David Ansen

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.

Judged purely as an adventure story, it delivers enough thrills and violence to keep the action crowd engrossed. It also has enough social resonance to take us right back into those dark; schizophrenic years. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]

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.

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]

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

As anthropology, it's fascinating, and everything about the production is first class. But the human drama at the heart of this movie is stillborn.

Director Jay Roach ("Austin Powers") has a keen sense of comic timing, and the script keeps finding clever new ways to mortify our poor hero.

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.

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

By the time Pale Rider wends its solemn, deliberate way to the final showdown, all of its tantalizing potential has bitten the dust. The woefully inadequate screenplay by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack takes every mundane turn available, reneging on its mythical promises. [1 July 1985, p.55]

Brando's performance is enormous fun, but it's not just a joke. He's hilarious and gently mesmerizing at once, and director John Frankenheimer savvily adjusts the tone of his movie to fit Brando's daft brilliance...Let's face it -- this is one nutty movie. It's not exactly "good," but I sure had a good time.

Thanks to the superb cast and Mottola's deft touch, this modest-looking comedy proves quite memorable.

Depp is subtly winning as a man-child oblivious to his own pent-up rage. But the performance that will take your breath away is DiCaprio's. A lot of actors have taken flashy stabs at playing retarded characters and no one, old or young, has ever done it better. He's exasperatingly, heartbreakingly real. This 19-year-old, who shone earlier this year in "This Boy's Life," seems to have a bottomless talent.

As he did in “The English Patient,” Minghella artfully weds movie-movie romanticism with a dark historical vision. The man knows how to cast a spell.

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]

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.

Smart, informative and lively polemic.

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

The movie's slight, anecdotal structure is deceptive; you wouldn't guess how big an emotional wallop it packs.

As eye-popping as anything Pixar has done. But Cars inspires more admiration than elation. It dazzles even as it disappoints. This time around, John Lasseter and his codirector, the late Joe Ranft, seem more interested in dispensing Life Lessons than showing us a roaring good time.

The French Lieutenant's Woman is one of the most civilized and provocative movies of the year, but it falls just short of greatness. Perhaps Reisz and Pinter are too innately reticent to wring the last drop of emotional power from Fowles's story. [21 Sep 1981, p.96]

Comic electricity.

Hunter never exploits the material for cheap thrills -- his camera keeps a sober, clear eyed detachment. Detail by appalling detail, he creates a vivid, stunted world where banality and horror intermingle. "I cried when that guy died in Brian's Song," one of the girls says. "You'd figure I'd at least be able to cry for someone I hung around with." Some may gag on this daring, disturbing movie; few will be able to shake it off. [01 June 1987, p.69]

It's hobbled by the too-familiar conventions of the musical biopic: with so many chapters of Charles's life to cover, Hackford's movie never finds a rhythm, a groove, to settle into. It wins its battles without winning the war.

The heart of the movie is in the Rocky-Rusty relationship, and as long as Bogdanovich sticks with Cher and Stoltz, his film is genuinely moving and largely free of cant. Far more problematic is the portrait of the biker gang who, for all their rowdiness, are about as threatening as Santa's elves. [04 Mar 1985, p.74]

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.

Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy are both in peak form.

Malick's magnificent, frustrating epic mixes fact and legend to conjure up a reverie about Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), her love for Capt. John Smith (Colin Farrell) and her crossing from one culture to another.