The script, written 20 years ago by the late, great director John Cassavetes, still packs an emotional wallop. [21 Mar 1998]

This emoting doesn't mix well with the comedy and action, of course, and the best that can be said of the film is that it's marginally entertaining, and (for Murphy) reasonably inoffensive. But he's competent enough to make us suspect he might be surprisingly good if he ever did get a real Denzel Washington part. [17 Jan 1997]

As a movie, it's respectably well-acted by everyone, directed with Reiner's usual panache and intelligence, but fits so snugly into the Grisham-movie formula that it's hard not to be a bit suspicious. [20 Dec 1996]

There are a handful of laughs, and maybe three solid scenes. Otherwise, it's an unfunny, relatively charmless, ultimately grueling excuse for a comedy that often plays like a 105-minute public service ad on why it's not a good idea to have children. [20 Dec 1996]

Best of all, the film showcases Leconte's full range of directorial gifts: his sense of pace and suspense; his ability to make a scene come magically alive with a small touch of wry humor; his ingratiating belief that, as bad as people are in the aggregate, they are capable of an amazing nobility of spirit as individuals. [06 Dec 1996]

the film is well cast and the script is mostly faithful to the novel. Visually, it's probably the most accurate evocation of Hardy's world ever put on film. [01 Nov 1996]

But the director hired for the job was Hopkins, who was responsible for two of the worst action movies of recent years - "Predator 2" and "Blown Away." And sadly, he has chosen to play the material as "Jaws" with Paws - a jump-out-at-you horror movie, and not an especially competent or thrilling one at that. [11 Oct 1996]

The film powerfully demonstrates the diversity, the adaptability, the resilience of the insect world. The rest of the animal kingdom (including man) may be on the brink of extinction, but these little guys are thriving. [22 Nov 1996]

Hopkins' Picasso is a first-rate performance.... With his intense stare, his air of subtle lechery, and his life-devouring zest, he not only looks uncannily like the real Picasso, he was actually able to convince me that he was Picasso. [4 Oct 1996]

There is action galore (the deaths, by my rough count, may run somewhere in the triple digits). It's very cartoonish and not upsettingly explicit. But it's all so predictable and pointless that it quickly becomes monotonous, lulling the viewer into numbness, apathy, and perhaps even a peaceful sleep. [20 Sep 1996]

There are scenes in this movie that give you well, goose bumps, that make you proud to live on the same planet with creatures so exquisitely, instinctively and spiritually lovely. [13 Sep 1996]

This "Moreau" is also a pretty creepy affair - at least through its first two acts. Director John Frankenheimer, who is responsible for some of the most chilling thrillers in American film history ("The Manchurian Candidate," "Seconds") certainly knows a thing or two about building a menacing, suspenseful situation. [23 Aug 1996]

Good performances are mostly wasted. Phoef Sutton's adaptation of the Abrahams' novel is poor, it works to an absurdly unlikely and dramatically dishonest must-hit-a-home-run conclusion, and - though it tries here and there - it has absolutely nothing new to say on the subject of fan obsession. [16 Aug 1996. p.30]

Perhaps because I expected nothing - the movie struck me as one of the better comic-strip translations, and one of the better films of the genre. It's fast, colorful, entertaining and a clear cut above its most immediate predecessor, 1994's "The Shadow." [7 June 1996]

Adults will quickly tire of the dragon antics; kids will be bored by all the moralizing and faux metaphysics. [31 May 1996]

The numerous plot elements don't come together in the end. Even though we are gradually expected to sympathize with the plight of the murdering vigilante cop, the whole vigilante theme is suddenly dropped midway through the film. It seems to have no real place in the larger story, except as a clumsy and purposeless O.J. Simpson parallel. [26 Apr 1996]

Before it runs completely out of creative steam in a disappointing final act, Celtic Pride flirts with being a surprisingly effective comedy about the phenomenon of sports obsession. [19 Apr 1996]

"James" is both genuinely exciting as an adventure and genuinely charming as a fantasy, plus it doesn't look quite like anything we've seen before. [12 Apr 1996]

The film works up to a totally conventional ending: It's never much of a comedy or an exploration of the phone-sex phenomenon, and it often seems to be just an excuse for Madonna, John Turturro, Quentin Tarantino and other Lee pals to make cameo appearances and mug for the camera. [22 Mar 1996, p.24]

It's not nearly as good as "Women," but it's still his most likable film since, and there is some definite magic in it. [5 Apr 1996]

This week's excruciatingly dismal dating comedy. [8 March 1986]

Like all Jackie Chan films, this one works best as a rousing action film. From beginning to end, Rumble is filled with imaginative and breathtaking stunts (all done by Chan sans stuntman) and a succession of epic fight scenes that are hypnotic, exhilarating, masterfully choreographed and great fun. [23 Feb 1996, p.3]

Mary Reilly has the distinction of being the most pretentious, the most ponderous, the most utterly suspenseless. [23 Feb 1996]

Ultimately, City Hall is more evidence for the contention that the best movies these days are made from novels in which the basic story has been well worked out by non-Hollywood personnel. The gaggle of high-priced writers who toiled on this script seem to have four different ideas of where they were going, and even what their movie is about. [16 Feb 1996]

It's fun in places, and moves like a bullet, but it's also clumsy and mostly quite routine - and seems a particular letdown considering it was made with a blank check from 20th Century-Fox and the services of John Travolta at the peak of his career. [9 Feb 1996, p.25]

His characters and his situations all ring false, and his movie just seems painful and pointless. [12 Jan 1996]

It's high melodrama all the way - a play written early in Shakespeare's career, filled with great poetry but lacking the sensitivity and complexity (and historical accuracy) of his more mature histories, and revived so often on stage over the centuries primarily because it's such a rousing, audience-pleasing theater piece. [19 Jan 1996]

And, of course, the film's biggest selling point is the performance of China's reigning superstar, Gong Li. Playing a sexy, shrewd but strangely suicidal character who is a far cry from the stubborn courtesans and determined peasant women characters that made her famous, she's as enigmatic and irresistible as ever, and demonstrates once again that she is the Garbo of China. [21 Dec 1995]