Dave Kehr

Though the film is far from polished, the force of its significance to Mr. Frey, as well as the urgency of its political message, give it some genuine impact.

Joins the small pool of films that have dared to use Imax to tell a story.

Special-effects buffs generally cite this 1963 effort by Ray Harryhausen as the master’s masterpiece, and his work does a great deal to enliven the tired plot and vacuous stars (Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack).

Bright, good-spirited and blissfully short.

There isn't a lucid moment in it (and much of the dialogue is rendered unintelligible by Russell's subversive direction), but it has dash, style, and good looks, as well as the funniest curtain line since Some Like It Hot.

The filmmakers build an argument that is both intellectual and emotional, concentrating as much on the forensic evidence as on Ms. Rosario's passionate commitment to finding justice for her son.

William Friedkin's remake of the French thriller Wages of Fear represents an above-average effort by the director of The Exorcist—meaning it's marginally watchable. Friedkin senselessly complicates the simple story—four men drive a truckload of nitro through a South American jungle—with a lengthy exposition and some unfortunate existential overtones. The rhythms are all off—it's either too fast or too slow—but most of the set pieces are effective.

A strange, disturbing and yet occasionally quite funny cultural artifact from the new Russia.

Universal's classic from 1931, directed by Tod Browning. The opening scenes, set in Dracula's castle, are magnificent—grave, stately, and severe. But the film becomes unbearably static once the action moves to England, and much of the morbid sexual tension is dissipated.

Ultimately unsuccessful, the film is nevertheless a fascinating first draft for Vertigo.

A competent, unpretentious entertainment destined to fill the after-school slot at shopping mall theaters across the country.

The 1980 sequel to Every Which Way but Loose, and a better film—smoother, more controlled, with more time for the casual elucidation of place and character. Though it's a loud, vulgar, and occasionally brutal comedy, it never succumbs to the fashion for facetiousness: Clint Eastwood always takes his work seriously, even in a relatively impersonal project like this, and there are moments of moving emotional candor amid the slapstick, flashes on loneliness, forgiveness, and loyalty.

Much of it is awful, but it's almost impossible not to be taken in by the narrative sprawl: like many big, bad movies, Giant is an enveloping experience, with a crazy life and logic of its own.

The material has been bowdlerized to the point of abstraction, which makes Richard Brooks's sweaty, emphatic direction look a little silly—there just isn't that much to get worked up about. But Burl Ives and Judith Anderson are highly entertaining as the nightmare parents, Big Daddy and Big Mama, and Jack Carson has one of his last good roles as Newman's competitive older brother.

Part wish fulfillment and part social moralizing, the film never resolves its point of view, but a few of the apocalyptic images stay in the mind.

The verbal and conceptual gags, however, belong wholly to Martin's own brand of goofiness, and some of them are pretty funny.

This 1939 release is still watchable, though the spirit is now sitcom.

The tension is intriguing and expressive (perhaps this is what Beineix had in mind for The Moon in the Gutter), though the unstable mixture is clearly limited as a sustainable style. 

Steve McQueen as a tres chic San Francisco cop, though the real star is his sports car. There isn't much here, and what there is is awfully easy. With Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn, Robert Duvall, and a chase sequence that achieved classic status mainly by going on too long; Peter Yates directed this 1968 feature.

It's rich, stimulating thought in spite of itself. Lots of elegant clothes and settings, weirdly linked to a shock rhythm of tension and release. It's a movie dream turned into a movie nightmare, a wonderful idea the film doesn't know it has.

The material continues to carry its inherent emotional power and moral importance. As banal as the telling may be -- and at times, All My Loved Ones more than flirts with kitsch -- the tale commands attention.

First-timer Peter Masterson directed; his notion of film is to point the camera in the general direction of the actors.

Entertaining, lightly mocking documentary.

Ms. Gardos is not a particularly flavorful filmmaker, but she is an honest one.

None of it is very convincing, thanks to Tuggle's shaky storytelling: on the one hand, he sets up his plot twists with such elephantine emphasis that the payoffs are invariably anticlimactic; on the other, he relies constantly and shamelessly on the most outre coincidence. Still, the action scenes do have a certain punch and vigor, and there are a few fresh, offbeat views of the City of Angels. Part of the point of the project seems to be to prove that Hall can “act” (as if his comic roles were something else), and he does move honorably if not remarkably through a mumbling Method performance.

A handsome, ambitious film that fails to satisfy—perhaps because the director, Ivan Passer, insists on an ambiguity on the plot level that muddies and dilutes the thematic thrust.

Far more ambivalent and ambiguous film than Mr. Spielberg's. Both North and South are portrayed as brutal, abusive regimes that use their citizens as so much cannon fodder.

The drama is developed without recourse to flashbacks or cutaways, and it is done cleverly and stylishly, though it lacks Hitchcock's usual depth. At times, the film seems on the verge of rising above its frankly propagandistic intentions, but it never really confronts the Darwinian themes built into the material.

The film is a celebration of youthful romanticism and youthful nihilism, two philosophies that are often indistinguishable from each other where Nadja is set: Manhattan's East Village, with its tiny, secretive bars and tumultuous street life.

Hitchcock disliked the film, but it offers an unusual glimpse of the master before he settled into thrillers.

Ambassador Gregory Peck finds that he's adopted the Antichrist (and he's a cute little feller too), in the slickest of the many demonic thrillers that followed in the wake of The Exorcist. Richard Donner directs more for speed than mood, but there are a few good shocks.

The first two are total stinkers, but things pick up with Joe Dante's creepy, claustrophobic, and very funny study of a brattish kid who lives in a cartoon universe, and come slamming home with George Miller's final sketch about a paranoid airline passenger.

His (Roy's) informed contempt is highly entertaining, but he neglects some of the more problematical and perhaps more illuminating aspects of his story.

Walter Hill's existential action piece, rendered in a complete stylistic abstraction that will mean tough going for literal-minded audiences. Not quite the clean, elegant creation that his earlier films were, The Warriors admits to failures of conception (occasional) and dialogue (frequent), but there is much of value in Hill's visual elaboration of the material.

Dunye's salvation is her sense of humor. She's good at creating light, bantering dialogue, and there are a couple of sharp, satirical scenes.

Standard Neil Simon stuff, full of cute grotesques, snappy one-liners, and cheap plays at pathos.

Good-natured, mildly appealing video feature.

Dario Argento's grossly overstated mise-en-scene adds some perverse interest to this routine (if unusually gory) horror film from 1976. Argento works so hard for his effects—throwing around shock cuts, colored lights, and peculiar camera angles—that it would be impolite not to be a little frightened

Robert Wise brings his Academy Award-winning sobriety and meticulousness to a pulp tale that cries out for the slapdash vigor of a Roger Corman.

The film looks like an attempt to make a Martin Scorsese movie without Martin Scorsese.

The film doesn't transcend its genre, but it's an honorable achievement within it.

Not entirely a pale shadow, but definitely fading. [12 Jan 2012, p.36]

Jonathan Demme's debut film is campy, choppy, and generally immature, though his bonding themes are fitfully discernible amid the cartoonish action.

Laurence Olivier's famous 1948 interpretation of Shakespeare's play suffers slightly from his pop-Freud approach to the character and from some excessively flashy, wrongheaded camera work—including the notorious moment when Hamlet begins the soliloquy and the camera begins to track back.

The film's mechanical workings are still impressive, but between the unsympathetic characters and the coldly precise direction, there is little here for an audience to clutch to its heart.

Amiable comedy western, with James Garner expanding on his Maverick image as a boom-town sheriff who’d rather use his cunning than his guns.

Edwards directs this farcical material in an unexpectedly intimate, naturalistic style, giving the characters a conviction that makes the slapstick sequences much funnier and more suspenseful than they might have been. But the film still has a rushed, slapdash feel to it.

Emerges as an uncommonly sober, well-researched film of its type.

No real film lover could help but muster some affection for this bedraggled action movie, shot in an extremely unpicturesque Yugoslavia on a budget that must number in the hundreds of dollars. The lead, Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas, is clearly a stranger to the thespian arts, but it's pointless to single him out in a cast that seems to have been assembled from all the expatriate American used-car salesmen living on the Adriatic coast.

This 1985 western does a decent job of developing some dry 80s humor without completely undermining the genre, yet Kasdan's considerable skills as a plot carpenter seem to desert him as soon as the story moves to the town of the title--the action turns choppy, confused, and arbitrary.

An amiable, offhanded comedy about ethnic identity and last-chance romance.

The dual point of view is used effectively, though it's less valid as social criticism (where Penn's observations tend toward facile revisionism) than as an index of the uncertainty that characterizes most of Penn's heroes.

In trying to cover so many bets, Petersen has created a film without an identifiable style or subject of its own.

Director Ron Howard brings a quality of gentleness and whimsy to the performances, but basically this is a highly calculated project brought in by those two old pros, producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown (Jaws, The Verdict).

This is a bumpy ride, but one worth taking.

This isn't quite up to the original, but it has its moments, as Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) sets out to solve a murder in an English country house.

Engaging entertainment, but far from Minnelli’s peak.

As soon as the medallion appears, so do the digital maneuverings -- speeded-up movement, composite images, objects and people morphing into supernatural thingamajigs -- that undercut the genuine thrills of the genuine action.

Those seeking a serious sociological examination of the role of stock car racing in late capitalist America will probably want to search elsewhere, but audiences looking for a kick will find one -- almost literally -- in Mr. Wincer's work.

Ultimately, this is the kind of film that gets more points for what it isn't—i.e., a typical teen comedy loaded with boob and fart jokes—than for what it is.

The Disney version (1951) lightens and sweetens Lewis Carroll's tale, but what's really disappointing is the undistinguished animation: the film looks and plays more like the Disney shorts than the Disney features, though the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Sterling Holloway) is a small masterpiece of elusive menace.

The essential humanity of the characters shines through, giving face and form to a subculture the movies have largely neglected.

Unfortunately, its inescapable comparison is to David Gordon Green's "George Washington," made the same year as Mr. Davidson's film but with a far greater sense of style and a more profound grasp of the fragility of young lives. Way Past Cool can't stand up to that kind of competition.

John Boorman's 1981 retelling of the Arthurian legends is a continuation of the thematic thrust and visual plan of his Exorcist II, though the failure of that bold, hallucinatory, and flawed film seems to have put Boorman into partial retreat.

Zuniga's support is winningly low-key.

Dustin Hoffman is superb as Lenny Bruce, but he gives an actor's performance where a less declamatory, more comedic delivery would have worked better.

The greatest disappointment is Shepard's own inability to play a Shepard character: a distant, stiff presence, he never seems to enter the emotional battles (with Kim Basinger, as the woman he can't live with and can't live without) that are the play's reason for being.

The film has no qualities beyond its formal polish--and its careful avoidance (or rather, displacement) of the moral and political issues involved can seem too crafty, too convenient.

The action and sentiments are familiar to the point of cliche, and there isn't much life in Gillian Armstrong's academic direction—she keeps pushing ideas over events, and meanings over emotions. But Judy Davis, as a teenage girl who dreams of transcending her rural background to become a cultivated, independent woman, grants the film much charm and passion.

Mr. Burger has a performer who can dart between stentorian self-assurance and cringing pathos, maintaining his character's ambiguity until the final sequence of this resourceful and ingenious entertainment.

Depending on your choice, the film is either an unpleasantly masochistic fantasy or an unpleasantly sadistic one.

It's bleak, creepy, and occasionally terrifying. Studio pressure apparently forced Murch to back off from the full fury of his conception, but this is still strong stuff.

Emerges as an engaging if occasionally hokey inspirational melodrama about the importance of community in the face of life's disappointments.

Most impressive, and the only segment that dares to criticize the terrorists directly, is Mr. Imamura's contribution, the last part of the film.

Comic book stuff, helped out by the presence of Rae Dawn Chong as an airline stewardess whose sarcastic commentary adds some comic counterpoint to the deliberately overscaled action.

Handsome, well-executed film that nonetheless feels a bit long at 111 minutes. Those who are already anime fans will certainly find it stimulating; but this may not be the one to convert the uninitiated.

Veers between the light naturalism of American television and the pulsing melodrama of Bollywood entertainment.

Its luxuriant, nearly three-hour running time allows lots of room for spectacular musical numbers and dramatic climaxes that are extended to the breaking point and beyond.

This was one of De Palma's early efforts, and its excesses can be chalked up to youthful enthusiasm—the ideas seem appealingly audacious even when they misfire, which is more often than not.

The film is an impressive technical achievement: the full-figure animation is dimensional and elegant, the perspectives imaginative, and the color design superb. But without the (old) Disney genius for emotional structure and character design, the results are rather flat—the film concentrates on Disney horror and trauma without the relief of Disney charm.

I wanted to like it more than I did, but it'll do.

Typical Nilsson mix of the audacious and the cringe-inducing.

Nick and Nora investigate a jazz-club killing in this final entry (1947) in the series, which gets by—just barely—on the charm of stars William Powell and Myrna Loy.

An enjoyable, noisy romp.

Here is one performer (Testud) whose features -- small sad eyes, sharp nose, wide rueful smile -- can sustain a feature by themselves.

Ken Kwapis' Dunston Checks In contains not a single surprising moment. But it is well crafted enough to squeak by. Kids should get a few laughs from it. Accompanying adults will be only moderately bored. [12 Jan 1996, p.33]

The movie is never less than entertaining, but it fails to satisfy—it gives us too little of too much. Oddly, much of its pleasure is in the acting, which up to this point hadn't been Carpenter's strong suit: Donald Pleasence, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton offer excellent turns.

Slick and often funny, but the smugness of the satire and the stunted emotions are finally wearying.

It binds up introductory lessons in music appreciation, Freudian psychology, and fanciful history with a pulp thriller plot.

The picture isn't bad, really—it's just a little too soft and eager to please, like the family films (circus pictures and suchlike) that John Wayne made in the 60s to soften his image.

Has the bad luck to come on the heels of Kathryn Bigelow's beautifully made and politically impassioned "K-19," making this submarine picture -- a relatively modest, low-budget affair -- seem skimpy by comparison.

The script is funny and observant, full of shocks of recognition, but for all his progress as a writer, Allen's direction remains disconcertingly amateurish. Still, it remains perhaps the only film in which Allen has been able to successfully imagine a personality other than his own.

The film is generous and often gentle. With Bill Murray, very likable as a head counselor who gruffly plays Wallace Beery to an updated, angst-ridden Jackie Cooper (Chris Makepeace).

There is little of the gratuitous hysteria that usually mars Lumet's work, and David Himmelstein's busy script (no less than four campaigns are covered, when one or two would do) keeps things moving, though at the price of losing track of a couple of significant subplots.

Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour on an average journey, enlivened by the strange antics of a forgotten vaudeville team called the Wiere Brothers, who do acrobatic stunts and shout “You’re in the groove, Jackson!” on cue.

Richard Attenborough's direction achieves that balance of impersonality and brisk pacing we've come to recognize as "professionalism," and he doesn't clog up the dancing with too many stylistic gimmicks.

Ashby is excellent on atmosphere but fair to middling on character. When the film makes a sudden transition from epic to melodrama, things fall apart.

What was wonderful in the Kurosawa film—the recruiting and training of the mercenaries—is just dead time here, though the icon-heavy cast helps out: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and Robert Vaughn.