David Sterritt

Deeply personal, morally alert, and highly entertaining.

This is the kind of movie that literate viewers pine for, laced with gracefulness and wit.

Tsai's cinematic style is unique: He unfolds his stories in long, static shots that let you discover their surprises and mysteries on your own. And that's great fun. What Time Is It There? is perky, entertaining, and one of a kind.

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are attractive stars, but what's most appealing about the picture is the value it puts on sharing ideas and feelings through language.

While Jaoui's film is interesting to watch, it dawdles enough to lose its storytelling grip.

John Sayles's offbeat western shows how public controversies often overlap with private grudges and conflicting memories.

This movie equivalent of Robert Rauschenberg's artwork "Erased de Kooning" is funny, ornery, and ultimately inspiring.

Not that Honda's original Godzilla is a message movie first and foremost. It's a horror flick, and an ingenious one at that, with visual effects so vivid that gimmicky spin-offs became an enduring staple of popular film.

A riveting new documentary about the Arab-run Al Jazeera network, reminds us that news programming can vary so widely from place to place that journalistic myths of "objectivity" and "impartiality" seem more naive than ever.

The story sometimes seems hesitant to confront the most harrowing implications of the harsh realities it portrays. But it benefits greatly from Syed's close-to-the-bone performance as the boy.

Milos Forman's drama is full of outrageous material that will offend liberals and conservatives alike, but it's positioned on the cutting edge of contemporary debates about free speech, feminism, and the effects of mass media on modern society.

The first half of this freewheeling comedy-drama finds Toback at his imaginative best. The second half sinks into silliness.

The gifted Zhang Yi-mou directed this gripping and colorful drama, which mingles beauty and perversity in equal proportions. [15 Mar 1991, p.12]

The buildup is slow and deliberate, creating a vivid sense of love and warmth within the family who share the harrowing adventure. The climaxes are horrific, with effects recalling ''Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' but in a less exotic setting.

The movie soars highest when De Palma engages in the purely visual storytelling that he considers (rightly) his strongest suit as a director. [4 June 1987, p.29]

An intense, claustrophobic drama of love and infidelity.

Junge's testimony is a salutary reminder that Hitler was like other people in ways, and that the evil he manifested could visit us again if more civilized humans don't remain watchful.

Nolte gives one of his most fully realized performances, Coburn makes an amazingly powerful comeback, and Schrader's filmmaking has never been more expressive or assured.

The story is stylishly filmed and acted with high spirits, but there's not much going on in many of its colorful shots.

It doesn't have a speck of authentic heart -- you can bet its Hollywood creators wouldn't move to Alabama if their lives depended on it -- but if you belong to the growing legion of Witherspoon worshippers, this is definitely the movie of the week.

Roddam's minor but imaginative 1979 movie.

Magical movie, which has brilliant fun with the contrasts between film and theater, love and infatuation, reality and fantasy.

A fact-filled study that's also a full-fledged work of cinema art. [2 Sept 1988]

If one's domestic environment is a kind of autobiography, then the five households visited by this entertaining documentary reveal fascinating lives indeed.

Tykwer's style gives the movie an explosive energy that never quits, marking him as the most ingenious new talent to hail from Germany in ages.

It's imaginatively filmed and builds a sense of brooding emotional power.

Bird isn't an easy film, and it doesn't always make an effort to be likable. But it's a dazzler - at least as good as "Round Midnight,'' and that's saying a lot.

Wharton's old-school compassion and Davies's taste for artfully wrought melodrama make an unusual but ultimately successful combination.