With so much covered superficially here, little is covered well. But the film moves fast, with the cafe becoming a viable - even vital - character. [30 Dec 1991, p.4D]

Dickerson's direction seems more assured as Juice progresses, but by then, the film has become less a dilemma movie than a melodramatically conventional revenge piece. [17 Jan 1992, p.4D]

Although delayed several months for fine-tuning, Freejack hijacks any potential cult status with drab visuals and a lousy score. Even Jagger fans aren't going to get much satisfaction out of that. [20 Jan 1992, p.4D]

Cradle settles for saying ''boo'' when it could have said a lot more about parental fears. [10 Jan 1992, p.4D]

Sleeper is the best Schrader-directed film since the dashed promise of his Blue Collar debut in 1978. [21 Aug 1992, p.4D]

Naked Lunch is so well-acted and so amusingly warped that it's a shoo-in to become a cult movie. [30 Dec 1991]

Writer/director Julie Dash pours on sounds, music and costuming for a tone more impressionistic than dramatic - and more somnambulant than either. She might have gotten away with it for 80 minutes, but merciless Dust closes in on the two-hour mark, a structural shambles in the too-earnest American Playhouse tradition. [1 April 1992, p.6D]

Canyon is similarly slick, though even more heavy-handed in hammering home its points. [26 Dec 1991]

Nolte has his moments and is the reason to see the film, but he won't quite be the fait accompli shoo-in once Tides' Oscar panhandling begins. [24 Dec 1991, p.1D]

It's easier to take Hi-Heel Sneakers by Tommy Tucker- more seriously. [20 Dec 1991]

A few bits are filler, albeit funny filler. But those who would rather laugh than cry at weddings ( will say "I do'' to Bride. [20 Dec 1991, p.1D]

JFK is provocative, a technical primer and an ensemble treat with unusually well- realized star cameos. [20 Dec 1991]

Bugsy is a gangster film around the edges, a '40s love song down the middle, and the year's breeziest live-actor movie through and through. [13 Dec 1991, p.1D]

Directed by Tony Scott (Top Gun) with his usual testosterone-injected verve, Scout is never boring but hardly edifying. With a nod to the '90s, the formula does digress to allow the pals to expose their emotional wounds to each other. [13 Dec 1991, p.4D]

Individually, the episodes aren't much, but it's impressive that Jarmusch even pulled off the logistics. [01 May 1992, p.7D]

Peter Pan is the boy who wouldn't grow up, and Hook is the movie that grows unbearable once a grown-up Peter arrives in Neverland with a merciless 90 minutes to go. [11 Dec. 1991, p.1D]

Star Trek was never about gizmos, but about relationships - both among its crew members and with its audience. Star Trek VI more than upholds the tradition, making it a satisfying send-off for a mighty ship of foils. [6 Dec. 1991, p.1D]

Chlumsky's devotion to Culkin, a lovable wimp given to milk mustaches, sets us up for an emotional rainstorm. Only the strong will escape without a tear. [27 Nov 1991, p.1D]

It's at once funny, exciting, tearful and tuneful. [13 Nov 1991, p.1D]

Any qualms that The Addams Family movie might be more creaky than kooky quickly evaporate, like mist over a still-toasty cadaver. [22 Nov 1991, p.1D]

Kafka is in glorious black and white, except for an extended color sequence near the end that recalls the visual transition in "The Wizard of Oz." The comparison is even more apropos: This middling pigmentary stunt has a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of mood, and too much put-on wizardry at its center. [4 Dec. 1991, p.5D]

Sweet (maybe) - but also painful (for sure). So painful that it's initially easy to resist this slice-of-Middlesex-life from Brit director Mike Leigh. Yet gradually, a mom, a dad and late-teen twins prove overwhelmingly winning through sheer willpower. Theirs, and the willpower of an idiosyncratic filmmaker who loves his characters no matter what. [24 Dec. 1991, p.4D]

Truth is, Idaho is nothing but set pieces; tossed into a mix whose meaning is almost certainly private. [27 Sept 1991]

Vanilla Ice was fairly amusing striking terror into Debbie Gibson when they were perversely cast as co-presenters on the last Grammy telecast. On the big screen, though, he all but exudes irreversible brain damage, as if he's taken too many noggin spills off a motorcycle. [25 Oct 1991, p.4D]

Last time, director Garry Marshall gave us the fairy tale with Pretty Woman. This time, he gets the story right. [11 Oct 1991, p.1D]

This tough and unsparing film feels authentic; the cops are ever-railing against the FBI, and have sickly skin tones that probably result from too many bad burgers on the run. Homicide is provocative and, in its first hour, even hilarious. Its prestigious closing slot at the just-completed New York Film Festival was deserved. [10 Oct 1991, p.4D]

Instead of Hitchcockian flair, there's Silver-ian excess: Women treated like meat, maimings in close-up, plot craters. [07 Oct 1991, p.4D]

Jenny Wingfield's script is ripe enough to include icky man-in-the-moon allusions; mom Tess Harper's pregnancy seems tacked-on; and the climax is pat melodramatic sap. But Sam Waterston (as dad) has his moments. [04 Oct 1991, p.6D]