Amy Taubin

Time has tamed some of the terror and eroticism of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, but it’s still a haunting thriller about guilt and the supernatural. What’s notable (more notable even than the much celebrated bedroom scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, in which sex is displaced into memory even as it’s taking place) is that Roeg’s use of the death of a child as the focus of a horror film never feels exploitative.

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.

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.

Probably more terse than it needs to be, but the dramatic line has an elegance and drive that reinforces the unexpected turns of the story.

What's most stunning about Raging Bull is the tension between 19th-century melodrama and 20th-century psychodrama, the narrative form brought into being by the conjunction of Freudian theory and the mechanics of the movie camera.

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

Pretty much a mess, but it also has a couple of long stretches that are extremely daring in that they reveal black family dynamics we've never seen on screen before.

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

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.

Eccentric and thoroughly winning.

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.

A pop culture document for a mass audience.

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.

It's this strategy (however unconscious), and not simply a lack of directing talent, that makes Hedwig so relentlessly assaultive, heavy-handed, and emotionally monochromatic.

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.

Although I don't begrudge Borchardt his year of fame, what he doesn't seem to understand about his exploitation creeps me out.

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.

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

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.

Restrained, tough, and subtle enough to be as engrossing on the second viewing as it was on the first.

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

A film of rare tenderness and mystery.

It may seem perverse to fault a movie for being too accurate, but when surface accuracy is coupled with tunnel vision about self and society the result is a wee bit irritating.

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

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

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

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

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.

Eads's wit, generosity, insight, and courage are irresistible.

A veritable Chekhov tragicomedy of provincial life.

The most audacious debut feature of the year.

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

I suspect that Time Code was a lot more fun to make than it is to watch.

It's a sign of how watered-down the movie is that only the supporting actors have any bite.

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

The most progressive, good-hearted studio film of the summer.

Singer achieves remarkable intimacy with his subjects.

Has all the hallmarks of a Pennebaker production. The editing is seamless, the drama builds throughout, and the arc of the central character is as shapely as in a Hollywood fiction.

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

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

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

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.

Largely a showcase for Puri, and he rises to the occasion with a performance that bursts from the screen and tears into your heart.

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

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

Made with intelligence and formal sophistication.

Far too tepid.

Inept as a thriller, Place Vendôme nevertheless intrigues.

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.

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 small, direct, tantalizing documentary.

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

This is the Julia Roberts performance her fans have been waiting for.

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

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

A tender and hilarious vision of female adolescence.

Egoyan, whose sophisticated eye is connected to a brain that seems, for the moment, to have gone dead.

Filled with vivid and likable characters, The Opportunists could be the basis for a TV series as captivating as "The Sopranos."

As ethereal, moving, and uncompromising as its subject.

As smooth and powerfully packed as its protagonist.

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.

Antoine Fuqua's propulsive, elegantly written police thriller, offers the unsettling spectacle of Denzel Washington.

Despite Sunshine's historical scope and multiplicity of characters, it doesn't shed half as much light on its subject -- identity and anti-Semitism -- as does, for example, Agnieszka Holland's claustrophobic chamber piece "Angry Harvest."

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

The many eight-to-11-year-olds in the audience seemed completely enthralled.

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.

The show that Horrocks puts on when she finally takes to the stage is more than worth the wait.

Little more than a cartoon, and not a funny one at that.

We may not want another film about incest, but there's a necessity about this one that won't be denied.

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.

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

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.

His film is hardly memorable, but it's amusing enough for two hours, and it never panders or cloys.

Except for Polley and Rea, the performances are heavy-handed.

An understated gem.

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

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

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

While the acting ensemble is crucial, it's not the only asset here.

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

By turns hilarious and wounding.

Tender, poignant, and homoerotically charged, this complicated father-son relationship is brought to life by two brilliant actors and a director who's canny enough to give them all the room they need.

So low-key it could be mistaken for a throwaway. But Meadows's understanding of childhood fears and fantasies and the yearning, heartfelt performances he draws from his two young actors should not be underestimated.

A witty, trenchant script, lots of complicated characters, and a few actors who turn human frailty into something nearly sublime.

Not nearly the mindfuck it wants to be.

A sympathetic but conventional disease-of-the-week movie.

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

Filled with people who cut Holmes more slack than he deserved.

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

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

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.

Cross "Rushmore" with "Cheech and Chong" and you might get Outside Providence.

A smart, sweet, and altogether smashing evocation of teenage girlhood.

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.

It's entertainment that never lets us off the hook.

Director Eric Bross has a smooth nonstyle that serves him well until the screenplay turns melodramatic at the end.

Overproduced as a Super Bowl soft-drink commercial, so much so that even its potentially insightful moments seem like movie fakery.

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.