Bob Graham

In Ran, the horrors of life are transformed by art into beauty. It is finally so moving that the only appropriate response is silence.

The most striking effect of the Technicolor process is its subtlety. The viewer is aware of the gradations of flesh tones in Leigh's face and can see the color rise in her cheeks. The exact color of her eyes is a source of fascination (they are gray-blue with flashes of green).

Bride is often cited as Whale's masterpiece, and one of the reasons surely is his intentional lacing of humor throughout that never completely undercuts the horror or pathos.

The class act of action movies.

The comic contrast between the genteel snobbery of von Bulow, a Danish aristocrat, and Dershowitz's dry contempt for his well-tailored client is treated with understated but stinging wit in Nicholas Kazan's brilliant script. [9 Nov 1990]

This Alfred Hitchcock film on his familiar theme of the wrongly accused man is outstanding in every respect. [19 Sep 1999, p.52]

An overwhelming experience.

Part of the appeal of Topsy-Turvy is its generosity about human folly and shortcomings. Its wistfulness is very touching.

Claude Rains' performance in the title role of The Invisible Man may be outtasight, but you can still see the hand of director James Whale.

No one else makes movies like this Spanish director.

It would have been enough that Singleton raise these difficult questions without trying to wrap them up, too, in the last five minutes.

It's astonishing that so much money, talent, technical expertise and visual imagination can be put in the service of something so stupid.

It is a spellbinding hour and 45 minutes of pure music, Latin jazz to be specific.

Enter the Dragon goes far beyond the philosophical, of course. Its best sequences, and the only real reason for seeing it again, involve Lee's phenomenal physical and emotional presence.

A strange mix of the campy, at least in the English dubbing, and the awesome.

A viewer may even blink his eyes to be sure the turn of events is actually happening.

Don't be too quick to jump on Hurt with complaints of old-fashioned gay stereotyping. Only with a development well into the movie will the audience realize the layers he brought to Molina's role-playing.

This is a transcendent film, deeply committed and beautifully wrought. It will make anyone who sees it look at the world with new eyes.

It's the kind of unpretentious movie that falls between the cracks, and for a certain kind of audience, the thoughtful kind, it would be a shame to miss.

Chunhyang is an extravagantly beautiful movie that many viewers are going to love and others are not going to be able to sit still for. That's their problem.

For a bighearted effort like this one, some patience on the audience's part is not too much to ask. Go ahead. Take a chance.

This warm, celebratory and very public film is punctuated by sudden and luminous private visualizations.

Where it really counts, though, it's the same good old comic action fantasy.

At times, Anderson may be too brilliant for his own good, and there is a risk that viewers will tire of the director's relentlessly prowling camera.

A hostage drama that oscillates between soap opera and action flick.

This is almost Mel Brooks territory: The frontiersmen think the Chinese are Jews, while the white settlers think it's the Crow Indians who are. Whoosh!

All bets are off. For my money, Vincent Gallo wins the Triple Crown of indie filmmaking -- for writing, directing and starring in Buffalo '66.

I Stand Alone ("Seul contre tous" in French) is a portrait of a pathetic soul, but it is also a cautionary tale. The butcher cannot be dismissed as a monster, nor is this a creep show. Something like the butcher's story can be found almost every day in newspaper crime reports.

Story pitches are made. Coke is snorted. There is lesbian sex. Fellatio. An earthquake. A murder. Just another day in Hollywood.

It is wonderful to see how Sheedy gives shape to this performance -- her eyes, a photographer's eyes, carefully sizing everything up. [18 June 1998, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

This thriller is so expertly -- and perversely -- poised that audience members may find themselves secretly rooting for the duplicitous Ripley.

The look of the film is first class, with muted colors but deep textures, the opposite of historical kitsch.

Has that Dickensian spirit wherein simple acts of kindness can bring an audience close to tears.

A very smart noir about gambling, smartly directed by Mike Hodges -- until almost the very end. It craps out in the decisive London casino heist scene.

A steady undertow of sex gives this French thriller a scintillating surface.

It is an exceptional accomplishment.

It is described as about a guy who came back to life, and clearly one of Dumont's aims in The Life of Jesus is to express a spirit of charity for flawed humanity amid the rhythms of ordinary life.

A big-hearted celebration of the we're-all-in-this- together American way.

An actors' feast.

A quirky character study of the four-man team, led by Sam Neill as the crew leader who seems surrounded by an aura of sadness but is so dedicated that he's not above lying to Houston to buy time when something goes wrong.

People who see it may feel like dancing out of the theater afterward. Go for it.

This nasty, provocative comedy comes from a play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

The Coens' plotting, with its suspense and reversals, is a source of amazement and delight.

It's a kind of "sex, lies and videotape'' in suburbia.

Best movie of the summer.

Sly and very savvy.

Slam, directed by Marc Levin, is schematic but effective as it makes its points about African Americans caught in the Washington, D.C., criminal justice system. It's got a wonderful eye and, for a film, ear.

Love and basketball -- if you like either one, here is a movie for you.

A venemous Valentine to Hollywood sugarcoated with laughs.

Haunting music, the seriousness of the allegations and riveting interviews with Alexander Haig, Christopher Hitchens (whose book inspired the film) and others give "Kissinger" extra drama and urgency.

What The Thomas Crown Affair has to sell audiences is a fantasy of the life of the super-rich who jet off to Martinique on the spur of the moment, and the super-smart who operate outside the rules.

At its most interesting, and a bit frightening, when Moore starts to get a little loony. Too bad they didn't follow through and make this more of a psychological thriller than a melodrama.

It proceeds, weirdly enough, from the truly annoying to the absolutely fascinating.

Potentially oppressive subject matter is redeemed by impeccable moral integrity and stunning artistry.

Neither a "gay" movie nor a straight one; it is simply a funny one.

Sets off depth charges of the psyche.

This is a solid suspense thriller that's fun. These stars have put it together in a spirit of playfulness -- as in playacting.

He (Aronofsky) has put together a phantasmagoria of self-destructive obsession that is so visually astounding it becomes its own saving grace. Otherwise, we might not be able to bear it.

It is so propulsive so much of the time, it almost looks as if it's going to go the distance. If Washington & Co. don't quite manage to bring it home, the getting there sure is something.

If this movie ever figured out what it wanted to be when it grows up, it would be a terrific one.

It's more psychological than a genre movie, and that is the source of both its greatest interest and its biggest problem.

Slowly unfolding but liberating film, which is also a rare look inside a circumscribed community.

Leigh is perfectly cast as the game-pod goddess.

This movie can be recommended only to dyed-in-the-wool fans of the genre. Anyone who goes into one of Miike's films must be prepared to be put through the wringer.

Has a saccharine quality but also offers a memorable performance by famed Spanish actor Fernando Fernan Gomez.

In the person of Cameron Diaz, Mary is an island of sanity, good-natured humanity and genuine sweetness in an ocean of anarchy. Without her presence, There's Something About Mary would be merely sophomoric and tasteless.

Totally absorbing even when it, too, strays.

Audiences will talk about how satisfying this movie is.

The lowdown on Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Rob Schneider's first starring role, is that it is. Lowdown, that is.

When the film sticks with the eccentric comedy of a highborn woman attracted to a preoccupied genius, it works splendidly. When it strays into melodrama, it is as ill-equipped as Luzhin.

It is a warm, closely observed satire of lived life, and it is a charmer.

It comes as a bonus that this romantic comedy is one of the rare pictures of its type that actually is about something -- the double-edged sword of celebrity.

Jim Jarmusch has come up with something strange and amazing.

This is no-holds-barred filmmaking. Some viewers will find it disgusting. Others will call the director's bluff.

Stir of Echoes is much more down and dirty (than "The Sixth Sense"), and the thrills are more visceral.

Perfect Blue manages, through animation, to take the thriller, media fascination, psychological insight and pop culture and stand them all on their heads.

The audience, too, will be sorry to see this fleeting, beautifully made French film end.

If the dialect is hard to comprehend, that soon becomes part of the joke. It's unlikely that even the British audiences who made Lock, Stock a big hit got it all.

Delivers a sucker punch to the audience and then pulls the rug out from under it. It is sensational. It is also grimly funny.

Needs to be seen and savored.

Anyone expecting a flashy Bond-style fantasy is going to be disappointed.

Maybe it's no mystery how they did it, considering the aggregate comic talent, but this bunch achieves peaks of sublime nuttiness.

Absolutely the best single moment, beautifully presented, comes when the orphaned Harry looks in a mirror and sees his parents there. It is brilliant in its simplicity and very moving.

Although it takes something of a slog to get there, this thriller finally comes through where it counts.

Any way you slice it, it is still pointless.

Connects so often and so persuasively that its shortcomings -- the movie goes slack from time to time -- really don't amount to much.

If it seems to have the ingredients of an after-school special, the performances take it to another level. Gut level.

If the movie sometimes seems not to come to much either, it does have something to say to those patient enough to stick with it.

This feast of fantasy is worth it.

There may be no more unusual movie around than Vengo.

Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence are back together and give both of their careers some new life in this sentimental comedy.

Fascinating -- up to a point.

Isn't vicious. It's just cheerfully mocking as it courses the canyons and flatlands of Los Angeles.

Anybody with a soft spot for fakers, who either identifies with them or just admires their chutzpah, is going to get a kick out of Happy, Texas.

Totally involving.

Dumb.

Rich supplies some eloquent grace notes, and Van Sant uses them to make understated music.

It overcomes some patchiness to turn into a rich emotional experience, ranging in degree from fire to ice.