David Ansen

Alternately enrapturing and exhausting, brilliant and glib, this is a "Romeo and Juliet" more for the eyes than the ears. [4 Nov 1996, pg.73]

If the truth be told, my eagerness to sit through a sequel to "Romancing the Stone" only slightly surpassed my desire to revisit my periodonist. Surprise: The Jewel of the Nile, the further adventures of romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and adventurer Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), is a good night at the movies. [16 Dec 1985, p.82]

But Smooth Talk, alas, is two movies, and the parts don't mesh. What begins as subdued, plotless realism -- everything up to Arnold's late entrance -- then lurches into Gothic melodrama. Arnold is a literary conceit, Connie is real: thus their portentous mating ritual seems more contrived than inevitable. Smooth Talk feels like an anecdote that's been stretched out of shape. [24 March 1986, p.77]

Red Dragon is certainly an improvement on “Hannibal.” It has something the Ridley Scott movie didn’t -- a good story -- and it will no doubt keep the franchise rolling in dough.

Paternity evades every serious issue it raises and blows a nice opportunity to be something more than a pleasantly run-of-the-mill entertainment. [12 Oct 1981, p.99A]

The images of war that Folman and his chief illustrator, David Polonsky, conjure up have a feverish, infernal beauty. Dreams and reality jumble together.

Day-Lewis, who imbues Jack with a ravaged, Keith Richards charisma, is once again extraordinary.

An extraordinary movie. [5 Nov 1984, p.74]

A hauntingly beautiful tone poem.

Dick Tracy is a class act: simple, stylish, sophisticated, sweet.

A hugely entertaining thriller shot through with dark shards of agony and paranoia. It takes nothing away from the original while delivering pleasures all its own.

A spectacular sequel. [21 July 1986, p.64]

It may be the most original American movie of the year. It's funny, fast literate and audacious. [01 Sep 1980, p.45]

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.

The peculiar thing about Into the Night is that while it fails to deliver the conventional goods, it succeeds as an unclassifiable mood piece, a quirky voyage into seedy all-night Los Angeles. There are nice cameos from Bruce McGill as Pfeiffer's surly brother, and from David Bowie as a deadly hit man. It's good to see Goldblum in a leading role, even though he is kept on a tight rein; Pfeiffer is alluring and touching, like a precious object made from base parts. For the first time in a Landis movie, real pain reaches the surface. Propelled by B. B. King's haunting blues, this oddball movie sneaks under the skin. [11 March 1985, p.70]

This vintage movie is just another reminder that when it comes to movie romance, there's nothing more satisfying than a broken heart. [20 Jun 2002]

The tale is a bit too insular and claustrophobic for its own good: in the end these characters lack the depth and complexity to resonate deeply. The pleasures of The Dreamers stay mostly on the surface. But when the surface is as stylish and sexy as this, it's hard to complain.

An ambitious, intense, but overdetermined exploration of the varieties of ethnic intolerance.

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.

The viewer finds himsel falternating between awe at the director's courage, energy and dedication, and horror at his monomania. [18 Oct 1982, p.95]

A piece of spectacular silliness, but that's not meant with disrespect. The key word is spectacular.

Powerful images hook you immediately.

It succeeds in bringing O'Barr's comic-book vision to life, but there's little else going on behind the graphic razzle-dazzle and the moody, ominous soundtrack.

Frances McDormand, as the lone female union rep, and Richard Jenkins, as Josie’s angry miner dad, cut through the predictability.

Irreversible takes an adolescent pride in its own ugliness. “I Stand Alone" told me something about the world; this one tells me more than I want to know about the calculating mind of its maker.

Droll, sweet-tempered and lackadaisical, it's a shaggy-dog story with Nicholson playing the shaggy dog. It turns Western conventions on their heads not out of satirical anger but simply to charm the pants off the audience. A little less coyness, and a lot more John Belushi (as a Mexican deputy), would have helped. Still, at a time when most comedy comes straight out of the bathroom, the quirky, civilized pleasures of Nicholson's film are not to be sneezed at. [09 Oct 1978, p.94]

Director Ronald Neame, who once made good movies, has instructed his actors to shout as much as possible. The rest is special effects -- and not very special ones at that. [05 Nov 1979, p.101]

His smart, raunchy movie offers no answers (how could it?), but it poses its questions with painfully hilarious honesty.