Bird on a Wire (1990)

Mel Gibson's mullet and wild-eyed "loose cannon" routine feels self-conscious and tired here - after Lethal Weapon 1 and 2 - but he and Goldie Hawn generate chemistry together, and occasional laughs, as former lovers fleeing killers from his pre-witness protection life, and helping bind the wafer-thin plot, action and comedy together into a palatable something is the Neville Brothers' easy-listening cover of Leonard Cohen's Bird On A Wire.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

In The Line Of Fire (1990)

What I like about Wolfgang Petersen's action thriller is how human it is, about an assassin (John Malkovich) determined to kill the President: Clint Eastwood's security guy fulfills his action hero duties, hanging from the edge of buildings and leaping into the path of bullets, but all the while he grizzles like the old man he is, has clumsy sexual encounters, gets sick, crankily dismisses the psychological games his quarry plays, and generally stays down-to-earth, which is refreshing given all the other bionically- and super-power-enhanced heroes saturating our cinemas.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

A Shock To The System (1990)

A very minor thriller and yet an exceedingly enjoyable one thanks to the star-power of the two leads (Caine and McGovern), this 1990 release adapted from a Simon Brett book has Caine playing an upper manager almost on the way out -  old and overlooked for a plum promotion - when he discovers a new magic way to reinvigorate his work and private life: murder dressed up as accidents.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Narrow Margin (1990)

The RKO screenplay, first filmed in 1955 and then this time in 1990, has all the ingredients of a classic thriller: a train carrying a witness to murder and thugs trying to identify her before she and her escort, a Deputy District Attorney played by Gene Hackman, get to Vancouver to testify against a Mr Big - but it all ends up silly, empty stuff with the action amounting to Hackman flinging himself sideways into a sleeping car or into a nook or into a quiet cargo hold as the inept baddies trawl up and down and up and down the train corridors ridiculously unable to pinpoint the car in which Anne Archer, the witness, sits either being breathless and scared in the dark or else engaged in long conversations with the DA somehow still able to stop by regularly for lengthy heart-to-hearts.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Blue Steel (1990)

I like Kathryn Bigelow's gripping Blue Steel about a rookie cop who just 24 hours into the job blasts away a supermarket robber, has her badge taken away and ends up the object of a gun-fetishist's psychopathy, and I like it so much I've watched it three times now, but full of awful policework and characters' really dumb decisions, it is best considered a slice of throwaway psychosexual horror (with horror stalwart Jamie Lee Curtis really just terrorised by another nightmarish Michael or Fog) than a more meaningful thriller/drama - there's nothing intelligent said, for instance, about gun violence or female cops or male violence.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Pacific Heights (1990)

Financially stretched San Franciscan couple (Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine) buys a Pacific Heights property with a plan/need to rent out the rooms but when their tenant (Michael Keaton) turns out to be a creep who hammers at night, toys with razorblades and stares creepily at people through his car windshield, a long, dry Tenant's Rights case study ensues, one that becomes only slightly more interesting towards the end of the movie when the landlords and tenant engage in a cat and mouse game (with the movie making the mistake of assuming you'll side with the inept, unsympathetic landlords).

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Joe Versus The Volcano (1990)

12-year-old Josh Baskin couldn't wait to grow up and, wish granted by a Zoltar Fortune Telling machine, made a good go of corporate life in the body of a 30-year-old Tom Hanks, whereas in this comedy released two years after Big and in some ways its reverse, another J.B. played by Tom Hanks, the adult Joe Banks, believing himself to be dying, rejects his dreary corporate life and embarks on a childish, absurdist Candide-esque round-the-world trip to an island where he is prepared to sacrifice his life for an orange soda-loving tribe.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Hunt For Red October (1990)

In this first of the Jack Ryan movies, released in 1990 with Alec Baldwin as Tom Clancy's hero, Jack Ryan is a mere "expendable" analyst but even so he is the only one among CIA heavies and the navy elite of two countries who can intuit what is really going on (nothing terribly thrilling) when a Russian nuclear submarine, the Red October, goes awol.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Quick Change (1990)

A trio of friends nonchalantly carries off a bank robbery in the opening scenes of this hilarious Bill Murray comedy only to encounter trouble afterwards when an uncooperative New York City throws its criminals, mafiosi, an early career Stanley Tucci, inept taxi drivers, and stubborn bus drivers in the way of their easy getaway!

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Witches (1990)

This is just exactly how you imagined it in your head as you read the Roald Dahl book as a child, with the witches a grotesque gaggle of foul bald creatures who plot to turn all the children of England into mice; one boy on holiday with his grandmother in a beachside hotel must stop the witches from enacting their dastardly plans but will he be able to after they've turned him into a mouse?

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Home Alone (1990)

Poor Kevin is accidentally left home alone over the Christmas holiday period in this kids classic featuring a very cute Macaulay Culkin as Kevin who revels in his newfound freedom, calmly and expertly booby-trapping his home and unleashing Warner Bros cartoon-style violence upon a pair of bumbling house thieves.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Bad Influence (1990)

This 80s Fight Club has a baby-faced Rob Lowe playing a wet sort of a Tyler Durden whose (not very convincing) bravura in a bar fight and way with women (doing 'out there' stuff like buying them drinks and dancing with them and stuff) works a Rasputin-like spell over James Spader's The Narrator, who ditches his corporate life of double-breasted suits, ProDOS computers, and suitcase mobile phones for an anarchic Clyde-and-Clyde lifestyle of grubby three-person sex, convenience-store theft....and murder! 

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Ghost (1990)

It is often said of this hit romantic ghost story that Whoopi Goldberg steals the show playing Oda Mae Brown, a not-so-fake psychic, but in fact the whole cast - including Patrick Swayze as Sam, an all-round good guy murdered early on who tries as a ghost to solve the mystery of his death, and Demi Moore as Molly, his heartbroken lover - is so winning and likeable that it too, along with the movie's special effects and great humour, makes this a romantic, suspenseful, funny and only occasionally cloying romp.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS