Delightfully comic - and the funniest moments are rich in meaning - A Man of No Importance is laced with memorable scenes.

Mixed Nuts, opening today at Bay Area movie theaters, is laced generously with chuckles, though it neglects one little detail that helps make movies satisfying: a plot. [21 Dec 1994, p.E1]

Meticulously crafted, and warmly acted by a cast that includes Winona Ryder as Jo and Susan Sarandon as her mother, the devoted Marmee, Little Women is one of the rare Hollywood studio films that invites your attention, slowly and elegantly, rather than propelling your interest with effects and easy manipulation.

A solid bit of fun in the straight-arrow family entertainment genre, Richie Rich, starring Macaulay Culkin, doesn't pretend to be much more than pleasant matinee fodder.

This wacky buddy road film... has a brilliant glow of intelligence behind the stupidness. It's easily the funniest movie of the year.

Disclosure is a frankly adult picture. The seduction scene is protracted and genuinely sexy -- though what this woman sees in Douglas is a mystery. The talk in Disclosure is also frank -- and unusually explicit. People talk about sex in this picture as they would in life.

Given its mad-dog subject, Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones as the raspy, snarling and seemingly demented Ty Cobb -- one of baseball's greatest players -- should have been a home run of a bitter, heartrending drama. Instead, this histrionic portrait of the most celebrated cur in sports history comes across like a fly ball that thuds on the ground.

Though many of Parker's well- known wisecracks make their way into the screenplay, Mrs. Parker ultimately does not give us the Dorothy Parker of legend.

Red is the best of the lot: warmer, more accessible, unusually generous toward its characters. A mystical tale of chance encounters and unexpected connections, Red uses a traffic accident as a springboard to discovery.

As a comedy, Junior has its share of laughs -- but no more than its share.

Directed by first-time film maker C.M. Talkington, Love & a .45 is a low-rent variation on Natural Born Killers -- ragged, raunchy, a bit bratty but not altogether worthless.

The film may be intended to launch the movie careers of Patrick Stewart and the gang from ''Star Trek: The Next Generation,'' but any vibrancy, any emotional power it has derives from William Shatner as Kirk. And it's not even his movie. [18 Nov. 1994, p.C1]

Haneke directs Benny's Video in a cool, dispassionate style that matches the austerity of his subject, but keeps us at a distinct remove. And even though he introduces a faintly optimistic note in the film's last moments -- a hint at possible redemption -- his film is mostly a grim, downbeat experience. [01 Apr 1994, p.C3]

There's almost no violence in the film, which favors natural settings and, for weaponry, archery. Only one scene, when Rothbart appears as a bat, is strong enough to make kids shudder a little. The script chirps with funny interplay between the animals.

Jackson has called "Creatures" a "murder story about love, a murder story with no villains." His generous approach makes it an unforgettable experience.

Directed with playful wit and energy, with steamy sex scenes played as much for laughs as anything else.

Exuding glamour, health and prosperity, real-life spouses Beatty and Bening are so radiant that they run the risk of seeming superhuman and thereby losing our sympathy as screen characters.

It is an exhilaration from beginning to end. It's the movie equivalent of that rare sort of novel where you find yourself checking to see how many pages are left and hoping there are more, not fewer.

Though the movie clocks in at just under three hours, it is -- aside from an occasional slow spot -- fascinating and exciting.

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]

A flick so terrifying and brilliant that it makes the two other Chainsaw sequels seem like After-School Specials. [20 May 1995, p.E6]

The River Wild may be the season's most exhilarating family entertainment. [30 Sep 1994, p.C1]

Burton has trouble sustaining the briskness of the first half. But the brilliance of many individual scenes, and the extraordinary performance by Landau, are more than enough to justify this goofy, tender ode to eccentricity. [7 October 1994, Daily Notebook, p.C1]

The desire to go back in time to change things -- or just to visit -- is so central to the experience of being alive and stuck in time that Timecop has a built-in power. It's a power the film, a satisfying science-fiction thriller, takes full advantage of.

The problematic result is not that The New Age is bleak -- bleak is fine. We all like bleak. The problem is that The New Age becomes static. [30 Sept 1994, p.C1]

Robert Redford's exceptionally handsome and provocative Quiz Show manages a trick that few films even dare try -- to take a hard look at personal and public moral issues and still provide dazzling entertainment.

The Next Karate Kid' has all the makings of a terrible movie, but it never quite becomes one. One reason might be that cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs just loves a beautiful picture. [10 Sep 1994, p.E6]

Connery's charm and integrity make all his scenes worthwhile, and Lithgow's stiff-backed turn as the classic British imperialist is in good fun.