Desson Thomson

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.