Amy Taubin

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.