David Ansen

Ultimately, one's reservations are overwhelmed by the story's urgency; it's impossible not to be shattered.

Cusack is a master at playing smart, frazzled, self-flagellating hipsters, and the movie, propelled by his arias of angst, lets him strut his best stuff.

Howard's fifth movie is a keen disappointment. Clever moments and bittersweet touches aside, it leaves you wishing a modern-day Preston Sturges had written the script. [17 Mar 1986, p.82]

Small in scale, grittily realistic, charged with a fierce intelligence about how people live on the other side of the law, the film makes few concessions to an audience's expectations, but it has an edgy, lingering intensity. [03 Apr 1978, p.91]

If Animal House lacks the inspired tastelessness of the Lampoon's High School Yearbrook Parody, this is still low humor of a high order. [7 Aug 1978, p.85]

A demonstration of bravura acting.

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

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

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.

The payoff comes at the end, when the myriad threads pull together with a shock like a noose tightening around your neck. Built with old-fashioned craftsmanship, Lone Star is not a movie you'll quickly forget. [8 July 1996, p.64]

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.

Quest for Fire is diverting and well made, and kids should love it. Chong is delightful as the first feminist heroine. And as bloody and brutish as the fights are, the film is resoundingly sweet-natured at heart. [15 Feb 1982, p.61]

If we must have teen movies, let them all be as sweet and seductive as Sollett's smartly observed romance.

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

Courtney Love's performance as stripper Althea Leasure is an amazement. Funny, unfettered and almost scarily alive in front of a camera, she's the definition of a "natural."

Schrader has never been one to coddle an audience, and this is as uncompromising a vision as he has given us.

In Parker's hands, Billy's story has become a virtuoso horror show-an exercise in emotional manipulation designed not merely to arouse chills but to turn the audience into avengers. Despite the remarkably controlled, honestly conveyed performance of Davis, Billy finally seems far less vivid than his prison friends-Randy Quaid's highly combustible American roughneck, the superb John Hurt's strung-out English junkie. Parker captures their camaraderie well, but he fails to convey any sense of day-to-day prison life-so keen is he to get to the assaultive highlights. [16 Oct 1978, p.76]

The movie holds you in its grip from start to finish.

Told from both women's points of view, this fascinating, if sometimes overwrought, tale packs a wallop.

Where the original gave you something to chew on, the sequel is more interested in chewing on you.

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.

Like most of this refreshingly subtle film, it's not what you expect, and it's not something you've seen before.

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

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

Beresford's nice little movie seems so afraid to make a false move that it runs the danger of not moving at all. [07 Mar 1983, p.78B]

The Freshman has a preposterous plot even the writer's mother couldn't believe, and it strains and creaks down the runway, but when this baby gets off the ground, we're talking seriously funny.

A pretty damn good summer movie.

The meal is more than mouthwatering -- it's Dinesen's metaphor for the transcendent power of art. This bountiful movie, like the feast itself, can turn your heart. [14 March 1988, p.61]