David Sterritt

The plot is familiar from decades of earlier bank-robbing sagas - the classic "Bonnie and Clyde" seems to have been a particular inspiration for its overall tone - and neither the action nor the dialogue rings meaningful changes on the genre.

Borden artfully combines social and political commentary with story elements, character development, and enough ideological savvy to poke intelligent fun at dogmas of every stripe.

Khouri's new picture takes all this talent and turns it into the kind of manipulative mush that Hollywood used to market under the condescending label "woman's picture" years ago.

It's a pity that such vital, thought-provoking material has been rendered so lifeless and inauthentic on the screen.

The material is familiar and the ending is corny, but Huston's acting and directing keep the comedy-drama likable if not very imaginative.

The movie tries to outdo "Thelma and Louise" by upping the number of heroines, but it lacks the moral seriousness to tackle its sensitive material.

There are a few clever lines and Cleese has some sensational moments, but that's not enough to make the farce seem fresh.

What ensues is a Halloween-style blood bath accompanied by graphic sex scenes.

George Clooney looks great in a cape, but this fourth installment in the series has invested so much capital in razzle-dazzle special effects that it hardly matters whose head is under the pointy-eared helmet.

Vigorously directed by Joel Schumacher, the film is closer to a suspense thriller than a journalistic report.

Its screenplay veers in highly questionable directions before reaching a mean-spirited climax that outweighs Ron Howard's workmanlike filmmaking and the contributions of a star-powered cast.

This masterpiece of 1952 is one of the gentlest, subtlest tales from one of Japan's all-time-great filmmakers, combining the sweep of a novel with the intimacy of an elegy. [10 Jan 2003]

Philippe Rousselot's carefully shaded cinematography looks great, but the screenplay is pretentious and there's little to applaud in the top-heavy acting by John Malkovich and Julia Roberts.

A reasonably effective comedy-drama that squarely fits the usual Allen mold. [18 Sept 1992, p.12]

The movie's one good performance is given by the house, full of ominous inscriptions, inscrutable chambers, and fiendish machines. The human characters are played with various degrees of manic overacting.

All of the actresses are fun to watch, and as much attention appears to have been lavished on their outfits and hairdos as on their high-flying fight scenes.

They vary enormously in style, quality, and ideas, but the best of them -- by Gitai, Chahine, and Iñárritu, among others -- pack an enormous emotional and intellectual punch.

Strong acting and smartly tuned-in directing turn a run-of-the-mill detective story into a striking, sometimes harrowing blend of horror and suspense.

The movie is lively, funny, and endearing until melodramatics and sentimentality take over in the last few scenes.

Uneven but always energetic and sometimes very funny.

Directed by Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky with the same unearthly visual style, and the same mingled concern with technology and psychology, that he showed in his towering ''Solaris'' a few years ago.

This capably made HBO documentary takes an understated and compassionate look at a subject that is often sensationalized in other contexts.

Poignant, spirited, revealing.

Wong Kar-Wai, whose energetic and inventive style isn't enough to give the shallow story the substance and resonance it needs.

If the picture is often less spellbinding than it wants to be, it's partly Hoffman's fault for creating fantasy moods through traditional stage devices -- lavish props, cute makeup, peek-a-boo costumes -- that seem rather tame for this age of morphed-up visual surprises.

Mamet's screenplay is full of savvy satire and the cast couldn't be better.

Enriched by allusions to biblical stories of fathers, sons, and sacrifices, subtly woven into the movie's moodily photographed fabric.

Isn't glossy, but it has a thought-provoking mix of skepticism, hopefulness, and respect for all but its most scurrilous characters. Hollywood could learn from its canny blending of psychological and multicultural insights.

As he showed in the recent "Catch Me if You Can," also a Hanks vehicle, Spielberg has little talent for emotional realism, not to mention psychological suspense. He should scurry back to "Jurassic Park" as soon as the next flight leaves.

An enjoyable movie that marks a rattling good directorial debut for Stephen Fry, the English actor who's best known for starring in "Wilde" seven years ago.

Bale is brilliant.

As mysterious as it is sinister.

Well acted and ably directed, if not very probing about its subject of underclass youth.

The movie's cutest twist is that the monsters are more scared of kids than kids are of them, because they think human children are toxic.

The plot is sordid and predictable -- indiscriminate nightclubbing leads to escalating drugs, promiscuity, and violence. Things perk up cinematically in the last few scenes, but by then it's almost too late.

Foster is fine, but the story's outcome would seem a tad more uncertain if another actress had the part. How scary are three New York tough guys when you've handled Hannibal Lecter in your time?

A refreshingly novel ride.

In the acting department, there's nobody on the current scene with more sheer talent --- or offbeat charisma -- than Philip Seymour Hoffman, in whose bearish body nestles the heart of a lithe and limber artist.

Suicides are proliferating in the city -- is the song to blame, or is it the tenor of the times?

The drama is a gentle, witty parable of the mixed feelings some people show toward free choice when it confronts them not in theory but in everyday life.

This is more than enough material for two hours of summer-movie fun, and The X-Files delivers said fun reasonably well. The action scenes are bigger and bolder than their small-screen counterparts.

Some of the material is dramatic, other bits are dull.

The movie is more a family album than a historical study, but you'll learn a lot and your toe will tap, tap, tap.

The fact-based story is so riveting and revealing that the filmmakers needn't have used melodramatic formulas to boost its impact.

Energetic acting and directing make it a less exasperating experience than it might have been.

It's one of the season's most original and energetic movies.

Harold Pinter's screenplay adds needless touches of melodrama to Margaret Atwood's original novel, but the performances have a lot of conviction, and the story deals with important issues. [16 Mar 1990, p.10]

The humor is more childish than raunchy, but it's interesting to see that becoming a big-time Broadway impresario hasn't led Waters to sell out his affection for gross-out gags.

Araki graduates from his usual obsession with teenage angst in this neon-lighted comedy, but fails to hit the visual and verbal high notes he strains so hard to reach.

Hackman gives a powerful performance as the killer, and the storytelling is often gripping. But the film contains much extremely offensive language and gratuitous depictions of violence, some of it aimed at children, not needed to get the plot across.

This is epic filmmaking on a profoundly human scale, directed to perfection and magnificently acted by everyone in sight.

This is a brilliant, if challenging, film.

Its main value is the prolonged look it gives of the late artist Basquiat.

Politics and humanism find an engrossing balance in this ambitious drama based on the life of Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban poet who was persecuted by the homophobic Castro regime.

Just loopy enough to be tantalizing, involving, and fun.

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.

At a time when screen comedy has its own problems with anger management, Sandler's self-possessed style is as refreshing as it is funny.

One of Hollywood's bloodiest and goofiest adaptations.

One of the most violent films this year, it's no more so than many of the Asian kung fu flicks it pays homage to. Don't be surprised if it slaughters its action-film competition in this overcrowded movie season.

But there's no denying the movie's frequent hilarity, abetted by Mel Smith's superbly laid-back directing and on-target performances by an excellent supporting cast.

Why does affection sometimes grow between people who seem to have little or nothing in common? That's the tantalizing question running through this capably acted comedy-drama

Every shot plays a part in the director's underlying scheme - to probe the actual and symbolic roles of money in society, and grander yet, to explore the relationship between matters of the flesh and the human spirit, as manifested by the struggle between aspiration and corruption. [22 March 1984, p.21]

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.

Reissued with the addition of 50 minutes trimmed from the original 1980 cut, Fuller's only A-budget movie is still among the lesser works of this frequently brilliant filmmaker.

Lively, gentle, smart.

Loses its way in a crime-movie subplot and a less-than-believable love affair.

Is this misogyny, as some insist, or a critique of misogyny, as others say? Many moviegoers, grossed out by the film's gothic approach to medical matters, won't watch long enough to find out which is the answer. [30 Sept 1988]

The film means well, but each scene gets clobbered by sappy screenwriting.

Thanks to director Zucker, this is by far the best installment yet -- there's less bathroom humor and more "Airplane!"-type lunacy.

All give heartfelt, unflashy performances that help make Shattered Glass one of the season's most thoughtful offerings.

It starts with a promising angle, portraying the perennial conflict between the Federation and the Klingons as an allegory for real East-West relations. But the screenplay does little to capitalize on this. The result is an ordinary science-fiction adventure. [12 Dec. 1991, p.14]

Sean Connery is still up to par as James Bond in the latest adventure of Agent 007,

The acting is uneven, but Huston's performance gains eerie intensity as the tale moves from sensationalistic melodrama to humanistic tragedy.

There's some very funny dialogue, but the picture falls apart when it tries to think real thoughts about celebrity, publicity, and the media.

You meet some fascinating personalities during this uncomfortable voyage.

Reveals a key aspect of fascism's cynical use of art and architecture to mesmerize a weak and vulnerable society.

Films borrow tricks from pictures made years ago -- try to watch Bourne without thinking of "The Manchurian Candidate."

The credo of Italy's fabled neorealist movement was that movies rooted in real, unadorned experience carry more dramatic impact than studio concoctions can dream of, and this 1952 masterpiece exemplifies that argument brilliantly.

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

A spicy critique of tabloid TV is buried in romantic-comedy material that strains too hard for cuteness. Ditto for Murphy's acting.

Visually stunning animation.

Polanski's directing is marvelously assured and Depp is always fun to watch.

This isn't a Ferrara classic like "King of New York," but even his less- memorable pictures carry an eccentric kick no other director could duplicate.

Cinema's greatest surrealist is at the peak of his powers in the last movie of his unparalleled career.

This romantic adventure is corny fun, and it's amusing to hear Sean Connery's elegant Scottish accent jangle against Lorraine Bracco's feisty Bronx twang. The movie is more picturesque than memorable, though. [13 Feb 1992, p.13]

It's encouraging to see Hollywood tackle themes of faith and religion, but here, too, Shyamalan is timid, reducing them to fuzzy New Age clichés. Add wooden acting, stilted dialogue, and a faux-arty style, and you have a thudding disappointment.

This is standard plot material in most respects, and Kasdan has done little to make it seem new. Fans of time-tested formulas may applaud his fidelity to the genre, but others will wish he'd come up with a few original notions to energize this very long picture.

Frivolous but fun, somewhere between a comic "French Connection" and the craziest Nascar race you never saw.

Oliver Stone's imaginative style runs rings around John Ridley's idiotic screenplay.

The movie has a broader range of emotions and visual effects than any "Star Wars" installment since "The Empire Strikes Back," but the writing and acting are as stiff as R2-D2's metal torso.

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

There are some good laughs and ironic twists in the story, along with a nagging vulgarity. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas make a terrific team, and director Jeff Kanew gives them free rein to amuse us. [3 Oct 1986, p.23]

Old-style animation slows down after a snappy start, but it's lively enough to keep kids from fidgeting too much.

It's an ideal match, and Eastwood deserves accolades as both director and star of this powerfully made picture.

Bardem is brilliant.

It's as powerful as it is bruising, with more surprises than "Jurassic Park" and more sheer energy than any action movie this season.

A romantic kung-fu comedy with a good heart.

The story is hardly original, but this well-directed Taiwanese drama paints an intermittently vivid portrait of life on the Chinese mainland in the 1930s era.

The trouble lies in its stereotypical style, its schmaltzy emotionalism.

Merchant brings keen insight and rich humanity to this culturally revealing tale of psychological unease in a tense postcolonial world.

Most of the time we see her through Hal's idealizing eyes, though -- no surprise, since Hollywood won't let glittery stars like Paltrow play down their sex appeal for long.

Livelier, more absorbing, and generally better acted than "Dangerous Liaisons," which arrived a year ago. But it runs out of inspiration long before it runs out of plot twists, and we've seen the twists too many times before.

Raising Cain will delight cinephiles with keen eyes and strong stomachs, but general audiences may find it more bothersome than brilliant. [10 Aug 1992, p.11]

Lots of lively tunes and spirited acting.

Ramis doesn't reach the comic heights of his "Groundhog Day," but the acting is excellent and the screenplay offers some hearty laughs if you can stand bursts of violence and language as foul as a Mafioso's business agenda.

Plays like a warmed-over "Last Tango in Paris," with more explicit sex but a lower level of originality and acting skill.

Based on William Faulkner's novel "Pylon," this 1958 melodrama gains much of its dark power from Douglas Sirk's visually rich directing, which transforms basically sordid material into a moral tale of love, loss, and redemption. [27 Jun 1996, p.14]

The coach is certainly an offensive goofball, and the Bears are certainly a pack of hard-to-handle whippersnappers. But the picture's point is that surfaces don't tell the whole story about people, about teams, or about anything.

Danny Boyle's dark comedy has stylishly filmed moments, but overall it's a queasy blend of amusing, pointless, and sometimes quite nasty material.

Everyone works hard, but the results are sadly short of style and personality or irony and intelligence.

Kathy Bates gives her most gripping performance since "Misery," also based on a Stephen King thriller. The picture is weakened by a rambling and inconsistent screenplay.

Too much repetition and an unconvincing finale take a toll on the film's overall effectiveness.

More emphasis on computer-generated gimmickry than on persuasive acting and ideas.

What emerges most strongly, though, is a staggering degree of ignorance among everyday Americans about the basic meanings of democracy, liberty, and national security. [20 Aug 2004, p.15]

It's all deliberately homemade and raggedy, and that's where its charm comes from, along with the delightful old-music score.

The director of "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" scores his most funny-sad movie to date.

The acting is excellent.

McClelland is a joy to watch, even when the story strains too hard for lovable whimsy, which happens much too often.

Maybe the movie does so much dawdling and meandering so we'll have more time to bask in their presence; in any case, the otherwise pleasant picture uses up its ideas long before it uses up its running time.

One of the season's most watchable treats.

De Felitta dodges the temptations of sentiment and preachiness.

Good acting and an effectively claustrophobic mood compensate for a story that doesn't add up to much in the long run.

The gimmick behind the screenplay is clever, but the filmmakers don't rise to the challenge they've set themselves, merely spinning two unimaginative stories for the price of one.

Unexpectedly subtle cinematic style.

Egoyan is one of Canada's most ambitious and original filmmakers, but the power of this intricate drama falls short of its aspirations, despite his personal investment in the subject, since he is of Armenian ancestry himself.

Easily the best American film so far this year, Far From Heaven is close to perfect.

You may find the film as outrageous as it is outlandish, and Bowery would have taken that as a compliment.

Technical virtuosity and entertainment ingenuity.

The first hour is eloquent and true. Once the story takes its big turn toward tragedy, though, it becomes predictable and sentimental.

All the good points together can't make up for the film's mostly soggy acting, particularly by Sean Young and Matt Dillon in the leading roles, or for the technically inept way the voices have been dubbed over the picture - the characters sound like they're reading their lines from a phone booth. Even second-rate Hollywood movies generally have a certain amount of craft and professionalism, but there's precious little here. I say, kiss this one goodbye. [17 May 1991, p.13]

The acting is amiable and the story is crisply told.

Some scenes of Ulrich Seidl's first fiction feature (he's already a respected documentary maker) are so brutal and degrading that they're hard to watch. Others are highly atmospheric and sometimes quite funny.

Preposterous plot, bad acting, and dialogue that provokes more laughs than shivers.

It will frustrate viewers who like stories to make instant sense, but fans of provocative puzzles will have mind-teasing fun.

Endearingly silly, but nowhere near as original or amusing as Pee-wee's Big Adventure a couple of years ago. [22 Jul 1988, p.19]

Written and directed by a brilliant screen artist at the peak of his powers, it's an utterly original comedy-drama.

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.

Spellbinding.

Delivers enough action to please Saturday-night crowds, if not the surreal wit that made the first two "Batman" movies, directed by Tim Burton, so entertaining.

The willingness to blend professionals and nonprofessionals is Duvall's most interesting directorial trademark. Most commercial filmmakers hesitate to use this technique, but he doesn't see it as risky.

Of course, most of the people who flock to Gremlins 2 are interested in the special-effects fantasy scenes featuring the gremlins themselves, and the nastier the better. Here the filmmakers are at their most energetic and most wearisome, dishing out so many silly-gruesome variations on the crazy-creature theme that you can't help being impressed, even as you feel like ducking under your seat for a moment's relief from the relentlessness of it all.

Here's hoping other filmmakers will follow its spirit, if not all of its methods.

Travolta and Jackson have some effective scenes, but Nielsen is lacking in charisma, and James Vanderbilt's screenplay ought to be court-martialed.

All the old Disney trademarks are here, except the wit and surprise that were once the studio's stock in trade. There's little appeal to grownups, but kids should enjoy it.

The animals are cute and Murphy gives a lively performance, but as with his remake of "The Nutty Professor," the original is still the best.

Taylor is utterly believable even when the screenplay (from an Anne Tyler novel) is too self-consciously quirky, and Pearce nicely portrays the guy she obsesses over.

A swiftly told, smartly acted yarn, and it even has an idea or two on its mind.

This is moviemaking on the highest dramatic, psychological, and moral plane.

This tragicomic tale doesn't have the supercharged brilliance of "Run Lola Run," which it occasionally resembles, but it's certainly fast-moving and action fans should enjoy it.

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.

The Haunting can't quite decide whether it's an out-and-out thriller, a psychological drama, or a systematic demonstration of the latest computer-generated effects. But it should attract big crowds for a weekend or two on the strength of its attractive stars and deliciously spooky setting.

This visually intricate fantasia combines his (Greenaway's) extraordinary cinematic imagination with a story and characters less compelling than those in his best works.

Moore makes no pretense of being "fair and balanced." He makes a passionate case for his own perspective, and invites us to agree with him or not. "I fulminate, you decide" could be his motto.

Has amusing bits of social satire, but they're crowded out of the stable by lots of bathroom and barnyard humor.

Required viewing for anyone interested in the struggle for American racial equality.

A wide range of concert and media clips lend vigor and variety to the documentary.

Both a blood-churning war movie and a mind-stirring antiwar movie, focusing not on guts and glory but on the stark realities of real battlefield experience.

There are a few hilarious moments, and a few more that are foolish and even disgusting. [15 July 1988, Art and Leisure, p.21]

The result is a fine production with splendid singing by Angela Gheorghiu, Ruggero Raimondi, and Roberto Alagna. It joins the very short list of first-rate opera films.

It's illuminating and nostalgic and for anyone who lined up for American movies in that bygone golden age.

The first feature-length movie from Bhutan tells its lighthearted story through smart performances, appealing images, and unfailing good humor.

Strains to be shockingly original but winds up as cheap and cheesy as its characters.

This disturbing drama has many telling moments, but it ends with an out-of-the-blue shock episode that raises more questions than it answers.

Pat O'Connor directed this likable but unmemorable comedy-drama, which creates some vivid moments without quite managing to flesh out its commonplace characters.

What makes the picture special is its muted atmosphere, its way of concentrating on the human dimensions of the plot without slipping into pathos, sensationalism, or even melodrama. [18 Nov 1982, p.19]

Sir Walter Scott's novel is turned inside-out by Michael Caton-Jones's movie, which transforms the title character from an elusive rogue into a conventional hero who swaggers across the screen from beginning to end.

Mood, atmosphere, and character are more important than story twists in this unassuming, acutely observant drama.

Be warned that the results are in aggressively awful taste from beginning to end.

Solondz is a courageous social commentator and a canny provocateur at the same time. He'll never get to Hollywood if he stays on this track, but cinema will be a lot duller if he ever mends his incendiary ways.

This astoundingly beautiful Korean production is poignant, original, and engrossing.

Makes up in solid acting what it lacks in Hollywood-type frills.

The story is unmemorable, but the characters are engaging and their predicaments are all too recognizable.

While it's often harsh in style and melancholy in subject, Kandahar taps into veins of humor and compassion as well.

The psychology of the story is shallow, but the action scenes pack a good visual punch.

So sloppily made that it's barely coherent.

In short, this isn't a poignant drama about courage and imagination -- it's a contrived fantasy about courage and imagination.

A must-see account that casts a harshly illuminating light on a key period of recent American history.

Wildly irreverent fantasy.

The story is so complicated that the movie can't quite make it clear, but the picture has impressive energy and high-intensity performances from Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and Guy Pearce.

Amanda Plummer is even more weirded-out than usual as a serial killer wandering through England with her sadly befuddled girlfriend. [10 May 1996, p.13]

The nasty, sometimes violent story was written by Christian Forte, a newcomer who is clearly under Quentin Tarantino's unpleasant spell, and directed by Kevin Spacey, an unusually gifted actor who doesn't yet show any special talent for filmmaking.

Hollywood censors made Wilder reshoot one scene, but the original version has been rediscovered; while it's tame by today's standards, it makes the movie's caustic social commentary more potent than ever.

Superbly cast, evocatively directed.

To say it right out, The Bostonians is the best movie I've seen all year.

Crammed with show-biz jokes that younger kids won't fathom, but the action is so quick and colorful that they probably won't mind.

For a while, it's like really cool, with lots of energy and stuff, but then it gets like major repetitious, and you wish it was like over, y'know? As if!

Everything about this subtly directed drama enhances its pathos and humor, especially an astonishing performance by Gorintin, a 90-something woman only a few years into her acting career.

She emerges as an energetic, narcissistic, and totally self-deluded woman.

If you don't compare it with the novel, it's one of the season's better films.

The movie's style is fairly staid, but it's hard to imagine how Neeson could be better, and the subject is handled with taste and tact.

The movie is very small in scale, but the performances are appealing and Fernandez's screenplay casts an interesting light on the main characters' self-images as Latina women.

It's all energetically filmed, but I miss the cool, modest clarity of the first version. Bigger isn't always better, even at the movies.

Redeemed by sensitive acting.

The filmmaker keeps things lively by roaming far and wide with her camera, returning to the statesmanship side of the documentary often enough to let us follow relevant events as they unfold.

The movie has nothing intelligent to say about post-cold-war tensions or anything else, but it's great fun to watch Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington square off in a submarine that looks like a cross between the Starship Enterprise and something you'd get in a cereal box.

If the film is too similar to Ritchie's first movie, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" with its multiple story lines, complex plotting, and double-crossing antics, it's at least colorfully told with dialogue that shines with the inventive slang of Ritchie's screenplay.

Coil up with a tub of popcorn, get a stranglehold on your soda - this is a creepy, action-packed boat ride down a jungle river with lots of huge snakes dropping by for man-sized snacks.

The screenplay is overwrought at times, but the acting is superb by any standard.

With the exception of a few laughs - including a hysterical footsie scene and another that involves Saran Wrap - this one's a no-brainer.

A genuine PG, gentle and wholesome almost all the way through. It's not a great movie, but it should attract family audiences.

What damps down the psychological power of One Hour Photo is director Mark Romanek's reluctance to let the film become as idiosyncratically unnerving as its main character.

Slums of Beverly Hills is less a hard-edged exposé than a mood-shifting satire, though approaching its subject with a wryly ironic touch.

Depp gives a smart, subtle performance, and Turturro is terrific as a foe who's both exactly what he seems and exactly the opposite. Koepp's makes his (literally) corny tricks seemfresh and surprising.

A compassionate, life-affirming Spanish comedy-drama.

Documentary about stock trading, with some vivid images but no clear perspectives or opinions on the material it presents.

As a zoological spectacle the movie is riveting. But the narration tries to make us think of these adorable animals as if they saw the world in human terms.

Virtually every person in the story is fabulously cute, picturesquely forlorn, adorably ditzy, or winsomely philosophical. In short, there's plenty of smooth storytelling but not a hint of reality here.

It reconfirms Marker as one of the most serious-minded and artistically gifted filmmakers in France, or anywhere else.

An intense, claustrophobic drama of love and infidelity.

The comically tinged action is as lively as it is brainless, and it revels in violence a bit less eagerly than many thrillers of its ilk.

Konchalovsky keeps the action reasonably quick, but sentimental storytelling eventually swamps the picture.

The results are unsparingly perverse and oddly spellbinding.

The filmmaking is meticulous and the ideas are endlessly thought-provoking.

From its restlessly moving camera work to its heartfelt acting by a splendid cast, "Azkaban" is a horror movie for mature kids.

Uninspired thriller-comedy.

The story wants to be a sort of "Last Tango in Paris" redux, but it falls into mere melodrama after a brilliant beginning.

A triumph of psychological drama, owing as much to Ms. Bier's sensitive style as to Anders Thomas Jensen's smart screenplay, based on Bier's own story idea.

It's refreshing to find a comedy that deals with such resonant material. True, there's nothing profound in the screenplay by Rick Podell and Michael Preminger, and director Garry Marshall wraps most of the emotions in bundles as tidy as a Thursday-night sitcom. But the story has serious things on its mind, relating to intimate areas of family life and sexuality. [30 July 1986, p.21]

Directed by Martin Sheen, the picture works hard to be socially and psychologically penetrating but doesn't quite make the grade. [15 Mar 1991, p.12]

The movie's concept is amusing, but much of the acting and dialogue is as uninspired as the story's deliberately bland suburban setting.

The comedy isn't quite as crude as it sounds, but there's not much of value here beyond a little lively acting.

The story raises challenging moral and legal questions but loses energy in a miscalculated romantic subplot.

Herzog soft-pedals his cinematic ingenuity in this personal documentary about his love-hate relationship with Kinski, whose performances in Herzog classics...helped both of them become towering figures on the international movie scene before Kinski's untimely death.

The film has plenty of shortcomings, but it's fun to see Caan back in action.

The movie is strong in sound and fury, weak in nuance and insight.

There are thrills and cliffhangers galore, even though everyone now knows the outcome of the tale, and chief wheeler-dealer James Carville emerges as a zesty screen personality. [12 Nov 1993, p.12]

Its main message is that everyone should believe and behave in exactly the same way. Groupthink wins again!

At least Dennis Hopper plays the bad guy with wildness and wit. Costner's stolid hero seems a washout by comparison.

Like all this adventurous filmmaker's work, it's truly one of a kind.

You run across animation this ingenious about as often as a moving castle comes your way.

Lacks the subtle sense of mystery that distinguished E.B. White's lovely novel, but nicely conveys its playful spirit and amiable tone.

Annie turns out to be a reasonably entertaining movie.

Pauly Shore is less a comedian than a class clown, and his dim-witted mugging makes Jim Carrey's antics seem creative triumphs by comparison. Vapid, vulgar, and more to the point, not funny.

A smart and scary voyage into the uncanny realm where hard realities,mind-spinning myths, and hallucinatory visions blur.

Solid acting and an intriguing plot compensate for some dull spots.

It never exploits its characters or demands their way of living. For all the hidden misery it uncovers, it remains compassionate and humane from first scene to last.

The action is fast, furious, and loaded with explosive effects, but the theme is a regrettable return to the us-against-them paranoia that dominated much science fiction in the cold-war era.

Cartoonish effects and overacting make this more corn than catnip.

While serving up music so free of thought that the best of it seems to crystallize our thoughtless, tightly wound era.

Akerman is among the most imaginative filmmakers in her native Belgium or anywhere else, but here she doesn't get very far beneath the surface of her subject.

This low-key drama is a miracle of mood, atmosphere, and sensitivity.

This offbeat drama has more atmosphere than logic, but a few sequences are strikingly well acted and filmed.

Expressively filmed story of rivalry, romance, and cultural conflict.

No show-business tradition is sturdier than the two-man comedy team, and no contemporary stars are better suited to the format than Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. Pairing them was a terrific idea.

This dark psychological story falls short in terms of filmmaking and acting, but it's original enough to stand out from the crowd.

In this forthright screen version of E.M. Forster's posthumously published novel. Directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, who show the same literate skill and the same fidelity to their source that marked "A Room With a View."

Bullock is cute. Grant is even cuter. They have the timing and panache of a first-rate comedy team.

The story is silly, the acting is campy, the effects are amusingly tacky. A mildly entertaining romp that pokes refreshing fun at its own occasional violence.

Caine puts all his formidable talent into pulling this off, but Jewison's directing and Roland Harwood's screenplay (based on Brian Moore's novel) provide a regrettably shaky foundation for him to build on.

Like its star, it's quietly sincere and compulsively watchable.

The movie's heart is in the right place, but it looks and sounds regrettably bogus.

Along with its try-anything-for-a-yuk screenplay, the worst thing about Hitch is its running time of almost two hours. Did the studio forget to edit this flimsy thing down?

Often trite and predictable but grudgingly likable in the end.

Striking an excellent balance between wry cultural critique and crisp entertainment value, the picture is as smart and funny as any comedy-drama in recent memory.

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]

Sometimes enticing, frequently savage.