisfy no one.

What makes Rampage especially enjoyable is the way it sneaks up on the audience. Before casting off every shred of dignity and abandoning itself to good-humored excess, the movie passes itself off as a reasonably serious science-fiction movie.

And give credit to Stallone: He just leaves the camera on Rourke, in the tightest of close-ups, cutting only once, to himself, for a one-second reaction shot, but keeping the focus on his actor. A great actor.

SWAT is better than "Gigli," but so is most outpatient surgery.

It's about as close to French farce as romantic comedies get, and the closer the better.

This slight, predictable comedy has appealing moments.

It’s an elaborate and artificial concoction, without any discernible ambition behind it.

The sum here is less than the parts, which have problems of their own.

Extremely bleak but occasionally compelling debut feature.

So at the very least, audiences will come away from Chasing Mavericks with a deeper understanding of surfing and an appreciation for surfers.

But the single most compelling performance may belong to Australian actor Guy Pearce.

Like every other action movie, it's designed for a 14-year-old boy's mentality, but it's enjoyable enough to turn most people into 14-year-old boys.

The film's overburdened, silly plot renders it a disaster.

Brothers Oxide and Danny Pang co-directed. What they lack in discipline they make up in razzle-dazzle, even if it sometimes is pointless.

Saddest, most hang-dog, most depressing movie possible.

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

If anything keeps “Red Door” going, it’s Autumn Eakin’s exquisite cinematography. The Further looks like a shadow reflection of the real world, and she and Wilson never fail to come up with aesthetically interesting and sometimes ingenious light sources to illuminate portions of it.

Legends of the Fall is so gorgeous that its failure to catch fire seems a piddling concern.

The movie is pleasant. It's reasonably funny. But the one who gets the real laughs here, the hard laughs, is Carrey, who plays the kind of role he should be playing - a complete lunatic.

Pathetic yet stupidly entertaining for several minutes of its interminable running time, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain makes half its cast look like retreads and half like fresh ponies desperately karate-kicking a dud script to see if it has any signs of life.

Cherry is like three different movies in one: the teen years, the war experience, and then life as a drug addict. It’s held together by the smart writing, by the overarching tone of tragic absurdity, and by Holland, who hits every bump on Cherry’s way down.

Chock-full of holes.

A good bio of any historical character has to have a compelling story, whether evil or good. Klimt appears to have had that story. I sure would have liked to know what it was.

As one might expect from a Christian film, Miracles From Heaven centers on faith — and a major miracle — but it’s also a decent family drama about a mother’s tribulations in caring for her sick child.

It would require a near-lethal injection of nitrous oxide to induce laughter.

The show takes little more than an hour to finish and less than a minute to forget, while politely reminding us not only that gay movies have fallen on hard times but also that they refuse to give up.