David Sterritt

The comedy is tooooo loooooong for the two or three jokes it has to play with, and Kinnear does the picture's only three-dimensional acting.

This superbly filmed Italian drama stands with Bellocchio's best work. Originally titled "Ora di religione."

The setting is cramped and the story is illogical, but it's suspenseful as long as you don't think about it very hard.

LaBute is coming of age as an artist, and his future looks brighter than I ever would have suspected a year ago. Enfant terrible or not, he's starting to become a substantial figure in American film.

It tells its story crisply, and it doesn't hesitate to exlore the seamy side - i.e., the money side - of the racing game, along with the usual stuff about galloping to glory.

The film may be too talky for action-minded viewers and too fantastic for more serious spectators, but it brings appealing twists - including a feminist sensibility - to the venerable martial-arts genre.

Articulate interviews and an unusually creative visual style make the picture as lively to watch as it is illuminating to think about.

The movie is as adolescent as it sounds, but Kahn keeps your eyes popping with truly nonstop action and some of the most outlandishly inventive effects you've ever seen. And of course Cube is so supercool it's worth the price of admission just to watch him.

Like the Oscar-nominated "Seabiscuit," though, Miracle fails to ring true as it tries to make a sporting event an all-embracing metaphor for the American way.

Fans of unregenerate underground moviemaking will have a ball.

The acting ranges from adequate (Jared Leto, R. Lee Ermey) to awful (Lindsay Crouse and everyone else).

Everyone tries very hard to make the story sweet and funny, but the soggy screenplay defeats them every time.

Filmed in a quietly impressionistic style and splendidly acted by a well-chosen cast, the movie would be a top-of-the-line entertainment if its delicately balanced perspective weren't marred by a few moments of racially insensitive excess.

Hanks and Ryan are as appealing as ever, and Ephron's fashion-conscious camera gives the action a slickly attractive sheen.

Falls flat on screen, weighed down by far-fetched plot twists.

While the story has few surprises, parts of it are amusing and the performances are convincing.

The movie is more striking to watch than to hear, more interesting as a tone poem than as a drama. In the end, it's a half-successful film on a subject that could have been all fascinating.

Directed by Charles Shyer, who brings much imagination to the first half but loses all momentum in the homestretch. [04 Oct 1984, p.27]

The remake of Unfaithfully Yours is just a shadow of its source, using the basic plot and characters, but diluting Sturges's ideas. [23 Feb 1984, p.21]

Joe Pesci has more energy than charm in the title role, but the supporting cast has some terrific moments, and the comedy supplies a fair number of laughs before running completely out of steam.

Full of fascinating eye-witness accounts.

More cautionary than titillating...some of it (is) deliberately disturbing.

Carax's cinematic imagination makes it worth viewing by movie buffs with a sense of adventure and a tolerance for explicit sex.

The satire is intermittently amusing, but Arcand adds little to the arsenal of standard mockumentary tricks, and the interesting cast doesn't get many interesting things to do.

A likable though slender documentary.

The story is a string of sub-Scorsese clichés, and if engaging actors like Malkovich and Hopper seem to be sleepwalking through their roles, imagine how unwatchable Diesel manages to be.

Michael Caine gives the most ferocious comic performance of his career, while Elizabeth McGovern is deliciously understated as the ''sorceror's apprentice'' who unwittingly helps him. [23 Mar 1990]

The film only touches the surface of Monk's complex and mysterious personality, and it doesn't explore the deepest roots of his innovative style. It's full of magnificent jazz, though, and offers an unprecedented look at Monk's unconventional behavior, both onstage and off. [06 Oct 1989, p.10]