Those immortals keep noting that there can be only one. Perhaps they mean there should have been only one.

Legends of the Fall is a magnificent bore: a western saga lolling in its own immensity - its big music, its big scenery and, yes, its big hair

Nobody's Fool is so eloquently straightforward, it practically sings to the soul. A story about very real people caught in the everyday woes and worries of a small Upstate New York town, it shows the kind of character traits, tics and from-the-heart chatter you wish there was more of in the movies.

The level of humor, of course, is familiarly low -- with nothing more deadly than the Crypt Keeper's puns ("Frights! Camera! Hack-tion!"). As for the gore, let's just say the demons are slimy, heads do roll and bodies are ripped asunder

For every persuasive insight John Singleton brings to Higher Learning, his thoughtful but flawed movie about multiculturalism and racism, he throws in something equally disappointing.

Riotous adaptation of Alan Bennett's comedy about monarchal frailty.

The picture is not a social satire. It’s a mess.

IQ, the new romantic comedy with Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins, is disarming piffle—frothy, sweet and nearly irresistible.

The narrative shifts from romance to adventure the way Cheetah used to hop from foot to foot, but Sommers nevertheless delivers a bully family picture.

Polanski touch -- apart from a little suspense here and there -- is limited. And the story, which Ariel Dorfman adapted from his radical-chic play, is too contrived and smug to really hold.

One gets the uneasy feeling that Jodie Foster is trying to tell us something that has nothing essential to do with Nell's plight. The movie is a coy, condescending vanity production. [25 Dec 1994, p.D6]

What can you say when a video game is more exciting and entertaining than the big-budget feature film it inspires?

Albert Finney is a beautifully mannered, lilting charm; he's more than ably supported by Dubliners Michael Gambon, Brenda Fricker, Tara Fitzgerald and others. [27 Jan 1995]

Usually, Ephron is one of the most reliable comic voices in the movies, but here her gifts seem to have deserted her. Though she shows her customary talent for smart one-liners, the spirit of the film is forced and desperate, as if she lacked faith in her gags and were trying to shove them down our throats.

Armstrong applies a dusting of contemporary feminism, but the stubborn sentimentalism of Alcott's endearing family portrait endures. [21 Dec 1994]

The mediocre screenplay (by Tom S. Parker and Jim Jennewein of The Flintstones) is a more sober version of Arthur, with elements from Our Gang, North by Northwest and TV's Gilligan's Island. The filmmakers seem to think of their movie as a fiduciary fable, but they're not quite sure about its moral.

An abominable, abdominal comedy. Aside from its tastelessness and dawdling pace, the movie’s chief problem is the lackluster chemistry between leading lummoxes Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels.

In his zeal to break the book down into bite-size, cutting-edge nuggets, adapter Paul Attanasio has squandered—and arbitrarily altered—many of those details.

Shelton's movie never quite transcends its cheap, baseball-card poignancy. You never get the feeling these pulp-fiction archetypes -- the young hack-writer and the aging bull -- are real people. [06 Jan 1995, p.N37]

Trapped in Paradise, a heist caper starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey, gets lost in a snow flurry of subplots and formulaic run-and-chase -- right around the time you've settled in for a good comedy.

As with many of his films, Rudolph creates an oyster of a work. You need to jimmy a little around the edges before its delicate wonder becomes apparent - which it does, beautifully.[23 Dec 1994, p.36]

In this final installment of a glorious trilogy (which includes the films “Blue” and “White”) he has saved his greatest for last.

Let’s just say that, for the right audience, Junior may deliver. But there’s a whole lot of pregnancy to go through first.

Oldman is the least inhibited actor of his generation, and as this deranged detective, he keeps absolutely nothing in reserve.

A flawed but funky adventure.

Perhaps the most pleasing aspect of the film is its fluid, unhurried pace. Rich and his team aren't interested in roller-coaster effects or sledgehammer manipulations. They have a lush, original sense of color, even a flair for the poetic. The score -- by lyricist David Zippel and composer Lex de Azevedo -- isn't terribly distinctive (it's probably the movie's weakest link), but there is a merciful absence of the hard sell in that area as well.

As Juliet, Winslet is a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene she’s in. She’s offset perfectly by Lynskey, whose quietly smoldering Pauline completes the delicate, dangerous partnership.

Passionately anticipated and much ballyhooed, the film, alas, is little more than a foppish, fang de siecle costume drama. Its pulse barely registers.

The personable star of the TV series "Home Improvement" turns this Walt Disney film around. He may not be as effervescent as, say, Robin Williams, but he's full of understated, ticklish charm.

Like most plays transferred to screen, Oleanna still bears traces of grease paint. Actually, all the cold cream in the world wouldn't make this verbose material in the least cinematic -- not that Mamet has put much effort into adapting the original anyway. Most of the action takes place in the professor's office. Luckily, it has a window through which we, like bored grade schoolers, can escape from time to time.

All too faithfully adapted by Kenneth Branagh, the film is the last thing that one would expect of a contemporary highbrow version of this ageless horror classic. It is, in a word, dullsville.

A Ninja turtle soup of computer gimmicks, karate chops and kiddie Confucianism.

By the end, the film’s early promise has pretty much degenerated into routine pyrotechnics.

A spirited attempt at modern film noir, and huge parts of it are enjoyable.

For all of its old-fashioned discretion, the movie lacks vitality. As a love story it is a complete bust, but beyond that, it is missing a reason to be.

Amateurishly acted, clumsily edited and slapped together out of what looks like surveillance camera footage, the thing bumps along not so much on talent as on audacity.

The experience overall is like laughing down a gun barrel, a little bit tiring, a lot sick and maybe far too perverse for less jaded moviegoers.

Hoop Dreams is the most powerful movie about sports ever made.

Happily, Craven knows just how to play off expectations and twist things past predictability.

As a celebration of ephemera, the movie is a mixed bag, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tiresome.

The film would be utterly banal without the novelty of the high-toned Streep in an action role.

Burton has evoked the surface of Ed Wood's life, but in a story about a man who loves angora and frilly panties, he has barely unbuttoned Wood's uniform.

Timecop is good dumb fun, but it's likely to receive the same sentence most Van Damme projects do: a few weeks in movie theaters and eternity on video store shelves and cable television.

As taut, sleek and guiltily comfortable as the classic Chrysler automobile we see at the beginning, "Quiz Show" is built for entertaining road performance. The facts (at least, the dramatically inconvenient ones) are left on the side of the road. Redford retains the emotional engine of the Van Doren affair and drives this baby all the way—presumably—to the bank.

The fourth film in the series, the newest installment has a new director, Chris Cain, and a female Kid, Hilary Swank, but otherwise it reprises the formula established by John G. Avildsen in 1984: A troubled teen conquers self-doubt and the local bullies with the help of an enigmatic karate teacher.

With its widely acclaimed source material and a cast of distinguished actors, A Good Man in Africa held the possibility of being a welcome departure from the ordinary. Instead, ordinary is what it rises to at its best.

An uneventful actors' exercise better suited to off-off-Broadway theater.

Fresh is an electrifying, sobering movie, and with it, Yakin announces himself as perhaps the most gifted newcomer of the decade.

Speaking of jail, "Shawshank"-the-movie seems to last about half a life sentence. The story, chiefly about the 20-year friendship between Freeman and Robbins, becomes incarcerated in its own labyrinthine sentimentality.

There have to be better ways of wasting money and killing time than the fashionable nihilism of Killing Zoe.

Our culture may be drifting toward the sort of calamity that Stone describes in Natural Born Killers, but the hysteria he depicts seems to come from within him. His soul is in turmoil and so he keeps trying to convince us that we're sick.

A convoluted psychosexual thriller that promises the moon and gives us Bruce's butt.

Obviously, Priscilla is a one-note pleasure: Bitches in the Desert! Queens in the Sand! Nancy boys do the Outback!

This film manages to have the feel of an original -- and very effective -- piece of comedy. In part this is due to the delicate touch of director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers"), who never allows the film to slip into a silly mode.

Both director and co-writer of Rascals redux, Spheeris coaxes artless performances from the picture's engaging ensemble of half-pint players.

There's nothing "wrong" with this movie but it feels like warmed-over business as usual.

The movie’s main appeal—beyond stomach yearnings caused by its cuisine—comes from the actors, who infuse their archetypal roles with comedic appeal.

Mike Werb's screenplay -- just a rickety framework for Carrey's consummate clowning -- lacks a propelling plot and has zip in terms of secondary character development.

Unlike “Metropolitan,” which for all its brittle wit seemed clunky and stagebound, Barcelona is sharply paced and alive on the screen.

In the end, It Could Happen to You is a lot like the cop and the waitress: sweet, naive, not too smart, but likable. In this pyrotechnic summer of "Speed," "Blown Away" and "True Lies," that's got to count for something.

North, which co-producer Alan Zweibel and Andrew Scheinman adapted from Zweibel's slight novel, is awkwardly structured -- it's still in chapters -- not to mention mean-spirited and incredibly stupid.

Unfortunately, the film rarely slows long enough for the actors to do anything more than sketch in their characters. On the other hand, the showdowns between Sarandon and Jones are choice; it's a meeting of charismatic equals.

Deceptively labeled a domestic epic by writer-director James Cameron, the $100 million movie is, in fact, a weird hybrid of action juggernaut, buddy cop caper and reactionary soft-core pornography.

This is dangerous, dissonant material, but writer/director David O. Russell, making his feature filmmaking debut, somehow pulls it off.

By the time the last out is called, the movie's shamelessness far outweighs its charms. Aimed at the minors, it's in a bush league all its own.

This is a captivating experience.

The Shadow does have its moments, which include a googly-eyed mad scientist portrayed by Tim Curry, a smoking billboard for Llama cigarettes and an animated dagger capable of biting he who wields it. Of course, they too are crushed under the weight of this overproduced but underwhelming monolith.

The ballplayers themselves are a well-drawn, enjoyably kooky bunch, but it's absolutely impossible to believe that they would accept Billy's leadership. (If you believe this premise, then you probably believe Marge Schott doesn't look like a Saint Bernard.) And of all the child actors in the movie, the scrawny 13-year-old star shows the least presence.

Wyatt Earp, a bio-pic that lasts more than three hours and moves with the urgency of a grazing buffalo, lacks everything from a coherent dramatic structure to a clearly articulated point of view.

The fun never stops because it never starts.

Shakespearean in tone, epic in scope, it seems more appropriate for grown-ups than for kids. If truth be told, even for adults it is downright strange.

Undeniably, the picture now and again supplies that edge-of-the-seat sensation; yet, by action-adventure standards, Speed is leaden and strangely poky. It never seems to shift into overdrive and let fly.

Kryzstof Kieslowski's White...is a continuing testament to the Polish director's poetic mastery. Like all of Kieslowski's works, White articulates a whole language of sensations, images, ironies and mystery -- often with a minimum of dialogue. But it is no rarefied, abstract exercise. The movie...aches with human dimension.

Slickers II is grounds for a stampede -- away from the theater.

A movie that celebrates the life of the mind and the uniqueness of the individual but does so in glib slogans and is, itself, a sort of knockoff.

Patchy, underbudgeted pop-music satire a la This is Spinal Tap but lacking its professional assurance. [30 Jun 1994, p.M28]

The "stone"-shtick gets mighty old after about 15 minutes. More than 30 screenwriters worked on the Flintstones script, and the result just proves the ancient saying about too many cooks.

Landis's handling of the cop business is unnecessarily laborious, but Murphy's patented insincerity is winning. And a few of the slapstick set pieces are genuinely thrilling, especially a riotous nighttime chase scene.

What is surprising is the beguiling, unpretentious result: "Little Buddha," a modern fable about a Seattle boy believed to be a reincarnated Buddhist teacher, endears the audience to the Tibetan doctrine with a glowing, almost Disneyesque panache.

Saddled with leaden lead performances, hobbled by an arch, incoherent script and pokey pacing, the new, improved Cowgirls is a miscarriage - misconceived, miscast, miserably boring.

Alternately a celebration and sendup of cowboy conventions, the movie lingers over a stunning Western landscape only to be spurred on by the principals' inexhaustible supply of escapades. The burr under the saddle: There's just too much of everything.

Modulating from heavy to light, from angry to lyrical, and so on, the movie's an enjoyable, emotional symphony.

If he had to die so soon, this movie is the best and most appropriate sendoff Lee could have hoped for.

Forsyth's script feels uncomfortably improvised, so almost all of the performances are hesitant and unconvincing. [06 May 1994]

It's a glossified, cluttered parody of itself. Almodovar is no longer a burlesque auteur. He's a repeat offender.

The Favor is a frisky, frank and funny female-buddy film - as if "Thelma and Louise" had stayed in the suburbs, making girl-talk about sex and satisfaction, married vs. single.

The screenplay, by the team of Joe Batteer and John Rice and doctored by Dan Gilroy, is standard issue, as insufferable in its situations as it is in its characterizations. Berenger, who tries to growl some life into his role, sounds as if he's been gargling cat litter, while McNamara shows off the work of his orthodontist a la Tom Cruise. For Eleniak, there's always Hooters.

Dickerson keeps things moving along briskly and the ensemble manages to survive Eric Bernt's "script" (Connell gets no credit). As for the dreadlocked Ice-T, he avoids the rap trappings of his previous film roles and is generally effective in his survival schemes.

What comes through in "Backbeat," along with the amphetamine-fueled adrenalin of Hamburg, is confusion, bruised feelings and the dawning understanding that life isn't just fun and games -- and neither is rock 'n' roll.

The real world has caught up with him, and [Waters'] off-kilter comedy seems disappointingly mundane and mainstream.

Director John Dahl and his brother Rick Dahl co-wrote the intelligent and off-handedly witty script; they're like the Coen brothers, but with a sense of fun and a coherent, entertaining story to tell.

An enormously enjoyable gothic yarn from Mexico, transfuses the genre with wry grotesquerie, but retains respect for the old, classic films.

David Zucker and Segal seem to thrive on the formulaic tomfoolery that propels these rapid-fire spoofs. Naked Gun 33 1/3, as pointlessly plotted as ever, manages to be not only still funny but energetically slapped together and occasionally inventive.

It's an exhausting and exhilarating movie about the birth of "the daily miracle." Thanks to a caffeinated cast and hyperactive script, director Ron Howard delivers The Paper with a bang.

With its musty scenario of a dissolute middle-aged man and a clingy, devouring child-woman, 60-year-old co-writer/director/producer Polanski's film smacks of wish-fulfillment and self-justification.

All of the supporting characters -- notably tubby Richard Griffiths as Tess's nurse and mousy Austin Pendleton as her chauffeur -- are thinly drawn, but neither MacLaine nor Cage leaves much room for anyone to overact.

Another ultra-stylized movie-about-movies by the Cannes-winning Coen Brothers, Hudsucker is clever but cold, a heartless mechanical gizmo. The actors rattle around tinnily like shiny marbles inside its cavernous sets and hollow script.

Unfortunately, this loosen-up-Sandy-baby allegory, full of heavyhanded sexual/mythic symbols is more of a poetic nudist's delight than a movie. Its characters (from fussy Grant to voluptuous MacPherson) are only mildly appealing. Writer/director John Duigan, maker of the charming Flirting, took a recent tumble with The Wide Sargasso Sea. He has yet to regain his footing.