Barbara Shulgasser

If there is a reason anyone would voluntarily agree to make this movie it probably dwells somewhere in a realm only accessible to the thinking of ambitious actors.

You find yourself absorbed in simply looking at them to the extent that it's hard to hear what they're saying. It's a nice dilemma for a movie to present.

[Nair's] sure touch with the details of social decorum carries the film through. [14 Feb 1992, p.D3]

Something in Hutton's wounded puppy look always communicates an untapped intelligence or wasted potential, both of which are perfect for this role.

On the whole, the movie is a success. I still hope that children and their parents will read this wonderful book together, but it's nice that there's a movie they can see, too.

The film itself never felt quite so densely plotted as Yimou apparently had hoped.

DeVito, whose singing sounds like a cross between coughing and Jimmy Durante on a good day, is a gruff and lovable mentor with a Brooklyn accent and a New Yorker's intolerance for sentimentality. Egan's Meg is a fiery dame with lots of gall. Tate Donovan gives voice to the adult Hercules, and he is just right as an almost Dudley Doright-ish lug who thinks heroics have more to do with physical daring than with big-heartedness. Alan Mencken's original score is boisterous and hummable, and lyrics by David Zippel perfectly suit the story and Disney's recent style for cleverness.

Mangold's vision is bold. There is nothing cutesy or gimmicky about Heavy, which may be why something in its grimness recalls the work of Ingmar Bergman.

The scenes with Stalin and his frightened underlings, his giddy yes-men tip-toeing around him, are written and directed by Duncan with a grace, agility and comic deftness one rarely is treated to at the movies these days.

There isn't much to recommend this movie until Pacino and De Niro finally share the first of their two scenes together.

Buscemi is after a slice of life with a grown-up slacker. The trouble is that, in the end, this isn't terribly interesting.

With this marvelous premise to launch it, the film fails nevertheless. The trouble is that none of the dialogue is funny enough to fulfill the expectations that Brooks' full-bodied stand-up comedian delivery promises every time he opens his mouth.

Hytner uses 360-degree camera turns and strange angle shots to inject this largely lifeless business with some drama. Ryder tries to do the same by nearly working herself into cardiac arrest in several monologues. Day-Lewis is acting so hard you can see his lower teeth, which, by the way are sometimes horribly decayed and other times white enough to blind a dental hygienist...See this movie at the peril of your soul.

Referring to his love of Hollywood musicals and a working-class background that fostered enduring dreams of making movies one day, Varda creates an homage to a filmmaker's imagination. It doesn't hurt that she was also in love with him.

Most disappointing is the fact that the movie ends so abruptly that you can't help wondering what the whole story amounts to, moving as it is.

Baumbach is obviously a bright man, but this material is too thin for anything more than a slight New Yorker short story about thoughtful screw-ups.

Huston manages to bring the unavoidable brutality of this story to the screen without seeming exploitative. And she gets good performances out of Malone, Leigh and Eldard. Glenne Headly gives a great performance as Leigh's saintly sister.

This is the old beauty and the beast tale, one that Disney has already done well enough. I guess they had so much fun the first time that they just had to do it again.

Martin Scorsese is certainly one of the great living movie directors. Sadly, this does not mean he can't make a mistake. Kundun is a mistake.

When you really think about Breakdown - and believe me, that would probably require spending more time thinking about the movie than the filmmakers did - it doesn't make much sense.

Softley and Amini say they consciously viewed Kate as a film noir kind of heroine, a beauty leading a good man astray. And that, added to the setting of the second half of the movie in canal-riven Venice, gives the story the kind of moral haziness that verges on Thomas Mann territory.

Sympathizing with Moreau would be difficult in any case. But with Brando in the role, there is the added obstacle of needing to suppress laughter every time he opens his pursed mouth.

There is something nicely matter-of-fact about Greg Mottola's family comedy-trauma, The Daytrippers. This first-time writer-director has a breezy way of persuading us that seemingly unrealistic behavior is the most natural in the world.

I'm not really sure who would enjoy this movie.

DeVito directed this wonderful fantasy about a brilliant little girl with strange powers and a sunny disposition. Using special effects DeVito creates a visual delight that seems more British than American partly due to the origin of the material and partly due to the playfulness of DeVito and writers Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord.

It's hard not to keep thinking that this movie is basically "Yentl" with a nose job.

Here and there, a good idea or scene erupts, as when the antagonists accidentally switch cellular telephones and start taking each other's emergency calls. And Jack keeps his shrink appointment but must speak in code so his daughter won't understand. But these are anomalies and subside just as suddenly as they appear.

The movie is well made by director Michael Winterbottom ("Jude"), with a minimum of overdramatics.