David Sterritt

Barbet Schroeder directed the ingeniously made film, which weaves fact, hypothesis, and conjecture into a harrowing yet continually gripping and often highly amusing narrative. [12 Oct 1990]

Smart, funny, and splendidly acted.

Brilliantly acted, sumptuously filmed, and overflowing with mellifluous music.

Harrowing, extremely disturbing at times, but brought to the screen in dazzling pop-art images that make the movie's grim content very much worth watching.

A travelogue unlike any other.

This strikingly unusual movie is at once an old-fashioned melodrama, a boldly stylized spectacle, and a very grim fairy tale, acted and directed with originality and flair.

Well worth seeing on the wide screen before its video release next year. It's guaranteed to take your breath away.

The secret to enjoying 8 Women is to check your analytical mind at the popcorn counter and settle back for almost two hours of cinematic mischief.

Feisty, funny, and smart.

Acted as a drama, paced like a ritual, filmed as a slice of rural Iranian life.

The timeless fairy tale about a young woman who agrees to dwell with a mysterious monster, as interpreted in 1946 by one of cinema's most brilliant visual stylists and mythmakers.

The result is a history lesson both invaluable and horrific.

Concise, humane documentary.

Superbly acted, movingly written, and directed with a tough-minded lyricism rarely found in today's films. A summer movie to love.

Stay far, far away unless you can handle the copious amounts of blood--and agonizing psychological problems-- that its participants face on what seems like a daily basis.

Anderson fulfills the promise of his inventive "Bottle Rocket" with this quirky, often hilarious comedy, and Murray gives his most uproarious performance since the groundbreaking "Groundhog Day."

The movie elegantly mingles drama, comedy, and low-key spiritual resonance. It also has a splendid cast.

Pure fun.

Riveting and revealing whatever views you have on the partisan issues involved.

Rohmer's films are renowned for their beauty, so it's surprising that he made a picture using digital video rather than film. But this was the right choice.

Soldier's Daughter thrives less on Hollywood-style drama than on nuances of personality, details of everyday life, and emotions so commonplace that conventional movies rarely take the time to acknowledge them, much less explore them with loving care.

Like all masterpieces, it speaks to later ages as powerfully and intelligently as to its own.

Iwai's ambitious drama is strikingly shot, poignantly acted by a splendid young cast, and enriched by surprising use of Debussy classics on the soundtrack.

One of a kind, turning Foreman trademarks such as self-satirical acting and out-of-nowhere music into powerful elements of an outlandish story.