If, at odd moments, The Rock is better than tolerable, it is usually because of its stars.

For better or for worse the movie belongs to Sheen, who does manage to generate enough intensity to hold writer-director David Twohy's unwieldy story together. [31 May 1996, p.D6]

Another product from Industrial Light & Magic, this fire-breathing, soaring creature is a technical wonder to behold. But they've skimped on everything else. The script douses the movie's fiery potential and director Rob Cohen soaks all remaining embers with his cheap, made-for-TV direction.

Nielsen earns a few giggles with his big entrance and later on his even bigger belly, but he can't overcome the lousy material.

Humorless, charmless and flat.

An unimaginative boy-and-his-mammal saga with only tenuous connection to the old television series of the same name.

Twister not only blows, it sucks, too.

Bad movies have a way of writing their own epitaphs.

Thanks to Schlesinger's exacting direction and Malcolm Bradbury's witty, restrained script, these characters are kept more amusing than horribly pitiable.

Lee elevates herself from the lower echelon of mere international super-babedom to the loftier realm of pulp myth. She is "It" with an exclamation mark.

Despite all their toil and trouble, the tale leaves us more bothered than bewitched.

Obstreperous, male-bashing pain in the patoot.

Without a doubt, mainstream moviegoers will be revolted by the nastiness of it all.

Written by former deejay Audrey Wells, the observant and funny script includes some wonderful scenes for the leading ladies.

A sort of empty hat. Patterned after such noir classics as "The Big Sleep" and "Chinatown," the film is written in an arch, self-consciously hard-boiled style by novelist Pete Dexter that comes close to parody.

Ricki Lake makes an appealing, though unlikely, fairy tale heroine in the derivative romance Mrs. Winterbourne: If only this stale trifle didn't call for the bewitching or pixilating, for the abracadabra of a Bullock or a Pfeiffer. For a Cinderella story, it's sorely without magic.

A flat-out hilarious celebration of B-moviemaking mastery. [19 Apr 1996, p.G06]

Shrill and slovenly opus.

Not only is the picture woefully short on laughs, it's also coarse, overbearing and, in places, downright insulting.

The Substitute is a sour experience—bloody, ugly and exploitative.

Alas, the movie's producers could use a genie of their own. Surely, if granted three wishes, they could have produced a better film.

I sat through "Courage" with interest, but I wasn't particularly moved or riveted with suspense.

Fear is pretty much a cheap-thrills fix; the ideas, such as they are, function as window dressing. Still, cheap though these thrills may be, they are genuinely thrilling.

Imaginative, slightly creepy, but tremendously appealing to all ages. It's ripe to bursting with visual effects a heady combination of stop-motion and computer-generated imagery. And it has a delightful cast of personable bugs and larvae, all bound for New York City via floating fruit.

The special twist-which Paramount Pictures has implored critics not to divulge-redefines the story completely. It also ruins everything.

The potential for hokum is there, but Duvall and co-star James Earl Jones capably avoid the sticky pitfalls of Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton's sugar-cured script.

Technically, Ghost in the Shell is astonishing, not only for its smooth meld of cell animation and state-of-the-art computer animation, but also for its imaginative storytelling and mood-setting (thanks to an eerie, non-thumping score by Kenji Kawai).

A definite improvement. However, whatever gains this adaptation makes are due entirely to the inspired goofiness of its star, Steve Martin, and not to anything that director Jonathan Lynn or screenwriter Andy Breckman may have contributed.

Writer-director David O. Russell's exhilarating follow-up to "Spanking the Monkey," is even wilder, giddier and more unpredictable than that irreverent debut.

Writer-director Todd Solondz is far from clueless when it comes to the agonies of early adolescence, which he mercilessly re-creates in his caustic suburban comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse.

Girl 6 is such a mundane, flat comedy.

Ed...is thrown together with such little concern for originality or its audience, it's appalling.

Writers Jim and John Thomas and first-time director Stuart Baird have come up with a surprisingly deft variation on the airplane hijack genre, one that relies on subterfuge and suspense rather than explosives and body counts even though Steven Seagal is in it.

The brothers, who have always seemed fond of their characters, have never taken quite so overt a stand for life's simple joys.

A spirited remake of the French drag farce, has everything in place, from eyeliner to one-liner.

The picture seems muted, the flower's petals a little brown at the edges.

Despite its fragmentary, seat-of-the-pants plot, Chungking Express abounds with staccato style and frenetic charm. It's the cinematic equivalent of popcorn on a hot stove. There are "jump-cut" shots, freeze frames, stirring (and often beautiful) images and a general sense of boundless energy, all of which capture perfectly the Zeitgeist of Hong Kong society. [15 Mar 1996, p.N43]

They are also bloody and sadistic. There are two basic gore effects: In one, heavy chains fly through the air to impale people with sharp hooks, which then separate those people from their skin, or worse. Elsewhere, flesh crawls and melds with nearby flesh. There are also close-ups of various bloody, flesh-dripping tools and assorted maggots. All this is decidedly gross but not particularly frightening. [9 March 1996, p.H03]

Given these flaws, If Lucy Fell should be a chore, and yet I kept catching myself having a good time.

Though Down Periscope is set in the age of the nuclear submarine, the jokes seem to date back to the time of the original battle of the ironclads.

With his mop-top cut and silly grin, Chan cuts an amiable figure, but while this film may confirm his skills and appeal to those already familiar with his better work, it's not likely to convert anyone else.

Adapted from Valerie Martin's psychosexual novel, this maudlin film transforms the legend of Jekyll and Hyde into a talky romantic love triangle. [23 Feb 1996]

Gets by on quirky charm and slacker chic-but just barely.

A genial and surprisingly self-contained performance by Adam Sandler.

Kermit, who takes to the role of Smollet like a grunion to running, is commanding, but it is Piggy as Smollet's castaway flame who puts much-needed wind into the movie's luffing sails. Clad in a muumuu and clamshells, she sets Kermit's timbers a-shivering as in the old days. Their love for each other—like America's love for Muppets—is simply unsinkable.

The ultimate verdict on "City Hall" is easy: It's no good. The movie, a corruption-in-the-city saga starring Al Pacino, John Cusack and Bridget Fonda, ends on such a false, unsatisfying note, any faith you had built up in the movie is dashed. But that there's faith to lose in the first place is something of an achievement.

The movie is wry, touching and fun to sit through, thanks to Rosenberg's amusing script, Ted Demme's vital direction and zesty performances from everyone.

Broken Arrow, a deafening, brain-deadening action thriller, takes a mighty blase approach to nuking Denver.

Todd Robinson's script, alas, drags White Squall down. As directed by Ridley Scott, with a surplus of intrusive music and some manic overacting, the movie dips into cliches. [02 Feb 1996]

Writer Rupert Walters's episodic narrative is decidedly corny—especially the later chapters—and yes, it's as creaky as old bones. But its weaknesses are offset by the film's elaborate re-creation of plague-ridden London.

They're certainly no Aykroyd and Belushi, or even Myers and Carvey, but Farley and Spade manage to wring humor from a series of juvenile setups and predictable pratfalls. The belly laughs come easy when Farley's tumbling down a mountain or being dragged behind a car by his necktie. Director Penelope Spheeris ("Wayne's World") keeps up a head-banging pace, barreling past Spade's flat jokes and Farley's limited character range.

A plodding, aggressive film that is neither engaging, disturbing nor funny.

As the years flash by, Mr. Holland ultimately discovers that he has given the world something much more valuable than a symphony; he has touched thousands of lives with the gift of music . . . blah, blah, blah. It almost makes you wanna hurl.

A nonstop moronathon... Bio-Dome offers a pants-load of poop and masturbation jokes, deviant innuendo and simian sight gags destined to gross out and offend just about everyone.

A cheerful romp through a fussy New York hotel.

All in all, this is not a Jobe well done.

The trick is to make the already ridiculous completely outrageous. Sometimes the family succeeds, like in Keenen Ivory Wayans's 1988 spoof of '70s films I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Sometimes they fail, like in the waning days of the Fox television series In Living Color. In this movie, they succeed, for the most part.

This suspense drama, which stars Sally Field, Kiefer Sutherland and Joe Mantegna, tries desperately to press your vigilante buttons. But its manipulative agenda is so transparent, you don't know whether to take exception or laugh it off.

Two if by Sea, directed by Australian Bill Bennett, suffers from a symptom common to romantic comedies that begin after the couple have visited the haystack: There's simply no more sexual tension. Without it, you'd better be as good as Tracy and Hepburn.

A densely plotted, visually dynamic post-apocalyptic thriller.

What this intelligent, balanced, devastating movie puts before us is nothing less than a contest between good and evil.

Despite his occasional witticisms, the old grump is no great catch, and neither is this movie.

There's not much adventure on these high seas. This buccaneering boondoggle is more like a slow voyage aboard the PMS Pinafore. [22 Dec 1995, p.C06]

But this whore-and-the-innocent friendship, set in Shanghai during the 1930s, is too trite to pull us in. And the gangster scenario around it (Bi Feiyu wrote the script) is similarly unconvincing.

Nixon is an audacious biography rich in imagination and originality, with a provocative, often subversive sense of character and history. Dense and challenging, it is also undermined in places by Stone's obsessions just as dramatically as Richard Nixon was undermined by his.

Ultimately, though, the movie never transcends the limitations of its Hemingwayesque, men-with-men attitudes.

The script boasts more writers than the computerized menagerie's got megabytes, but they haven't come up with much variety or humor in what is essentially a string of catastrophes.

Alan Paton's haunting novel is brought rather splendidly to life in this moving production.

The remake, alas, must mask its failings with Julia Ormond's toothsomeness, Pollack's poky pacing and the uninspired scribblings of writers Barbara Benedek and David Rayfiel.

Lee, who made the upbeat "Eat Drink Man Woman," plays this double love story as brightly as possible. There's peppy social satire in the smallest of gestures.

Father of the Bride, Part II is a virtual avalanche of cheap emotion. Short on comedy but long on maudlin sentiment, this sequel stumps so hard for the traditional values of home, hearth and family that any possible entertainment value is canceled out.

Ought to be the subject of an obituary, not a review. A creepy film noir modeled on Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," it was a stinking stiff on arrival.

Like the opium dreams that its eponymous hero becomes addicted to, this fragmented, trigger-happy account of Wild Bill Hickok's final years feels like a bad trip through every cheap western knockoff you ever had to sit through.

Though computer-animated rather than hand-drawn, this wry, rippingly paced buddy movie is as delightful in its own way as any of Walt Disney's traditional fairy tales.

Roll past this casino.

Like Shepherd's speech, The American President touches on all manner of issues but illumines none of them. And while there are some engaging glimpses of the president's staff in action...the film's principal pleasures lie in the president's pursuit of a first lady.

New Bond man Brosnan can't be faulted for much. He's always been generically sexy, a sort of programmed cover boy. In this new venture, he's appropriately handsome, British-accented and suave.

Penn, who also wrote the script, burdens the story with so many self-indulgent side developments that he loses emotional drive and Freddy's desperate obsession gets lost in the shuffle.

In short, Carrey's got nothing to bounce all that energy off of, not even a solid story line.

In this loser-and-the-whore story line, Allen's sensibilities have taken a turn for the nasty.

The movie faithfully records the rivalries among the various members of a fractious Baltimore family, but it never really attempts to resolve any of the internecine conflicts. In that sense, it's less ambitious than many a TV series.

The movie is fast, slick and dumb as a post.

Presumably, there's a poignant story to be told about the love between 19th-century poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. But Agnieszka Holland's Total Eclipse, a pretentious, flat affair, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Rimbaud and David Thewlis as Verlaine, is not the film to pull it off.

Doesn't go down smooth, but it doesn't promise to.

Jon Amiel, who previously directed "Sommersby," delivers a taut, gripping thriller and, with the help of his accomplished leads, succeeds in camouflaging some of the mammoth holes in Ann Biderman and David Madsen's otherwise intelligent and inventive screenplay.

Murphy has said that he wanted the picture to work both as a comedy and a horror movie, but he has succeeded at neither. Director Craven manages to wedge in some of his signature bits, but can't keep the comic elements in balance with the horror, and as a result there's no tension or dramatic pull.

In short, it's about as charming as a gob of spit.

Barry Sonnenfeld's irresistibly charming lampoon of Hollywood.

I'm guessing even die-hard "Clerks" fans will find this only-in-America stuff only partially satisfying, like something they gorged on at the Eatery, then wished they hadn't.

One is hard-pressed to isolate any feature of Now and Then that isn't stale from movie overtime and sentimentality. [20 Oct 1995, p.C17]

An unpredictable, occasionally amusing, wildly uneven portrait of a neighborhood struggling to hold on to its identity.

The movie is shot as if Bigelow wanted to take her audience to the very edge of sensory overload. Her pulsing, super-psychedelic images are edgy and invasive. They burn as they hit your retina. After a while, however, Bigelow's careening camera, the heavy-metal music and the flash cutting begin to make you feel hammered and abused. Though the movie is jammed with plot, nothing seems to happen. [13 Oct 1995, p.F01]

A flagrantly vicious and broken-down murder melodrama that leaves recognizable fingerprints all over the place while making a chump of director William Friedkin. [13 Oct 1995, p.C16]

As a writer, Baumbach loves smart, glib talk, and he has a sharp ear for fast-paced, overlapping dialogue; as a director, though, he prefers long takes that allow his characters to work out their feelings.

Few films are more assured in their storytelling or build more forcefully, irrevocably toward their resolution.

And so begins the impale imitation of John Carpenter's once-scary bogyman tale, in which every shadow and reflection is premeditated and all the herrings are red.

Brilliantly written by Buck Henry, "To Die For" works on several levels. As a satire on the American obsession with celebrity and fame, the movie is nuanced and haunting. And for the most part, Van Sant keeps the tone chillingly light and ironic.

This film is just a coarser, dumber, smuttier remake of the 1983 Eszterhas-penned "Flashdance," throbbing music, working-class Cinderella and all.