Credit McGlone for humanizing and even making funny one of the most insufferable big-screen boors in recent memory. Cheating on his wife, doing what he can to undermine his older brother's already rocky marriage, McGlone is setting himself up for a fall. Burns' lower-key acting style makes him a cool straight man during their frequent bandyings, into which dad Mahoney (also abandoned by his wife) always adds his own two cents. You probably have to love a guy who claims that his failure to believe in God isn't enough to keep him from being a good Catholic. [23 Aug 1996]

The movie keeps switching focus without ever getting its bearings, and when Brando exits earlier than expected, there's little but mayhem to fall back on. Moreau and mayhem are synonymous, to be sure, but we already know this going in. [23 Aug 1996]

Costner and Russo show they're up to par. [16 August 1996, p.D1]

Though the music is helping market the movie, it's really an omnipresent backdrop to the two intersecting stories. Audibly and visibly, Kansas City nearly equals Ed Wood for period verisimilitude. Yet it's also character-driven, in particular by the women stars. [16 Aug 1996, p.4D]

Even our bony host the Crypt Keeper, who never met a pun he didn't like, might declare Bordello just plain whore-ible. [16 Aug 1996, p.4D]

The movie meanders without a rudimentary sense of the dramatic, yet it remains intermittently interesting thanks to a surprisingly voluminous cast of usual suspects from the world of independent cinema. [14 Aug 1996 Pg.09.D]

For director/co-writer John Carpenter, it's a chance for career renewal. For eyepatched lead and co-writer Kurt Russell, it's a fitfully amusing lark, a harmlessly retro career move and a second audition for any future Rooster Cogburn parts. [09 Aug 1996, p.3D]

Emma is the peak of the recent Austen pack and a star-maker, too -- an antidote to a summer in which even good movies have subordinated writing and characters to special effects. [02 Aug 1996, Pg.01.D]

Not for kids, silly. The little devils will devour this deviously delicious assault on abusive authority figures like the cake gobbled by the story's gluttonous schoolboy. [02 Aug 1996, p.1D]

The movie is so uninvolving that it inspires renewed respect for Broken Arrow, which was equally stupid but excitingly filmed. Though its sound effects will shake up your marrow, you can experience the same effect by plunking $ 100 worth of change into a rumbling bed at the nearest seedy motel. [2 Aug 1996]

A handsome but riotously cluttered melodrama with maybe 145 subplots, it's the latest and least in a soulless string of preordained multiplex hits from the John Grisham warehouse. [24Jul1996 Pg. 10.B]

A movie that rudely flings feces at the breakfast table isn't for everyone.

It's a mess with sporadic flashes of creativity. Someone should have gone back to the drawing board. [19 July 1996, p.13D]

But when material is this fragile, virtually every scene is obligated to click for the result to become something special. Ultimately, this walking and talking comes perilously close to becoming a gab-fest treadmill. [26 Jul 1996, Pg.04.D]

My hope is that if they do a sequel, they focus on No. 4. Love the way he carries pizza wedges in his wallet [17 July 1996]

A rousing state-of-the-art cartoon capped by an aerial-combat climax that, to its credit, isn't anti-climactic. [2 July 1996, p.D1]

Phenomenon is a fantasy about super-intelligence that works best if you can switch off your brain. Those who can will reach weepy nirvana. Those who can't will find this sticky-sweet wallow a bit, well, dumb. [03 Jul 1996 Pg.01.D]

But it does mine Murphy's gifts, and the payoff is both nutty and funny. Sometimes even touching, too. [28Jun1996 Pg.01.D]

[A] socially conscious sprawler... Sayles' latest never bores during its 21/4-hour unreeling. But neither does it soar, despite finessing a complex flashback narrative set in 1957 and present-day. [21 June 1996, p.3D]

The middling result, diverting while it lasts but too silly to recommend, is merely this week's funhouse action pic. [21 Jun 1996 Pg.01.D]

Filmmakers of Bernardo Bertolucci's magnitude don't often take on sexual coming-of-age movies, but judging from the pleasures of Stealing Beauty, maybe more of them should. [14 Jun 1996 Pg.04.D]

Poor Ben Stiller can't distill the darkness, slapstick and fantasy into a consistent directorial tone, but the leads' expert give-and-take make the movie far from unbearable. [14 June 1996, p.1D]

Buried under an avalanche of action. (1996 June 7, pg. D1)

Friedberg, who previously made Nielsen's golfing video and rental car commercials, knows only the low road -- and gets lost anyway. [24 May 1996, Pg.04.D]

Stylish, brisk but lacking in human dimension despite an attractive cast. [22 May 1996, p. D1]

A summer crowd-pleaser worthy of its wind.

Coy to a fault, the movie collapses under its own weight with 90 minutes to go, despite Robby Muller's impressive black-and-white photography, which puts the film on a higher artistic plane than other equally unbearable movies. [16 May 1996, Pg.06.D]

Who, though, would assume rambunctious humor would be served up as well? Dickens meets the Beverly Hillbillies, and the movie is handsome, too. [10 May 1996, p.4D]

A cool and clinical reportorial remembrance whose very title reminds us who Solanas was. [3 May 1996, p. 10D]

Potty humor to spare. [26 July 1996, p. D4]

Though its romantic-comedy triangle borrows heavily from Cyrano de Bergerac, the film has more in common with Three's Company. A shame, since Dogs boasts more than a few stray pleasures. [26Apr1996, Pg. 04.D]

Happily, MacLaine (who can pull off these lovable eccentric dowagers while she's sleeping) and Fraser, showcasing a previously untapped flair for romantic comedy, keep Lake on her toes. [19 Apr 1996, p.1D]

The film is funnier off court than sizzling on it, the preferred balance in a broad farce that's only in it for the laughs. Irrelevant to real life but performed with enough gusto to justify somebody's 91 minutes, it at least allows the actors to hold their heads up. Not with pride, but not with shame, either. [19 Apr 1996]

Pure wish-fulfillment for Shaq-watchers who can't get enough of their 7-foot-1 basketball hero. [17 July 1996, p. 9D]

A film that wins on 'Courage' of its convictions. {12 July 1996, p. D1]

James is a stunner with a breathtaking array of eye-teasers. [12 Apr 1996]

As a forum for its actors and for the big-screen directorial debut of multi-Emmy winner Gregory Hoblit, the film is up to the job.

It's likely to be overrated by some and underrated by others, and both contingents will be wrong. One can't, however, overrate the performances, with auntie ruling the roost in more ways than one. [29 Mar 1996, p.4D]

Director Jonathan Lynn has had his hits (My Cousin Vinny) and stinkeroos (Greedy). This falls in between. [29 Mar 1996, p.4D]

Welcome to the Dollhouse does, with accessible dark comedy and chilling honesty, reminding us right off that school-cafeteria agonies only begin with the cuisine. [24 May 1996 Pg.04.D]

Spike Lee deserved a vacation after putting himself through the grueling emotions of Clockers, but Girl 6 is too flimsy to excuse even as cinematic R&R. Frenetic but lazily conceived, it's like one of those puny low-budget toss-offs Brian De Palma used to spring on us when he thought nobody was looking. [22 Mar 1996, p.4D]

Put an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of word processors, and one of them may indeed write War and Peace, as the old theory goes. But more likely, they'll come up with something like David Mickey Evans' screenplay for Ed. [15 Mar 1996, p.5D]

Lean, mean and mordant black comedy.

Light as a feather. [8 March 1996, p.D1]

Secret isn't the usual romp, but it's Almodovar's most committed work in years. [7 Mar 1996]

Unlike glossier renderings of twentysomething love, Eric Schaeffer's If Lucy Fell at least elicits the heartfelt goodwill of a messy homemade valentine. [8 March 1996]

Talk about the limitations of using the four-star rating system to assess a movie both glorious and dreadful, with the dreadful components glorious as well in their own bent way. [23 Feb 1996, p.1D]

Mary Reilly, a perversely courageous disaster that audiences will simply hate. [23 Feb 1996]

Rocket flies with comic-kaze crooks. [21 February 1996, p. D6]

Slap Happy. [16 February 1996, p.D4]

Geena Davis and Renny Harlin couldn't cut it with Cutthroat Island. Steven Spielberg nearly got the hook for Hook. But leave it to Miss Piggy and Kermit to discover uncharted gold in the shipwrecked-pirate genre. With felt-covered cohorts like Fozzie Bear and human co-stars like Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous, the cross-species duo pulls off the rollicking Muppet Treasure Island with only a bump or two. [16 Feb 1996, p.4D]

Easy to tumble for. [9 February 1996, p.D4]

Though John Travolta and Christian Slater don boxing gloves to open the dippy but zippy Broken Arrow, the real slugfest in director John Woo's elaborately mounted action pic is between content and style. Call it a draw, and call the movie's content a Speed derivative. [9 Feb 1996, p.1D]

The 15-minute squall is spectacular and the movie's partial redeemer - the minimum you'd hope for in a movie called White Squall, don't you think? [02 Feb 1996]

Mowing the lawn might be more involving than watching this subpar sci-fi sequel, which manages to be complicated and witless at the same time. [15 Jan 1996, p.4D]

This savage parody of the many recent coming-of-age-in-the-ghetto melodramas is rude, crude and outrageous. It's as likely to elicit gasps from the politically correct as chuckles from the impossible-to-shock. [15 Jan 1996, p.4D]

A Hitchcockian chase...A crowd-pleasing airport-pursuit pic. [27 Dec 1995, p.D1]

Happily, there's nothing to misconstrue about the film: It's fabulous.

This warm-weather variation on the original, once again set in a small Minnesota town, is in dire need of Geritol. Or a dose of ginseng. Or Ex-Lax. Anything to get things moving faster than this turgid replay. [22 Dec 1995, p.3D]

If the sight of half-naked, tattooed sailors firing cannons at each other shivers your timbers, climb aboard. Even passable pirate movies don't sail by every day. [22 Dec 1995, p.3D]

Shanghai Triad concludes the sublime seven-movie collaboration of Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li with a bang worthy of the most jubilant New Year's Eve.

Oliver Stone's Nixon humanizes a reviled but respected subject for over three hours - dynamically at times, but finally so solemnly that it becomes a grind-you-down dirge. The maker of Natural Born Killers actually concludes with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Shenandoah - without irony. [20 Dec 1995, p.1D]

Heat is in the cop-movie pantheon with Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low," and that's as "right" as the genre gets.

Based on a popular children's book by Chris Van Allsburg and directed by that "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" guy Joe Johnston, Jumanji is a calculated but very entertaining special effects extravaganza. [15Dec1995 Pg. 01.D]

But this telling of the story filmed on location in the now democratic South Africa is especially heart-rending thanks to superb performances by James Earl Jones and Richard Harris. [1 Jan 2000]

At its best, the movie is coldly clever with a few brilliant warmer moments - as when someone drops an Alka Seltzer into the tank to soothe the Brain. [14 Dec 1995]

To redo such a sentimental gem without Hepburn's incandescence to light the way seems foolhardy at best, but director Sydney Pollack (Tootsie) miraculously almost pulls off his updated homage simply by choosing well and popping enough champagne corks to make us believe the wealthy are still glamorous despite Donald Trump. [15 Dec 1995, p.1D]

Thompson has had the good sense and sensitivity to get Austen right, while letting Winslet steal the show.

a painful though sadly humorous portrait of sisterhood deftly written by Leigh's mom, Barbara Turner, and directed with just-right spareness by Ulu Grosbard. [08 Dec 1995]

Martin, Keaton and cinematographer William A. Fraker put this retro fluff over better than expected early on, but hour 2 is only for those who don't want their equilibriums rattled by surprises. [8 Dec 1995, p.1D]

Colorful. [1 December 1995, p.D13]

An authentic-looking Jeff Bridges goes for the grit in an incoherently arty rendering (full of fuzzy-focus black-and-white flashbacks) filmed by action veteran Walter Hill. [01 Dec 1995, p.13D]

A 2-hour classic wrongfully stretched into three.

The first all computer-animated feature, which brings a bedroom of playthings to bouncy life, is yummy eye candy spiked with 3-D-style tactile treats.

A super cast injects it with Teddy Roosevelt vitality. [17 Nov 1995, p.D1]

The musical score is a dud, and the film is one firebomb too long. But GoldenEye's vision is 20/20 when it comes to reviving a legend. [17Nov1995 Pg.01.D]

A rote variation on Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper that is marginally salvaged by those spunky Olsen twins from ABC's Full House. [17 Nov 1995]

The movie is repetitious in some ways and superficial in others. But though Penn doesn't always seem to know where he's going, his movie doesn't altogether miss its destination. [15 Nov 1995, Pg.05.D]

But the best moments are in the trailer (the squirting skunk, the asparagus in the teeth), and they are funnier in short doses than lazily strung together. [10 Nov 1995 Pg. 01.D]

Allen's connective scenes are slack and barely functional, and even his asides lack bite.

But director Jodie Foster and writer W.D.Richter aren't content to serve the usual Planes, Trains and Cliches at their Thanksgiving feast. With her keen actor's instincts, Foster piles on plenty for her terrific cast to chew on and for us to savor. [03 Nov 1995, Pg.01.D]

Deliberately downbeat, it's best as a two-person character study, stumbling a bit whenever it extends its parameters.

Copycat, despite two tough-babe leads to kill for, flies in more directions than scattered kitty litter. [27 Oct 1995, pg.02D]

Not even scaremeister director Wes Craven can awaken this story. Murphy's pale efforts are enough to make one fondly recall Blacula. Now that was one sucker who knew how to make a film that didn't. [27 Oct 1995, p.4D]

Though it sounds like a blueprint for either disaster or dynamite, the movie is a bit too controlled to be either.

The slapstick would put Curly and Moe to shame. The raunch is crude as often as it is clever.

It wallows queasily in its high-tech violence and is woefully anti-climactic; if you think director Kathryn Bigelow doesn't know when to quit, just think back to her sky-diving folly Point Break. The audio-visual ka-boom here befits James Cameron's producing-writing co-credits, but little else justifies Days' prime Saturday-Sunday slot in the New York Film Festival. [6 Oct 1995, p.4D]

Jade recalls Sliver (even before its fizzled finale) by reuniting Eszterhas with producer Robert Evans, the faded genius and ill-pegged comeback producer who fared better with last year's lively autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture. Judging from his last two movies, the aging kid stays on the D-list, too.

Moviegoers of rarefied sensibilities will easily identify this anti-captain-of-industry as a "typical Eric Stoltz role," just as moviegoers of extremely rarefied sensibilities will pick up on Kicking's "typical Chris Eigeman role." [23 Oct 1995, Pg.06.D]

It's a hoary Chinatown knock-off wrapped in a seductively novel black-culture veneer, with a dash of Laura added for bad measure. [29 Sept 1995, p.01.D]

Not since Tuesday Weld in "Pretty Poison" has an actress so played off her fresh-faced beauty for such pointed black-comic effect.

Director David Fincher shovels on more gloom than even the serial killer genre can sustain in the murkily moody, but self-defeating, Seven.

Who knew such a seamy swim in the misogynistic swill of life could be so entertaining?

Recalls the pumped-up energy of "Pump Up the Volume," as well as its casting prowess.

Yet because this adaptation of Franz Lidz's childhood memoir is odd enough and even stylish enough to attract a small following, you might want to weigh my ingrained dyspepsia before electing not to see it. [15 Sep 1995]

Lee captures the despair, self-delusion, occasional terror and frequent humor of a praised and popular novel, aided by the potent acting his direction virtually guarantees. [13 Sep 1995, p.01.D]

The stars at least keep Wong Foo watchable. [08 Sep 1995, p.7D]