FREEZE FRAMES
THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST - Recovering from the death of his son and the breakup of his marriage, a tourist-guide writer gets romantically involved with a working woman he once would have considered beneath his class. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who establishes a haunting mood at the beginning but lets the story degenerate into a male-chauvinist suspense yarn: On which lucky woman will our hero deign to lavish his affections? The message of the film is that life isn't neat and predictable like a well-arranged business trip; yet everything in the picture is so calculated that there's no life to it. (Rated PG) BEACHES - The friendship of two women, an entertainer and a lawyer, from childhood until death parts them. Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey give lively performances, but the screenplay is dreary. There are about a dozen endings, each one more sappy than the last. Directed by Garry Marshall. (Rated PG-13) BURNING SECRET - A brooding performance by Klaus Maria Brandauer is the only strong point of this sentimental drama about a boy coming of age during a stay in a sanitorium. Andrew Birkin directed from his own screenplay. (Rated PG) DANGEROUS LIAISONS - A second-rate adaptation of the second-rate Choderlos de Laclos novel: two hours of pretty people sitting in pretty rooms and talking about sex. Directed by Stephen Frears, who is capable of much more exciting work, from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, who wrote the popular Royal Shakespeare Company version of the same tale a few years ago. (Rated R) DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS - They aren't always who you think they are. As con artists plying their trade in the French Riviera sunshine, Steve Martin is downright riotous, while Michael Caine is quietly, quintessentially comic. The story isn't much, but it hardly matters under the circumstances. Directed by Frank Oz. (Rated PG) TALK RADIO - A few hours in the life and work of a broadcaster who specializes in outraging his own outrageous listeners. Powerfully directed by Oliver Stone, whose swirling camera transforms a radio studio into a white-hot caldron of words and emotions. Written by Stone and Eric Bogosian, and based largely on Bogosian's play of the same title, which was more compact but less forceful when it appeared on the New York stage. Bogosian's performance is one of the film's weaker links, however; he misses the full-bodied intensity his character demands. (Rated R) WORKING GIRL - A secretary turns herself into a financial wheeler-dealer by assuming her employer's identity while the boss is laid up with a broken leg. Wittingly or not, director Mike Nichols has done a cynical twist on last year's ``Wall Street,'' suggesting that greed and chicanery are perfectly acceptable routes to success as long as you're a swell person inside. Melanie Griffith gives a strong performance as the shady heroine, though, and much of the story is fun if you can overlook its amoral implications. (Rated R). RATINGS: Films with ratings other than G may contain varying degrees of vulgar language, nudity, sex, and violence.
