David Ansen

Urgently, without sentimentality, "La Promesse" shows us the birth of a conscience, and its cost. This fleet, powerful movie may prove to be a classic. [30 June 1997, p.79]

Director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers") nimbly keeps this airy concoction afloat.

It’s a movie for movie lovers -- playful, hip and light as a feather.

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

Has a quiet sense of community, a wry, unsentimental sweetness, that grows on you. It's a patient movie for impatient times.

The film is a class-act thriller, a fiendishly efficient example of emotional manipulation. But that's not all. With Jane Fonda heading the cast, it couldn't help but be a thriller with a very large social conscience, activated, of course, to warn against the dangers of nuclear power. As such, the movie is both ferociously effective and decidedly facile. Director James Bridge's suspense film is the most potent blend of tract and trash since the underrated "Three Days of the Condor." [19 March 1979, p.103]

The superrealist images beguile us with their bold wit, and the storytelling is so tight, urgent and inventive there doesn't seem to be a wasted moment. Which makes you wonder -- why can't scripts this clever be written for human beings?

The compositions, the editing, the lighting, the sound, the music: everything seems meticulously considered, conjuring up a hushed intimacy that instantly sucks you in.

The Jerk is a kind of post-psychedelic Jerry Lewis movie -- Broad, dirty and juvenile, but definitely hip to its own dumbness. Half the jokes fall flat on their face, but when they score they're laugh-out-loud funny. Almost invariably, the best routines are non sequiturs -- off-the-wall riffs where Martin fixates with dopey brilliance on a subject that has nothing to do with the plot. [17 Dec 1979]

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]

A powerful and moving experience -- once it overcomes its clunky, badly written and clichéd first act.

The actors attack their roles with commitment (Hartnett’s understatement is impressive), but their fervor can’t hide the movie’s implausible, often confusing storytelling.

The Movie Works. It has real passion, real emotion, real terror, and a tactile sense of evil that is missing in that other current movie dealing with wizards, wonders and wickedness.

Sean Penn, Elizabeth McGovern and Nicolas Cage are three attractive, gifted young actors whose combined talent, if properly used, could set a movie ablaze. Nothing of the sort happens in Racing With the Moon, a movie that wants badly to be taken as tender and understated when in fact it's merely dull and trite. [02 Apr 1984, p.85]

Zoo avoids any taint of exploitation, but it errs on the opposite extreme. I came away from it wanting a little less Art and a lot more simple reportage.

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

A great horror movie is like a good shrink--and a lot cheaper, too. It purges us through petrification. That horror movie, thankfully, has arrived. It's called The Orphanage," and it is seriously scary.

As drama, The Dark Crystal comes fully alive only at its rousing climax, and it's hampered by the Ken Doll blandness of our hero. As a bestiary, however, it is bountiful -- a prodigious and amusing parade of things that do much more than go bump in the night. [27 Dec 1982, p.61]

John August's trickily structured script owes an all too obvious debt to "Pulp Fiction," but Liman's film is more like kiddie Tarantino.

The Departed is Scorsese's most purely enjoyable movie in years. But it's not for the faint of heart. It's rude, bleak, violent and defiantly un-PC. But if you doubt that it's also OK to laugh throughout this rat's nest of paranoia, deceit and bloodshed, keep your eyes on the final frames. Scorsese's parting shot is an uncharacteristic, but well-earned, wink.

If only the laughs were bigger, smarter and more frequent than they are.

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.

The best and perhaps only way to enjoy Saturn 3 is to pretend that you're watching a "Saturday Night Live" parody of Saturn 3. Imagine that Harvey Keitel is one of the Coneheads, that Kirk Douglas is the guest host, lampooning his own overemphatic acting style, and that Farrah Fawcett is, well, Farrah Fawcett. Viewed in this light, the unintentionally risible dialogue by Martin Amis becomes sparkling comic repartee. Keitel to Fawcett, with nary a flicker of expression in his voice: "You have a beautiful body. May I use it?" [10 March 1980, p.88H]

The Hunger is slick, silly and not without thrills. [09 May 1983, p.85]

The beauty of this extremely clever movie, directed with fleet, robust theatricality by John Madden, is how deftly it manages to work on multiple levels.

Not every movie -- even one based on an unproduced Kurosawa screenplay -- has to be about Life itself. Oh well, enjoy it for the thrills, and don't worry about trying to keep a straight face. [30 Dec 1985, p.62]

The most interesting thing about Beowulf, alas, is its technology. It's the work of a man who has fallen in love with his toys, but I miss the wicked satirist who made "Used Cars." And the truth is the motion capture in Beowulf comes across as an unsatisfying compromise between animation and live action.

For all its shortcomings, The Human Stain is an honorable, sometimes moving attempt, better at evoking the poignancy of Silk's autumnal affair than exploring the moral ambiguities of his deception.