Some viewers will decide that Benny & Joon strays too far from the brink; they will find its sentimentality cloying. Other viewers will applaud the classic silent film humour and will emerge with a glow they'll want to show off to their friends. Both camps can agree, however, that Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn and Johnny Depp are quite good. [16 Apr 1993]

The process of remembering that drives the book is gone from the film, boiled away until all that's left is the mundane residue of memory - mere incidents strung together as plot.

With some movies, though, it's just the opposite. Like this one. It's a whole lot easier to forget than to forgive.

A technically slavish and totally atrocious Hollywood remake. [19 March 1993]

Not quite a comedy, not really a drama, Mad Dog and Glory throws your equilibrium but keeps your interest high. [5 Mar 1993, p.C3]

It's Footloose Loose In The Third Reich and, even with your expectations kept knee-high to a kindergarten, you might have at least hoped for some finger-poppin' music and a few great dance scenes. Sorry. Here, too, things come up short. [05 Mar 1993]

Trying to be off-the-wall, Amos & Andrew never gets off the ground. It ends up as politically correct as its title, and that ain't funny. [05 Mar 1993]

FALLING Down is a nasty bit of business, a two-faced manipulator that condones what it pretends to condemn. Cluttered and often downright silly, it's not much of a movie, but it is a fascinating sign of the times - a litmus test for every prejudice and fear harboured by the white middle class in ailing, urban America. [26 Feb 1993, p.C6]

Dial your expectations to moderate, burrow in for the duration, and you won't be disappointed - it ain't exactly springtime, but there are worse things than an amiable outing on a winter's night.

It's silly, it's serious, it's outrageous, it's mundane, it's blowsy, it's lovely. Yet this fickle film has a constant heart - warm and very likeable.

Untamed Heart is a gentle fable, a contemporary re-working of myths that will always cut close to the bone - myths about love and magic, about the silence that speaks volumes and the peace that surpasses understanding. It's certainly not a perfect film, but there's a sweet integrity to the writing and a stern refusal to compromise itself, to bow to the dictates of formula. [12 Feb 1993]

By removing the delicacy of the technique and the adept use of flashbacks, and by explaining the characters in the lexicon of Psych. 101, what was once an unconventional and unforgettably terrifying thriller has become a conventional, mildly scary melodrama. The Vanishing has gone up in Hollywood smoke. [08 Feb 1993]

Even at the abbreviated length of 70 minutes (less feature than featurette), material so maniacal wears very thin very fast. [5 Feb 1993]

YET another movie about a woman who is Trouble, French director Louis Malle's lushly shot Damage wants to be Last Tango in Paris for the nineties, but it is structurally and psychologically so unsound - despite several excellent performances - that it is less arousing than soporific. [22 Jan 1993]

Even though Frank Marshall's latest film Alive is based on a true story of survival, it lacks the very qualities it means to celebrate - spark, imagination and spirit. [16 Jan 1993]

Instead, you get a nominal character study that boasts a single mighty performance and one nifty scene; alas, both performance and scene exist in a narrative vacuum - the plot is non-existent and the pace makes the ice age seem hasty.

As long as it remains within the carefully constructed, peaceful and innocent cosmos of its opening, it's nonpareil. When it goes to war, it goes to hell. [18 Dec 1992]

The performers are powerless to bring life to this moribund courtroom drama...a snoozer.

YOU'VE gotta love the casting. Defying the skeptics, The Great Gonzo keeps his furious urges in check and transforms himself into none other than the prolific Charles Dickens, popping up on camera to act as our narrative guide through his Christmas Carol classic. For the feisty one, it's a remarkable stretch. [15 Dec 1992]

The Distinguished Gentleman isn't - distinguished, that is - but it's a notable cut above Eddie Murphy's recent ventures. [04 Dec 1992]

Simultaneously a tough, haunting, lyrical, hopeful film, and the tears it wants us to shed are an alloy of sorrow and joy - cleansing tears, the kind that alter the rules and dignify the game.

Pick your cliche - searing, rivetting, haunting - Keitel delivers a performance to rival Brando's in "Last Tango In Paris."

Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, is decadent, overpoweringly erotic campiness coupled with soft-core pornography - blood, breasts, buttocks and big teeth. It's daring and those with a taste for the sexily sanguine will find it delightful. But it's not for the prudish. [13 Nov 1992, p.C1]

It may be charming and unpretentious, but the script of this little film could have used more attention. [18 Nov 1992]

THE Lover is lyrical and sensuous, very pretty and strangely hollow. Deliberately hollow, I think - the flatness at the centre of this film is meant to correspond to the emptiness at the heart of its young protagonist. And the audience is supposed to fall into that void and hear its echo, feel the residual ache. Yet we don't - we're content to comprehend the theme without feeling it. Our emotions are spared, and, as a result, we watch the proceedings at a safe remove - appreciative yet detached, admiring yet unmoved. There's much to love about The Lover, but not enough to love passionately. [30 Oct 1992]

ALAN J. Pakula's name may seldom be associated with movies of dazzling brilliance, but you can generally rely on him for entertaining, first-rate work, like All the President's Men, Sophie's Choice and Presumed Innocent. He's let us down badly with Consenting Adults. [20 Oct 1992]

It's perfectly admirable, absolutely controlled, and fully understandable. [09 Oct 1992]

1492 is a pretty good movie, but it isn't as good as you might like. Part of the problem is Roselyne Bosch's script. The screenwriter (and co-producer) seems so determined to make a hero of Columbus that she can't resist giving him every virtue and virtuous motive available, and placing him in direct opposition to every bad guy or bad idea around, including decadent aristocrats, ignorant priests, and the Church and the Inquisition in general. [12 Oct 1992]