David Ansen

Urgent, gritty, sometimes weirdly funny, The Fighter might be considered his first feel-good movie. But Russell's too honest and acute an observer to serve up affirmation without leaving a subversive aftertaste of ambivalence and unease.

Rabbit Hole deftly sidesteps sentimentality and still wrenches your heart.

Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait is the most delightful movie the year has offered. Funny, fantastical, fast on its feet, this romantic fantasy comes closer than any film of the past decade to capturing the ingenious, madcap spirit of '30s comedies. [03 July 1978, p.90]

The Yugoslav-born Tesich is a wry romantic, a moonstruck jester, and his tendency toward excess is nicely complemented by Britisher Yates's crisp but delicate professionalism. With a superb cast at their disposal, they've taken a somewhat preposterous film noir plot and enriched it with quirky, meaty characterizations to produce a nervous comedy of menace about class distinctions and romantic and political obsession. [02 Mar 1981, p.81]

Like many of Winterbottom's movies, it falls a step short of its full potential. Its tact is both its strength and its weakness. The climax feels rushed: it's the rare movie these days that feels too short.

Ferrell is a hoot. So is much of this witty holiday family entertainment, which, up until the end, when the “true spirit of Christmas” must be reaffirmed, happily favors slapstick over treacle.

Shot in stunning color by a gifted cinematographer named Caleb Deschanel, beautifully scored by Carmine Coppola in moods ranging from Arabian Nights impressionism to Wagnerian exaltation, the first hour of The Black Stallion is a state-of-the-art demonstration of film as a purely visual medium, a formal exercise that is nonetheless suffused with feeling. [29 Oct 1979, p.105]

Compromising Positions has acting talent to burn and enough drollery to pass the time quite pleasantly. [9 Sept 1985, p.90]

I don't know how a movie this original got made today, but thank God for wonderful aberrations.

As breezy and charming an entertainment as any barnyard ever produced. [6 July 1981, p.75]

There's neither coyness nor self-importance in Brokeback Mountain--just close, compassionate observation, deeply committed performances, a bone-deep feeling for hardscrabble Western lives. Few films have captured so acutely the desolation of frustrated, repressed passion.

This unpretentious, affectionate biography of the horn-rimmed Texas boy who changed the course of rock 'n' roll is a real movie, with a firm grasp on its characters, an honest-to-god plot and an old-fashioned heart. [26 June 1978, p.79]

It's a minimalist almost-love story told with epic flourishes.

Fascinating but repetitious, Better Living Through Circuitry nevertheless does a good job describing the scene.

Brings history to life with an uncanny sense of realism.

Only near the end does the mix of melodrama, mush and message get out of hand.

Everyone will be tickled pink by this sleek Mike Nichols remake.

Ultimately achieves that lump in the throat that is the romantic comedy's promised land.

Eastwood is at his effortless, slyboots best and the film is as preposterous as it is delightful.

It's strange energy - sexy, morbid, not quite human. There's an awful lot of blood in the movie and a lot of flesh, but there's little flesh and blood. The Fury is the work of a brilliant, droll, sadistic puppeteer. [20 Mar 1978, p.93]

This powerful, precision-made movie offers hope as well -- an act of kindness from a German officer that saves the pianist’s life, the music that sustains his soul.

For anyone who grew up worshiping at the shrine of Julie Christie, the notion that she could be playing a white-haired woman drifting into senility is a jolt to the system. But her radiance, beauty and talent are undiminished: she's hauntingly, heartbreakingly good.

It's a deliciously outrageous premise, and director Barry Levinson and writers David Mamet and Hilary Henkin know just how to spin it, savaging Washington and Hollywood with merciless wit. It's a hoot.

Stillman remains a deftly funny portrait painter of the young, willfully self-involved Anglo-Saxon male.

The astonishing thing about Alex Cox's mesmerizing movie is that it makes no attempt to conceal how boringly self-destructive its punk lovers were, yet it still holds us fascinated to its preordinated conclusion. [27 Oct 1986, p.103]

Director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale assume you've seen the original and are ready to swallow whatever zany time-travel notion they offer. They're not wrong. As unapologetically broad and silly as this sequel it, it's also a good deal of fun, and its relentless velocity is part of the joke. [4 Dec. 1989, p.78]

It's a tribute to Newell's seductive filmmaking, and to the delicious wit of the sterling cast, that this unlikely romantic idyll casts so potent a spell. A sweet pipe dream, Enchanted April won't bear much scrutiny; just bask in it indulgently like a spring sun.

This is a good introduction to the affable Chan persona. The comedy is broad, the inner-city Americana hilariously off-base, and the English dubbing may prove disconcerting to U.S. audiences. But the cheesiness is part of the fun.