Alien Resurrection
Scum of the galaxy fight aliens. Tip for producers: audiences don't care about scummy characters. As usual, movie-makers deliver gore and sharp editing and loud-track. This movie is better than Alien 3, but not nearly as good as the first two. Cameron's Aliens is the best space-military action movie.

I Know What You Did Last Summer
Homicidal maniac stalks witnesses. At first he just torments them. He injures one, has him at his mercy but doesn't kill him. Later in movie he kills him. Why did he wait? In half a second he had time switch off lights in a store and hide under plastic like a mannequin. He removes corpse and dozens of crabs from trunk of car in broad daylight--and no one sees him. It sure is easy to be a homicidal maniac and no brains required. This movie does not deserve its apparent success.

Starship Troopers
Mobile Infantry fights giant bugs with machine guns--no armor, no artillery, no air support, apparently no reconnaissance, definitely no intelligence. The computer-generated bugs are great. But that's the movie. They spend a hundred million bucks on special effects but won't spend a hundred thousand to tweak some plot.

Hoodlum
Laurence Fishburne and Tim Roth and other good actors make this a good gangster movie, directed by under-appreciated Bill Duke.

Air Force One
There were people from ages eight to eighty watching this movie with me and we all enjoyed it immensely, especially the mid-air transfer. I'm not sure why Russian ultra-nationalists would be helping a Kazakh despot. Harrison Ford acts like the president all Americans want, but to really make it in politics takes a whole different world of phoniness.

Face/Off
Oooo! John Woo! Sharp action sequences offset the usual improbabilites. Face transplants--OK. But doesn't anyone check fingerprints, teeth? Why does the hero wait in the church--and with his wife? He should have had her safely out of the way, considering he lost his son.

Speed 2: Cruise Control
Stupid and boring. If I want to hear an actress say the word "relationship" I will go to a Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts chick-flick. Willem Dafoe throws Bo Svenson off the ship. I don't think that is believable. Sailors in the harbor don't notice a cruise liner until it's almost on top of them. I don't think that is believable. Sandra Bullock gets to yell, "Be careful!" too many times. She paints her toenails. This is supposed to be an action film! The navigator reports the digital readout that we see on the screen because Hollywood knows the audience is so mentally slow. I don't think that is believable. Anyone on the ship who can hear him can feel the ship is slowing down. He'd be hanging on to his ass.

Con Air
The usual credibility problems. Cyrus The Virus (John Malkovich) would not leave clues hidden in his prison cell. He left a booby-trap bomb, so he was expecting the stuff to be found. He would have destroyed his code device, or planted misleading false clues. I know--it's only a movie. Put your brain on auto-pilot and let the Bruckheimer crew fly.

The Fifth Element
Lush and ludicrous and lacking Luc's usual kinetic drive.
It is as bad as a Benetton ad. Too many close-ups of faces that don't deserve close-ups. Fash trash. Barbarella did it better.
Why was Milla Jovovich cast in the role of a perfect being? I can list many actresses with better parts for the part.

Breakdown
Moody, tense, good pacing, photography. Only a few plot implausibilities, none through which one could drive a truck.

Murder At 1600
Good plot + good cast = good movie.
Unfortunately, it's a mystery story, so it won't draw the repeat crowd as do the summer spectaculars in which lotsa stuff gets blowed up real good; and so, it won't make a gazillion bucks.

The Saint
Good, not great. Couldn't they work out a more satisfying thwarting of the villains? They go to prison. That'll teach them. Tretiak has stolen oil hidden under his house. It would have to be a negligible amount for a country with a population of three hundred million. For whom was that silly info included? Is it because the children of the baby boomers are starting to hit cinemas that all movies have to aim for not-too-sophisticated? Here's an idea: multiple versions of every movie--a dumbed-down version and a sensible, satisfying piece of work. Almost any book I read is worth the time it takes to read it. Almost no movie I see is worth the time it takes to watch it.

Double Team
Yeah, I went to it. Yeah, it was stupid too.
It was dumbed-down with minimized plot and dialogue to facilitate translation for the global markets. There must be specialist script doctors in Hollywood.
"I've got a not-bad piece of shit I need dumbed-down, Doc."
"No prob, C.B. I can get it down to IQ 80 for summer release."
I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone (how could I?) but . . . Mickey Rourke has the coliseum-type place rigged with mines but he's happy to fight Van Damage there and yet when he steps on a mine, the place goes up like a truck of fertilizer and diesel fuel was under it. If Mickey put so much explosive in the place, he would not be hanging around to see if J-C went boom.
The story would have more impact if the protagonist is presented with a dilemma to solve. Instead, the baby was out of the way and it was run, run, shoot, shoot, punch, punch, kick, kick.
And who would be funding The Colony? Yeah, I know: people like me who go to these movies. Barnum certainly had it right.
And this movie has way too many close-ups.
Tsui Hark is a good director of action sequences. Maybe they should platoon directors. Shoot the eye candy and bring in someone else for subtlety of story and character.

Dante's Peak
Was there any doubt the family dog would survive?

Star Trek First Contact
If you're a Trek fan, then you want to see this movie. Otherwise, like the previous seven movies, it offers nothing stellar.

Crash
Mundanely driven vehicle, except for the sex scenes, which may set a new standard for R-rated movies. Cronenberg's style is becoming even less fluid. At least he's not a Hollywood assembly line director.There should have been a couple fornicating while driving fast through heavy traffic and then colliding so two cars could copulate. Too much about people spectating crashes as a means of arousal and not enough orgasmic collisions. The novel is better. Ballard is an under-appreciated writer.

Escape From L.A.
Now that summer is falling, I can stop going to this type of movie.

The Island Of Doctor Moreau
Brando wears an ice bucket on his head--you need know no more.

Fled
Flawed by plot improbabilies . . . example: the Schiller character on top of the cable car--yeah, right; like there wouldn't be an easier way.

Independence Day
142 boring minutes.
This movie is bad enough that I'm surprised Demi Moore didn't star in it.

Eraser
Savage mayhem. Two thumbs up and a railgun in each fist. Film students can milk another Arnold opus for material on the self-made man (physically and financially) deconstructing identity and reconfiguring in his own image blah, blah, blah.

The Rock
Exuberant action, premise and plot not wholly convincing, saved by powerful presence of Sean Connery.

Mission Impossible
As a Phelps-phile I am dismayed.
Any episode of the TV series had a better plot.

Fear
Not enough Alyssa, I'm afraid.

Embrace Of The Vampire
Lots of Alyssa--Milanometer goes off the scale--plus directorial flair.

Executive Decision
Tight script with twists. Most directors badly need to be taught to make movies even this taut.