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.

As it unreels, The Ref keeps getting dumber, and, unfortunately, it simply wasn't that brilliant to begin with.

A movie to cheer you up and on and help you feel that spring will, in fact, arrive before we are all too desiccated to enjoy it.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a tad too precious. One of those movies that wants to address life's quaint wackinesses, it's full of characters who are quirky, lonely, bizarre or retarded. There's something intensely earnest about the project. But there's something equally manufactured, starting with the casting of Johnny Depp and Juliette Lewis.

Sugar Hill is often more unflinching in its detailing of the death trip drugs provoke -- a pair of overdoses are particularly harrowing and the gun-violence is sufficiently sudden and shocking -- but much of its message feels as if it's being delivered by Western Union.

The picture amounts to little more than an uninspired, almost perfunctory exercise in "big game" manipulations.

Reality Bites principally turns on the romantic tension between Ryder, wonderfully radiant and not all that literate for the class valedictorian her character is purported to be, and Hawke, who does the alienated-poet thing better than anybody since Matt Dillon's greaser in "The Outsiders."

Martial arts maven Seagal has long been on deadly ground with critics, and this, his directorial debut, is likely to keep him there.

An utterly pointless remake of Sam Peckinpah's hair-raising road movie. Updated and dumbed down, this anemic variation on the bloodier 1972 original is primarily an opportunity for those vast legions of Baldwin-Basinger voyeurs. You know who you are.

In the end, family ties are re-strung, but the morals remain annoyingly at loose ends.

Treat this project as you would a safari: It has its slow parts but the wildlife makes it worthwhile.

Most of the humor is sophisticated slapstick, which Depardieu mastered in the hilarious trio of Francis Veber comedies he did with Pierre Richard in the '80s.

Stylishly gruesome and dementedly romantic, "Romeo" has its pervertedly funny moments, but in the end it's a bloody bummer that leaves a depressing aftertaste.

Scent is a captured memory, a living, breathing reverie rather than a narrative. It's also the birth of a great talent.

Car 54, Where Are You? is a stupid movie. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. If you pay money to see it, then you're stupid.

Grecian Formula and body corsets notwithstanding, Bronson looks like one of those sculpted potato heads and moves with appropriate grace. This is not the face of death; it's the face of old.

A soulless replica of Don Seigel's 1956 model and Philip Kaufman's 1978 update.

In between its hokey setup and its overwrought climax, Disney's dog-sledding adventure Iron Will is brisk and involving and surprisingly adult, its cinematic strength drawn mainly from the beauty of panting teams of huskies muscling their way across snowy landscapes. Which is a sight you can never grow tired of.

Contains about enough laugh-out-loud sight gags and non sequiturs to justify what it demands of a viewer's time and money.

An entertaining look under the tent flaps of the Clinton campaign, "The War Room" fairly bristles with the frenetic energy, flat-out fun and Southern-fried cunning that won the White House. It's a documentary, though not a hard-hitting one, about presidential politics as reinvented by Bill Clinton's cagey generals, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville.

Based on Gerry Conlon's own account of his arrest and subsequent incarceration, the film takes forever to do what "60 Minutes" does with the same meat in a single segment.

The plot stumbles over genre cliches after a promising start and the whole thing becomes lamentable. As an indictment of a techno-society in which too much information is available by computer, it's simply unconvincing.

In today's mouse-toting, instant-gratification world, this kind of old-fashioned, character-driven slapstick is wonderfully incompatible. It's a grumpy last hurrah.

Highly stylized fashion-wise but awkwardly unfocused in its plotlines, it aims for the western iconography of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone but never gets past its own directorial hurdles.

As usual, it's the colorful and loquacious Joker who is most riveting. Shirley Walker's orchestral score is also quite powerful.

Directed by Jonathan Demme, and starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, this AIDS courtroom drama is so pumped full of nitrous oxide, you could get your teeth drilled on it.

Faraway...is vaguely deflating, a film that doesn't build to a powerful climax so much as gradually run out of air.

A brightly wrapped, ketchup-drenched mush-burger, it slides down the Zeitgeist esophagus like a slippery McPelican. You pay, you swallow, you drive home. You're left with nothing except, possibly, heartburn.

A ruthlessly unsentimental portrait of a German war profiteer's epiphany that inspires neither sorrow nor pity, but a kind of emotional numbness.

This is 90-proof, single-malt stuff. You sip it neat and you don't handle heavy machinery afterward. This movie will stay with you long after you've seen it, thanks to Thewlis's performance, Leigh's direction, Andrew Dickson's haunting bass-and-harp soundtrack, cinematographer Dick Pope's indelible images -- and the unalloyed, naked conviction of it all.

Carvey is such a lovable doofus and Myers such a well-intentioned naif that it's hard to get down on them, especially considering that the heirs to their niche in pop iconography are Beavis and Butt-head.

Shamelessly contrived pap.

There's a deep, touching tale to relate about the man who went from Apache chieftain to circus has-been, selling his autographs for money. But don't look for stirring, touching or anything in "Geronimo: An American Legend." Look for the exit sign.

The relationships feel contrived, less a drama than an exercise in cuteness.

The Snapper is a small movie, but its spirit is gigantic. [17 Dec 1993, p.C1]

This fictional documentary's films-in-miniature -- subdued, engaging grace notes that run from 45 seconds to several minutes -- create a subtle, appropriately unconventional portrait of this eccentric man.

Williams has to break out of a second-rate "Tootsie" imitation, ankles clamped in pathos and face covered in latex. He pulls it off in the end, but it's not pretty.

A Perfect World is one of the Academy Award-winning actor-director's most unexpected, most satisfying films. This isn't the first time that Eastwood has turned the tables on our expectations, but he's never been this bold in the past, or this sure of himself.

As with most sequels, Addams Family Values is a thinner, airier reunion. For those who enjoyed the original The Addams Family, the flavor is still there. But you feel a little undernourished.

About halfway through, the overwhelming fact that the movie is a complete nothing becomes too much to ignore.

Ernest keeps up his filibuster of inane chatter, shifting from one comic voice, one accent, to another with impressive dexterity. That voice of his is a real gift. Too bad we have to look at him too. [12 Nov 1993, p.C6]

It's a brisk, colorful, infectiously charming but instantly disposable Hollywood entertainment. It's fun, like watching kids play dress-up in the back yard -- nothing more, nothing less.

Hopkins and Thompson's downright marvelous duet is supported by a host of deft players, and the detailed re-creation of this small universe is in all ways remarkable.

As for the conflict, it's hardly riveting and often it's downright silly. The sets and effects betray their downsized budget. And the Japanese bashing is less artful than in Rising Sun, though just as obnoxious.

Take the "dle" out of "poodle" and you've pretty much got the leitmotif of Look Who's Talking Now, a crude and mawkish film in which dogs attempt to communicate with Kirstie Alley and John Travolta.

A modestly budgeted but richly rewarding look at a Tennessee housewife's search for a better life.

If you go to this, anticipate neither an endearing Quaid-Ryan vehicle nor a fully satisfying art film. By trying to satisfy opposing demands, Kloves misses the spirit of both and is left only with flesh and bone.

The movie is so beautifully filmed by Bojan Bazelli, and so skillfully edited, that its art house surface belies its exploitation content, making this a trip through a cool world rather than a cruel one.

The Piano is dark, sublime music, and after it's over, you won't be able to get it out of your head.

Lacking in both inspiration and ingenuity, it doesn't so much spoof the conventions of the genre as dumb down famous -- and in some cases, forgotten -- scenes from a slew of other movies.

His dazzlingly brilliant "Nightmare" -- directed by Henry Selick -- is more of a postmodern fractured fable, one he scribbled as a poem-script 10 years ago when he and Selick were working as Disney animators...This is a modern classic that enriches the Christmas tradition by turning it on its head and spinning it like a bob.

It's a sweet-natured family drama in which years of effort are rewarded by a brief moment of glory. Its corny, cartoonish finale makes "Rocky" look like "Bullwinkle." Still, you'll have to forgive the lump in your throat and the tear in your eye.

[A] scatterbrained imitation. [15 Oct 1993, p.D7]

Judgment Night is regrettably familiar fare.

Like Cheung's ethereally plaintive voice, the movie is a siren song that's appealing at first, but held too long. It becomes an increasing whine.

Demolition Man is a futuristic cop picture with slightly more imagination and wit than the typical example of the slash-and-burn genre.

Mr. Nanny, a dumbed-down variation on Kindergarten Cop, uses the same ingredients that made the (only slightly) classier Schwarzenegger comedy a hit: A muscle-bound galoot, hired to protect young kids, puts them in even greater jeopardy while he slam-dances with the villains. Those ingredients don't blend well in Mr. Nanny, and they sure leave lumps.

"Mr. Jones" does have some things to savor. Director Mike Figgis, who made "Stormy Monday" and "Internal Affairs," has a distinctive, atmospheric touch. There's something memorably restless about Gere's performance. He never stops. Olin gives her white-uniformed, statistics-spouting, let's-work-together role an off-center appeal. And there are likable supporting performances from Delroy Lindo, as a construction worker who befriends Gere; Lauren Tom, a hauntingly beautiful but distraught mental patient; and Lisa Malkiewicz, as a bank teller who giddily falls for Gere when he effortlessly calculates accrued interest on his account. But these worthy elements can't completely disguise the conventional medicine we're ultimately being asked to swallow.

A cynical, sexist and shallow work from cinema's premier misanthrope, Robert Altman, who here shows neither compassion for -- nor insight into -- the human condition.

David Cronenberg's film version of David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play, is no more successful in solving it than any other versions of this fantastic tale have been.... "The Crying Game" it's not. [09 Oct 1993]

A wholesome, engaging, frequently hilarious, ultimately inspirational film.

This latest project, a murder mystery scripted by Aaron (A Few Good Men) Sorkin and Scott (Dead Again) Frank, is bilge water.

The major problem with "For Love or Money" is its leads, since Fox is no Cary Grant and Anwar no Audrey Hepburn. Fox is sweetly engaging at times but he still seems too boyish to be convincing. And though he wheels and deals with flair, no romantic sparks fly between him and Anwar. Of course, as she proved with Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman," it takes two to tango -- and Anwar simply is too vapid an actress, a poor woman's Adrienne Shelly with a flat voice, wan looks and all too little presence.

Richard Linklater's satirical take on high school life in the 1970s is not only funny and entertaining. It's practically a historic document of life during the smiley-face button era.

Freeman lays out the father-son dynamics with great skill and very little fuss. There's no hysteria in his approach; instead, he sticks to the facts, relying on his cast to provide the emotion. The result is a surprisingly powerful, insightful film. The dramatic curve of the narrative may not seem entirely fresh, and some of the characters are simplistic, but the movie still gets to you.

Culkin's best comedy ever. If only this movie wasn't supposed to be a horror picture.

The lead character ostensibly is Coach Sam Winters, but the film never really focuses on the ethical compromises he needs to make and steers away from him. Thus, James Caan -- playing the coach -- appears in what amounts to a series of cameos. In fact, Caan seemingly just walks through his role, perhaps wondering how he got from "Brian's Song" to this thing.

The story is riddled with absurd coincidences and improbabilities. It doesn't have an original bone in its body. And no one's going to leave this film thinking De Niro should stay behind the camera. But none of these problems stops the movie from being enjoyable. If Bronx Tale feels too familiar, it's at least the familiarity of good Italian movies.

Though lovely to behold, this film isn't meant to send you home with a song in your heart.

Though long on ambiance and short on story, it may appeal to the spiritually inclined -- and to oater lovers.

An ugly, unbelievable thriller, Striking Distance is a lame excuse for a few loosely connected chase scenes, full of macho piggishness, glaring inconsistencies and yawning plot-holes.

An amiably dopey teen movie.

Despite its noir references and evocations, this slick film, directed by Tony Scott from Quentin Tarantino's script, is a preposterously bloody mess, as is the plot.

Undercover Blues offers a perfectly enjoyable, completely forgettable hour and a half. After all, how hard is it to watch pros like Quaid and Turner have a good time knocking around with a lovable baby? As Quaid coos to the toddler, "It's a bad world, isn't it, sweetheart? You 'n me 'n Mom are gonna make it better, right?" Quaid, Turner and the kid do make this movie better, but it isn't good enough.

Gives refreshing -- and bittersweet -- dimension to the age-old clash between generations.

A gruesome tale of obsessive love and mutilation, it's less a work of art, however, than a luridly stylish expression of female self-loathing...A prettied-up snuff movie.

For Kieslowski, subtlety is a religion. He hints or implies -- anything to keep from laying his cards on the table. With "Blue," you never feel he's shown his whole hand; not even after the game is over.

A moment past its concept, Fortress settles into a mix of sci-fi and prison cliches that result in predictable and often silly confrontations, including a not-so-great escape. Much of the blame lies with Lambert, as vapid here as he has been in the "Highlander" fiascoes.

Stephen King is a novelist, not a screenwriter. Which may be worth remembering on the admittedly slender chance that you go to see Needful Things for its dialogue, which is by turns cheap, cute, histrionic, profane and derivative.

The one thing Edwards did right this time was to cast comic actor Roberto Benigni -- a big star in Italy -- as the illegitimate son of Jacques Clouseau, the accident-prone French detective who first appeared on the screen in The Pink Panther nearly 30 years ago. Benigni is enormously charming, a slight little fellow with a homely face that seems almost puppetlike and a flair for broad physical comedy.

Careful, the hilariously bizarre new film from Canadian director Guy Maddin, is like some lost masterpiece from a time-warped alternative dimension -- a strange artifact that time forgot.

In The Man Without a Face, Mel Gibson reminds us that he doesn't need one-liners and explosive special effects to warrant our attention. Gibson, as actor and first-time director, is not only self-assured in these dual roles, but he seems relieved to let the drama carry him, rather than the reverse. The result is a movie that's both heartwarming and heart-wrenching.

It's his best work by far.

The only thing wrong with John Woo's American debut, Hard Target, is that it's too American and not enough Woo.

Writing with his old partner Marshall Brickman ("Sleeper," "Annie Hall," "Manhattan"), Allen produces his blithest film ever. It's an amiable caper descended from the "Thin Man" series, with Keaton as a kookier Nora Charles and Allen not as Nick but Asta, their twitchy wire-haired fox terrier.

The scriptwriters try to conjure some history/mythology to validate the plot's twists and turns, but the whole thing ends up more confusing than Days of Our Lives on fast-forward.

The young actors are quite proficient and un-sappy too -- it's not their fault if they too often seem like chessmen being moved around on the director's board, composed into picturesque tableaux.

Director Ron Underwood, who came up with a happy marriage of schmaltz and shtick in "City Slickers," can't quite disguise the mechanical superficiality of the story.

A wonderfully acted, heartwarming family film, it suffers from a goopy score, but not in the least from its potentially stalemated subject matter. Zaillian can make a chess tournament look like the Threepeat.

There seem to be big gaping holes, and not just in the characters' carcasses. The only kind of scene Carpenter appears able to direct well is someone sneaking up on someone else. [07 Aug 1993, p.D4]