A story about race relations, ecology and the application of violence, Costner's film speaks to us where we currently live.

He plays a 19th-century cavalryman who finds the extended family he always craved among the Sioux. Kevin Costner may be working with a hoary genre, but his popular sleeper 'Dances With Wolves' is a revisionist western that looks at the whole earth and the family of man. Then again, they made movies about the past to fit the political correctness of the New Age. Casualties were especially heavy for the over-50 set, with Clint Eastwood bellyflopping in 'The Rookie,' 'Pink Cadillac' and 'White Hunter, Black Heart,' Jack Nicholson sinking in 'The Two Jakes' and Robert Redford bombing in 'Havana.' For that matter, Warren Beatty did not live up to Disney's expectations when it came to turning 'Dick Tracy' into this year's 'Batman.' The lesson for leading men of the '70s seems to be, go soak your teeth.

But mostly the big guns went off half-cocked, their magnums clattering to the floor. Bruce Willis held his own as the indefatigable detective of 'Die Hard 2,' and the artier 'GoodFellas' did good if not great business. That is not to say that the barbarians went totally unappreciated. In 'Rocky V,' Stallone boxes in the shadow of Alan Alda, while Schwarzenegger has mellowed from the Martian G-man of 'Total Recall' to the baby sitter of 'Kindergarten Cop.' In this feel-good movie Arnold, now a father himself, chucks chins and pats bottoms. While movie violence rose to inexcusable and excruciating levels, the two major butt-kickers of the '80s - Stallone and Schwarzenegger - were turning over new fig leaves for the new decade. American Moviegoer and the Little Moviegoers wanted 'Ninja Turtles' and 'Home Alone,' Nos. Seemingly weary of excess in all things, Mr. The public wanted boy meets girl, not boy beats girl or eats girl or ties up girl or chops girl into little bitty pieces and buries her in the basement. 'Henry and June,' the first film ever rated NC-17 - a new rating that replaced the X - disappeared as rapidly as the blush on a virgin's cheek. And who - aside from those of us who spend altogether too much time in the dark anyhow - can blame them? Given the choice between Cinderella and Henry the Serial Killer, the public went with the fairy tale in 1990. There was an uproar over 'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover,' yet it was 'Ghost' that serenely floated off with $200 million in U.S. In this year of living dangerously, of testing the limits of good taste and viewer tolerance, 'Pretty Woman' simply lifted herskirts and stepped over the racier competition.

Wild at heart 1990 nc 17