This is a confident, playful film that skewers both the amorality of the central character and, less comfortably, the gullibility of the people he so easily dupes. [5 Dec 1997, p.G5]

She's So Lovely works best as an actors' showcase. The ordinarily reserved Robin Wright Penn goes through a transformation not unlike Mia Farrow's complete makeover in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose; she's never been brassier or funnier. [29 Aug 1997]

Well-intentioned but hulky and lumbering, "Steel" falls somewhere between the cacophony of "Batman & Robin" and the tepid Robert Townsend vehicle "Meteor Man." With a size-22 shoe, it just keeps stepping on its own feet.

Blackboard Jungle created this genre (and most of its cliches) more than 40 years ago. 187 doesn't add much more than outrage and resignation. [30 Jul 1997]

The first-time writer-director, Miguel Arteta, does a remarkable job of drawing us into this destructive world and making its rules and rituals seem casual and almost natural. [8 Aug 1997, p.G10]

What a dynamite cast. What a savvy director. And what a soggy comedy they're all stuck in. [02 July 1997, p.E5]

It's light and fizzy and fun without once calling attention to the fact that a lot of hard work went into it (Gerald Scarfe's sharp production design keeps it from looking quite like any other Disney cartoon). [27 June 1997, p.F1]

Compelling epic filmmaking.

Fans of Crystal and Williams certainly will enjoy the pairing, but this is far from their most inspired work.

The 42-year-old Assayas demonstrates an assured light touch here, drawing expert comic performances from Cheung, Richard and Ogier while using a 16mm hand-held camera to lend the film a live, experimental quality. It dovetails neatly with a surreal and quite hilarious ending that carries the technique - and Vidal's cinematic pretensions - to their logical conclusion. [26 Sept 1997]

The format couldn't be slighter or more familiar, yet this Australian film-festival favorite is one of the freshest romantic comedies of the season. [11 Apr 1997, p.F5]

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]

Jungle 2 Jungle is better than expected, yet not quite good enough. [07 Mar 1997, p.F1]

The young writer-director, Greg Mottola, deals forthrightly with trust and betrayal and the destructive tensions in family relationships, whether they're well-worn or freshly hurtful. But he never loses his sense of perspective or humor, and neither does his cast. [04 Apr 1997]

Neither the sophisticated teen comedy it wants to be nor the routine Disney slapstick number it sometimes becomes, it doesn't know what it is. [14 Feb 1997]

Simultaneously smart and myopic, sneaky and forgetful, the mother Debbie Reynolds plays in Albert Brooks' Mother always keeps you guessing. [10 Jan 1997, p.F1]

"Metro" could easily have been subtitled "Beverly Hills Cop 4."

The result is the kind of competent, earnest, well-made but unexciting film that could just as easily have been produced for television. [20 Dec 1996]

Techine never quite makes the crime element stick here. It seems unnecessary, imposed on the material, an unnatural outgrowth of a series of relationships that have more to do with dysfunctional family ties and midlife readjustments.[17 Jan 1997]

It takes a special actor's grace to survive a script as lame as My Fellow Americans, and James Garner has it. Without appearing to break a sweat, Garner makes each grotesquely desperate attempt at humor look smooth and assured. In his hands, everything seems funnier than it is.

This $80 million disaster epic takes us back to the simple, tacky pleasures of Irwin Allen's "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "The Towering Inferno" (1974), although Allen's blockbusters had more of a feeling for character and mythic resonance than "Daylight" ever demonstrates. [6 Dec 1996]

In the end, the movie reaffirms the importance of standing up for truth, and not betraying one's friends - the two most obvious morals at hand, though behavior no one could take for granted during the Communist-baiting "witch hunts" of the 1950s that Miller lived through. Too bad, though, that The Crucible fails to probe deeper into the sexual, religious, and political conditions that can give false accusations so much power - even today.

Toy Story approached toy frenzy from the toys' point of view while craftily exploring the media-driven delusions of that Turbo Man-like doll, Buzz Lightyear. Jingle All the Way had that kind of potential, but somewhere along the way the filmmakers lost all perspective. [22 Nov 1996, p.F7]

Spike Lee's liveliest, funniest, most confident movie in years, Get On the Bus suggests that he should stick to political confrontations as the basis for his stories. [16 Oct 1996, p.E3]

Buscemi gets such fine ensemble work out of his actors that you never doubt that Tommy and his friends, family and ex-friends are united by one thing. They've spent far too much time together. [25 Oct 1996, p.F6]

Miscast and nervously directed. [11 Oct 1996]

A soothing 76-minute respite from the noisy clutter of Hollywood's holiday-oriented movies, Microcosmos invites us to "fall silent" while it shows us the spectacularly exotic sights of a world almost beneath our notice, where "time passes differently." [22 Nov 1996]

With at least a third of the rapid-fire dialogue in English, the film covers a lot of social and moral ground on the way to its sweet conclusion. [13 May 1996, p.E]