Bob Graham

Summoning silliness Roman Polanski salutes and spoofs satanic thrillers .

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).

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.

Any way you slice it, it is still pointless.

Solondz should have called this one "So-So Storytelling."

This poor excuse for a thriller turns, with a great crunching of gears, into a mess of a buddy comedy. Either way, it misfires.

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

Faye's presence provides an unexpected context for the photographer's circle, where the gay and straight worlds overlap, and adds a delightful dimension to Chop Suey.

A potential problem with the movie is that it can be a challenge watching people hand-wringing over moral decisions. But the acting is so good that it makes it worth sticking with during the slow patches.

The movie lacks the one thing that the classic "Three Musketeers" story can't do without: panache.

The comic drama is refreshingly anti- sentimental but will break your heart anyway.

A crackerjack combination of live action, special effects and recycled footage.

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.

Tends to be lugubrious.

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.

Wants to be a brightly colored bubble but has trouble getting aloft.

Runs out of ideas long before the projector runs out of film.

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.

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]

A surreal comedy about sex that comes as close to charming as Greenaway ever gets.

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.

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.

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.

A pleasant myth.

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

De Palma seems to be trying too hard to make somebody else's great movie, once again an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Would someone please tell this guy to relax?

The last 15 minutes finally get it together for what passes as a movie experience with a considerable "gotcha!" quotient.