Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make heads or tails of this Byzantine thing. [22 May 1996]

The cast is proficient, with Balk especially adroit at giving her demonic gifts a gleeful twist. And director Andrew Fleming keeps the special effects on a low boil, effective yet not ostentatious, while taking allusive advantage of the competing (and sometimes complementing) tension between the school's Catholic imagery and the girl's pagan icons. But as our heroines lose their grip, so does he. [03 May 1996]

Shows promise, but needs more effort, and definitely doesn't play well with others. [7 Jun 1996, p.C2]

Narratively, the film strikes all the sentimental chords that audiences typically find so reassuring, but the music grates here, sounding mechanical and flat, lacking the single ingredient indispensable to any uplifting fable - a charming belief in its own sweet nature. [19 Apr 1996, p. C1]

Makin has a knack for comic jolts, and, apparently, little interest in the longer narrative arc that movies, no matter how unorthodox, require. [13 Apr 1996]

Is Kazaam racist? In effect, yes. But it'sracism linked to bad marketing: You can't really mix a black-pride rap film with a revamped version of "Free Willie" and expect them to magically jibe.

At the end of Courage Under Fire, you feel torn between admiration and annoyance with the filmmakers.

Fear strikes out in slasher flick This movie is laced with enough gratuitous bloodshed and reactionary zeal to warm the heart of a Montana militiaman. [12 Apr 1996]

At its heights, James and the Giant Peach is a shock of pleasure, a juicy immersion into a world both intriguingly weird and consistently magical. [12 Apr 1996]

Writer Andy Breckman and director Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinnie ) don't even try to recapture or eclipse the past. Instead, they offer the movie a comfortable plug-in-and-play system for their well-known comic stars to be all that they can be. [29 Mar 1996]

Trading in his thinker's cap for a craftsman's apron, Lee is content to carve a little something out of nothing much - the result is as dismissible as it is diverting. [Apr 12, 1996. pg. C.2]

Despite its lapses in credibility, the screenplay does offer both wit and numerous surprise twists, as well as all that non-stop action. And it's a nice change to see an action movie in which the hero, Russell's Grant, isn't some muscle-bound squinter. [15 Mar 1996]

Wong Kar-Wai makes gifted use of a hand-held camera in Chungking Express; little seems to have been shot with anything else. That, linked with a clear taste for chiaroscuro imagery, makes for a fast-paced film that combines visual flair with story lines that are subtle enough to leave the most important things unspoken. [15 Mar 1996]

Nominally set in some rural American backwater, The Neon Bible is a hellishly muddled reprint of Davies' personal canon - muddled enough to turn all his past virtues into present transgressions. [19 Apr 1996]

After the first five minutes of Down Periscope, though, you'll be more likely be thinking Voyage to the Bottom of the Dregs. As with Ellen DeGeneres's Mr. Wrong, this is the sort of film you expect a big TV star to do before he's successful, not after. [01 Mar 1996]

Freed from the tiresome constraints of plot and character, Rumble in the Bronx is the distilled essence of action entertainment. [27 Feb 1996, p.D1]

Mary Reilly comes across as too much brooding atmosphere and too little story. [23 Feb 1996]

Broad, loud and crammed full of costumed characters and stage asides about the poverty of the script, it's typical pantomime, with a thin plot on which to hang the over-the-top performances and light-hearted musical numbers (by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil). [16 Feb 1996]

Broken Arrow conforms faithfully to the tongue-in-cheek, post-Die Hard action genre, with the usual spectacularly choreographed action sequences and rudiments of a story line. Even considering the meagre demands of the genre, though, character and plot seem woefully underbaked and the reliance on improbable solutions soon makes the groans of incredulity outnumber the gasps. [9 Feb 1996, p.C1]

The shipwreck comes too late to rescue movie from endless banalities. [02 Feb 1996]

Restoration is a middling thing, indifferent good, albeit much enlivened by Robert Downey Jr., who did act Merivel with the full vigour of his profession. [31 Jan 1996]

Mr. Holland's Opus is all heart. I suppose a brain cell or two might have helped to win over laggards such as me, but no matter. It sure means well and, in a note-perfect world, strikes its basic chords with a naif's true conviction. [19 Jan 1996]

For all his daring, the brazen creator maintains control - there's aesthetic order in the disorder, and calculated reason in the madness. Seldom has it felt so good to seem so lost.

A swashbuckler that plays like an over-dressed serial on a slow Saturday afternoon. [22 Dec 1995]

An intense story about an all-powerful Chinese crime lord and his extended family. [26 Jan 1996]

This three-hour opus, bearing only the eponymous title of Nixon, is an intriguing ramble through the social psychology of man and country alike. Indeed, the simple dialectics that both animated and marred Stone's earlier work are redeemed here precisely because they're invested in a single, complex personality - consequently, this film is more character-driven than any of its predecessors. [20 Dec 1995, p.C1]

No, the film may not be quite as luminous as the cast, but it's good - very good, in fact.

The terror sequences (not only animals but monsoons and earthquakes and quicksand) are scary until they get monotonous: after a while, you have a sense you're watching a clip reel from every Hollywood disaster flick ever made.