Jay Boyar

Harrison Ford - that most decent of decent men - helps to carry the new film on his broad shoulders. With his blunt, Everyman features and sympathetically furrowed brow, he comes off as such a solid, good guy that it's impossible not to care about his upstanding character.

The main difference between Naked Gun 2 1/2 and Hot Shots! is that almost half the jokes in Naked Gun 2 1/2 were at least slightly funny while in Hot Shots! less than a fifth are any good at all. [2 Aug 1991, p.C5]

Three Amigos will never get any prizes for excitement or originality, but if there were an award for friendliness, this movie would at least be in the running.

The folks who made The 'burbs appear to be card-carrying members of the School of Non-Urban Humor. Basic to the philosophy of this school is the misapprehension that anything occurring outside city limits is intrinsically amusing.

Most of the time, Soapdish is fairly amusing in a zany, anything-goes kind of way. [31 May 1991, p.5]

This latest Star Trek is a well-plotted, well-acted and consistently exciting addition to the popular movie series. [6 Dec. 1991, p.21]

Fortunately, director David Carson and screenwriters Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga (all of whom have served in the Star Trek universe) keep the longueurs to a minimum. Whenever you feel like beaming up (or is it out?), they switch scenes.

Kika is flamboyant and provocative. But the new film, which was partly inspired by the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, is ultimately quite serious.

It's a lot of fun to watch - over two hours of thrills, spills, elaborate sets and special effects, all tied together by a pleasingly varied (and lighter than usual) musical score by John Williams.

It's a measure of Leigh's sensitivity that the big scene arises naturally, never threatening the delicate fabric of the narrative... And not only has Leigh grown as a storyteller, he appears to have acquired exactly the right amount of filmmaking technique to tell his story.

By the end of the film, there's even something vaguely inspirational about our antihero's painful journey through the bowels of his self-created hell.

By the soaring standards of Mike Leigh's career, Career Girls (which opens locally today) is a minor work. But minor-league Leigh is better than major-league most other people, especially because he possesses the most emotionally sophisticated sensibility of any contemporary filmmaker.

The Last of the Mohicans isn't a classic, but it's one of the most exciting action pictures to come along in recent memory.

Altman's method is risky, but when inspiration strikes the result can be wonderful. When it doesn't, the result can be, well, Ready to Wear.

A production that's strong on atmosphere but weak in the plot department. Watching this often-tedious film, you begin to feel as if you've been kidnapped - which is appropriate, anyway, since the story concerns an abduction.

JFK is a limp, semi-coherent, boring movie. [20 Dec 1991, p.21]

The setup isn't exactly what you'd call plausible, but the follow-through is consistent and clever.

In Bottle Rocket, the small scale and vague amateurishness (especially in the performances) are themselves rather endearing. They seem to go along with the screwed-up characters, as does the loosely structured plot.

The film doesn't go deeply enough into Hawking's theories to really explain them, and it doesn't go deeply enough into Hawking's life to impart anything but a sketchy understanding of the man. Still, considering the almost impenetrable subject matter, it's remarkable that Morris has gotten as far as he has.

Although the filmmakers are subtle in their methods and unobtrusive in their interviewing style, they make their points forcefully.

The Big Easy is as atmospheric as they come, but -- surprise! -- it's also sharp and swift. Plus, it has ample amounts of chemistry -- the steamy, sexy kind.

The bottom line is that The Crow is a somewhat-better-than-average exploitation flick that has received an extra shot of hype from the untimely and dramatic demise of its star performer.

This superficially engaging movie leads you to expect something more - something that would suggest how the experience of playing professional ball changed the lives of the women in the league, and how the league itself may have helped to alter the general public's notions of women and sports.

One triumph of The Untouchables is the way its operatic style accommodates larger-than-life performances.

The Firm and The Pelican Brief, both of last year, were solid entertainment. Now along comes the movie version of The Client - the best of the Grisham film trilogy.

A big-screen version of a routine cop show that occasionally gets by on momentum from the original movie.

The problem is that producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler (Night and the City, Guilty by Suspicion) simply has no idea what he's doing. I take that back. He knows what a producer ought to know: how to latch onto a hot topic and a hot star. Winkler also appears to have picked up enough from the directors he has worked with to give his film a certain second-hand slickness.

The movie's biggest sin, however, is that during its crucial final half-hour, the action is shot in a confusing way that renders it virtually incomprehensible. This section is almost a series of random images, which is no way to build suspense, let me tell you. That this movie's director has previously specialized in music videos and that he has never before directed a feature film, may explain why this section is so very chaotic. [22 May 1992, p.19]