This time the filmmakers seem to have forgotten everything they knew, and have endeared themselves only to Ms. Moore, who walked away from this ghastly fiasco with more money than most people could earn in two lifetimes.

But clever casting, and inspirational dieting, can't make up for this poor little rich girl's shortcomings as a comedienne. Under Mr. Benjamin's vulgar tutelage, she portrays Connie's coarseness coarsely, with an accent that seems to have come from Ida Lupino by way of Madonna. [19 Apr 1996, p.A11]

Quick cuts, jangly ’80 synth music and an impressive pool-hall tracking shot distinguish the picture, but the familiar tropes of Hong Kong cinema, including predictable fight sequences and a moralizing conclusion, subtract from its appeal.

A wispy, fundamentally sentimental tale about a nice girl who has to support herself by working as a phone-sex siren, Spike Lee's movie takes the better part of an hour to get started. Once it does it still can't dramatize the script's one good idea. [2 Apr 1996, p.A12]

The movie's metaphorical dimensions rarely interfere with the concrete, quirky pleasures of its story. The Flower of My Secret is Mr. Almodovar's most entertaining work since his phenomenal "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." [15 Mar 1996]

Since Mary rarely gets to see any of the good stuff, neither do we; Dr. Jekyll hides most of his switcheroos behind closed doors. [23 Feb 1996]

Joy has been replaced by a sense of laboriousness, even though the action sequences move along energetically enough and the movie does have moments of comic-book charm. [9 Feb 1996, p.A12]

The failures of White Squall are dismaying as well as perplexing. Director Ridley Scott serves up some ravishing images along the way: the stark geometry of the ship's riggings against an azure sky, crew kids scampering along a verdant ridge toward a volcano's silvery crater lake. But the script is a shambles. [06 Feb 1996]

Since Mr. Stone is a prisoner of his penchant for pop-psychologizing on a cosmic scale, his movie has the astounding effect of absolving President Nixon of personal guilt for his crimes and misdeeds without bothering to explain what he did wrong. [21 Dec 1995, p.A12]

Unstrung Heroes is a revelation. [15 Sep 1995]

For all its rich trappings, A Little Princess is impoverished at the core. [18 May 1995, p.A14]

Amateur is curiously monotone: a pulp fiction with all the pulp strained out. [13 Apr 1995]

Crumb pulls us in with rich detail, and with what it says, or suggests, about art, drugs, psychology and the subconscious.... Like last year's "Hoop Dreams," this documentary does justice to a great subject. [08 Jun 1995]

It's beautiful to watch, but it doesn't cover very much ground. Sumptuously appointed, meticulously detailed, the film sallies forth - and sags. [06 Apr 1995]

Ms. Stone. She alternates between two expressions here: sullen, and aghast. Then again, if you were listed on the credits as the co-producer of this violently dull piece of shlock, you'd look that way, too. [16 Feb 1995, p.A12]

This clever thriller has the juiced-up, hyperactive feel of a rock video. [07 Mar 1995]

Nobody fares well in this movie about sibling rivalry, doomed love and fringed suede. [05 Jan 1995]

Higher Learning put me in mind of a long lecture by a well-meaning but dull professor. What he has to say may be worthwhile, but it's delivered with plodding predictability. [12 Jan 1995, p.A12]

The oddballs of Mixed Nuts are oddly lackluster -- starting with Mr. Martin, who ambles through the movie with a stunned look on his face. [22 Dec 1994, p.A12]

Ms. Armstrong's Little Women, which has enough sugar to make your teeth sing, if not your heart. [29 Dec 1994]

I didn't mind the preposterousness of the premise nearly so much as the general ineptness with which it's presented. After all, good trash has its place. [8 Dec 1994, p.A16]

With his co-writer, Randy Sue Coburn, and composer Mark Isham, director Alan Rudolph has created a sense of time and place that authentically conveys what it might have been like when writers were celebrities and special effects came from words. [10 Jan 1995, p.A18]

Rough around the edges, it's humor decidedly sophomoric in parts. But that's part of its charm. [19 Jan 1995, p.A16(E)]

The most imaginative movie to come along in ages. [18 Oct 1994, p.A14(W)]

A brilliant mess, I suppose, in the way that seriously disturbed people can sometimes deliver a briefly mesmerizing vision of the universe while babbling. If nothing else, Natural Born Killers is the most in-your-face movie ever released by a major Hollywood studio. [25 Aug 1994, p.A10]

Like the "girls," the movie is flamboyant in almost every respect - the costumes, the humor and the sentimentality. [1 Sep 1994]

These are very small pleasures, indeed, that can be taken as gasps of air in a movie that unwinds for what seems like forever in a complete vacuum. [23 Jun 1994, p.A12]

The director Penny Marshall has a gently persuasive touch that keeps the movie's most brazen manipulations from being too offensive. [02 Jun 1994]