David Ansen

It is, first and foremost, a visual delight, a Victorian picture book come to life, from its brief prologue in India through its darkly enchanted recreation of Misselthwaite Manor on the Yorkshire moors.

A smart and wicked delight.

A deep, powerful and rivetingly complex study of Tienanmen - and, ironically, it's far more evenhanded in its account of the massacre that killed more than a thousand protesters than the Chinese government might suspect.

Funny, bittersweet, its understatement yielding surprising depth charges, Broken Flowers is a triumph of close observation and telling details.

It starts quietly, introducing its splendid gallery of fowl, rats and humans, then builds and builds until it achieves full comic liftoff.

It takes nearly three hours for Tess to reach its tragic climax at Stonehenge, but the deliberateness and occasional longueurs pay off: Tess is depthcharged, resonant. [22 Dec 1980, p.73]

The result is fascinating -- a rich, strange, problematical movie full of wild tonal shifts and bravura moviemaking.

Lyrical, original, misshapen and deeply felt, this is one flawed beauty of a movie.

Has an almost perfect-pitch grasp of those messy, idealistic, vibrant times, when everyone was trying to reinvent himself from the ground up.

What blasts off the screen like a heat wave, burning in the heart, is the sheer toe-tapping, booty-shaking joy of making music.

An epic both raw and contemplative, is neither a flag-waving war movie nor a debunking.

What a sumptuous canvas Lean gives us, and what a superb cast. [24 Dec 1984, p.53]

Cameron's achievement isn't only technical. He's using all the not-so-cheap thrills of a violent genre to make a movie with an antiviolence message, and the wonder of T2 is that he pulls it off without looking silly.

At its tense, funny/melancholy best it hits notes other movies don't even attempt. It was probably folly to film this unfilmable book in the first place. But what an honorable, fascinating folly. [15 Feb 1988, p.71]

People seeing Peter Bogdanovich's version of Michael Frayn's clockwork farce might find it hard to believe that the Broadway show, under Michael Blakemore's direction, was twice as funny as the movie. It was. But the movie happens to be twice as funny as anything else around.

Quiz Show is supebly shot (by Michael Ballhaus), and the acting ensemble could hardly be better..."Quiz Show is witty enough never to need to get on a soapbox to make its points.

[Rudolph] may compose from borrowed parts, but his synthesis is uniquely his own -- nutty and gorgeous and moody as all hell. [31 March 1986, p.72B]

Mel Brooks's To Be or Not To Be has the ingenious plot twists, the breathless comic cadences, the blithe spirit of a classic '40s comedy, and for a very good reason -- it's almost a scene-by-scene and line-by-line duplicate of Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not To Be" of I942. To those who know and love the Jack Benny-Carole Lombard original, this may seem like sacrilege. But because the copy is so entertaining in its own right, it seems more a tribute than a rip-off. [19 Dec 1983, p.66]

Jerry Schatzberg's gripping, darkly satiric Street Smart, written with great savvy by David Freeman, keeps you in a state of agitated suspense as it springs one booby trap after another on its compromised and foolish hero. [06 Apr 1987, p.66B]

Akin's raw, powerful, multileveled movie takes us places we never expected to go.

The results are wondrous, wrenching and crazily funny to behold.

Ryder, Hawke, Stiller and Garofalo turn these paradigms into wonderfully tasty characters. Written with verve and played with grace, Reality Bites is too smart to pass itself off as a definitive statement, but it gets the details delightfully right.

It's as smart, quiveringly alert and fleet of foot as a purebred pointer on the scent of fresh game.

Rozema's handling of the entangled amours and social gamesmanship at Mansfield Park is delightful and the open-minded moviegoer will have a hard time resisting this stylish and stirring movie.

A witty movie -- with a fine ear for the undertone of aimless chatter -- that never raises its voice to make hollow Gen-X proclamations.

It's a swirling, fluid retelling of the tale that packs an impressive cargo of laughs, thrills and wonders into a watertight 88 minutes.

Wise Blood, a virulently comic, grotesquely unforgettable adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's celebrated novel of customized redneck religion and redemption, is as strange and original a movie as Huston has ever made. [17 Mar 1980, p.101]

This wonderful, one-of-a-kind movie hops from Taiwan to France, from tragedy to deadpan comedy and, in its mysterious conclusion, from the worldly to the otherworldly.

Lehmann isn't in perfect control - the movie gets off to a flat-footed start, and the conclusion is chaotic - but when Heathers hits its stride, it reaches wild and original comic heights. [2 April 1989]

Zaillian tells it with warmth, humor and zest. The cast is first-rate. Laurence Fishburne plays the rather underdeveloped role of Vinnie, Josh's other teacher, a speed-chess hustler with a more instinctive approach to the game than Pandolfini. Joan Allen is Josh's protective mother, determined to see that his childhood isn't stolen by the monastic demands of the game. Best of all is young Pomeranc, a chess whiz with no previous acting experience. [30 Aug 1993, p.52]

Schygulla's heartbreaking performance--like the movie itself--will stay with you long after the film's quietly devastating final frame.

Thanks to everyone involved, the movie radiates a hundred pleasures.

This is Depp's coming-of-age role, and he's terrific. Pacino, who's shown more flash than substance recently, reminds us how great he can be when he loses himself inside a character. The bond between these two makes the film sing.

Superb moviemaking-but not exactly a superb movie. It's probably as good a screen adaptation (written by David Hare) of Hart's swank tale of tragic obsession as is possible. On every technical level-editing, scoring, cinematography, production design and costumes-the work is impeccable. And it's brilliantly acted.

A Cry in the Dark is no mere courtroom drama. Schepisi turns this tabloid story into a kind of splintered epic, a scathing portrait of Australian provincialism and prejudice at its most virulent. [16 Nov 1988, p.86C]

Hilariously odd and prodigiously inventive.

Movie purists will tell you that a heavy reliance on voice-over is a sin (“show, don’t tell”), but when the words are this funny, to hell with purity.

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.

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

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]

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

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

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]

The considerable virtues of THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN reflect the temperament of its author and star, Alan Alda. Decency, dependability, cozy sexuality: these are the qualities Alda projects as the star of TV's "M*A*S*H," and they are the underpinings of this intelligent, beautifully acted cautionary tale about the conflict between the siren call of success and the responsibilities of a private life. [27 Aug 1979, p.62]

If this gives the impression that The Star Chamber is a contemplative movie, forget it. It's a social tract in the classic Hollywood style -- viscera first. The issues are laid out in the most hyperbolic fashion and resolved by sheer melodrama -- a wild chase, a race against the clock, a shoot-out. On these gut-level terms, The Star Chamber is utterly gripping. Supported by an excellent cast and very stylish cinematography, Hyams sustains the tension from start to finish, no matter how preposterous the plotting becomes. [15 Aug 1983, p.64]

Ron Howard, directing from a witty script by Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel and Bruce Jay Friedman, has fashioned an enchanting piece of fluff -- a romantic comedy that is truly romantic and truly comic, a deft blend of hip satire and fairy-tale charm. Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah have a lot to do with that charm. [12 Mar 1984, p.89]

Screenwriters Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon have devised some lovely and hilarious variations on Rodgers’s irresistible premise.

Mingling reality and fantasy, Forster has given us a luminous, touching meditation on life and art.

It's these well-lived-with characters who make The Four Seasons a pleasure to watch, and the actors obviously relish their parts. [25 May 1981, p.74]

It's hands down the funniest of the year, both pushing the boundaries of bad taste and exploring how those boundaries keep shifting.

Joanou has an intricate, beautifully built script to work from (David Rabe did a lot of uncredited rewriting) and he unfolds his charged story of violence, fratricide, and betrayal with masterly assurance. [17 Sep 1990, p.54]

Octopussy, the 13th of the Bond adventures and the sixth to star Roger Moore, isn't as exhilarating as "The Spy Who Loved Me". But it's the most enjoyable since then, in large part because it's not trying to be the ultimate anything. [13 June 1983, p.77]

That's the paradox that makes this parade of folly so much fun: it feels as if everyone involved is having a high old time, and their enthusiasm is contagious.

Though it lacks "Wallace and Gromit"'s charm, its mile-a-minute inventiveness is impressive.

Over the Edge is a rabble-rouser--and a good, tough, darkly funny movie to boot. [28 Dec 1981, p.65]

Though some of the violence is nastier than it needs to be and the obligatory climactic melee, complete with choppers, skidding trucks and explosions, overstays its welcome, The Long Kiss Goodnight stays fun because it plays its heroine's split personality for laughs, not trauma.

A shameless crowd-pleaser.

The gift of this charming, low-key excursion is more intangible, yet you may find that its surprisingly complex moods linger with a bittersweet afterglow. [28 Feb 1983, p.79]

Unlike many dramas of middle-class family wreckage, which tilt toward soapoperatic revelations, The Ice Storm is told from an ironic, almost meditative distance that gives the movie its paradoxical power.

The beauty and scale of Miyazaki's vision shines through.

The film is a class-act thriller, a fiendishly efficient example of emotional manipulation. But that's not all. With Jane Fonda heading the cast, it couldn't help but be a thriller with a very large social conscience, activated, of course, to warn against the dangers of nuclear power. As such, the movie is both ferociously effective and decidedly facile. Director James Bridge's suspense film is the most potent blend of tract and trash since the underrated "Three Days of the Condor." [19 March 1979, p.103]

It might, however, have been a greater film if its villain were as compelling as its flawed hero. Williams is effectively creepy, but next to Pacino’s rich, multileveled portrait he seems one-note, and one we’ve seen before.

Take the movie's first words to heart: watch closely. You'll be well rewarded.

The uncontestable triumph of Goblet of Fire, however, is Brendan Gleeson's Alastor (Mad-Eye) Moody, the grizzled new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

Ferocious and sometimes creepily funny, Bully is a raunchy suburban "Crime and Punishment."

A Single Man's sleek surface may go against Isherwood's crisp, understated prose, yet the story's beating, wounded heart and its spiky intelligence still come through, personified in Firth's moving, eloquently internalized performance.

Cute, anthropomorphic animals, old-fashioned American rural locales and alternating doses of sentimentality and scares firmly place The Fox and the Hound in the classic Disney mold. [13 July 1981, p.81]

Luke has real movie-star power. He's enormously sympathetic, but this moving, well-crafted movie, written by Shawn Slovo, mercifully doesn't turn him into a plaster saint.

It’s too bad that at the very end L.I.E. settles for an easy, melodramatic resolution; it flies in the face of everything that makes this perceptive, original movie so special.