Leonard Klady

Barrymore continues to prove herself as a performer of extraordinary range and charisma, and is simply sublime in the leading role.

An astute, intelligent family picture, the film is a potent reminder that you can have your heart in the right place and still produce a gripping, satisfying entertainment.

This is a vanity production parading as a social statement. It nonetheless has enough sound, fury and flash to satisfy the action crowd who have propped up Seagal’s career.

The picture provides hilarious complications to the arithmetic mayhem and will be one of the strongest performers in the second half of the summer, its inventive edge standing up to the barrage of flashier effects pics.

The real strength of the Tim Kelleher script is its understanding that despite the two main characters’ considerable positive traits, they are misfits. Each appreciates the other for his qualities, not his station. The writer has effectively created an appealing fantasy and given it human dimension.

The music is overbearing, the camera and lighting too bright and obvious, and the production design borders on the cheesy. Performances range from competent to just plain embarrassing.

City Slickers II is a welcome sequel, much in the spirit of the original but keen to mosey into new terrain. It’s definitely the yee-hah! film of the season.

There’s really nothing particularly fresh in this routinely crafted, banally scripted and directed effort. Mantegna’s humorously arrogant performance is the pic’s sole distinctive element, and it’s saved for the finale. Still, it’s just not good enough to make up for the rest of the drudgery and put a smile on one’s face leaving the theater.

A throwback to bygone historical adventures, The Ghost and the Darkness is a classy, high-gloss yarn with sterling production values, fine performances and breathtaking vistas. It’s a literate and eerie true-life chiller that should grab moviegoers who’ve been hungering for adult entertainment.

Sweet and sincere, the film is also a remarkably shallow wade, rife with incident and slim on substance.

A richly realized piece of Masterpiece Literature, director Darrell James Roodt's Cry, the Beloved Country has an admirable high polish. But more effort could have been made to address its underlying message and provide an emotional punch to equal the book's resonance.

This chilling look at emergency room politics wrestles contemporary medical ethics to an unsatisfactory draw. Similarly, its mix of real and exaggerated situations doesn't quite jell, making for a commercial diagnosis that's good but not great.

There's charm to burn in "She's the One," Ed Burns' sophomore romantic comedy. Very much in the vein of his award-winning "The Brothers McMullen," outing is a decided step forward artistically and technically. Endowed with a refreshing honesty and poignancy, the film should score well with audiences and rack up upbeat theatrical returns.

So I Married an Axe Murderer may have to dodge some angry Scotsmen but otherwise should click with those looking for slightly upscale humor that’s not averse to a few well-placed cheap shots. It’s a delightful and unexpected surprise.

The overall result is a cinematic feast that will have audiences returning for Lee’s next movie meal.

A sweet, funny anarchic pastiche that should find broad based popularity. Its sly combination of the outrageous and the mundane is a surprisingly appealing screen entertainment that transcends the one-joke territory it inhabited on television.

Part homage, part spoof, the deft balancing act is a clever adaptation -- albeit culled from less than pedigreed source material.

Despite fine work from his actors and smooth technical polish, the more provocative elements of the tale arise awkwardly and grate against the early section's almost whimsical nature.

Recalling the animated "Superman" shorts of the 1940s, "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" is a baroque, melodramatic tale of good and evil that's a tad too sophisticated for its intended youthful audience. The shrill thriller is a throwback to a bygone time more appealing to adults.

Babe: Pig in the City is tour de force filmmaking that masks its achievement in a good ripping yarn.

An extremely handsome physical production, with breathtaking Venezuelan vistas by Tony Pierce-Roberts, Jungle 2 Jungle is an otherwise modest effort. Simple truths are often the most effective, but in this instance they are only banal and mildly amusing.

While the picture is often pure delight, and constantly inventive and engaging, ultimately it is not up to the highest standards of the troupe. [25 Feb 1996, p.47]

It’s an effective, if predictable paranoid fantasy. The film’s social statement may be hopelessly muddy, but its adroit sense of fun and thrills cannot be discounted.

It’s relatively foolproof light entertainment, undone only when it strays too far into the absurd or wears the mantle of Wayans’ comedy persona.

The familiar setup sparkles a little brighter here thanks to the ensemble and their deft delivery of the bitchy dialogue in Robert Harling's adaptation of the Olivia Goldsmith novel.

A passionate personal and professional drama that hits both the high and low notes of an extraordinary life and career. An immensely enjoyable saga that's tough, funny and touching.

Poetic Justice is a hermetic inner-city love story elevated by resonant social commentary.

It’s the kind of wickedly delicious comedy one can savor without adding the proviso of guilty pleasure.