Desson Thomson

This 138-minute film, comprising two thousand performers and a helluva lot of musketry, has several good scenes, including the well-known one in which Christian utters romantic praise to Roxanne from below her balcony, while de Bergerac feeds him lines. But it can't escape Rostand's structural shortcomings.

Ruben, at least, is adept with suspense tactics. He keeps Bergin lurking off screen for an agonizingly long time and he knows his suspenseful way around a bathtub. There's also some respectably scary business to do with neatly arranged bathroom towels and food cans in the pantry. But Ruben is merely modulating mediocre material.

As in Chaplin's films, humor and tragedy dance a wonderful tango throughout the movie. Baran is heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes apart, sometimes together.

A three-ring circus of visual pleasure, showing us the beauty of Korean garment, custom and national character.

A guaranteed pleasure for anyone who ever loved pop music, owned a record collection or suffered in love

If it lacks a certain fuzzy warmth, Kinsey makes up for the shortfall with spirited and (for a commercial movie) amazingly candid vigor. It's an alert, lively movie with a crackling performance by Liam Neeson.

Huppert and Greggory provide the emotional impact. They respond accordingly, imbuing their mutual suffering with an exacting and moving finesse.

The movie's devil-may-care freneticism is edgily amusing, almost liberating.

A Molotov cocktail of a movie, an engaging conflagration of British B-flick, cockney wit and gallows humor. There's even a delicate little love story in there.

A great picture, 113 minutes of stirring stuff, set to the ironic lilt of Jean "Toots" Thielemans's harmonica and Harry Nilsson's theme tune, "Everybody's Talkin'."

Take this trip with him and chances are, you'll find the journey increasingly funny and touching.

We are hooked into a low-tech but compelling dynamic -- between relatively static images and McElwee's sensitive, connective narrative.

Mamet's graceful, reverent movie adaptation moves along with a deliberating, almost hypnotic flow, strengthened by impeccable, dignified performances from Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon and others.

The story that emerges has elements of romance, tragedy and even silent-movie comedy.

Sunrise feels more like an absorbing experiment than a supple success.

A movie of biting social observation. And it masterfully avoids Manichaean simplicity.

The most enjoyable John Sayles movie in recent memory.

Wings is a soaring vision that appeals to the senses and the spirit. (Review of Original Release)

Not only visually brilliant, it's funny, too.

The images are crisp. The story is restored. And there's no sign of Raymond Burr.

This handmade feel gives Zathura an appealing, childlike sense of wonder, an element too often forgotten in movies with many times the budget and technological resources.

Enlightening, if structurally relaxed documentary.

We're really celebrating Hollywood's freedom to create biographies of anyone, no matter how high or low on the social ladder, and still come up with the same banal characteristics, messages and conclusions. In this sense, The People vs. Larry Flynt doesn't champion, so much as squander, freedom of speech.

The most assured of the three films.

Sure, the heroes and villains are arranged in a convenient moral gallery. But the performances, Weir's adroit direction and John Seale's superb cinematography take care of that banality.

What's best about Faithless is its honesty, its lack of desire to ingratiate itself with the audience.

Fluidly edited, subtle.

Makes for fascinating cinema.

Never has an actor embodied the passing down of violence and bitterness from father to son more powerfully.

There are extremely touching moments between Jesse and mystical Randolph, who seems to understand just about everything; and, more tellingly, between Jesse and mechanic Jim.

One artist's moving tribute to another.

If you're a fan of Witherspoon, this movie was produced, shot, edited and distributed entirely for you.

It yields surprisingly unspectacular results.

More like a waking nightmare than a docudrama. A true story of murder and justice evidently miscarried, wrapped in the fictional haze of a surrealistic whodunit, it will leave you in a trance for days. [2 Sept 1988]

Fabulously kinetic.

Del Toro has made a ghost story that's not only evocative and original, it's a pleasure to watch.

To watch "Time" is not merely to marvel at the heavens we cannot yet know; it is also to admire Hawking, now 50, for approaching such daunting problems on a daily basis, despite every possible problem the cosmos can throw at him.

This fictional documentary's films-in-miniature -- subdued, engaging grace notes that run from 45 seconds to several minutes -- create a subtle, appropriately unconventional portrait of this eccentric man.

Belgian actor [Jan] Decleir's tough-guy vulnerability ... gives an otherwise standard police procedural extraordinary grace and power.

As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.

Something to treasure: a thriller whose style, structure and rhythms are so integrated with the story, you cannot separate them.

Corbijn makes us achingly aware of the singer's talent, the haunting poetry of his songs and how, living in the gloomy culture he did, his passing was virtually inevitable.

The most eloquent and exacting vision of the war to date... Inspired with technique rather than overblown with it, Kubrick, the filmmaker's filmmaker, lays one on you.

No matter what is going on in the story, these star-crossed lovers are always fascinating to watch.

In this extended good time of a fairy tale, there's something for everyone.

A historical drama about a black regiment that proves its mettle during the Civil War, may not hold up to intense scrutiny but it marches to the glorious beat that fired up the Massachusetts 54th. And it's hard not to get carried along.

An extraordinarily riveting drama.

Diabolically amusing without plunging into the Mel Brooks zone, and it's smart without being pedantic. And it's genuinely scary at times.

It's great to watch characters in The War Room operating as most of us do -- by the seat of their pants.

As we vicariously participate in their daily rituals, we find ourselves at the ground level of spiritual worship. It's hard to recall a similar documentary that brings viewers so palpably close to that sacred experience.

It is quietly observant, with a detached eye for the telling moment, and the visual compositions are often exquisite.

The movie is visually stirring. And the locations, in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, imbue the story with eerie authenticity.

Doesn't just bring you to the edge of the hopeless zone, it takes you right into its homes where the children play.

If the story seems a little waterlogged, it's still big, loud, and fun to watch.

This banquet is the glorious finale of Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast, his handsome, understated adaptation of the Isak Dinesen short story.

What songs, what people and what a triumph that their music won in the end.

Once again, Frears -- who has enjoyed a glorious run of diverse, good-quality movies, from "My Beautiful Laundrette" to "High Fidelity" -- has crafted a unique gem.

Through this miasma of pain and suffering, love may not flicker more strongly than a dim lamp. But it's the only beacon to consider. Can Barry find his? Thanks to Anderson's assured picture, a symphony of cinematic textures, that disarmingly simple question becomes incredibly compelling.

A great little film, dignified by a superb performance, Diamond Men is a gem.

Despite its fragmentary, seat-of-the-pants plot, Chungking Express abounds with staccato style and frenetic charm. It's the cinematic equivalent of popcorn on a hot stove. There are "jump-cut" shots, freeze frames, stirring (and often beautiful) images and a general sense of boundless energy, all of which capture perfectly the Zeitgeist of Hong Kong society. [15 Mar 1996, p.N43]

A percolating comedy. The laughs may not tear your belly up, but they're constant and they dovetail with the story.

It's more of an urban fairy tale, a surprisingly charming story that -- in certain sections -- almost crystallizes into the sweetness of a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musical.

Wedding has enough coincidences, screamfests, drunken rants and shock revelations to fill a season of "Desperate Housewives," but it comes across as finely textured drama, thanks to the performers, who make their characters so persuasive and three-dimensional, we're too mesmerized to care about the story's more overwrought or histrionic passages.

Franklin's picture is effortlessly wise beneath its entertaining surface.

You will surely leave this movie shocked, shaken and surprisingly moved. And definitely stuck on that poor octopus.

As Morvern, Morton is disconcertingly enigmatic, often bordering on catatonic. But she carries the movie effortlessly. And even though we're on the outside looking in, she carries us along, too.

The most obvious problem occurs between Snipes and Sciorra. Lee's so interested in the ripple effect they cause, he almost forgets the affair itself. We see anger all over Harlem and Bensonhurst, but we're barely allowed into the main bedroom, where the real hell must be taking place.

There isn't much to the movie, and you can see where it's going from kilometers away. But [Daniel] Auteuil gives the silliness a surprising heft.

More amiable than hysterical.

The wacky incongruity works when debuting director Mamet has tongue in cheek. But all too often he's rechewing film noir, Hitchcock twists and MacGuffins, as well as the Freudian mumbo-jumbo already masticated tasteless by so many cine-kids.

The plot becomes so overextended, as Reeves and Hopper wage their endless public transportation battle, even the hardest Die-Harders will consider leaping off way before the final stop.

Eve's Bayou is a movie unto itself, a rousing, original yarn about family life that includes everyone, whether they're from Louisiana or miles away. [07Nov1997 Pg N.48]

It may be longwinded here and there, but Mississippi Masala jumps with life. There's an ebullient, lusty mood to it. The characters have a crazy, eccentric rhythm of their own. It's fun to watch them be.

Delightful...a subtle and moving drama.

You're left, as with certain vivid dreams, filled with memorable images but not completely able to account for what you just experienced.

The movie is wry, touching and fun to sit through, thanks to Rosenberg's amusing script, Ted Demme's vital direction and zesty performances from everyone.

Robert De Niro is one extended pleasure in Midnight Run -- a real actor putting his considerable talent to work in a well-scripted comedy. And he's more than complemented by Charles Grodin, a brilliant comic performer who has been wasted up to now in small roles or lousy movies. [22 July 1988]

The best thing about The Island is this: Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, buffed and dressed in sparkling white, wondering how and when to kiss each other.

Extraordinary documentary.

The movie's pace is unhurried by Hollywood standards, but it's all the richer in character detail.

Imaginative, slightly creepy, but tremendously appealing to all ages. It's ripe to bursting with visual effects a heady combination of stop-motion and computer-generated imagery. And it has a delightful cast of personable bugs and larvae, all bound for New York City via floating fruit.

It won't be long before you feel the compulsion to watch again. There is too much to appreciate in one sitting.

Proof of Life isn't a movie. It's an overpriced scrapbook.

Inspired, sublime fun.

It gets you below the emotional belt in a searing, delicate way. No movie this year approaches such magnificent imagery, such delectable poetry.

We may enjoy watching the spectacles, but we don't much care for, or even have a feeling for, the guy in the cockpit.

An extraordinary and brilliant (and almost wordless) film that takes us above ground and below it, up in the air and deep below water, to follow its conundrum of a story.

Sometimes big-time studio entertainment is done so well, you simply have to salute its corporate effectiveness.

We realize that this romance, like the beautiful land, is doomed almost inevitably to earthquake fissures, to irreversible change. But rather than making us despondent, Climates leaves us peacefully philosophical.

A heart-stirrer at times. More often, it's a heartbreaker.

What's truly surprising about Happy Feet is not its giddily brilliant entertainment, its intimate knowledge of the culture or its toe-tapping music. It's how commonplace these qualities have become in computer-animated movies… Happy Feet may be just one of the crowd, but what a great crowd it is.

A small masterpiece of a documentary that takes us into the heart of a complex darkness.

One of the most thought-provoking documentaries of recent times.

You probably never dreamed a charming romantic movie could be staged against a backdrop of Scud attacks from Saddam Hussein.

The movie’s disappointingly straightforward, with no discernible flair.

I sat through "Courage" with interest, but I wasn't particularly moved or riveted with suspense.

It's more a collection of episodes that build to a complex, richly layered picture of these girls' lives. And the more time we spend with them, the more endearing they become.

It is a fascinating dance between style and substance.