Ultimately, her run and Roseanne for President! meet the same fate: not quite entertaining enough to qualify as comedy, nor quite thoughtful enough to take seriously.

The script, attributed to four writers, is based on stories of cats who roamed the Warners back lot, begging for food among the discarded sets of "Casablanca" and "East of Eden." Imagine any storyline designed around that studio legend and you're likely to come up with a more auspicious plot than the one this team has created. [26 Mar 1997]

By the time Donner crowds his climactic poker game with a bevy of veteran Western character actors, decades of movie tradition have been reduced to window dressing, and Maverick leaves you hungry for the real thing.

Greenaway keeps his wits about him. His vision of human evil is as droll as it is unrelenting. Trained as a painter, he can't help making this particular hell look gorgeous. "The Cook, the Thief, etc." is, paradoxically, a beautiful, drily witty film about monstrous vulgarity and ugliness. [6 Apr 1990, p.22]

Those who love books, picturesque English villages and getting lost in actors’ faces should be very happy

An oddly overblown, semi-operatic adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s once-banned 1964 novel about life among the abused prostitutes, lonely sailors, lonelier drag queens, repressed homosexuals and gay-bashing pimps along the hellish waterfront district of Brooklyn in 1952. [11 May 1990, p.22]

The plot may be nothing special, but Reynolds most certainly is. He’s just so relatable, genial, nice, in an unforced sort of way that he makes the movie, which he also produced, a fun ride.

None of these stories feel monumental, and all of them resolve themselves neatly in a quarter-hour or so. But they have a kindness to them; a way of seeing people as they are, with their flaws and their goodness.

Already nicknamed "This Is Spinal Rap," this clever fake-documentary should delight both those who love rap music and those who feel it's been given a free ride by music critics for far too long. [17 Jun 1994, p.E3]

There’s nothing special about any of this, but as a generic thrill machine, Plane certainly delivers the goods.

Neither Spader nor Amick can get past the generic nature of the characters they're playing, nor can they make up for Kazan's timid approach to their supposedly steamy love scenes. The nude Spader is so carefully draped and arranged that he could be posing for a soft-core parody, while Amick resorts to doing an impersonation of a haughty 1940s glamour queen. [6 May 1994, p.D31]

Most important: The volume of bloodletting is undeniably impressive and frequently explosive, and the filmmakers effectively employ a lot of creepy remixes of the “Swan Lake” theme.

Ronan and Howle are tremendous in their performances, especially in the way they physically inhabit the characters, transforming from free and unabashed to tense and closed. The bedroom drama, which is almost theatrical in its setting, is riveting thanks to these two actors, and makes the film worthy of regard.

Life and death is one big joke in The Monkey, with the sense that Perkins is manically cackling along while he never skimps on the craft to make it all hit brutal pay dirt.

An engaging picture brimming with uplift.

You leave Touched with Fire wishing there were a little more to it — the screenplay needed to flesh out Carla and Marco a bit more as people, rather than Bipolar Poets in Love — but undeniably moved.

There are plot levels here that are deeper than the original, which is quite complex and moving in its own right.

The first-time director and co-writer, John Dahl, has a veteran's assurance. He knows exactly what he wants from the actors, how to stage the tricky action, how to keep the plot comprehensible, how to use the Nevada/Arizona locations to suggest the aridness of the characters' lives. He doesn't break any new ground with Kill Me Again, but he does establish himself as a filmmaker to watch. [04 May 1990, p.3]

Co-writer and director Lars Kraume brings muted colors and a claustrophobic, urgent energy to the procedural part of this story, while reminding us that not every moral hero looks like Captain America — in fact, like Bauer, they can be a rumpled, misanthropic mess.

It plants its gaze on Lee — and on Elliott, who takes The Hero in his hands and makes something quietly moving from it.

This Night and the City is alive and kicking, and Winkler's got a lot of interesting physical and behavioral detail packed into his frame. But by walking the fence between comedy and desperation, this film denies the hellish certainty of the original, rendering itself harmless and weak in the process.

There are moments now and then that register, particularly early in the movie when we meet the regulars on the musical-impersonator circuit.

The action is fierce, kinetic and basically nonstop in “Fire and Ash.” The ending sequence goes on a bit too long (as does the movie in general, at 195 minutes), but it’s all generally entertaining, if you forgive the fact that the spectacle replaces the story for the most part.

Oleanna the movie remains faithful to the charged 1992 play in Mamet's original Off Broadway production. It features outstanding performances by a pair of expert actors. And Andrzej Sekula's beautiful cinematography firmly inserts their encounters into the musty, hallowed interiors of an Ivy League college. [04 Nov 1994, p.i34]

When greed runs up against conscience, you’ve got a story. It does in Triple Frontier, and the story of that collision is a violent and thought-provoking one.

The characterizations now seem a tad thin, but Ives still impresses, and so does Charlton Heston as the most conflicted character, caught in the middle of this Cold War allegory about two feuding families and an outsider (Gregory Peck) with pacifist leanings. [29 Feb 1996, p.D3]

There’s a funny, offbeat movie lurking in the details here.

Overall, Heart Eyes has a winning formula, but maybe don’t expect it to sweep you off your feet.