David Ansen

For a number of reasons The Duchess isn't all it could have been. It's fun, but falls short of fabulous.

The loving exhumation of an earlier cinematic style suggests that the director is looking to regain his own moviemaking innocence, to make the kind of picture that moved him as a child. But you can't go home again -- not on secondhand, sentimentalized memories. In transferring Hinton's teens to the screen, Coppola and screenwriter Kathleen Knutsen Rowell have idealized them to the point of cliche. [4 Apr 1983, p.74]

If The Pope doesn't fly Sinatra-high or dig Scorsese-deep, it is an appealing commercial movie with a gritty sense of the city, an effective narrative drive and a very watchable cast of pungent performers. [25 June 1984, p.68]

The plot is madcap nonsense, and the comic aim is sometimes very broad and very low, but the belly-laugh quotient in Arthur (The In-Laws) Hiller's movie is the highest since the last Midler movie, Ruthless People. [26 Jan 1987, p.76]

Miller's strength, and his weakness, has always been his tendency to see things in black and white, which is what makes "The Crucible" moving, and also suspect. I recommend Hytner's movie highly, but a part of me resists a work that makes the audience feel as noble in our moral certainty as the characters it invites us to deplore. Some part of its power seems borrowed from the thing it hates.

Michael Beck (of "The Warriors") shows no discernible talent for musical romanticism Olivia ("Totally Hot") Newton-John sings prettily but is totally tepid, and the ever graceful Gene Kelly deserves a medal for keeping a straight face. Robert Greenwald, the director, should look into another line of work. Perhaps opening a disco? [18 Aug 1980, p.85]

A brainy three-ring circus.

With honesty, charm and an uncanny sympathy for all its characters, the film takes us deep inside the awkward and exhilarating experience of first love.

The second installment was better than the first, and this one is best of all. It has spectacular action scenes and imaginary creatures, and it’s by far the most moving chapter. The performances have deepened.

Barry Sonnenfeld's bouncy, immensely likable adaptation.

Even though Alvin Sargent's script lacks both grace and plausibility and director Sydney Pollack has succumbed to pretentions of European artiness, star chemistry might have made this love story catch fire. [03 Oct 1977, p. 71]

Face/Off is a summer movie extraordinaire: violent, imaginative, crazily funny and, oddly moving. Hollywood has finally wised up and let Hong Kong auteur John Woo strut his stuff in all its undiluted, over-the-top glory.

Just because Sandler's Sonny makes little sense as an actual human being doesn't mean he won't make you laugh.

I'll take the Disney any day, in spite of the fact that the characters are cardboard, that the dialogue belongs in a deflated cartoon balloon, that the ending is hopelessly murky and that the acting -- by Schell, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux and especially Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster and Joseph Bottoms -- is abysmal. The magic of Peter Ellenshaw's production designs disarms the critical mind: the child in me had a dandy time. [24 Dec 1979, p.79]

The great Spanish director's fourth triumph in a row--following "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her" and "Bad Education"--Volver (which means "coming back") flows effortlessly between peril and poignancy, the real and the surreal, even life and death.

Forget "Bonnie and Clyde"; even compared with "Night Moves," which also starred Hackman, Target disappoints. [18 Nov 1985, p.94]

I staggered out of this shameless, interminable movie feeling as if I'd been force-fed a ton of mealy, artificially sweetened baby food.

Arthur is not the best comedy of the season, which is a pity because it has the best comic team--Dudley Moore as a childish, perpetually soused millionaire named Arthur Bach and John Gielgud as his snobbish, reprimanding and adoring valet, Hobson. [27 July 1981, p.75]

Mann, the executive producer of "Miami Vice," can be too stylish for his own good, but the movie holds the viewer all the way to the predictably explosive end. [25 Aug 1986, p.63]

Under Buddy Van Horn's nonchalant direction, the Eastwood/Peters romantic chemistry is rather low voltage, but they both seem to be enjoying themselves. Keep your expectations modest, and you will, too. [12 Jun 1989, p.67]

Sarandon is touching and funny--a truly fresh performance. But the movie's sweet, elegiac heart belongs to Lancaster. Lou may be the role of his lifetime, and he carries it gently, obviously cherishing the gift. [06 Apr 1981, p.103]

The movie itself, like these guys, is defiantly old school -- confident, relaxed, professional.

This is the most personal, deeply felt film from the gifted director of "Under the Sand" and "Swimming Pool." Ozon leaches his melodrama of all sentimentality, and moves us all the more.

Writer John Patrick Shanley, whose mix of comedy and romantic whimsy produced intoxicating results in Moonstruck, mixes thrills, social satire and romantic whimsy in The January Man and gets mush. The whodunit is spectacularly implausible, the comedy misjudged, the romance forced. [30 Jan 1989, p.70]

How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it.

Hill is a modern-day Peckinpah. But is there really a need for this pointless, graphic violence in the 1980s? Is this escapism, or is it just a distasteful, needless reflection of what has become horrifyingly common in the real world?... Only small boys will be able to keep a straight face. [4 May 1987, p.77]

With Saraband, the great writer-director has stepped back into the ring for one last epic wrestle with his demons. There is, as always, no easy outcome. But no one ever fought for higher emotional and spiritual stakes.

The Turning Point has its flaws - some overwritten scenes and lapses into staginess and sentimentality - but they are those of heady excess and are easily forgiven. One has the sense of a project perfectly matched to the people who made it. [28 Nov 1977, p.97]

Fortunately, whenever the movie starts to sag, Depp flies to the rescue. It’s a truly piratical performance: with his flamboyantly fluttering fingers he steals every scene in the movie.

There hasn't been a studio movie as unapologetically adult, sophisticated, and nuanced as Up in the Air in some time.

Aided by Vladimir Cosma's haunting score (and that great Catalani aria) and by Philippe Rousselot's bravura cinematography, Beineix makes an utterly stunning debut. "Diva" demonstrates the depth of pleasure a shallow movie can provide. [18 Apr 1982, p.96]

The movie crackles with the serio-comic tension of thin-skinned New Yorkers thrown together in a crisis.

In Peggy Sue Got Married, Francis Coppola takes a familiar, sitcomish premise -- the one about a grown woman who time-travels back to her high-school days -- and invests it with rich and surprising colors. Imagine a paint-by-numbers comic book put in the hands of a Rembrandt; the bold comic outlines remain, but the subject is transformed by the dark palette and subtle brushwork into a tale reverberating with complex, adult emotions. [6 Oct 1986, p.73]

This is an epic you have to listen to--it's about people who trade in words, who make revolutions in their heads, and Beatty and Trevor Griffiths's script is full of some of the best talk in any movie this year. [7 Dec 1981, p.83]

Like the march itself--which is only briefly glimpsed--Get On the Bus' is conceived as a challenge to black men to take accountability for their lives. A sermon wrapped in a road movie, at its best it can stir the soul.

Expect to be confused for 10 minutes. Then sit back and enjoy the ride.

The longest, grimmest and least funny of the trilogy.

The true allure of Titanic is its invitation to swoon at a scale of epic moviemaking that is all but obsolete.

While the elements in this coming-of-age saga may seem familiar, Eszterhas brings a fresh, immigrant's-eye perspective to his tale.

To blends sentimentality, shoot-outs and cool humor into a bewitchingly entertaining brew.

Corny and sweet, Doc Hollywood has its genuine charms, but they'd be a lot more charming if Caton-Jones and the screen-writers allowed them to sneak up on us. Instead, the movie oversells its whimsy and fits its quirkiness into a sitcom formula that's as preordained as the hero's moral rejuvenation.

What makes you giggle your way through much of the movie isn't the jokes--Jonathan Gems's script is surprisingly feeble, and Burton's comic timing is often flat-- but the sheer, oddball chutzpah of it all. [23 Dec 1996]

Downright repetitive! [30 May 1983]

First-time director Graeme Clifford, a former editor, hasn't set out merely to exploit this lurid legend, and he tries to suggest the multiple layers of the story, but he simply doesn't do his job well. The film has no rhythm, it's stagy and inauthentic-looking, and the patchwork script has that tinny ring that so often infects movies about real people. [06 Dec 1982, p.152]

This sweet, sometimes clunky chick flick is a likable teen romance, but not likely to arouse the giddy swoons Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey generated back in ’87.

With an arsenal of cool f/x at their disposal, the Wachowskis have come up with a dizzyingly enjoyable junk movie that has just enough on its mind to keep the pleasure from being a guilty one.

Narnia, brightly lit and kid-friendly, has an appealingly old-fashioned feel to it. Adamson, codirector of "Shrek," wisely doesn't try to hip-ify the tale, leaving its curious blend of medieval pageantry, Christian fable and children's bedtime story intact.

This is an elaborate production, but all the jazzy sets and explosions in the world can't disguise the story's complete lack of urgency.

Exuberantly theatrical yet every inch a movie, and some numbers ("The Cell Block Tango") are so entertaining you might want to applaud.

The plain fact is that Halloween II is quite scary, more than a little silly and immediately forgettable. [16 Nov 1981, p.117]

A cliffhanger with no real ending. When the lights come up, think of it as the start of a six-month intermission. For better and worse, Reloaded leaves you hungry for more.

In Wildcats, Hawn remains a pre-eminently delicious comedienne, even if the notion of a "Goldie Hawn movie" is becoming perilously predictable. [17 Feb 1986, p.68]

Noyce uses his Hollywood craft to unfold this primal, powerful story, he has an epic feel for the harshly beautiful Australian landscape and he gets wonderfully natural performances from the three girls. His bold, lyrical images stay in your head, like an unaccountably beautiful nightmare.

Guts, wit and soul, these suburban kids have it all: Babysitting outdoes even John Hughes in flattering its target audience, and for this it will doubtless be amply rewarded. [13 July 1987, p.60]

Slick, gaudily suave guilty pleasure of a movie.

Employing an unconventional structure full of funny flashbacks and talking-to-the-camera monologues, Singles is brimful of clever bits and likable performances. Why, then does it seem so weightless? Something slick and generic has slipped into Crowe's work: too much of "Singles" feels like television. His sympathy for the youth culture now feels not so much uncanny as canned. You want to like a movie this inventive, this friendly, and you can't deny Crowe's talent. But "Singles" is all approach: it never seems to arrive. [21 Sept 1992, p.78]

The rage and sadness behind this film -- the first from Afghanistan since the Taliban's fall -- is matched by its artistry.

Directed, with neither prurience nor sentimentality, by Alan Clarke, the film is a celebration of the survival instincts of two game, practical girls, but a bleak wind blows just below the surface. [03 Aug 1987, p.67]

We're here for catty one-liners, movie-star camaraderie and fur-flying vengeance, and, in spite of a regrettable wimpiness that creeps in toward the end, that's what we get.

What Friedkin's film is about is anybody's guess. If he just wanted to make a thriller, he has made a clumsy and unconvincing one. If he wanted to explore the psychology of his characters, he has left out most of the relevant information. If he intended to illuminate the tricky subject of S&M, he hasn't even scratched the surface. "Cruising" is quite effective in working up an atmosphere of dread: the ominous bar scenes are butch grand guignol, full of sweaty flesh, menacing shadows and barely glimpsed acts of degradation performed by glowering, bearded men in black leather and chains. But who are these people and why are they doing all these kinky things? Friedkin isn't interested in explaining his milieu; he merely offers it up as a superficially shocking tableau for the titillation and horror of his audience. [18 Feb 1980, p.92]

Far from being a period piece, this love story/murder mystery/political thriller couldn’t seem more timely.

Downey and Favreau give the movie a quirky flavor it can call its own. For that we can be grateful.

This scary, eye-opening documentary looks back from a post-9/11 vantage point to see how Ike’s prophecy has come horribly true.

Copycat is satisfyingly tense, but the disgusto factor is balanced by its obvious theatricality--neatly captured in the contrasting performaces of Weaver and Hunter, the one playing neurotic standard poodle to the other's tightly wound terrier. [6 Nov 1995, pg.86]

he Dogs of War doesn't begin to deal with the moral complexity it promises: it keeps settling for easy, melodramatic solutions. Irvin is obviously a gifted storyteller, but he's shackled with the wrong story: it's a shame he couldn't have scrapped more of Forsyth's original plot and made a real movie about mercenaries and the Third World. [23 Feb 1981, p.61]

Spielberg doesn't differentiate between the good ideas in the script and the bad ones: everything is given an emphatic, production-number treatment... His ultraslick, seductive technique can be a pleasure to watch in itself, but it can't disguise the fact that "Always" is a decidedly uneternal fantasy. [1 Jan. 1990, p.60]

Jumpy and ironic, Downey is a quicksilver delight and Kilmer is funny as the gay Perry. But Black’s inventive, self-conscious script--heavy on voice-over narration--can be too clever for its own good. The movie is baroque fun, but exhausting.

This is not exactly standard children's fare, but kids (and their parents) should be smitten by its wit and wisdom.

Blackly funny, unafraid to shift emotional gears from farce to horror, peppered with spectacular action.

Kasdan has made a winning if overly pat first feature notable for its keen ear, its preference for character over plot and its refreshing modesty.

Poison's rich layers of juxtaposed images can't be easily digested in one viewing. The acting is uneven, the lighting sometimes dim, the tone at times deliberately awkward. But this suggestive, discordant movie takes you places you haven't been.

Black Rain is the sort of movie where, if you see a motorcycle race at the start, you know you'll get one in the climax. The script is routine formula swill, at best. [02 Oct 1989, p.70]

The self-deluded, 21-year-old heroine, can be an awful pain, but her meddling misjudgments are redeemed by her wit, grace and budding moral intelligence, and it's Gwyneth Paltrow's triumph that we always keep sight of that potential as she blithely plucks all the wrong heartstrings in town.

Reveals a chilling reality: how hard it is to tell a simple truth when big business doesn't want it told.

Every role is miscast. Whose idea was it to have the boyishly British Bale play an illiterate Greek peasant, or the elegant Hurt a gruff-voiced country doctor? Cruz’s run of bad luck in American movies continues.

There are inspired moments in this edgy, unstable comedy.

Greenaway uses the screen rather like the calligraphers of the story use the body so that the film becomes a kind of visual "pillow book;" a multi-layered series of inscriptions and reflections with almost hypnotic power.

Director Sam Raimi, working from David Koepp's screenplay, wisely anchors his big action-adventure flick on Maguire's modest but beguiling persona.

At its screeching, wall-breaking best, “T3” achieves heavy-metal slapstick.

A tad dark for little kids, this one-of-a-kind movie delivers 80 minutes of idiosyncratic inspiration.

Mandoki's gripping film may pull on the heartstrings too knowingly, but it's hard to forget the sight of the village’s children lying silent and still on every rooftop, praying the recruiting soldiers below will pass them by.

A superbly taut and well-made thriller that jumps from Geneva to Rome, from Paris to Beirut, from Athens to Brooklyn, each lethal assignment staged with a mastery Hitchcock might envy.

Using shadows and strikingly designed sounds, Pellington skillfully creates an atmosphere of otherworldly, invisible menace. Gere and Linney, both solid, dance around the edges of a romance.

No simple diatribe against capital punishment, it's a strong film, made stronger by two terrific performances.

Thanks to fine acting and its vividly unconventional protagonist, it pumps fresh blood into a conventional formula.

When it catches fire, this great-looking movie offers hilarious diversions.

A romantic comedy for an era of diminished expectations.

Deep Blue Sea gives good rush -- earning its stripes as one terrific junk movie.

Domestic violence has never been more savagely portrayed on screen.

Tthough it is action packed, spectacularly edited and often quite funny, one can't help feeling that Carpenter is squeezing the last drops out of a fatigued genre. Ten years ago this would have been one wild and crazy movie; in this era of ruthlessly efficient entertainments, it's a rather one-note evening. [14 July 1986, p.69]

What Scott brings to this, for him, surprisingly conventional genre moving is a superb sense of mood, seductive settings and a nice feel for the comedy of colliding social classes. Yet for all its tension and style, the movie feels thin. The obligatory violent ending is a real letdown: implausibly plotted and much too familiar. And while there's nothing wrong with Berenger's solid, witty performance, he's a little bland. [12 Oct 1987, p.84D]

Smart, informative and lively polemic.

The first test of a horror movie comes not the morning after but in the midst of the onslaught. By these standards, Monkey Shines is a white-knuckle triumph. Romero's film has its lurid, nonsensical lapses, but it touches some deep nerves. It's as unsettling as anything he's done. [08 Aug 1988, p.66]

This powerfully contained, painfully funny performance has to rank with the greatest work Nicholson's ever done -- This road movie gives you emotional whiplash, and you’ll be glad you went along for the ride.

Raises Hollywood's depiction of war to a new level.

Pirates is pure Polanski, but it's unfortunately not good Polanski. Attempting to revamp the swashbuckler genre the way he parodied Dracula movies in "The Fearless Vampire Killers," he's produced an abstract action comedy so emotionally detached it's impossible to stay involved. [28 July 1986, p.70]

There’s not a whisper of melodrama or sentimentality in the way Moretti tells his tale, guiding us through the stages of grief with calm, devastating lucidity.

Ferociously intense, furiously kinetic, it’s expressionist film noir science fiction that, like all good sci-fi, peers into the future to shed light on the present.