Short Schiff

Only Kiefer Sutherland emerges with his magnetism intact.

-STEPHEN SCHIFF

MOVIES

Nadine: Robert Benton's poky cracker-barrel fable harks back to the cheerful lunacy of his early films Bad Company and The Late Show; it isn't wonderful, but it's a sweet little refreshment. And Kim Basinger proves once again that if you give her a corn-pone accent and a flirtatious dirty-girl role, sue can be a first-rate comedienne.

The Lost Boys: They have manes like horses, and their leathery clothes hang from them like fur; when they saunter down the boardwalk, women sigh and dogs bare their teeth. They are, in short, what every teenager dreams of being—eighties versions of the Wild One. With one difference: they're vampires. The idea of a heavy-metal Dracula is clever enough to make The Lost Boys a monster hit, even though it's a vacuous windbag of a movie, full of noise and garishness and cheap tricks cadged from better films. The director, Joel Schumacher, whips all of vampirism's metaphorical possibilities into a froth, but his most pungent conceits drown in flurries of split-second cutting, cockeyed camerawork, and effects that approximate a Metallica light show. Only Kiefer Sutherland, as the vampire gang leader, emerges with his magnetism intact.

STEPHEN SCHIFF