David Sterritt

Todd Solondz's movie begins like a suburban ugly-duckling tale with many comic overtones, but it grows darker as it goes along, evoking dangers that youngsters must be alert to in today's world - from drugs to child abuse - and showing how cruel children can be to one another when grownups aren't around.

On the action-adventure level it's a sure-fire delight for fans, a punchy entertainment for average sci-fi buffs, and a colorful rocket-ride for moviegoers who just want a good time on Saturday night.

Dustin Hoffman gives the inspired performance that launched his movie career, and director Mike Nichols shows a gift for social satire that has never glistened quite so brightly since. [Review of re-release]

It's regrettable that director Costa-Gavras puts more of his storytelling energy into simplistic psychology and suspense-movie action than historical depth and philosophical insight. This prevents Amen. from becoming a Holocaust drama for the ages.

A fascinating account, if less urgently compelling than it might have been.

Sometimes enticing, frequently savage.

Superb performances from a nonprofessional cast. It's gripping, timely, and revealing.

The story has more violence than brains, but Hong Kong action star Chow makes an interestingly moody impression in his first Hollywood role.

While the result is visually brilliant, it's oddly disjointed and packs less emotional force than Richard Price's novel.

It's the year's cleverest comedy in more ways than one. The animated sequences are brilliant... Most important, the story also has dark overtones that lend a hint of seriousness to what could have been just silly. [24 June 1988]

Most of the acting is as real and warm as the characters themselves. And the streets, shops, and living rooms of Brooklyn have never seemed more inviting. [29 Jan 1988]

At once sympathetic and unsentimental, this is a model of low-budget storytelling on a human scale.

The sequel is more exciting and surprising than the 2002 original, thanks largely to Molina's excellent acting. Only the strenuously comic scenes fall as flat as one of Spidey's leftover webs.

Fascinating footage goes beyond the boxing ring to document Ali's brilliance as a public personality.

In all, Wyler's version is a fine example of classical Hollywood filmmaking. But if you want the full experience of this dark and stormy tale, spend a few evenings curled up with Bronte's novel. Nobody has improved on it yet. [19 May 1989, p.10]

Ladybird Ladybird tackles this troubling tale with documentary-style realism, showing profound sympathy with the protagonists while dispassionately revealing the enormous divide that exists between ideals of harmonious family life, on one hand, and a network of inadequate social policies, on the other. [29 Nov 1994, p.14]

The acting is passionate, but the film would be more effective if it presented a more thoroughgoing lesson in the raging horrors that swept through European culture during the era of the French Revolution.

Arguably the subtlest, most carefully textured film of Cronenberg's career.

A quintessential New York director made this quintessential New York movie in 1973, with Pacino at his best.

This grim Danish-Swedish production is socially revealing and artistically creative, both coldly realistic and infused with compassion for its heroine and her youth culture.

One of the most entertaining films ever made by the legendary Maysles brothers and their gifted associates. [17 Apr 1998, p.B2]

Tarantino has always been an inventive director, and in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 he's at his cinematic best, showing an ingenuity that nothing in his monster hit "Pulp Fiction" surpasses.

The acting is brilliant and Leigh's screenplay - developed through his usual process of improvisation and rehearsal - is very long on compassion, very short on preaching and politics.

A pungent, powerful film that points an accusing finger not at religious beliefs but at flawed human institutions. It also targets social and cultural mores that are almost medieval in their patriarchal bias against girls and women.

Touching, transfixing, unique.

Broderick and Witherspoon give perfectly matched performances at the head of a first-rate cast.

This unconventionally structured thriller moves at an energetic pace, spurred by a string of clever variations on conventional film narrative.

Suspenseful, surprising, and psychologically rich.