Desson Thomson

When Gray brings things to a narrative conclusion, the movie feels perfectly structured. If it were any longer, it would tip the overindulgence scale, and lose its effectiveness. But at 80 minutes, the film feels compact and pithily observed. And you're quite prepared to meet Gray on his next flight of self-absorbed fancy. [30 May 1997, p.N41]

Truly a movie for world audiences with a message that's devastatingly subtle.

It's a magnificent comic experience.

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

I'm talking cheap visual gags, painfully embarrassing moments and other sophomoric humor guaranteed to get you and your friends almost vomiting with laughter.

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 hilarious fantasy, about a plucky piglet that learns how to tend sheep, Babe is a barnyard charmer.

The movie holds you in thrall from first frame to last. Hatred is hatred unslaked. So is racism, ugliness, love, lust and sorrow.

A delirious mixture of spectacular gun battles, furious explosions and breathtaking stunt work, it's also one of the strangest stories to ever get the green light at a Hollywood studio. You have to take your hat off to Paramount Studios for allowing such inspired weirdness to see the light of day.

Thanks to Caine's subtly nuanced performance, there's a deeper dimension to everything. He's snappily ironic at times, sometimes amazingly delicate, always engaging.

Piquant, thoroughly engaging character drama.

In Get Shorty, director Barry Sonnenfeld's spirited adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, Travolta's rebirth accelerates directly into adulthood.

You realize this is a story about the life beyond this movie, about the great changes in life we never give ourselves time to consider. And for a moviegoing experience, that's a lot of bang for your buck.

One of the most enjoyable experiences of the year.

You can feel the movie's sensibility and its powerful emotions in every aching image, which leaves you so caught up in these ancient times, you're loath to return to present-day normalcy.

Spade and Warburton might not have made The Emperor's New Groove one of the mouse factory's all-time greatest, but they've certainly made it one of the funniest.

To appreciate the movie, you have to be okay with vampire violence. I don't mean subtle little nips at the neck and, ooooh, it's directed by Werner Herzog.

A stylish hoot: entertainingly edgy and ludicrous all at once.

An intriguing yarn.

Ford makes such a dynamic president in Air Force One, you may find yourself favorably weighing his odds in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Enormously entertaining.

Watch this film. You may never look at nature indifferently again.

Cuts a path directly to the heart.

A well-orchestrated nightmare that keeps you on edge until the very end.

Mike Myers unleashes (or seems to unleash) the entire contents of his comic mind.

Without hesitation, I hand the comic award to Smith. She plays a pinched guest known as Constance, Countess of Trentham, to such a hilarious tee, her tee runneth over.

An extremely affecting experience, down to the last agonizing moment.

Hilarious, painful and brutally frank.