David Ansen

Moment by moment, Sea of Love holds you in a tight grip. It's a stylish diversion, though it never gets much below its self-consciously "hot" surface. [18 Sep 1989, p.81]

All of this may be based on fact, but as presented in the cutesy script by Ted Leighton and Peter Hyams, it has the hollow ring of counterfeit coin and the formulaic symmetry of a made-for-TV movie. [11 Aug 1980, p.69]

The Falcon and the Snowman lurches about awkwardly, withholds crucial information and lacks a strong point of view. It is nonetheless fascinating, a kind of darkly comic illustration of the banality of contemporary evil. Penn is reason enough to see the film. [04 Feb 1985, p.15]

De Palma has brought back Travolta's edge and intelligence. Relieved of having to give a star turn, Travolta seems happy to buckle down and do a straight-ahead, no-frills acting job. [27 July 1981, p.74]

The Slugger's Wife isn't remotely provocative -- or even entertaining. It's an example of creative anorexia: the movie is so thin you leave the theater feeling you've watched the outtakes by mistake. [1 Apr 1985, p.87]

This one is all about the boys. But as glad as we are to see them, watching the third installment is like attending a college reunion too soon after the last one: after the initial welcome, there's not all that much to say.

The Name of the Rose spins a whopping good tale, a medieval murder mystery that only those with seriously damaged attention spans will find hard to enjoy. [29 Sept 1986, p.63]

It's a testament to his (Amenabar's) cinematic flair that he has taken as daunting a subject as euthanasia and turned it into a crowd-pleasing movie. It's also an indication of what feels wrong here. I can't deny that I was moved, but it all goes down a bit TOO easy.

At times Southern Comfort seems like a kind of war game itself--an academic exercise, perfectly executed but a little cut and dried. Still, it's an exercise passed with flying colors. The objective is sighted, the mission accomplished, the audience properly pummeled. [05 Oct 1981, p.78]

As dumb as Looker is, it's not dull, and Crichton does pull off one very funny sequence--a black comic climax in which corpses and commercials become hilariously intertwined. lt should have been a skit on "Second City Television." [2 Nov 1981, p.108]

The dialogue is tacky, the characters stock and the special effects no improvement on anything George Lucas did 20 years ago.

Leaner and meaner, "The Road Warrior" had more nonstop thrills. But Miller was right not to try to top that act: he's opted to expand the moral geography of his funk Wasteland. With crazy and beautiful Mel and Tina backed up by a raging gallery of mutant humanity, only a glutton could complain he didn't get his fill. [29 July 1985, p.58]

This is a movie that sticks its political neck out, that throbs with dread, paranoia and outrage, that doesn't coddle the audience by neatly tying things up.

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]

Director Payne, who adapted Tom Perrotta's novel with Jim Taylor, has an authentically dire view of human behavior, which he expresses in crisp, edgy and sometimes startlingly raunchy style.

Field comes off best under the circumstances - she has real spirit - but Leibman, too eager to be liked, hits all the stereotypes on the head and Bridges is saddled with an underwritten, utterly inexplicable character. What Norma Rae really tells us is that Hollywood is still capable of making condescending paeans to the "little people" with all the phoniness of yesteryear. [5 March 1979, p.105]

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

Being There's dry, dark humor sneaks up on you: until Chauncey arrives at Douglas's home you may not even know it is a comedy. That's Ashby's method, and his confidence pays off in one of the year's most unusual and engrossing films. [31 Dec 1979, p.48]

It calls attention not to the fate of the earth, but to the numbing effect of bad, manipulative art. [14 Nov 1983, p.98]

Great Expectations has great style; that's not everything we want from the movies, but sometimes it's almost enough. [2 February 1998, p. 61]

Gloria is pure, unembarrassed jive--a hipster's lark of a movie--and Rowlands give a great jive artist's performance, straight-faced and charged with sly conviction. [06 Oct 1980, p.72]

A premise this preposterous must be carried off with unflappable comic conviction, and Cusack is just the right man for the job.

If they merely wanted to retell a good tale, they've failed. The first half of "Postman" succeeds in building up an atmosphere of dread and throttled desire as Nicholson and Lange circle their prey (John Colicos). But after the dramatic turnarounds of the trial, the film goes slack. Just when Mamet's script should be tightening the screws, it grows diffuse, introducing unnecessary characters while unaccountably lopping off Cain's original ending, without which the title is inexplicable. Rafelson's increasingly plodding, stagy direction doesn't help: he emphasizes the mechanics of Cain's plot when it needs to be disguised. [23 March 1981, p.81]

Gripping from start to finish.

This swiftly paced comedy is a deliciously impure compound of old-fashioned "women's film" formulas and up-to-the-minute sexual mores. It is, from moment to moment, trashy and touching, literate and ludicrous, bitchily funny and as full of sharp, sophisticated insights as it is of appalling blind spots. Part soap opera, part comedy of manners, it refurbishes shopworn cliches into a gloriously unrespectable entertainment. [12 Oct 1981, p.98]

In trying to appeal to a wide audience, quirky material has been forced to fit a formula that can't really contain it.

For all its neon-lit expressionism and portentous, dread-inspiring music, Hardcore has almost nothing to say about its subject. Schrader doesn't explore any moral conflict, he just gives off attitudes - and banal, shopworn attitudes at that. [13 Feb 1979, p.57]

What charm, quirkiness and warmth the movie possesses is due largely to them (Cage and Leoni).

The juiciest battle here is Spidey vs. Spidey, or, if you prefer, superego vs. id. When Peter starts to go seriously bad, the movie becomes seriously fun.

Unnerving because it forces us into uncharted waters: Solondz doesn't tell us how to feel but makes us thrash out our responses for ourselves. In doing so, he has made one of the few indelible movies of the year.

For about 15 gonzo minutes Dante supplies the most audaciously uproarious satire of the season. If only Eric Luke's script had prepared us more adroitly for this turnabout. The early stuff is aimed at the kids, the payoff can be properly savored only by adults, the finale is limp. But the blast of silliness is inspired. [29 July 1985, p.58]

Under the direction of special-effects whiz Douglas Trumbull, Brainstorm provides lots of good cheap thrills and a juicy performance by Fletcher as a passionate scientist. But Trumbull is consistently more at home with technology than with the human drama (can Walken rescue his relationship with his wife, played by the late Natalie Wood?), and the spectaculariy cosmic ending leaves too many key questions unanswered. [10 Oct 1983, p.94]

It's an expertly made film that, scene by scene, holds your attention. But both emotionally and intellectually, it doesn't add up.

Peirce's taut, sure-footed first film sidesteps sensationalism without sacrificing any of the story's wonder and horror

While this accomplished film holds you in its grip, it doesn't convince. The revelatory urgency that made Selby's book a literary scandal is long gone. [14 May 1990, p.75]

I Am Legend can't seem to make up its mind just what kind of movie it wants to be.

It's obviously a dangerously stretched premise, but writer-director Andrew Bergman keeps the plot rolling so fast you don't really mind. Bergman, who wrote "The InLaws" and "Blazing Saddles," mixes his comic punches well, from low slapstick to English-major jokes to Jewish social satire. [12 Oct 1981, p.99A]

This handsomely shot movie, with its throbbing Philip Glass score, has a kind of perverse integrity; its mixture of the art house and the hothouse is pure Schrader. I'm not sure whom this movie is made for, but you've got to admire the chutzpah of the man who got it made. [23 Sep 1985, p.68]

It is a dark, spellbinding dream, full of murmurs and whispers, byzantine plots and messianic fevers. It finds its iconography of the future deep in the past. It's not always easy to follow, but it's even harder to get out of your system. For better and for worse, it takes more artistic chances than any major American movie around. [10 Dec 1984, p.93]

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]

I'm not sure what kids are going to make of Bee Movie. The shiny, vivid computer-animated images pop off the screen with the vibrancy of the Pixar movies, but the understated, throwaway humor is pure Seinfeld: adult, observational, feasting on the small ironies of human (make that "beeish") behavior.

Let the Right One In unfolds with quiet, masterly assurance.

Like people who compulsively giggle whenever they tell you bad news, the movie runs for cover in lame, comic shtick.

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.

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.

This flirts dangerously with the cornball. But for the most part The Natural is rescued by its fine polish: the gravity balanced by wry, sneaky humor, the rosiness tempered by darkness and disquiet, the fairy-tale vision dressed up in impeccably detailed period dress. [28 May 1984, p.77]

Inflated to more than two hours, spiced up with lyrical pseudeo-erotic sex scenes, Scott's Revenge is long on candlelight and billowing white curtains and short on emotional potency. [26 Feb 1990, p.66]

The Syrian Bride would be an out-and-out comedy were it set anywhere but in the Middle East.

As a genre movie, The Kingdom delivers atmosphere, heroic American derring-do and some decent thrills, though director Peter Berg's approximation of a jerky documentary style suffers from its proximity to the more textured "Bourne Ultimatum."

Though they’re full of undeniably spectacular moments, great production values and unusual ambition, a simple thing has gotten lost in these sequels: they’re not much fun.

Like a box of sampler candies, Radio Days offers a wide assortment of bite-size goodies. They can't all be to your taste, but the sweetness lingers from the best. [02 Feb 1987, p.72]

It’s not a particularly sexy movie. What’s shocking to Schrader is not Crane’s promiscuity, but his obtuseness. It’s the story of the unbearable lightness of Bob.

The Coens abhor sentimentality, but behind the comic-book grotesqueries there's a disarming sweetness. Like "Blood Simple," this wild-card comedy knows where it's headed every inch of the way. It's a hoot and a half. [16 March 1987, p.73]

Of the three, Real Genius comes tantalizingly close to being a real, and interesting, movie. If only Coolidge weren't hemmed in by the formulaic plot. [26 Aug 1985, p.62]

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.

A good half hour too long, and badly in need of some scares, Hook is a huge party cake of a movie, with too much frosting. After the first delicious bite, sugar shock sets in.

Shelton's strength is character, streetwise wit and funky, lived-in sexuality. Snipes, one of our most versatile young actors, gets to demonstrate his wonderful comic chops, and Harrelson, whose goofiness is part of his scam, partners him beautifully.

The combination of Shandling's button-down TV sensibility and Nichols's good taste produces a film whose tone is out of sync with the simple, ribald conceit and is only mildly amusing at best.

Mamet brings an unusual level of intelligence to this boys'-adventure formula, and an edgy understanding of the ongoing games of one-upmanship men play. After a rocky, dutifully expositional beginning, The Edge turns into an unusually gripping suspense movie, its peril all the more effective for being unfashionably low-tech.

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

As taut and exciting as many edge-of-your-seat Hollywood escape movies.

Forster's solid, unpretentious movie hits its marks squarely, and isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve. Only a mighty tough viewer could fail to be moved.

Clint's latest doesn't try to do much of anything that hasn't been done before, and better. [15 Dec 1986, p.83]

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]

This material is charged enough without piling on the melodrama and the lip-smacking violence. The movie too often sacrifices reportage for razzle-dazzle.

A dark slice of sword and sorcery that could have used some of Walt's old storytelling sense. [13 July 1981, p.81]

While Whale Rider is a doozy of a female-empowerment fantasy, it’s mercifully free of any feminist smugness.

How you feel about Milk may depend on whether you've seen Rob Epstein's great, Oscar-winning 1984 documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk." Van Sant's movie lacks that film's shattering emotional impact. (Rage is not a color in the director's palette.) For those coming to Milk's story for the first time, however, this will be a rousing experience.

Mike Leigh's stunning, corrosive Naked is one of the best movies of the year, and one of the toughest... Its manic mix of tenderness and degradation, hilarity and scariness, keeps you dangerously off balance.

Howl's Moving Castle has the logic of a dream: behind every door lie multiple realities, one more astonishing than the next.

The first hour of Toback's movie bounces and sparkles like a stone skipping on water. Downey is such an ingenuous con man it's impossible not to smile at his chutzpah, and Ringwald reveals a grave, grown-up solidity we haven't seen before. [28 Sept 1987, p.77]

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

Ulee's Gold possesses an attribute that's increasingly rare in American filmmaking, independent or Hollywood: call it soul.

The Final Countdown is clunky, square filmmaking, but it's rarely boring, and the screenwriters come up with a final mysterious twist that saves the movie at the last moment from a disastrously anti-climactic turn of events. [18 Aug 1980, p.85]

Roxanne is a charmer. Sweet-spririted, relaxed, it's a sun-dappled romantic comedy that doesn't scream Laugh! [22 June 1987, p.73]

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

The faces of Noonan and Sillas reflect everything they're feeling. This disquieting duet of high anxiety rests entirely on their shoulders, and they're superb. [12 Sep 1994, p.60]

Everything about Manhattan Murder Mystery (except his recent fondness for the handheld camera) harks back to the earlier, more playful Allen style. Imagine a middle-aged Annie Hall stumbling into a film noir. At first, the whiny badinage seems too familiar--or maybe it's just that nowadays it takes a little time to cast the real Woody out of mind and let the screen persona take over. But the good news is that once the gears of the plot kick in, Allen's expert comic timing proves as beguiling as ever.

Heavy Metal is the bummer version of "Star Wars," an expression of adolescent revenge against the world. What gives the movie its thoroughly unpleasant integrity is the suspicion it arouses that the guys who dreamed this stuff up mean business. If only they'd saved it for their shrinks. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

Silly as it is, The Contende has a lurid zest that keeps you hooked, and a rambunctiously good cast.

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]

Get back, get back to where you once belonged, you want to shout. But the movie is stuck in the wrong groove.

There Will Be Blood is ferocious, and it will be championed and attacked with an equal ferocity. When the dust settles, we may look back on it as some kind of obsessed classic.

Director Kaplan has a generous, open-eyed affection for these quirky, hungry characters that he obviously wants to share. Smart host that he is, he doesn't over sing their praises. You warm to this movie at your own sweet speed. [31 Oct 1983, p.83]

Packs an irresistible emotional punch.

Gorgeous but curiously weightless.

The most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time. It's a mess, but one worth fighting about.

A delirious example of grrrl power, Hong Kong style.

Novelist Andre Dubus's plotting may be too much for a two-hour movie. But the story's details feel fresh. The vivid clarity of the images, the compressed fury of the tale, are impossible to get out of your head.

Branagh's two Shakespeare films have been triumphs-meaty, moving and fun. Bard-less, the director flounders. His Frankenstein gives off the same hollow echo that Dead Again did, the same mixture of stylistic flair and insincerity.

Comes off as surprisingly unmagical, with characters you only half care about.

Watching Robin Williams's new movie, Cadillac Man, spin hopelessly out of control, you know intuitively that there was no single storyteller at the wheel, but a committee of back-seat drivers inflating a small, decent idea into an incoherent, opportunistic concept. Trying desperately to speak to everyone, these star packages have no voice of their own. They're not really movies -- they're product. [28 May 1990, p.72]

Damon's Ripley is considerably different from the charming sociopath in Patricia Highsmith's novel or the smooth lothario played by Alain Delon in the 1960 French thriller "Purple Noon."

The fact is, you are not the kind of novel who should be turned into a move. Without McInerney's deft, witty prose to divert and amuse us, where's the beef in "Bright Lights"? [4 Apr 1988, p.72]

There’s much to argue with, but this unconventional, oddly beautiful film resonates in unexpected ways.

A smooth mixture of satire and sentiment that owes an obvious debt to "The Apartment," not to mention "Jerry Maguire."

The period details are dryly elegant and painstakingly authentic. Yet the film feels underfed - there's not enough meat on the bones of the plot to warrant such opulence. [30 Jan 1978, p.55]

Thematically, The Krays bites off more than it can chew: It's hungry for significance. But the horror of the twins' tale holds you in its clammy grip: it's a high-class creep show. [26 Nov 1990, p.80]

The wrong people made this movie, and its failure rankles. It's a handsomely designed, beautifully photographed production full of good actors who have been asked to play their roles in unfailingly hackneyed fashion. [01 May 1978, p.89]

The Razor's Edge is a pretty lame movie, but you've got to salute Byrum and Murray for their bravely unfashionable commitment. For better or worse, they mean it. [22 Oct 1984, p.99]

Hamer, a meticulous observer himself, is a minimalist with heart.

Keeps you hanging on every twist and turn of its wilder-than-fiction plot.

Harrowingly intense odyssey.

Newman has certainly directed well in the past (Rachel, Rachel), but he flounders helplessly here, unable to find a tone or a shape for his comical-mawkish story. [12 Mar 1984, p.89]

For all its reliance on old movie cliches, Top Gun is devoid of a strong dramatic line. It's a disjointed movie about flying school bracketed by two arbitrary action sequences... The likable Tom Cruise is simply miscast -- he's not the dangerous guy everyone's talking about, but the boy next door. Nor, for all the erotic posing, is there any real spark between him and the more sophisticated McGillis. Cruise seems to think that if he stares at her hard enough chemistry will result. [19 May 1986, p.72]

Defies all laws of gravity in its pursuit of thrills and laughs—and it's so disarmingly eager to please that only a stone-faced kung fu purist could object.

Lucas manages to turn the audience's familiarity to his advantage: like a jigsaw puzzle whose final form has always been known, the fun is in discovering how the last pieces fit.

It's unprecedented, a sorrowful and savagely beautiful elegy that can stand in the company of the greatest antiwar movies.

Though well acted, and handsomely shot by veteran Adam Holender, Fresh sacrifices real emotion for thriller contrivances. It's a tourist's drive through inner-city hell. [05 Sep 1994, p.69]

A tale this outrageous would seem to demand a more freewheeling style, but Shelton never really lest his hair down. His movie peaks too early: it feels over when Long loses the gubernatorial election; the last half hour seems redundant. But if Blaze isn't quite the movie it could have been, it's much too good a tale to pass up. [18 Dec 1989, p.68]

Let's face it: Culkin's self-reliant suburban warrior has entered a whole generations pop mythology. He's their Knight in Shining Parka, safely beyond criticism.

A far more accomplished anthology than Creepshow, Cat's Eye assumes an honorable but not exalted position in the multimedia King empire. But expect as many giggles as goose bumps. [06 May 1985, p.73]

Forman's decision to stick to the surface is probably, in the end, a wise one. Kaufman always wanted to keep us guessing, and this movie respects his wishes.

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

The comedy gets crushed just as surely as our heroes' cop car does in a compactor. This is a shame, because Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal, who play the daredevil cops who banter their way through these bullet-strewn streets, are two extremely likable performers who deserve a director more attuned to their charms. [30 June 1986, p.60]

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

Mazursky's satiric edge has always been leavened with heart. But now that his edge is gone he's wearing his heart on his sleeve and his dramaturgy has gone flabby. [16 Apr 1984, p.93]

The theatricality is off the charts. Lane aims for the balconies; Broderick tones it down for the camera a bit.

There are few movies around that take such huge risks: this is high-wire filmmaking, without a net of irony.

The movie belongs to Hudson as the proud, self-destructive Effie. When she's center stage, Dreamgirls transports you to movie musical heaven.

Zemeckis has always relished technical challenges; once again he pulls them off with high style.

As much as I enjoyed its cheap thrills and its exquisite craft, Dressed to Kill left me wanting something more from De Palma.He has begun to borrow from himself -- one crucial twist is lifted shamelessly from "Carrie" -- and his jokey disregard for psychological plausibility (most evident in his disastrous "Obsession") is beginning to seem just lazy. It may seem unfair to ask for more depth from De Palma when his surfaces give so much pleasure, but from a director this prodigiously talented one expects miracles. Dressed to Kill takes his series of Hitchcockian homages about as far as they can go. It's exhilarating dead-end moviemaking, and one eagerly awaits his next move. [4 Aug 1980, p.61]

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

Like any reunion, Texasville is filled with awkward moments. But it's a friendly gathering -- funny, a little sad and worth the visit. [01 Oct 1990, p.70]

Written with an acute ear by Barbara Turner (Leigh's mother) and directed by Ulu Grosbard, it's a resonant, grittily specific film.

A return to form after the flat "Life Aquatic," Darjeeling has a lightweight, coloring-book charm that deepens and darkens after these odd, privileged ducks are thrown off the train.

Strikingly devoid of suspense. It’s not always clear who’s the protagonist and who’s the antagonist. Nor is it scary—at its most intense moments, it’s merely yucky.

The Border has the air of a project marred by studio compromises -marred but not broken. Warts and all, it has more passion, texture and bite than anything Richardson has done in a long while. [01 Feb 1982, p.72]

Labour teeters on the edge of the amateur. Yet it's hard not to root for its moonstruck spirit, or to succumb to the panache of the pastiche.

A movie of arresting pieces that don't harmonize into a satisfying whole.

Quantum of Solace isn't frivolous or cheesy, but it isn't all that much fun either.

Builds dread masterfully, but don't expect solace or "fun." This is not for those who like mysteries neatly resolved.

Impersonal Hollywood filmmaking at its most paradoxical. It keeps you glued to your seat, and leaves no aftertaste whatsoever.

Columbus's Harry Potter has many delights, but the magical alchemy that the book seemed to achieve so effortlessly eludes it.

The audience is asked to be appalled by the cop's brutal methods, and then cheer when the hero reverts to the same law-of-the-jungle tactics to save his marriage. Revenge, in these movies, must be sweet, and the rule of the box office says the bloodier the better. [6 July 1992, p.54]

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

Demme has lots of fun, and, aided by a fresh, talented cast, he artfully modulates his moods from raunchy farce to somber pathos. [17 Oct 1977, p.102]

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

The story is predictable, the science is dubious, the dialogue leaden and the acting indifferent. No matter. When Frankenheimer brings on his garish monster, it's as if the audience had never seen one before. Fear and tremblings shake the seats. [18 Jun 1979, p.54]

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

Frankie & Johnny is a hard movie to dislike. Marshall and McNally have a real fondness for their characters and a deep trunkful of showbiz savvy. The playwright's delicious one-liners detonate with precision timing. The supporting characters, expertly played, have the kind of instant familiarity of regulars on a favorite TV sitcom. [14 Oct 1991, p.68]

Best Defense, already split in two by its dual story lines, lurches about desperately in search of a tone and a target. [30 Jul 1984, p.80]

Gets a lot of the details right. Outside Providence is a sweet, funny little movie.

The trouble with Sudden Impact is that it has the makings of a fascinating, multileveled melodrama, but settles for crude, comic-book detail. Eastwood doesn't want to let down his Dirty Harry fans, but at the same time he wants to take this character into deeper and murkier waters. The result is curious, a disquisition on the justice of revenge written with a spray can. [12 Dec 1983, p.109]

Demme is understandably reluctant to linger on the horrors of slavery, but it's a dramaturgical mistake. The quick, shocking flashbacks of Sethe's brutalization by her white masters don't do the job--they're horrific, but with a B movie luridness.

The usually reliable director Michael Caton-Jones hasn't a clue how to freshen up such stale material.

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.

Holofcener gets the milieu beguilingly right, but the abrupt ending leaves you wanting more.

Tom Hanks displays his usual comic finesse as Friday's rule-bending new sidekick, but it's Aykroyd's movie -- what movie there it. The fact is, ma'am, this Dragnet doesn't add up to much. [13 July 1987, p.60]

It's poppycock, but well directed: Ruben delivers two or three guaranteed jolts, which almost make up for the copout of an ending.

There is some elegant and clever filmmaking in Rising Sun. But ultimately Kaufman and Crichton are a bad fit: trying to transcend the material, the director loses the novelist's crude but compelling urgency.

Fortunately for Hughes and director Howard Deutch, Juliet is played by the fetching 18-year-old Molly Ringwald, an actress capable of revealing adolescent angst with amazing grace. Unfortunately, Romeo is an underwritten blank who resists all of actor Andrew McCarthy's efforts to make him charming. The manic Mercutio role goes to Juliet's bosom buddy The Duck (Jon Cryer), an ehibitionist cutup who loses the girl he adores to a guy who doesn't deserve her. "Pretty in Pink is a gentle and well-meaning sketch of teen peer pressures, but its dopey, feel-good ending leaves you suspecting that what you've really been watching is Much Ado About Nothing. [17 March 1986, p.82]

What we want to know is why we should care about any of these stick figures. Eszterhas seems as bored with them as we are. He's just moving his dopey plot along, leaving Friedkin to fill in the gaps with car chases and irrelevant chinoiserie.

Penn's eye for landscapes is stunning, and his affection for outsider lifestyles is tangible. Hirsch, who carries the film on his increasingly emaciated shoulders, performs heroically, but there's an edge missing. The ideal casting would have been the young Sean Penn.

After its compelling first hour, The Indian Runner gets self-indulgent and repetitive. But Penn has the gifts of a real filmmaker -- an eye, an ear and a heart. [23 Sep 1991, p.57B]

A glossy, engrossing piece of work. Yet the story feels worked up, inorganic. [10 June 1985, p.88]

The peril of making a movie about monochromatic people is that you'll make a monochromatic movie, and Brooks hasn't entirely avoided this problem. Basically, his imagination doesn't include other people: the audience is trapped inside one insanity and starts to crave variety. Still, few comics cut so close to the bone of daily life, and that's to be cherished. [25 Feb 1985, p.85]

There's something decidedly mechanical about this intermittently gripping movie's bleak view of human nature.

A painfully funny movie. There’s nothing in the history of movie courtship quite like the first meeting between Pekar and his future wife and fellow depressive, Joyce Brabner.

Under the reins of Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen"), the Alien franchise has lost none of its taste for acid-spewing, flesh-impaling, entrail-dripping gore.

Hollywood rarely mounts these lavish period epics anymore. It's nice to see them try, even if the result is somewhat less than heart-stopping.

This is a farfetched premise, and the movie pays a price for it.

Unfaithful shows what a powerful, sexy, smart filmmaker Lyne can be. It’s a shame he substitutes the mechanics of suspense for the real suspense of what goes on between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

Director Guy Hamilton's movie is rather more effective as an advertisement for Majorca than as a thriller, and the idea of Ustinov as Poirot remains more enticing than the reality, but you could do a lot worse. Think of it as a languid cocktail party with a terrific guest list. [22 Mar 1982, p.85]

It groans under the burden of explanations and exposition, not to mention moral homilies. Family love can conquer evil, according to director Brian Gibson's sequel, which is very nice to know but not why anybody will plunk down money to see this movie. [02 June 1986, p.75]

Suspended between the brutally graphic and flights of lyrical fancy, Pan's Labyrinth unfolds with the confidence of a classical fable, one that paradoxically feels both timeless and startlingly new.

The latest Star Trek is the most down-to-earth, and certainly the funniest, movie in the series, further evidence of the show's amazing durability. [1 Dec. 1986, p.89]

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]

You cannot accuse Wolfen of dullness. Though he hasn't the least interest in developing his characters, Wadleigh keeps you on your toes with a steady diet of dismembered bodies, red herrings (make that Red for the terrorists and Indians) and the sheer lunacy of the concept, which must be seen to be disbelieved. [03 Aug 1981, p.51]

Punchline is never less than compelling, never less than smart. Seltzer and company have made a disturbingly entertaining movie about the manic-depressive world of comedy. [26 Sept 1988, p.58]

But the thing about Carol Reed's 1949 The Third Man was that no matter how many times I saw it over the years its magic never failed. Its sophisticated, world-weary glamour never lost its allure. The movie only got richer as my own experiences got richer. I kept discovering dark new delights, and the classic moments remained every bit as classic.

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]

This spirited rerun, neatly mixing parody and panache, squeezes a surprising amount of fun out of the old war horse.

Though acid is dropped, groupies are bartered like poker chips and rock-star egos flare like fireworks, what comes through is the relative innocence of that era.

Director J. Lee Thompson has come a long, depressing way since the days of The Guns of Navarone: his film is sloppily edited, murkily photographed and shot through with a mean streak of sadism unredeemed by its clumsy camp value. [12 Mar 1979, p.89]

Rent the devastating "The Boys of St. Vincent" to see how slick and hollow Sleepers is, how little it reveals about the real nature and effect of child abuse. [28 October 1996, p. 74]

There's almost nothing you haven't seen before in this slick, preposterous, but occasionally exciting thriller. An angry Ford absorbs, and dishes out, massive punishment for a fellow his age, while Virginia Madsen is sadly wasted as his wife.

A very stylish and sexy film noir, a tale of obsessive love neatly balanced between exploitation movie and art film. [23 May 1983, p.54]

Nutty paranoid thriller.

Despite an overwrought finale, this stylish horror film is genuinely creepy. See it before the inevitable Hollywood remake.

Has its heart in the right place, but its funnybone is out of joint.

What's remarkable is how immediately, after a full year, The Two Towers seizes your attention, and how urgently it holds you through three seamless, action-packed hours.

Birch's confidence as a director ebbs and flows throughout -it's odd that she can direct the complicated musical numbers so well and bungle the action scenes so badly. Yet in the end it's hard to resist the movie's bubble-gum romanticism. There's even a dream sequence in which the heroine sings to a vision of her fantasy boyfriend, who appears in heaven in a silver-lame biker's outfit. What can-you say in the face of such sublime silliness but hooray for Hollywood? [14 June 1982, p.88]

When they are all brought together in one of the movie's many badly staged group scenes, King of the Gypsies hilariously resembles nothing so much as a Hollywood costume party. [28 Dec 1978, p.86]

In spite of the fact that everything turns out exactly as you think it will, director Curtis (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) Hanson's movie, written by Denis O'Neill, is a tense, satisfying entertainment. [30 Sep 1994, p.69]

Jarmusch continues to have a great eye for moody lowlife settings. But his minimalist dramaturgy, so resonant in Stranger Than Paradise, just doesn't give you enough to chew on. His iconoclasm is beginning to look like complacency. It's time this talented filmmaker put more matter in his mannerism. [04 Dec 1989, p.78]

Lili Fini Zanuck's directorial debut is impressively gritty and intense, and she avoids finger-wagging, but for all her good efforts, the movie suffers from deja vu: we've been down this road before. [13 Jan 1992, p.67]

One look at[Neil Diamond's] conspicuously coiffed hair-do and spotlight-glazed eyes and you know this man has been assimilated years ago, probably at Caesars Palace...Richard Fleischer directed this twaddle, using so many yellow filters it looks as if jaundice had set in. [5 Jan 1981, p.55]

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.

The movie, which ricochets between farce and poignancy, casts just enough romantic pixie dust to leave you smiling. It's certainly not the last word on the subject, but it's an amiable start.

Beverly Hills Cop is no masterpiece, but it uses Murphy to maximum effect. At its best, the movie is exactly as brazen, charming and mercurial as Murphy himself, which is to say it is unimaginable without him. [3 Dec. 1984, p.81]

It doesn't try to knock your socks off. But if quiet integrity and grave charm count for anything, Brest has made an important debut. [14 Jan 1980, p.86]

Casualties of War is De Palma's best work in years -- it's powerful, meticulous filmmaking -- yet it may be a movie easier to admire than love. Ultimately the drama seems too cut and dried; Eriksson wrestle with his conscience, but the audience never has to. "Casualties" has the visceral impact of a good movie; it lacks the resonance of a great one.

It pushes the audience's buttons with Pavlovian finesse, manufacturing industrial-strength adrenaline. First-time director Frank Marshall has long been Steven Spielberg's producer, and he's learned the master's lessons well.

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.

The special effects are definitely the best thing about this curiously bland disasterthon.

Like Sherman McCoy, the hero of Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities," Brian De Palma makes one fatal choice that leads to disaster. The disaster is the movie The Bonfire of the Vanities. The choice was De Palma's decision to film it as a cartoon -- a broad, black, wannabe savage comedy. Every unfortunate moment of this screechy, heavy-handed movie is a result of that basic misconception, compounded by the fact that the comedy is staged by a man who seems to have temporarily lost his sense of humor. [24 Dec 1990, p.63A]

Creepily beautiful, acted with relish, Barton Fink is a savagely original work. It lodges in your head like a hatchet. [26 Aug 1991]

As we watch the astonishing NASA footage, they eloquently evoke the optimism, anxiety and excitement of those voyages.

Sometimes flat, The Human Factor is nonetheless a lucidly impressive return to form for the 73-year-old director. It's not really a thriller at all, but an understated, uncompromising dissection of an event: an anatomy of the murder of a soul. [11 Feb 1980, p.82]

No two-hour film could ever capture all the riches of McEwan's masterly novel. But Wright and Hampton's Atonement comes tantalizingly close, while adding sensual delights all its own.

The Hand is a moderately frightening, reasonably stylish exercise that ultimately doesn't seem worth the effort. Connoisseurs of schlock shock effects will not be satisfied by its tony illusion/reality games, and those looking for psycho/sexual illuminations will be one step ahead of the Freudian cliches. [27 Apr 1991, p.90]

Superman II is a success, a stirring sequel to the smash of '79. Whether you will prefer it to the original is like choosing between root beer and Fresca. They're both bubbly, but the flavor is different. What the follow-up doesn't have is the epic lyricism of Richard Donner's version; it's harder edged, fleeter on its feet, less reverential. [22 June 1981, p.87]

Bustin' Loose has a fair share of laughs, none of which is supplied by Tyson, who is totally wasted in an oppressively upright role and lacks the light touch that might have transformed it into something more quirky. For his first effort as producer, Pryor earns a mixed report. He's given himself a good showcase, but his gifts as a dangerous, subversive comic are undermined by his desire to make Uplifting Statements. [01 June 1981, p.91]

Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Selma Blair are asked to humiliate themselves many times over in The Sweetest Thing, and they do it with such game good spirits that they ought to get the actor’s equivalent of a Purple Heart.

[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]

Spanglish feels hemmed in, visually monotonous. There are signs that a lot has been cut, and in trimming his film Brooks may have squeezed too tight: his movie needs breathing space.

More sweet than savage, this amiable farce creates laughs with old-pro efficiency.

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

The End initially promises to answer in disturbing comic form, mixing pathos and pratfalls to fashion a pitch-black comedy about a man freaking out on the edge of oblivion. But in the face of such a risky subject, director-star Reynolds and writer Jerry Belson get cold feet. [22 May 1978, p.72]

The movie feels like a half-hour skit blown up, like its stars, to unwieldy proportions. [02 Jul 1984, p.45]

Like all Stone movies, W. has energy and forward momentum--particularly in the pre-presidential sections, when Bush is in his loose-cannon phase. It's not boring, and Brolin is often remarkable.

Even when the film capitulates to its predictable feminist battle cry, director Howard Zieff maintains his poise, demonstrating the gift for light comic timing he showed in Hearts of the West. But the best reason for seeing Private Benjamin is Goldie Hawn, who proves herself a comic leading lady of the first order, a Cinderella in reverse who could charm the brass off the Joint Chiefs of Staff. [20 Oct 1980, p.84]

By the end of this white-knuckle movie, you stand in awe at the depth of man's will to survive. Touching the Void leaves you emotionally and physically spent, and grateful it was only a movie, not a mountain, you had to endure.

As a macho fantasy, First Blood is successful. But by the time it comes to its sobering, let's-put-this-all-in-a-sane-perspective conclusion, one has a right to feel powerfully misused. [25 Oct 1982, p.119]

Black Widow is an honorable attempt to rewire a favorite formula, but it doesn't go far enough. If you're going to play "Persona" games with the film noir, you've got to risk a dive off the deep end. [16 Feb 1987, p.72]

A hilarious, rousing musical comedy set at a summer camp where NOBODY plays sports and EVERYBODY worships Stephen Sondheim.

This movie's got a real story to tell, and the sheer urgency in its voice wins you over. [02 Oct 1978, p.85]

If you like your summer popcorn movies laced with a little poisoned butter, Gremlins is not to be missed. [18 June 1984, p.90]

A wonderfully quirky cast under Francis Ford Coppola's direction makes this one of the more enjoyable John Grisham movies.

It's all kept light and funny, but underlying the broad sight gags is a movie that actually has something to say about competition, fathers and sons, machismo and caffeine.

Shankman and his screenwriter, Leslie Dixon, prove you can make a lightweight Broadway musical into big movie fun.

It's the casting of Iraq vet and non-professional Jake McLaughlin as Specialist Bonner, who fought alongside Deerfield's son in Iraq, that strikes a deeper emotional chord. His scenes with Jones, fraught with a complicated mix of bitterness, concern and guilt, are the best things in the movie.

This German movie, with its lush cinematography and lovely score, has the sturdiness of an old-fashioned Hollywood epic. What isn’t Hollywood is Link’s refusal to tell the audience how to feel at every moment.

A fanciful, featherweight, mostly charming concoction predicated on the old romantic myth that there is one true soul mate out there for us all.

Where so many comic-book movies feel as disposable as Kleenex, the passionate, uncynical Hulk stamps itself into your memory. Lee’s movies are built to last.

Kershner's accomplishment in the first half of RoboCop 2--which offers up the original's mixture of crunching action, dystopian satire and depraved villainy--is the genuine pathos this conflicted tin man evokes. But a curious thing happens to this sequel. It forgets what it's about. In the last third of the movie, the character of RoboCop vanishes behind his visor, the script loses its focus, and the special effects take over.

Slides gracefully between comedy and pathos (it aims for tragedy, but doesn't quite get there).

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]

The Champ is overcalculated to a fault. Like suspense, sentimentality should sneak up on you unexpectedly; when it's poured out like slop in a trough, it kills the appetite. This movie is so busy spilling its own tears that my own seemed quite superfluous. [09 Apr 1979, p.87]

Every character--not just the kids, but the teachers as well--comes alive with a complexity worthy of Jean Renoir. The lyricism of Wild Reeds doesn't cast a smoke screen of nostalgia, it brings us closer to the experience of adolescence.

Sleek, moody, violent and romantic, Sharky's Machine is not only the most seductive Burt Reynolds movie in many a moon. Reynolds is turning into a stylish director, and he sets a distinctive tone of languid menace. Though he can be graphically brutal, Reynolds isn't after realism, but a kind of gauzy, slightly baroque romanticism. [28 Dec 1981, p.64]

Director Neil Jordan includes some graphic and grisly maninto-wolf transformations (done better in An American Werewolf in London), but his ambitious fantasy never really works up a good fright. [06 May 1985, p.73]

Nair’s stereotype-shattering movie -- like the polymorphous culture it illuminates -- borrows from Bollywood, Hollywood and cinema verite, and comes up with something exuberantly its own.

You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn't be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not "Hamlet." Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun.

The film's claustrophobic, color-coordinated dourness yields little illumination, and as the surging violins accompany our heroine's un-raveling mind, the movie comes queasily close to romanticizing suicide. I knew I was supposed to feel something, but what?

For all its violence - the movie has an almost fetishistic fascination with the destructive power of gunfire - the mayhem in The Gauntlet is as harmless as a comic book. You don't believe a minute of it, but at the end of the quest, it's hard not to chuckle and cheer. [02 Jan 1978, p.59]

With a little more trust in its characters, Innerspace could have been a truly memorable comedy. Short comes into his own as a screen funnyman, and Quaid works salty miracles within his physically confined role. But when it's over it's a relief, like climbing off a roller coaster. The best comedies leave you wanting more; Innerspace leaves you wanting less. [13 July 1987, p.60]

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

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

A one joke movie? Perhaps, but it's such an engaging joke that anyone who loves old movies will find it irresistible. And anyone who loves Steve Martin will be fascinated by his sly performance, which is pitched exactly between the low comedy of The Jerk and the highbrow Brechtianisms of Pennies From Heaven. [24 May 1982, p.85]

Structured like a farce but filmed like a Qaalude dream, this marvelously performed fairy tale packs a lot of style into its minuscule budget. [19 Nov 1984, p.135]

As ludicrous as the dialogue by screenwriter/director Walter Hill may be, the film's visual scheme is hypnotic. Dark, moody and muscular, its style gets under your skin even if your brain rebels. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]

It's no soap opera: it's serious, unsentimental and novelistic in its preference for anecdotal detail over melodramatic plotting and filled with fresh, acute and moving moments. Shoot the Moon can also boast of excellent performances and Parker's most controlled direction to date. Yet these many virtues don't add up to a completely satisfying film. [25 Jan 1982, p.75]

The failure of Barry Levinson's Toys is of a different order: it's the kind of folly only a very fine filmmaker could make, a labor of misguided love.

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.

Director Mimi Leder fills the mindless-action-movie quota quite stylishly. The trouble is, The Peacemaker thinks it has a mind.

No better children's film has appeared all year, but my bet is it'll be the grown-ups, not the kids, who come away with a lump in the throat.

Just at the point when Alien 3 should kick into high terror gear, it becomes clear that this hushed, somber sequel doesn't know how to deliver the goods. Fincher has style to spare -- and the sets, cinematography and special effects are all first rate -- but the nuts and bolts of storytelling elude him. [1 June 1992, p.73]

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.

Aims for a "Princess Bride" mix of whimsy and wonderment, the sardonic and the romantic, with only sporadic success. Both visually and narratively cluttered, the film diverts more than it enchants.

There’s a great, piercing story here, but too often you feel you’re watching it through the wrong end of the telescope.

The fans who have kept John Berendt's nonfiction tale on the best-seller list for more than three years may come away feeling they've seen "Perry Mason" on Valium. [1 December 1997, p.87]

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

As adroit and charming as Witherspoon is--and she gives it her all--she cannot rise above the embarrassingly broad, witless material.

Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mamá También," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarón boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

In this gorgeously melancholic fresco of love affairs, Tony Leung Chiu Wai plays a womanizing pulp-fiction writer in '60s Hong Kong.

It has a lovely score by Thomas Newman, stunning production design, striking costumes and gorgeous cinematography. Unfortunately, it just doesn't jell.

The good news about the amiable but only partly satisfying Tin Cup is that it frees Kevin Costner from playing a monument and restores to us the loose, sparkling comic actor he used to be. [19 August 1996, p.66]

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.

Though the tale is told with crisp sangfroid and a wonderful twist, there's hardly a scene I haven't seen somewhere else.

Will be remembered as a vintage Rohmer harvest.

As a moral fable Click holds no surprises; as a Sandler comedy, it's unusually dark, occasionally touching and pretty funny.

It powerfully manipulates our emotions of outrage and revenge but tends to sacrifice human subtlety for polemics. It leaves the thin aftertaste of a TV movie. It doesn't help that McGillis give a dull, leaden performance, rendering her side of the story more perfunctory than it needed to be. Foster must carry the show alone; she seems to compact a lifetime of hard knocks into this furious, touching performance. [24 Oct 1988, p.74]

A thriller in which a psychiatrist solves the murder by interpreting a dream? There hasn't been such a dime-store Freudian gimmick since the days when there were dimestores. [22 Nov 1982, p.118]

Poised halfway between the action conventions of "New Jack City" and the personal grit of "Straight Out of Brooklyn," Juice doesn't have the pizzaz or the insight, to satisfy as either exploitation or art. Dickerson and his fresh young cast make it move; it just doesn't move very far.

It's a picturesque tale that, hobbled by its episodic structure, never achieves full steam.

The film seems to want us to pin a medal to its own chest.

Townsend explodes the industry's tunnel vision in a series of skits, the best of which are explosively funny. His vision of the Black Acting School, run by white instructors ("You, too, can learn to walk black"), captures the movie's message in a raucous nutshell. He also gives us a memorable black street version of a Siskel-Ebert-type critic show called "Sneakin' in the Movies." This supercheapo flick ($ 100,000) is a hit-or-miss affair, but it comes as a tonic: no one's made this movie before. [6 Apr 1987, p.64]

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

I suspect a lot of people will be scared - and thus satisfied - by The Amityville Horror, a film that stoops to some of the oldest and cheapest tricks of the trade in its dogged pursuit of goose bumps. It's a crude haunted-house movie that depends for much of its tension on the possibility that the events that befell George and Kathleen Lutz might be true (though there is considerable evidence that Jay Anson's best-selling book was more fiction that fact). [13 Aug 1979, p.75]

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.

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

Still, even if the movie's vast reach exceeds its grasp, it's a spellbinding history lesson. The Good Shepherd demands you watch it like a spy: alert, paranoid, never knowing whom you can trust, or who will stab you in the back.

It’s like a nightmare that follows you around in daylight: you can’t quite decode it, you can’t shake it, you can’t stop turning it over and over in your mind. This is one queasily powerful movie.

Chocolat is a seriocomic plea for tolerance, gift-wrapped in the baby blue colors of a fairy tale and served up with a sybaritic smile.

There's a quirky, honest movie struggling to emerge from Then She Found Me (April's Jewish heritage is refreshingly portrayed, and there are lovely, scattered moments when the characters surprise you), but Hunt, in her directorial debut, can't seem to decide whether she'd rather make a spicy ethnic dish or bland comfort food.

Kids will be bored, the rest of us baffled.

Damien is a strikingly handsome film - full of plush offices and country homes reeking of Old Money, all lovingly captured in Bill Butler's burnished-gold cinematography - but it hasn't an ounce of suspense. There's really no story here, just a catalog of increasingly baroque murders. [19 June 1978, p.75]