Amy Taubin

Acting is the strongest element in Stephen Frears's Liam.

Runaway Bride isn't as offensive as most studio romantic comedies—just pointless and dull.

More commendable as social protest than as filmmaking.

Sweet, ribald, and even inspired in an off-the-cuff way.

Takes its shape from (Viard's) performance, which is as big as life.

The script for Session 9 is so underwritten that even such lively character actors as David Caruso, Peter Mullan, and Brendan Sexton III are left stranded.

Crouching Tiger's dramatic line is so blurry that the central character is only a bystander to the climactic fight between forces of good and evil.

Seems like a TV movie. A well-written, sympathetically acted TV movie, to be sure, but so timid and clumsy in its deployment of picture, sound, and editing that you have to wonder if executive producer Martin Scorsese bothered to give notes.

Part cautionary tale, part moral-uplift saga, Brokedown Palace is as dull as it's absurd.

A dark and unsparing study of female masochism and a brittle sex comedy of manners, Romance is unsettled in tone, to say the least.

It remains one of the most wrenching films about adolescent angst, thanks largely to the performance of Phil Daniels.

The most audacious debut feature of the year.

The General is a refined, traditional movie about a character who is never more traditional than when he imagines himself outside the law. It’s a great paradox, but it barely comes alive on the screen.

Martin's grin-and-don't-bare-it performance lifts the picture above sitcom level. [31 Dec 1991]

The film's greatest failure, however, is the absence of any convincing emotional or sexual relationship between Sally (Leigh) and Joe (Cumming).

Unabashedly personal and uncool...but between you and me, dear reader, I love it to death.

It soon becomes evident just how inane a film this is.

The relationship between the hysterical Gerard and the careful, compulsive George is classic screwball material and more compelling than the relationship between George and Alicia.

As ethereal, moving, and uncompromising as its subject.

Had Nelson and Kaaya been less concerned with following Othello to the letter and rather had pursued this love affair into uncharted cinematic waters, O might have been more than an unresolved mixture of gimmickry and good intentions.

Although there's no evidence of sexual chemistry on the screen, the stars share a certain physical defensiveness that occasionally makes them seem simpatico; most of the time, however, they just look bored to death.

Schneebaum is a great subject; the film doesn't quite make the most of him.

Justman's A Trial in Prague acts as something of a corrective to the exuberant but oversimplified "Fighter."

It seems like a more witty, wise, and succinct "Magnolia."

Takes us inside the consciousness and the coded masculine world of a single character.

Isn't convincing on every front, but as a political conversation piece, it's potentially effective.

Begins on a note of total migraine-inducing hysteria, which continues unabated throughout.

A magisterial film, but not quite a great one.

Martin's performance is as impeccable as the set decoration, though one wishes he'd stop wasting his skill. Keaton flaunts her matronly hips, daring us to remember Annie Hall, but despite a jawline that's tighter than it was a decade ago in Baby Boom, she looks past the age of conception (no cosmetic surgery for wombs). [19 Dec 1995]

An inert and inept romantic comedy.

The film belongs to Fleiss, and he makes Joe's inner life so transparent that it's heartbreaking to watch the boy dig himself into a hole.

What gives the film extra weight is the sense that these are not just actors trying to enhance their careers but real people seizing a chance for immortality.

Hal Hartley fans, Flirt may be too slight and schematic. [13 Aug 1996]

Loathsome though Stepmom is, the eternally coltish Roberts is always a pleasure to watch and Sarandon's mordant wit occasionally comes to the fore.

Prince-Bythewood gives the film a style that's easy on the eye but also has muscle -- on and off the court.

It could be described as the most gripping political thriller to hit the big screen in many years, although given the events it depicts through interviews, photographs, and news footage, the words "gripping" and "thriller" have inappropriately frivolous and commercial associations.

Bette Midler and Danny De Vito mug more shamelessly than usual.

What's on the screen is so dreadful that it inspires the ontological question "What are films and why is this not one of them?"

Punishing, visceral violence is the key element.

A highly talented filmmaker, Radtke draws intense, focused performances from these two inexperienced young actors.

It's the prettiest movie of the year, maybe of Allen's career.

There are big crowd scenes, intimate close-ups, and lots of bug’s-eye point-of-view shots. Call me gullible: I believed every second of it.

Neither as lively nor as tough as the original, and compared to the hardcore punk of "Border Radio," the score for Sugar Town sounds like Muzak.

As fragmented and unresolved as the experiences of mother and daughter, Alma bears witness to a situation for which there are no easy answers.

Michael and Mark Polish's debut feature, "Twin Falls, Idaho," was a cloying oddball love story involving adult male Siamese twins; their follow-up, Jackpot, is another piece of whimsical Americana.

Goodman and Anker adroitly shape a cohesive drama out of a complicated history.

The Cruise is being hailed as a harbinger of a future in which indie film will be liberated by low-cost technology. If this is where we're going, I want off the bus.

A tender and hilarious vision of female adolescence.

Eccentric and thoroughly winning.

Thanks to some brilliant casting, Venus Beauty Institute provokes ideas about women, movies, sexuality, and age that extend beyond its frothy fiction.

Its exploration of faith and love is skin deep.

It does offer Annaud the opportunity to show his directorial muscle in elaborate battle scenes, where many bodies are torn apart and blood flows freely.

A logo-laden celebration of the joys of sponsorship wrapped inside an innocuous teen-pic package.

A spare, formally ingenious, journalistically acute piece of filmmaking.

Far too tepid.

Its awkward mix of polemic and melodramatics probably won't travel very well.

Compelling viewing, even if there's nothing pretty (pictorially or emotionally) about it.

Not as skillful, subtle, or hilarious as "Some Like It Hot," but its anti-essentialism vis-à-vis gender roles is just as sharp and exhilarating.

Josh Aronson's thoroughly engrossing documentary Sound and Fury is as much about children's rights as it is about the impact of cochlear-implant technology on a family in which deafness runs through three generations.

Trades in sitcom stereotypes and crosscuts predictably from family to family as if under the misapprehension that equal time is a dramatic principle.

Derails toward the end, becoming platitudinous, not to mention kitschy, but, given the Cheerios wholesomeness of most gay indies, its grief-stricken delirium is a welcome relief.

A veritable Chekhov tragicomedy of provincial life.

Arik Kaplun's smart, scrappy romantic comedy Yana's Friends displays an insouciance rarely found in Israeli film.

Dorothy and Petula leave a bloodier trail than Thelma and Louise did.

What’s remarkable—and Kafkaesque—about La Sentinelle is how Desplechin grounds the phantasmagoric aspects of his tale in the details, routines, and conflicts of daily life.

Along with Raoul Coutard's radiant cinematography, what makes the film extraordinary is Karina, the pure curves of her face a contradiction to the marionette angularity of her body.

A gorefest of epic proportions.

Even more than the subtlety of the writing and acting, it's this sophisticated and emotionally potent visual strategy that suggests Barbieri's promise as a filmmaker and lifts One above the low-budget indie heap.

Owen and Mirren are fun to watch, but the film, despite the many shots of gardens in full bloom, lacks visual distinction.

This is one scary movie, not because we see ghosts or monsters, but because Kidman makes us feel her fear as our own.

There are long stretches in Sexy Beast that are so exhilarating it feels churlish to dwell on its flaws.

Downey, who radiates more energy doing nothing discernible than most other actors do when they let it all hang out, takes the film to another level.

By turns hilarious and wounding.

If Lloyd's performance is the film's near-fatal flaw, Unger's is its saving grace.

The queasiness it makes you feel is more like acid reflux than existential nausea.

Psychologically resonant despite the intermittently clunky performances...one of the only Amerindies in recent years to match intellectual with formal ambitions.

Lacks development and dramatic coherence.

The most revelatory moment is provided not by the spectacle of the Roes clinging to each other on a bungee cord, but by Julian Lennon, who pops up on the beach in Monaco to give a terse evaluation of his father.

Refreshingly direct and even courageous in its confrontation of female pleasure -- specifically orgasms and masturbation, the staple of teen-boy comedies, but hitherto off-limits for girls.

Forster not only makes this unlikely story emotionally believable, he moves you to tears. Lakeboat isn't much of a film, but for Forster fans, it's indispensable.

The relationship is touching, painful, revealing, and often funny, which is true of the film as a whole as well.

The style of the filmmaking, the freewheeling handheld camera movement, the associative editing, and the buoyant Brazilian score convey Anderson's sense that chance plays a major role in our lives and that what's happening on the periphery is often more important than what's staring us in the face.

The 7Up series is thus one of the rare documentaries to have had a positive practical effect on the life of at least one of its subjects.

An intelligent, perceptive film. It's good enough to make you wish Chen hadn't sacrificed emotional complexity for a last-minute surprise.

The three-act structure is too predictable, and at 90 minutes, feels both draggy and hacked to the bone.

A smart, realist drama -- I wouldn't be surprised if this one winds up on my 10-best list for '99.

Properly picturesque but lacks subtlety and substance in blending Chinese and Western history, ideas, and cinematic conventions.

So extremely stupid and incompetent, I doubt that even the most impartial critic could find much to praise.

This adaptation of John Irving's novel--- is as paternalistic, puffed-up, and dull as a congressional debate about abortion rights.

Isaac Eaton wrote and directed; he evidences little talent in either department.

The best Elmore Leonard adaptations ("Jackie Brown," "Out of Sight") play behind the beat, and although The Big Bounce isn't top-shelf Dutch, the film finds its own pace.

As smooth and powerfully packed as its protagonist.

Everything about the film is familiar except that the twentysomethings are all African American.

A small, direct, tantalizing documentary.

Mark Hanlon's ridiculous and repellent hash of "Repulsion" and "Psycho," with scenic elements of "Seven" thrown in for good measure.

Rampling has never been as beautiful, not to mention as emotionally naked, nuanced, and affecting as she is here.

The movie lacks any sense of subcultural specificity, though it has a superabundant country music score. [22 Apr 1997]

It's a lot of plot but none of it is particularly funny or compelling. What keeps the film chugging along and also gives it a depressive aftertaste is a middle-aged male sexual anxiety subtext that intermittently sputters to the surface.