Desson Thomson

In this movie, only one thing is certain: No one remains the same.

Director Fernando Eimbcke, in an extraordinary debut, never expresses contempt for his characters. By examining their inner lives with compassion and respect, he inspires us to do the same.

No matter what's coming their way, post-apocalyptic doom or gloom, this James Gang of the galaxy is just plain fun to watch.

If there's anyone who can make this ordeal -- and when you're plumb out of characters, it can be an ordeal -- tolerable, and even entertaining, it's Hanks.

The movie does what any great musician should: It lifts an idea to the heights of ecstasy; it sells its song.

Lures us in with extraordinary subtlety. Keeping sound effects and incidental music to a relative minimum, it builds its suspense almost subliminally. So when something scary or shocking does occur -- deprived of those Hollywood-style cues -- we are truly startled.

A helter-skelter ride of the soul, an unblinking, white-knuckle crash landing into the mushy mysteries of the subconscious.

May not be the ultimate word on the Tibetan situation, or even the Dalai Lama, but its heart seems to be in the right place; and it's entertaining enough to give audiences an emotional sense of the story. [16 January 1998, p.N32]

Witty, sweet and charming but never sappy, the movie joins the heady company of such extraordinary child-centered movies as "The 400 Blows," "My Life as a Dog" and "Au Revoir Les Enfants."

Something to get excited about.

It's not the deepest thematic concern you ever saw on screen. But it's watchable, great fun.

Takes unabashed delight in itself and its own culture.

Even if you tap only a little of the magic of "Peter Pan," you'll come away with some pixie dust.

The movie's intense watchability can be traced directly to superb performances by Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.

There are two distinctive features to the movie: the mind-numbingly banal plot as one chases another who chases another, and all the offensive material.

The Return is a pleasant if superfluous invasion of your local theaters. Everyone in front of the Cocoon Uno camera is back, including Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Brian Dennehy, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Steve Guttenberg and nine others. It's nice to see the old codgers still alive, kicking and making whoopee. But don't look for more than extra-terrestrial homecoming.

The Secret Garden unearths a few inventions of its own, it bears its own, quiet charms.

Amusing and inventive.

A blithely unfunny, low-budget comedy from director Barry Levinson.

It's a guaranteed must-see for its generation. Sin City has a long, long shelf life ahead.

So unambiguously good-natured it feels like something fresh.

The movie attempts to paint too large a canvas.

There's a refreshingly unusual spirit at work.

Documentary about rock history's biggest heavy metal band is -- variously -- serious, funny, frustrating and touching.

The result is a movie of deceptive lightness and powerful sweep. And what makes it truly work is the presence of Kervel, a first-time actor whose Anna is disarmingly self-assured and sweet. Without her, nothing else matters.

The writing (by Bill and Cherie Steinkellner) has a non-sentimental appeal for that young preteen (and early teen) crowd that fancies itself too cool for kiddie stuff.

Thanks to strong performances from all, particularly Mount and Nicholson, we're with this story all the way.

It's a grab bag of small delights -- and that includes a workmanlike performance by Toni Collette -- but it never quite amounts to a full load.

Martin Scorsese brings honor back to the remake. He shines up this reprise of the original with original brilliance

Creepy and truly suspenseful in some places, unintentionally comic or plain awful in others.

Add uniformly good acting to Sayles' script of dark coal pits, West Virginia spirit and cowboyish melodrama and you have stirring cinema.

A frustrating update. Take away the comedy and you're left with a pallid version -- a sort of Reader's Digest condensation -- of the original.

Its story -- and eerie allure -- comes from our evolving perception of Jackie (Kate Dickie), a surveillance operator in Glasgow, Scotland, who spends long days and nights monitoring the screens.

Lee's finest, most unabashed labor of love.

Instead of "Masterpiece Theatre"-style fawning, [Scorsese] fills this movie with visual flow, masterful cinematography and assured direction. There's an alert, thinking presence behind the camera.

Without its animation, A Scanner Darkly would have made a fine cautionary tale about drug addiction, paranoia and institutional treachery in a police state. But with a technique that turns the existing live action into a two-dimensional cartoon, the movie goes one -- maybe even 10 -- better. It becomes its own living, breathing metaphor.

(Stamp and Fonda's) polar-opposition in acting styles and temperament, their cultural differences and their pop-cultural synergy come together with almost delicious cacophony.

How great can an epic be, when it takes 30 years, including a whole sequence devoted to World War I, for Jean to realize he could be a little nicer to his wife? This is for diehard Francophiles and literate-movie fans only.

The joy of this movie, which features Joss Ackland as a memorably intimidating, Afrikaner-accented boss, is in the gradual revelation of intrigue.

Malkovich and Sinise, who worked together in Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre (which Sinise co-founded), are touching and pleasurable together. Malkovich's portrayal of big, simple naif Lennie will attract the most attention, yet he is remarkably restrained, skirting the dangerous fence between verisimilitude and sheer ham. But Sinise, in the quieter, caretaking role, achieves at least as much.

The dance between authenticity and storymaking works beautifully.

Surprisingly powerful and universal: the search for meaning and small blessings in the face of life's utter randomness.

When you're in the hands of the Coen brothers, you're in for sheer originality.

Spy movies just got thrilling again.

In Milan Kundera's novel, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," the characters are pawns on a complex, philosophical chessboard with Kundera's didactic commentary accompanying every move. In his adaptation, director Phil Kaufman films the pawns, even many of the moves. But without Kundera's connecting presence and voice, the result is closer to Chinese checkers than chess...Very attractive and watchable checkers, sure

Leads you through a miserable childhood without sentimentality or relief. The effect is torturous.

One of the most enjoyable experiences of the year.

There's no denying its surreal, hypnotic effect.

With disarmingly entertaining movies like this, dare I say, who needs big bad superhero movies?

Roll past this casino.

Roach knows to play to the movie's twin strengths: Stiller and De Niro. Throw these guys together, turn up the intensity.

Good but it SEEMS even better because of its evocative setting.

This is a compelling cautionary tale hot-wired to your gag reflex.

When you’re through watching The Daytrippers, you think about its minor imperfections, not because the film’s bad, but because it’s so good.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a tad too precious. One of those movies that wants to address life's quaint wackinesses, it's full of characters who are quirky, lonely, bizarre or retarded. There's something intensely earnest about the project. But there's something equally manufactured, starting with the casting of Johnny Depp and Juliette Lewis.

It's enough of a spectacle to enjoy. It's too bad the stars are little more than serviceable and give the movie title an irony it could certainly do without.

Commitments, adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from the Roddy Doyle book, exults in its own world. The characters, with their foibles and verbal joustings, are everything. There's something poetically sardonic in every sentence they utter.

It's doubtful that Depp's off-kilter interpretation will have any discernible effect on the movie's success. But it remains the movie's most disappointing aspect.

Jeffrey Blitz's smart, deceptively lighthearted movie gives audiences an endearing nerd-messiah to revisit that angst for all of us and -- maybe, just maybe -- he'll end up in love and ahead.

A subplot involving Griffith and first boyfriend Alec Baldwin becomes the-subplot-that-wouldn't-go-bust, and comic scenes sometimes go bankrupt because they just hold their stock too long. Light entertainment like this should zip along like those financial quote boards.

The grimness of the movie becomes not only too unbearable, its point is clear about halfway through. After that, everything comes across as redundant retreading of the same perspective. But for atmosphere, great cinematography and eye-opening directness, this movie can't be beat.

You don't have to love WWF scrapping to appreciate this movie.

At first, the picture is moving. . And suddenly charm turns to quasi-commie didacticism.

The movie, which is deadly slow and full of Japanese-bashing, is also an undisguised merchandising promo.

Although the movie is slow-going at first, it gradually awakens, like Lilia. And then it dances.

Makes for interesting, rather than emotionally compelling viewing.

Sitting through The Hangover is like watching "Memento" featuring the Three Stooges.

Glover (who shone as Michael J. Fox's father in Back to the Future) is riveting as Layne -- a speed-popping wacko more wired than AT&T And Joshua Miller, who plays Tim, the most malevolent child this side of the Styx, is alarmingly evil as the kid who wants to be part of the older gang, even if it means killing his own brother. But River stabs all-too-wildly in the dark.

It's a stylish and classic gangster saga about the clashing of rival empires.

It is sheer brilliance and testament to the vitality of an old master.

There may not be a bigger-hearted performance this year than Jamie Foxx's in Ray.

Macabre, yes, but the movie's also inventive and funny. You get a lot of smart bang-bang for your buck.

The lighthearted buoyancy comes through. Silver takes her time, just as surely as slowly, searching for nuance between the hackneyed lines of Jewish Moms, Barrow Boys, Famous Authors and English Lit Groupies. Everyone at least has flickering moments of originality.

A respectably stirring film about the rupturing birth of civil rights in the South. Although most of Walk Home heads down this ready-for-prime-time moral path, director Richard Pearce and screenwriter John Cork uncover some interesting dramatic grays along the way. 

This is exactly the kind of weird, sardonic texture the movie is aiming for - and unfortunately, most of it occurs in the first half of the story.

You may catch yourself trying to remember where you parked a little before the end.

A film that's tender and disarming for its intimate honesty. It's also deeply refreshing to see a movie that dares to explore sexuality among mature characters.

In a sense, Shattered Glass is a parenthetical horror movie in which someone discovers (or worse, denies) the monster within themselves.

It's a masterful little film, and, thanks to Zhang's seasoned hands, it's subtly heartfelt but never manipulative.

They (De Niro, Burns) look good together. But what a staggering pity they chose such a nasty, hackneyed movie to demonstrate their chemistry.

August, who also made "Pelle the Conqueror" and "House of the Spirits," steers this story to its stirring conclusion with firm lack of sentimentality.

There's something impressive and yet lacking about everything.

This is cinema as oral tradition. And one heck of a cheap-seat deal.

The movie refuses to descend into the cute smarminess of a mutual recovery drama, thanks to originally conceived characters. We're always wondering -- and wonderfully surprised -- by their choices.

Between the movie's frenetic bursts of energy, however, there's more than enough to enjoy, assuming you're not a Dahl purist. The best thing about the movie is actress Mara Wilson (who many will recognize from her role in Mrs. Doubtfire). With sleep bags under her bright eyes, and an array of facial expressions that ranges from shocked to mischievous, she looks as though she belongs in a Dahl-like world. [02 Aug 1996, p.N29]

Heaven forbid a Hollywood romantic movie have any narrative surprises.

Certainly the going is grim, and there's nothing socially redeeming about "Blues" whatsoever, but writer/director George Armitage's movie is also funny, stirring and full of great moments done in the pop-arty, lightly macabre spirit of producer Jonathan Demme.