Edward Guthmann

Beneath all that baloney and bombast, there's a lovely, inspiring story in Lorenzo's Oil. [15 Jan 1993, p.C1]

Angelopoulos returns to the same poetic terrain he explored in Ulysses' Gaze and Landscape in the Mist. In place of "action" and conventional narration, Eternity deals in philosophical ruminations, slippery shifts in time and long, hypnotic tracking shots that seem to whisper to us, "Slow down, observe. Listen."

Director Ang Lee ("The Wedding Banquet") spared no effort in giving the food its perfect preparation and display. Brace yourself for a visual orgy.

Terrific.

Extraordinary.

Smothers whatever merits it may have had in a rush of bells, whistles, bombast and smoke.

A study in unexpressed emotion, but Mamet turns the flame so low that his film lacks the emotional payoff we expect.

Coming on the heels of Ma Saison Preferee, Thieves suggests that Techine is filling the void left by the deaths of Truffaut and Louis Malle, and ought to be considered his country's finest humanist filmmaker.

Schrader seems to understand these characters implicitly, and the result is probably the best film he has directed.

Delicious but complex.

We're left with a metallic aftertaste.

Emily Watson is ravishingly good -- and brings an amazing focus and intensity to what could have been a disease-of-the-week picture.

The film doesn't explore the nature of ghosts, as it promises to initially, but it's fun to watch Del Toro confront death and fear with such energy and humor.

The beauty of Morris' achievement is the way he fuses Hawking's work in theoretical physics with his subject's life history -- finding subtle connections between the two, and avoiding the pat, predictable structure of biographical film. [28 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Apart from its cast, however, Gas Food Lodging doesn't have a lot to recommend it. This is true: It's earnest, the milieu it establishes feels authentic, and the three actresses work hard at giving their characters a life...But Anders' inexperience at writing and directing shows. She overloads her film with too many subplots, and consequently loses whatever steam she manages to build up. She introduces too many secondary characters -- two suitors for Nora, one ex-husband, and two boyfriends apiece for each daughter -- but never develops any of them adequately. [9 Sept 1992, p.E3]

Wonderfully original comedy.

Dafoe never reverts to campy, movie-monster gestures but seems liberated, consumed by his character, inspired to give a performance that's intuitive and otherworldly.

A handsome film, filled with lavish costumes and set designs and told in a series of exquisitely composed images. But even with its visual polish, it's a chilly, largely unaffecting film about an unsympathetic man.

All told, the best ensemble cast I've seen this year.

Despite the weakness of Sciorra's character, and the lack of development in her relationship with Snipes, Jungle Fever is a fascinating movie -- consistently provocative, brilliantly acted and written, in most cases, with a number of moments that transcend anything you've seen this year in their wit, sexual heat and emotional intensity. [7 June 1991, p.E1]

Forget Beautiful Girls. The title ought to be "Jerky, Messed- Up Dudes With Nowhere to Go"

(Morris's) strangest and most disturbing portrait yet.

I just wish that "Apollo 13" worked better as a movie, and that Howard's threshold for corn, mush and twinkly sentiment weren't so darn wide.

The movie's soul isn't its plot but the relationships among the girls.

It's a strong film, but apart from its stunning images, it doesn't linger in your mind's eye the way you would like it to.

A movie that's lean, unsentimental and hard around the edges -- a gut- grabber that stays with you for days afterward.

Humanite isn't like any other film: It's uncompromising, eerily affecting and wildly unresolved.

A serious weakness for corn isn't Marshall's only problem. She's got a gift for comedy and she brings out the best in many actors, but she's juggling too many elements here -- baseball, a huge cast, a 1940s milieu -- and never finds a consistently satisfying tone or rhythm. [1 July 1992, p.E1]

It's a sensational part for a young actress -- the film is told entirely from her point of view, using her journal entries as voice-over narration -- and Judd, in her first film, gives a subtle, delicate performance. [05 Nov 1993, p.C12]

The Hudsucker Proxy is the Coens' fifth feature in a decade, and you can see their tremendous artistic growth in every frame of the film. Classically composed, beautifully shot by Roger Deakins ("Barton Fink") and co-produced by legendary action-flick producer Joel Silver, Hudsucker has technique and visual invention to spare. [11 Mar 1994, p.C3]

Superb documentary.

A film that, despite its slight intentions, offers several lovely moments.

The film's loose, scaled-down technique never turns gimmicky...but enhances the tension and intimacy of Rosetta's struggle.

Mangold's sympathy is genuine and his refusal to mock or condescend to his characters -- indeed, that may be the point of the film -- is a pleasure.

One never knows where "Warm Water" is going and even though the film's objective feels a little fuzzy even at the end a parable on female sexuality? an ode to liberty? there's such a joy in the telling that it doesn't matter terribly.

Costner and Lowther are a winning pair, and Eastwood, an elegant director, takes his time telling the story, seasoning it with frequent humor and avoiding the logistics of the manhunt. [24 Nov 1993, p.E1]

Exhilarating but blatantly biased.

I liked Dave -- bits and pieces of it, that is -- but I think it would have worked better as a dark and fearless farce -- reckless, nervy, a little bit mean. American politics deserve it. [07 May 1993, p.C1]

It becomes stronger and more honest than most character studies on film.

It's a monster of a movie, and it gets unwieldy.

What's Love Got to Do With It isn't the best musical biography of all time, but it's an unusually satisfying one, and a tremendous showcase for the splendid Bassett. [11 Jun 1993, p.C1]

Great pleasures.

For all its flaws and vagueness, Safe is smart, challenging and provocative -- a film that gives you plenty to chew on, long after Carol's sad tale has wound down.

Splendid.

Mother is a relationship comedy, like Woody Allen's films, and it screams for the smart, elastic pacing that Allen creates. The situations are funny -- 40- year-old John moves into his old bedroom, goes shopping with Mother, is shocked that she has a boyfriend and occasionally curses and smokes -- but his poor timing flattens most of those scenes.

Violent, disjunctive and exhausting, it's a dark fable that illustrates with startling images the strong, seductive pull of evil.

Devlin tells his story without bias but with shards of gallows humor.

It's a witty, intelligent scramble, and it's beautifully mounted.

Director Nicholas Hytner doesn't soften or cosmeticize Miller's tale -- it's often uncomfortable to watch -- and he draws an emotional pitch from his actors that helps us understand the mob fury and irrational fear that make a situation like the one in Salem possible.

Captures one of the wildest, most heartbreaking episodes in Gilliam's career.

Typically, films about '60s subculture recycle the same set of media cliches and teach us nothing. Harron approaches the milieu with curiosity, compassion and an anthropologist's eye.

Beatty has fashioned a hilarious morality tale that delivers a surprisingly potent, angry message beneath the laughs.

It's a tribute to Day-Lewis that he can play a character like Danny -- cautious, withdrawn, inarticulate -- and endow him an eloquence and grace that aren't dependent on language. Without him, The Boxer might still be a powerful tale of loyalty and love, with a core of moral complexity; with Day-Lewis in the lead, it approaches greatness.

An eye-opening documentary.

Clever, exceptionally well-written film.

Has integrity, but the way he bends his tale to make a statement is overly deliberate.

Naked Lunch will undoubtedly bring pleasure, much of it perverse, to [David Cronenberg]'s many fans - and, simultaneously, confound and repulse a huge chunk of filmgoers. [10 Jan 1992]

A terrific documentary.

An entertaining but exhausting satire on tabloid media and the way they feed our thirst for violence, Natural Born Killers stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, in banshee-out-of-hell performances, as serial killers Mickey and Mallory Knox -- a trashy, gonzo/weirdo version of Bonnie & Clyde. [26 Aug 1994, p.C1]

Nelson's work is relentless, grueling and courageous. He makes a large blunder in having American actors (David Arquette, Steve Buscemi) play Hungarian Jews with American accents, while Harvey Keitel plays a Nazi officer with a German accent.

Pure of intention and passably diverting, His Secret Life is light, innocuous and unremarkable.

(Holm) nails one of the best roles of his career.

At its simplest level, East Is East is a broad comedy, but Puri's acting, so honest and heartbreaking, gives the film weight.

Self-satisfied -- an undisciplined brat of a film.

Downbeat, ultimately tragic, but there's a wondrous, sad beauty here.

This is pleasant, safe entertainment that ought to appeal to kids younger than 10, especially to girls, with its female-empowerment fantasy.

The Secret Garden unfolds like a richly illustrated storybook. It's an enchanting film, full of visual surprises and a story so simple and wise that it makes most ''children's'' entertainment seem gaudy and facile and overly explicit. [13 Aug 1993, p.C1]

The writing, by Rapp and Catherine Dussart, is exquisite, and the performers, including Francois Truffaut's old colleague Jean-Pierre Leaud as a magistrate, are all first-rate.

Sentiment, the kind bordering on schmaltz and easy tears, is found in Shower, a well-meaning generational drama.

A first-rate crime thriller and further proof that Soderbergh is one of our great contemporary film stylists.

A powerful allegory.

The Brady Bunch Movie is fairly innocuous, and ought to satisfy the twenty- and thirtysomethings who grew up on the sitcom. Just one problem: It may be unsporting to point this out, but the whole notion of holding up the Bradys as the ultimate cultural icon of the '70s is basically a lie.

Nicely photographed and beautifully scored.

This is a smart film, told in a minor key, that augurs well for Whaley's directing career.

Soft, evanescent and bittersweet.

Takes a fascinating look at the origins and impact of a ballad that's been called "one of ten songs that changed the world."

The difference is that Iain Softley, who directed Wings of the Dove, and his screenwriter Hossein Amini, who wrote the overlooked "Jude," are keen observers who bring a wealth of ambiguity and mystery to the surface -- and release their characters from the cliches that easily could have swallowed them.

Little rings true in The Commitments. The music, which is never lip-synched, is very good -- especially when Strong, only 16 at the time, belts Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. But the characters are shrill and two-dimensional, and the performers, most of whom had little or no prior acting experience, are made to look like pro-wrestling buffoons. [16 Aug 1991, p.F1]

What Daylight lacks is the knowledge of its own limitations. The only really hysterical line is delivered by Sly's son, Sage Stallone, who plays one of three young prisoners also stuck in the tunnel...Surrounded by rubble and rising water, he gazes longingly at the 14-year-old Harris and says, "If we don't die in here, I was wondering if I could give you a call. . . ."

A provocative, upsetting film.

A marvelous film.

It's hard to follow, the characters are ill-defined, and the wide-angle shots used by Wong's perennial cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, are deliberately unflattering.

In his big-screen directing debut, British film maker Danny Boyle demonstrates wit, intelligence and economy of style.

A zingy self-empowerment fantasy for kids.

Leigh doesn't sentimentalize these tragic, dead-end lives but allows his characters to be ugly and stupid, to make horrendous mistakes. Sometimes they're laughable, and yet there's never the sense that Leigh is mocking them.

One Fine Day is no great shakes, but it avoids being tiresome thanks to the attractiveness of the stars and to a few twists that screenwriters Terrell Seltzer and Ellen Simon offer to differentiate this from other bickering-adversaries-fall-in-love comedies. Both stars also have adorable kids who figure prominently in the plot.

The result is startling and repellent -- a challenge to filmgoers accustomed to fake gunfire, fake wounds and cosmeticized death.

A white-trash burlesque that springs from the notion that people chasing each other in cars and doing stupid things in motels are inherently funny.

There's tremendous maturity and skill in Felicia's Journey but also a sense of impending horror that's bound to repel some audience members -- even though the violence is all implied.

Sinks into melodrama.

Inspiring and largely unsentimental, this is as much a love story as a tale of courage.

Never becomes the thoroughly satisfying psychological drama that it promises to be. There's also a problem with the central metaphor of ice -- a literary device that turns repetitive and obvious.

A low-budget wonder: rough and gritty around the edges, filmed for what looks like a budget of $1.98, but bristling with energy, passion and intimacy.

Downbeat but ultimately hopeful, it's a domestic tragedy that cuts clearly to the bone, finding emotional nuance among the family's knotty secrets and dense layers of subterfuge.

A first-rate historical drama.

Lacks insight and finesse, and feels like a boldfaced Rorschach for Smith's own hang-ups.

A movie that eliminates Hollywood gloss and pop cliches -- and in their place offers an honest look at young love and its pitfalls.

Altman has delivered a lot of surprises in his long directing career, and his new comedy, Cookie's Fortune, is one of the most refreshing -- not because it's so good, but because it's so sweet and affectionate.