Dave Kehr

Robert Benton`s ''Billy Bathgate'' arrives amid a swirl of rumors that have labeled the film an expensive fiasco-a ''Bathgate'' that might prove a ''Heaven`s Gate'' for its producers at the...

In ''The Butcher`s Wife,'' Demi Moore has been equipped with Daryl Hannah`s flowing blond locks and Dolly Parton`s honey-and-biscuits voice. Eerily unnatural, she seems like something that`s been synthesized in...

Blown up grotesquely out of proportion, like a toy balloon stretched to the dimensions of the Goodyear blimp, Garry Marshall`s version of Terrence McNally`s modest, two-character play ''Frankie and Johnny...

If some inspired teenager hadn`t coined the word ''yucky,'' it would be necessary to invent it to describe ''Dogfight,'' a romantic melodrama starring River Phoenix as a heartless young Marine...

Though compromised by moments of mawkishness, ''The Man in the Moon'' remains a very impressive exercise in visual storytelling. The director, Robert Mulligan, is a veteran filmmaker (''To Kill a...

''Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll'' is a canny adaptation, by Chicago filmmaker John McNaughton (''Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer''), of a long-running one-man show by performance artist Eric Bogosian...

Accepting the award to ''The Fisher King'' for the most popular film at last week`s Toronto Film Festival, director Terry Gilliam said, ''Thank you for justifying my decision to sell...

''Roadkill'' is a Canadian road movie, which is to say that despite the alienation, nihilism and directionless anger built into the form, it still manages to remain nice. That`s no...

As filmmakers, Joel and Ethan Coen have long been a couple of smart alecks-''Blood Simple,'' ''Raising Arizona,'' ''Miller`s Crossing,'' all movies with vastly more style than soul. Now, with ''Barton...

`The Commitments'' is an amiable rock musical that uses its pointedly depressed social background more for atmosphere than for dramatic or political significance. Set in the most devastated areas of...