It's a kill movie, the filmic equivalent of a hate crime.

It's a lovely idea, and if the individual sections of the film were more substantial, or if we sensed some connection between them, some governing principle, it might have resulted in a delicate, poetically funny movie. Unfortunately, Jarmusch's lackadaisical minimalist aesthetic and his chronic lack of energy are the only unifying elements.

Spielberg and Co. have finally made their Disney movie -- or better yet, their film version of a theme park at Disneyland. It's sort of like "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "It's a Small World" rolled into one. It's a helluva contraption, and certainly one to be marveled at. It gives good ride.

Star Trek VI surprises us only by completely satisfying our expectations, by giving us exactly what we want from a "Star Trek" picture. It's not startling or revelatory, only witty, ebulliently good-natured and close to ideal.

My Girl may well have been intended as a tender way for parents to explain difficult subjects to their kids, but this botch of a movie explains nothing. Its fake nostalgia and cod compassion are as painfully awkward as adolescence itself and about as funny as a corpse.

Harrowing and funny, a fine film on its own, "Hearts" leaves us with a new appreciation for the Vietnam War epic it documents.

The Double Life of Veronique is a mesmerizing poetic work composed in an eerie minor key. Its effect on the viewer is subtle but very real. The film takes us completely into its world, and in doing so, it leaves us with the impression that our own world, once we return to it, is far richer and portentous than we had imagined.

Disney's new full-length animated feature, Beauty and the Beast, is more than a return to classic form, it's a delightfully satisfying modern fable, a near-masterpiece that draws on the sublime traditions of the past while remaining completely in sync with the sensibility of its time.

A laugh-in-the-dark funhouse ride that provides nearly two hours of slightly sinister sight gags and Gothic giggles, is creepy, kooky, even altogether ooky enough to satisfy any Addams addict.

Perhaps Steven Soderbergh's metamorphosis from clever Cajun auteur ("sex, lies, and videotape") to heavy-duty Eastern European angst-master has been altogether too successful. Like authentic Soviet Bloc cinema, Kafka makes its audience suffer along with its heroes.

It's a brutal, demonic film with a grip like a vise; it grabs you early, its fingers around your throat, and never lets go.

With its fancifully moldering sets and technical effects, Highlander 2 is little more than a barbarous arena, a Conanistic return to paganism for those among us who still laugh at violence.

Craven also wrote the script here, based on a news story about California parents who kept their children locked in the basement for many years. That's scary -- and so is how far Craven has fallen.

Leigh hasn't the affect of a poet, but he's a poet nonetheless. This movie captures the smallish details in life that perhaps you've felt before, but have never before seen on screen. He has a genius for the commonplace. It is truly sweet stuff.

Where Romero goes for the cheap, linear approach, Argento's storytelling is painfully poetic, with ever-shifting points of view and asides. It's not unusual for him to drop a Middle Ages dream sequence in the middle of things, rely on the unpredictability of a cat to advance the plot, or resort to pure shock that's no less shocking because it's expected: There's a madness in Argento's method and it's always appropriate.

Van Sant's sensibility is wholly original, wholly fresh. "My Own Private Idaho" adds a new ingredient: a kind of boho sweetness. I loved it.

A cross between an after-school special and MTV video, melding threadbare plot with colorful visuals and delivering a message, which is, basically, Vanilla Ice is cool, you know?

Producer-director Garry Marshall, who made a pretty penny off Pretty Woman, brings the same fizzy, dizzy feel to Frankie & Johnny. He seduces us with stars in our eyes and blinds us for 90 minutes or more to his ploys, some of them as cheap as dime-store perfume. Still, we're happy to sit back and swoon. [11 Oct 1991, p.D7]

Alongside this silly kiddie Halloween comedy, reruns of Hee Haw seem works of great comic sophistication.

David Mamet's Homicide is a brilliant muddle: compelling, exhilarating and, at the same time, profoundly dubious. Certainly there is greatness in it. And just as certainly the moral ice it skates on is precariously thin. It leads us into a forest of dark contradictions, then leaves us stranded, dazzled but bewildered, elated but perplexed.

Ricochet, the latest explosive, cynical thriller from Joel Silver, best known for engineering the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard blockbusters, should keep action freaks overstimulated for the next few weeks. [08 Oct 1991, p.E5]

An intimate, sentimental coming-of-age drama, a sweet little puppy love movie crushed by the enormity of its tragic twists.

An infectious albeit formulaic game of Cinderella football, this happy athletic romp seems to know just how wheezy it is, but the team grunts "hut, hut," and puts it right on the numbers anyway. It's "Hoosiers" with a pigskin pumpkin and a lot more sis-boom-bah.

A modern epic that fuses myth with hard-edged reality, it's a one-of-a-kind, thoroughly engaging experience.

You're going out with a touch of class: a slam-bang finale in 3-D -- make that Freddyvision; a gaggle of one-liners directed at the final crop of victims and a few in-jokes; some wonderfully bizarre dream sequences; and the possibility that while Freddy may be gone, some of his progeny may live on (we can say no more).

Commitments, adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from the Roddy Doyle book, exults in its own world. The characters, with their foibles and verbal joustings, are everything. There's something poetically sardonic in every sentence they utter.

Child's Play 3 is further proof of the principle of diminishing sequels: The original was actually quite good, the follow-up was lame and now what is hopefully the capper is DOA.

Directing with an eye to "Rebecca," Branagh brings more mood than suspense to this apparent hommage to Hitchcock. Still, he raises no goose bumps.

When they part ways at picture's end, Marlboro's parting words are "Vaya con Dios," which translates as "Go with God." I'd put it differently. Go, the both of you. With God or without, but by all means, go.

Like the mysterious, bound package Goodman gives Turturro (the contents are never revealed), the Coens isolate a small area of interest, bind it with psycho-atmospheric finesse, then wait for something significant to emerge. Even after a second viewing of this movie, it doesn't.

The movie is pure hound, but you'll want to catch Short's every pixilated move. He almost made me wish that the picture would never end.

There's one thing worse than a movie with two Jean-Claudes: A movie with two Jean-Claudes and bad fighting.

The film has a message; it's another picture about finding your humanity. But in this case, it's pedaled so softly that it doesn't impose itself on you. Nothing about this movie does. And that, as much as anything, is what makes it so irresistible.

Return to the Blue Lagoon, which doesn't star Brooke Shields or that blond guy, makes the original Blue Lagoon look like Citizen Kane.

Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston's brilliantly entertaining documentary look into the New York subculture of drag queens and transsexuals, is a rapturous, desperate ode to self-invention.

Trust is always interesting. And always interesting, as someone once said, is always good.

Once upon a time [Brooks] was hilarious. And can still be, in interview, which is his true art form. But for some time now, his movies have not even cruised near the neighborhood of funny. And this one is the bottom of the barrel.

A most excellent sequel, funnier and livelier than the original.

With its energetic cast and insistent street score, it still manages to be poignant without becoming bathetic, and violent without being exploitative.

A lot of what Bigelow puts up on the screen bypasses the brain altogether, plugging directly into our viscera, our gut. The surfing scenes in particular are majestically powerful, even awe-inspiring. Bigelow's picture is a feast for the eyes, but we watch movies with more than our eyes. She seduces us, then asks us to be bimbos.

It would be cornier if it weren't so well acted by Nunn, Bening and 12-year-old Allen.

Linklater's control seems all but invisible here. But this kind of stylistic lucidity can only be the result of determined calculation and planning. The kind of happy accidents he captures don't come about by accident.

Visceral to the point of overkill (and beyond), a berserk blizzard of kinetic images, it doesn't even give you time to be scared.

A bit of advice: Get to "The Naked Gun 2½" on time and plan to stay till they turn the lights back on. The opening and closing credits alone are almost worth the price of admission.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves has pomp and scale; what it lacks is something essential -- a sense of Once Upon a Time wonder, the exultant, heady thrill of legend.

Director Ron Underwood of the big-worm thriller "Tremors" effectively contrasts the bland life of the big city with the rough-hewn joys of the Big Country. And the three leads -- neurotic, brash and bonding like flies to No Pest strips -- give energetic if obvious performances. The whole dang thing is rather too blatant, but if you take your comedy with a little branch water, you'll want a shot of this 'un.

While this HBO-produced, generically titled family caper isn't quite as dead as you'd expect, it doesn't exactly pulsate with comic originality. Borrowing from successful comedies of recent years, from Big to Risky Business, it bounces along with a familiar, pre-sold air.

The most obvious problem occurs between Snipes and Sciorra. Lee's so interested in the ripple effect they cause, he almost forgets the affair itself. We see anger all over Harlem and Bensonhurst, but we're barely allowed into the main bedroom, where the real hell must be taking place.

A noisy, impenetrable and totally nonsensical cogitation on the nature of firefighters and the sizzling "animal" they love...We just wish somebody would call 911 for boredom.

It spins its wheels in a giddy sort of way, then puts the pedal to the mettle, lays rubber and fairly takes wing.

Merely airheaded where it should be lighthearted, Hudson Hawk offers a klutzy, charmless hero, and wallows dully in limp slapstick and lowest common denominator crudeness.

In Truly, Madly, Deeply comparisons with "Ghost" are inevitable. But this British production, starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, takes a wide berth around the kind of button-pushing found in "Ghost." It presses with lighter fingers.

While in theory this seems like an altogether valid notion, in practice it falls apart because Fred is such an obnoxious boil of a character. Instead of wanting to release him you want to deposit him in a Davey Tree Grinder. Painful death, that's what this trickster deserves.

As it is, fans of Candy are expecting a John Candy movie -- that is, a reasonably hilarious comedy about a sweetly sympathetic bumbler. And while he is as cumbersomely lovable as a Saint Bernard puppy, he's rarely allowed to be funny here. He seems miserably uncomfortable as a romantic lead, or maybe it's just that he's playing opposite the Stepford Actress.

It's an exhaustive, and exhilarating, document of an overwhelming lifestyle.

Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss star in this hilarious brain-teaser about a patient who suffers acute separation anxiety when his psychiatrist goes on vacation.

Unfortunately, Bosworth couldn't act his way through the Seattle Seahawks and he's not likely to act his way into a film career based on this first outing.

Screenwriter and sometime animal trainer Stewart Raffill directs from a screenplay by Ed Rugoff, who also co-wrote "Mannequin." Rugoff is fond of asking and answering the question, what if a mannequin came to life? But judging from "Mannequin Two," Raffill is probably better at sweeping up after elephants. The actors, bless their little wooden heads, would be better off pulling puppet strings.

The story line is little more than a shiny hat for holding the high-tech rabbits. Still, it's an enjoyable bit of smoke and mirrors, thanks to the decency and resourcefulness of its hero.

If it's subtle, insightful satire you're after, don't look to this coarse farce. It's simply more vulgar, insidiously homophobic Victor/Victoriana from the sexually confused writer-director.

There are a great many movies about the tragic experience of the Jews during the Second World War, but only a handful as passionate, as subtly intelligent, as universal as this one. In Europa Europa, Agnieszka Holland tackles a great theme and, in the process, has made a great movie.

If your teenage sons are looking for heroes, send them to Toy Soldiers. Even if they're not, send them anyway. They'll probably enjoy watching a judge being thrown out of a helicopter. Too bad the judge didn't take the script with him. Most reasoning adults will probably reject this far-fetched clash between American preppies and Colombian terrorists.

Writer-director Dearden, who earned his gruesome credentials as the screenwriter on Fatal Attraction, underlines his leading lady's lack of rudimentary skill by leaving the soundtrack full of dead air and amateurish articulation during numerous conversations. He's also repeatedly drawn to Hitchcock allusions that slip out of his grasp. [26 Apr 1991, p.E1]

Stallone is to humor what John Goodman is to ballet.

The moviemakers have set out to interpret the inner workings of abusive relationships in their boundless variety. Alas, their ambitions are far grander than their abilities.

Perhaps the shrewdest thing the filmmakers have done is call the film The Object of Beauty instead of A Thing of Beauty, which would make much more sense. By doing so they've removed what they must have known was a far-too-tempting opening for reviewers -- of saying A Thing of Beauty is not a joy forever. Even with the change, though, the sentiment fits.

Though it boasts a big budget and is indeed busier and more densely populated than Seagal's previous efforts, Out for Justice feels cheap, not only in its production but in its content. It's "Scarface" without a point of view; it's shallow plot cluttered with extreme violence, both verbal and physical.

Todd Haynes's Poison is a vision of unrelenting, febrile darkness. It presents three disparate stories in three greatly varied styles, all inspired by the work of Jean Genet, and its effect, as a whole, is like that of an especially vile infection; it moves diabolically through your system, spreading fever and nausea as it goes.

Brooks-the-performer embodies the movie's spirit with superb modulation. 

An elegantly wrought bit of nastiness.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, a maverick of China's "new wave," this disturbing tragedy is as unexpectedly lurid in its way as "Blue Velvet."

Jennifer Connelly is very easy to look at. Career Opportunities isn't. Go see the standee.

The humor, which made the first movie appealing to more than just TV kids, is far less adroit.

Grounded in a good cause but never puffed up or preachy, the father-daughter drama transcends the issues.

It's not a new subject, it's not a subject that requires a lot of moral deliberation -- we know who the bad guys are -- and Winkler has nothing new to say about it. Undeniably, his need to share his feelings on this topic is urgent; unfortunately, it is much more urgent than our need to hear them.

It's got a little kick to it.

True Colors rushes by at a hectic pace, never allowing the story to gain momentum. Despite good performances from the two leads, the film has the feel of a cautionary stampede. While it aspires to lofty heights, it never really goes much beyond the rules of behavior prescribed by the Boy Scout Handbook.

Parillaud is expressive but rather mundane. She's best at playing sullen, but there are so many French actresses who specialize in this particular talent -- the French have mastered the apathetic pout -- that she seems generic.

The "Godfather" films transcended their mobster genre; New Jack City doesn't, but it's a great genre film, edgy, vibrant and full of urgent color.

I don't care what Dylan said, everyone must not get Stoned.

Though creepy Jeffrey Combs and beach boy Bruce Abbott return as West and Cain, producer Brian Yusna has replaced Stuart Gordon in the director's chair, without bringing new life to the affair. Even the jokes in the Woody Keith/Rick Fry screenplay seem refried.

Nothing but Trouble, which distinguishes itself by being Dan Aykroyd's directorial debut and in no other way, certainly lives up to its name. But you could go far beyond that -- it's nothing but trouble and agony and pain and suffering and obnoxious, toxically unfunny bad taste. It's nothing but miserable.

Cadence might once have been pertinent, revolutionary or politically correct, but it's definitely out of step with the times

A smart, restrained entertainment, it doesn't splash around in blood and hysteria. It doesn't have to.

Taxes the threshold of acceptable cuteness.

Ultimately Sleeping With the Enemy wants to be about one woman's rebirth, but Roberts neither grows nor glows in this empty movie.

Never Ending Story II is as flat as the pages of its script.

Beware of horror films that begin with a bad dream -- they usually go on that way as well. Case in point: Popcorn, which has several good ideas that, unfortunately, go unrealized.

There's nothing embarrassing about Zeffirelli's brisk new version, nor anything particularly remarkable; it's an entirely credible, middle-of-the-road production.

Though slow and overlong, the movie is at least scenic family fare. This easily understood yarn should appeal primarily to boys who still think girls are yucky.

It is slightly disconcerting to realize that this pleasant but lightweight movie was produced, directed and written by Peter Weir. This means Touchstone Pictures didn't throw this the Australian director's way; he came up with it himself.

Unless you're a Van Damme or martial arts fanatic, you're more likely to be thinking: No, merci.

This real-life case of Misery sets your teeth on edge, your blood boiling, your adrenaline surging with the subtlety of a World War II propaganda film.

Except for a few gory flourishes and several jolly special effects, Warlock is a surprisingly old-fashioned horror adventure that benefits from the superbly malevolent presence of Julian Sands as said warlock.

The Godfather Part III isn't just a disappointment, it's a failure of heartbreaking proportions... It makes you wish it had never been made.

At its best the movie displays a vital playfulness. But at its worst -- and there's far too much of that -- Alice continues Allen's endless, banal quest for the Big Answers. All, of course, at the mild-mannered elbow of Farrow.

Part cop caper, part coo-fest, it is a feel-good movie, a jolly little button-pusher about a street-smart cop who brings law and order to a classroom full of unruly but adorable youngsters.

One of those rare movie history lessons that don't make you feel as if you're facing the chalkboard. It's an impassioned movie, with vehement, soulful performances from Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek, but it's also a work of great restraint and proportion.