Carrie Rickey

A throwback to the days when gangs met in clubhouses instead of crack houses, raced go-carts instead of stolen cars and brandished slingshots instead of semiautomatics, The Little Rascals is the best 1936 movie made in 1994. [05 Aug 1994, p.03]

While Smith gets into Ali's head and under his skin, the movie around him has more footwork than punch.

Solitary Man is a wafer-thin film with a river-deep, mountain-high performance from Douglas.

What's admirable about Save Me is that it grounds its religious and cultural debate not in vilifying one side but in sympathizing with both.

I enjoyed the spectacle of middle-aged people making spectacles of themselves.

Heigl, a double-dip of praline with caramel, is so beautiful that initially you don't notice her comic chops.

Paradise Now plays like Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," but with explosives.

Silly, but irresistible.

As adorable and predictable a film as the Helen Fielding best-seller that inspired it.

In her clear and compelling film, Sanders lets the innocents do the talking.

Because the confrontations between power and powerlessness are so dramatic and because Hirschbiegel's editing is so emphatic, Das Experiment is practically over before you realize that you don't know what its point is, exactly.

Kudos to Clifton Collins Jr., who appears as a dispenser of cleaning products and common sense.

A movie as generous, stingy, and biting - and memorable - as its six main characters.

Evocatively shot by cinematographer Lance Gewer in warm browns and reds that make Tsotsi seem all the more chilling, the film records his gradual metamorphosis from id-driven brute into empathic, if crude, care-giver.

Peter Glenville's staging of the material is the opposite of cinematic, but the pleasure of these two extravagantly gifted actors at the top of their game - their diction! their conviction! their beauty! - is enormous.

Not an easy movie to watch.

A third-generation performer, this daughter of actor-director Ron Howard makes a stunning feature debut.

It succeeds as a vivid video album of the metropolis at the millennium, a lilting musical album of the varied carols Americans play and an all-too-rare depiction of what the pursuit of happiness actually looks like.

Like its music, the film's emotions proceed from lament to screaming screed to chorus of hope.

This eccentric fairy tale with the feel of "Our Town" has a number of remarkable performances.

Making a remarkable feature debut, Hamilton distinguishes herself more as a filmmaker than as a screenwriter. While she elicits smoldering performances from Mackie and Washington, the movie around them is rather diffuse.

Swank is no mere impersonator. Her Amelia, like Maggie in "Million Dollar Baby," is unwavering in her gaze, ambition, and drive... In Nair's evocatively art-directed (and sensationally costumed) film, Earhart comes alive.

It's a film about dumbing down that has the effect of wising up its audience.

If Batman did nothing else but restore pulp-art shadow to the icon sanitized in his pop-art TV reincarnation, it would be an achievement. Tim Burton's Batman, starring a subdued Michael Keaton as you-know-who and a supercharged Jack Nicholson as the Joker, handily accomplishes that mission.

Though not blessed with a cinematic eye, Wells is a gifted storyteller who gets nuanced performances from most of his actors.

Each actor is unusually watchful and wily, and their actorly competition underscores the one-upmanship of their characters.

It lacks momentum, and thus the propulsion required to rocket it into the movie mythosphere.

It's also a case of art imitates life imitates art. If that makes it a tribute to a tribute to a classic, then it is no less enjoyable for that.