Ready To Wear is certainly a disappointment, if not an outright flop. [27 Dec 1994]

Although the screenplay by Andy Breckman and Michael Leeson is wittier than most, it overshoots its screwball target by a wide margin, and what was initially blithe and charming ends up as merely silly. [24 Dec 1994]

Adventure, romance and fabulous travel opportunities, all for a few bucks. [23 Dec 1994]

Death and the Maiden never fulfills the evocative promise of those initial frames...Beyond that, you have to settle for a craftsman working with more precision than inspiration. But Polanski at half-speed is still hard to beat. [27 Jan 1995, pg. E.1]

Nell is a good movie made great by the lambent presence of Jodie Foster. [23 Dec 1994]

Despite the talents involved, including Steve Martin and director and co-writer Nora Ephron, the result is a messy, almost desperately mirthless thing Mixed Nuts an empty shell. [23 Dec 1994, p.C6]

Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel is lively and thoughtful and beautifully formed. [21 Dec 1994]

An atrocious movie. An offensively stupid movie. A movie so witless and so crammed with bathroom humour that you will be deeply thankful for the darkness that envelops you - it lets you hide the fact (disturbing as it is) that you do laugh at the antics of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, in spite of yourself.

Disclosure is a well-acted, slickly directed shell of a picture. The veneer is so polished that you look on with something approaching genuine satisfaction, and only after the final credits roll do you begin to feel the void.

In a virtuoso turn, Tommy Lee Jones delivers an over-the-top performance, but it works for the obvious reason that everything about Cobb is oversized. Except for one commodity - there's not an ounce of sentimentality on the guy (nor in this film - it too is unlikely to please the crowd). [23 Dec 1994]

Sentimentality exceeds the bounds of the seasonal fantasy in Trapped in Paradise and ends up with all the charm of winter slush. [03 Dec 1994]

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a bunch of bon mots in search of a larger theme. Happily, the mots are so very bon that the two hours breeze by quickly enough.

A happy, healthy, bouncing baby of a movie. [23 Nov 1994]

Takes its viewers on a bouncing high-wire act between intense violence and sugar-sweet tenderness, with some light-hearted comedy along the way.

All the special effects in the universe don't make up for a lame plot, though. There's something foul about a Star Trek movie so apparently slapdash: the creators know that legions of fans will show up, no matter what. [18 Nov. 1994]

Documentaries show us what can be seen; fiction features, to qualify as art, should visualize for us the usually unseen. Benny's Video, in which the thought processes of the characters are never delivered to the camera, is all surface. Its implicit claim is that by doing nothing, it is doing everything. But there are times, and this is one of them, when less is merely less. [27 Mar 1993]

Heavenly Creatures is a devilishly clever and damnably accurate reflection of that duality - twinning the mystique of adolescence with the mystery of murder, it's a wonderfully natural recording of an awfully unnatural act. [20 Jan 1995]

The look is fine, the effects are special, the cast is solid, and Jordan (in company with Rice) makes a commendable effort to add a cerebral dimension to a visceral genre.

Magic it ain't, but competent isn't far off the mark. Neither is hum-drum. [28 Oct 1994]

Legs flashing and eyes smouldering and brain scintillating, Fiorentino serves up each facet with venomous glee - it's a performance that mixes a main course of Bette Davis with a side order of La Femme Nikita, and it's mesmerizing.

This is an Affair to forget. [21 Oct 1994]

Even augmented by the priceless commodity of Smith's talent, $25,575 can only be stretched so far. Apparently, it won't buy you a stellar cast - some very strong lines receive some rather flat deliveries. And some distinctly lame scenes survive the chopping block.

Pulp Fiction is at least three movies rolled into one, and they're all scintillating.

The other thing that sets this movie apart from the current crop of tongue-in-cheek screamers (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream) is that it's actually perversely intriguing, rather than just clever. [03 Nov 1997, p.C2]

It's her first action flick, and Meryl Streep ends up with a watered-down script: the metaphoric journey is without resonance and the actual journey is without thrills. The River Wild is awfully tame. [30 Sep 1994]

A cinematic homage as flawed as its subject. Flawed, yet with a peculiar fascination of its own -- what we have is a genuine artist paying sincere tribute to an unapologetic mediocrity, and stooping awkwardly to the task.

Director Peter Hyams strives hard to maintain a light and entertaining touch, lifting Timecop slightly above its formulaic restraints. On the one hand, there's a pleasing freshness to the movie, thanks to lots of energy and a little playful wit. On the other, there's something deeply fatiguing about this picture. Maybe it's the formula, maybe it's all that time travel, but you just can't help thinking you've seen it all before. Must be deja vu. [21 Sep 1994]

One of those rare films that manages to be both terrifically entertaining and consistently thoughtful, it turns an apparently tame deception into a very rich metaphor.

A jagged slice of life, What Happened Was ... converts an ordinarily clumsy date into an extraordinarily touching encounter, without the aid of melodrama and with no loss in credibility. For us no less than the star-crossed characters, it's a leap into a shallow end that turns perilously deep. [30 Sep 1994]

HAT in the name of artsy pretension do we have here? That Arizona Dream is a nightmare is beyond dispute - it's the sort of murky, symbol-laden trap that European directors often fall into when they cross the pond to take on the entire social stratum of the United States. The culprit in question is Emir Kusturica - Yugoslavian born, Czech trained, and now American buffaloed. This thing makes The Red Desert look coherent. [19 Nov 1994]

In dramatizing the rigours of the ghetto, Yakin stoops to hyperbolic plot devices that tend to erode the very empathy he's striving to create. Things are surely bad, but not that bad - unwittingly, he's demonizing people who deserve better, who are better. [02 Sep 1994]

Clearly, Avary wrote himself into a tight corner and, unlike his mentor, lacks the narrative imagination - the clever shifting of time planes, the neat overlapping of incident - to extricate himself. Instead, quite literally, he blasts his way out and, in the process, shoots his picture in the foot. Killing Zoe starts life as a vigorous wannabe, but pulls up dead lame. [04 Nov 1994]

A maniacal, hallucinogenic dip into the bloodbath drawn by a pair of mass murderers, it's the quintessential Stone opus - topical, testy, and wildly controversial, as brilliant or egregious as you wish it to be. [26 Aug 1994, p.C1]

Good ain't the half of it in this case - it's funny, it's endearing, it's strangely touching. [19 Aug 1994]

Airheads is a movie so direly muddled it actually manages - no mean feat this - to seem more stupid than the rock biz idiocy it aims to satirize. [5 Aug 1994]

Yep, just like a good meal - you feel satisfied without feeling stuffed. There's also a pleasant, lingering aftertaste - deceptively clever, even wise moments that sneak back up on you, demanding re-examination. [16 Sep 1994]

Director James Cameron always works on a mega- canvas, yet he's brought off something unique here.

For this Disney remake of a saccharine 1951 baseball comedy, the targeted age group has been lowered to around nine. That means plenty of mustard-squirting slapstick and not very much of the beauty and drama of the actual game [15 July 1994]

Yet, for all that's wrong here, one thing is wonderfully, blissfully right, and his name is Tom Hanks.

Alec Baldwin, star of The Shadow, looks great in his tux, and maybe he can even act, but the script doesn't give him the chance. It can't decide whether it's in the humour department or the thrills business. [01 Jul 1994]

Do we at least perk up during the ol' gunfight at the O.K. Corral, or the vacant lot at Fremont Street, or wherever the hell it did take place? Sorry. Kasdan never was an action director, and he clearly hasn't gone to school for this flick. Bang, bang, I'm dead, you're not, next scene - I've seen livelier shoot-outs at a soccer match. [24 Jun 1994, p.D1]

One of those unmemorable summer movies about which the only good thing you can say is that it has charm. Nothing for everyone. [17 Jun 1994]

For all the undeniable merits, it somehow feels manufactured, and thus, to a degree, calculated - the product not of a collective imagination taking esthetic chances, but of an imaginative collective putting the rivets into a well-wrought plan that can't go awry.

De Bont knows how to edit a pulse-pounding sequence, he knows how to keep the screen white-hot, and he sure knows how to blow things up real good. What he doesn't know is how to slow down - this premise is perfect for him.

Crystal has a likable screen persona, and he's gracious in sharing his stage, but the movie is essentially an expensive (if quite possibly profitable) act of self-indulgence. [10 June 1994]

It transforms that bottom line into a saccharine border, framing the picture with enough faux inspiration to keep Hallmark in cards for a month of Mother's Days. [03 Jun 1994]

There is, admittedly, something splendidly subversive about putting the movie's arch-villains into a children's theme park - the ultimate symbol of both apple-pie family values and the whole U.S. entertainment industry. There are no real worms in this apple, however; like most flicks conceived as marketing vehicles, it's hollow at the core. [27 May 1994, p.D3]

Writer/director Gus Van Sant, who's built his reputation on the romantic decadence of "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho," completely misses the poetry and the irony of the book. [20 May 1994]

For all its cinematic assets, Maverick seems a less charming vessel than the show I watched at my daddy's knee.

Spike Lee's Crooklyn is a charming little movie. [14 May 1994]

Being Human is just that, and it's a profound delight. [06 May 1994]

What we have here is a romp, a funny romp at times, with a clear satiric intent and the expected quota of outrageous style - likable enough, yes, but a rather flimsy thing, a zany fest with its mind on cruise control. [17 June 1994]

The laughs are lame in this annoyingly outdated spoof of political correctness. [5 May 1994]

Water's kinky view of the world has simply been overtaken (hell, swallowed up) by the sheer warp of reality. [13 Apr 1994]

Given the stereotypical elements that director John Dahl and his co-writing brother Rick have used to construct Red Rock West, it's surprising that the result is a neat and prickly little thriller, dressed up in cowboy noir clothing. [07 Jan 1994]

A Mexican feature from writer/director Guillermo Del Toro, it's a modern vampire tale that occasionally rises to the level of competence but never inches any higher. [20 May 1994]

Bitter Moon isn't perfection, but this truly creepy story of obsessive love and even more obsessive hatred is deliciously, horribly, compellingly watchable. [22 Mar 1994]

The Coen brothers have made the A-list of writer/directors with their big-budget replicants of Hollywood genres, but the wisecracking Hudsucker Proxy is all comic sound and fury signifying nothing All talk, no substance. [11 Mar 1994, p.C3]

British humour at its eclectic best, a deliciously heady mix of dry wit and ribald farce.

On one side, Sugar Hill is an admirable picture with strong performances. On the other, it's a victim of narrative cliches. [25 Mar 1994]

As a movie, Blue Chips is more journeyman than star, but, once in a while, it hops off the bench and shows a surprising flash of talent.[22 Feb 1994]

Seeking both conventional action and quirky atmosphere, it achieves a little of each and not enough of either. [15 Feb 1994]

It ain't hell and it ain't heaven; it's just, more or less, another two-star movie. [4 March 1994]

What they've created is a movie that, lacking any resonance, is a soulless clone of a more vibrant original. [04 Feb 1994]

The dogs and the snow and the flag-waving and the choo-choos are all reduced to TV-sized portions. Just as well, I suppose - think of it as audio-visual aerobics, forced training for next month's big bout in our living-rooms. [14 Jan 1994]

He gets much of what he wants, but not all of it, and not all of the time - the film is just too eclectic on occasion, a bit jumpy in its tone and its pacing.

Grumpy, dopey and wheezy. In this dispiriting spectacle of feuding codgers, two of the finer comic actors of their genration are reduced to being cute and talking dirty. [31 Dec 1993, p.C3]

A little bit like a barroom brawl: noisy, senseless, silly but somehow watchable.

This Hollywood movie about a gay man afflicted with AIDS is evocative, understated and ultimately deeply affecting. Hard-earned tears of truth. [22 Dec 1993, p.C1]

Pakula's screenplay looks to bulldoze a clear path through the narrative thickets, but this stuff is impenetrable - meant to be complicated, it's just confusing.

A powerful and affecting piece of work.

It's appalling, it's wicked, it's bleak, and it's very funny. In fact, the movie's ability to disturb us is directly linked to its ability to amuse us. We're made to feel guilty precisely because we're made to laugh - seeing something so sordid shouldn't be so engaging. [28 Jan. 1994]

THE dead end of desperation comes about three-quarters of the way into the joyless, uphill slog that is Wayne's World 2. [11 Dec 1993]

Whoopi (a beleaguered figure these days) single-handedly cranks up the volume now and again, earning a chuckle or two, but then settles lazily back, apparently content to bank on the formula and imagine the box- office. [10 Dec 1993]

Take a funny, touching, complex play that moves at a breakneck pace, filter it through the huge (if often underrated) talents of director Fred Schepisi, and you've got Six Degrees of Separation. Such a rare gift - a film that treats language with infinite respect and ideas with cultivated precision, a film that challenges us to keep up and rewards our efforts with a bittersweet comedy of manners. [24 Dec 1993]

A Perfect World is perfect indeed - for the initial 15 minutes. After that, the fault-lines start to emerge, widening, widening, until the thing cracks open and falls apart. [24 Nov 1993]

Although there are some fluid moments, De Palma's weary direction of a once-feared mobster trying to go straight against all odds seems pistol-whipped. [15 Nov 1993]

Thematically, structurally, narratively (hell, pick your adverb), this effort goes way past thin - Flesh And Bone is anorexic. [05 Nov 1993]

If the plot thins, the performances don't. Brad Pitt's lank-haired loony, Juliette Lewis's crippled innocent, David Duchovny's well-meaning hypocrite, Michelle Forbes' black-clad shutterbug - each is a deeply etched portrait that fulfills its early promise. [24 Sep 1993]

Great art is both immediately accessible and eternally elusive, having at its centre a powerful simplicity that speaks to anyone who cares to listen, that rewards every interpretation while embracing none. The Piano is great art.

Spoof chokes on the impossibility of ridiculing what was already ridiculous. [1 Nov 1993]

While Trauma is a veritable stew of psychological motivation compared to so many of the director's other films, the prevailing motivation remains, just as it is with Argento's killers, technique. [15 Sep 1993]

Admittedly, near the end, the picture loses some of its energy and compelling ambiguity (about a half-star's worth, I'd say). Still, by then, the big gains have been made. At its best, The Nightmare Before Christmas occupies the imaginative ground held by the likes of White and Dahl and Seuss - that lovely place where, for shining moments, parents and children can travel on the same passport and smile for the same reasons. [22 Oct 1993]

Barely dusted off, the humourless stuff is served up straight - damned if it isn't a Hillbillies homage. [19 Oct 1993]

Employing a bizarre love triangle as its base, and blessed with occasional flashes of brilliance, this melodramatic film leapfrogs among the defining moments in China's turbulent past. [29 Oct 1993]

SOMEWHERE in the muddle that is Mr. Jones, there's a good movie trying to get out. And somewhere in the actor that is Richard Gere, there's a good performance hatching a similar escape. But, all tied up by an erratic script, spotty direction and a Hollywood ending, neither makes it, leaving us with the cinematic equivalent of the high-school underachiever - loads of potential, none of it realized. [9 Oct 1993]

Altman shakes the camera like a two-bit horror director, and it seems a different sort of signature - less masterful than weary, less signed than resigned. Zero-sum, indeed.

The exceptional story of a low-level diplomat who had a 20-year affair with a man he thought was a woman, is, in Cronenberg's hands, turned into a beguiling masterpiece on the question of self-deception. [01 Oct 1993]

The surprise lies in Linklater's ability to breathe so much fresh life into a tired formula...This is a picture that recollects not merely a period in time but a state of mind.

Danny Glover delivers the most subtle and controlled performance of his life, and Freeman proves himself a sensitive and talented filmmaker. [24 Sept 1993]

Yet this surprisingly lyrical movie more than satisfies overall. De Niro, who has a rare eye for detail and nuance, shows himself at ease with action, comedy and romance. He also has a fine touch with actors. [1 Oct 1993, p. C5]

It comes eerily close to duplicating the experience of reading while, at the same time, remaining very much a motion picture. That's a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, achievement.

Into the West has its admirable side - it tries oh-so-hard to be a healthy treat for the whole family, and never plies us with cheap sentimentality. [01 Oct 1993]

An incoherent mess of a movie with a neat boat chase near the end. [21 Sept 1993]

Director Ross and his stars have been eagerly comparing Undercover Blues to the Thin Man movies of yore. True, both feature a bantering husband and wife team that excels at crimebusting, but Nick and Nora Charles had more substance - and, for that matter, more style - than Jeff and Jane Blue. And unlike their modern imitators, Nick and Nora had the good taste not to smile so overbearingly that you wanted to punch them. [13 Sept 1993]

The whole mess turns nuttier by the second. A black comedy, you ask? I wish. There are plenty of laughs here, but nary a one is intentional.

The message the movie preaches? The ills of a consumer society, I guess - all those needful things needlessly bought. And the best way to put that preaching into practice? Shut your wallet and pass on this little treat. [27 Aug 1993]

Canadian director Guy Maddin is an artist supreme - he steals with a liberal flourish and with enough sheer imagination that his previous films (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel) are often described as boldly original. Careful, his latest offering, is no exception - it's an honours graduate from the same school of dusted-off originality. [10 Oct 1992]