Edward Guthmann

One of the year's sweetest surprises. It sneaks up on you, disarming you with its modesty and tenderness, its remarkable lack of self-infatuation.

A buoyant, picaresque farce that hums with goofy energy and mines enough ideas, jokes and setups for three movies of this description.

Nobody's Fool functions mostly as a character study, but it's also Benton's elegy to America's endangered small towns. It's a gem.

That's why American Movie cuts so deep: It's about the American dream, about not giving up, about being true to yourself.

Fernanda Montenegro gives a landmark performance.

Gorgeous and optimistic.

A great experience, precisely because it's so intimate and unguarded.

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

Disarms with its sincerity and frankness.

An indelible statement on loneliness and spiritual thirst.

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.

The result is a sprightly, entertaining film, but one in which the satire is neutralized for laughs.

The magic here is all in the telling: in the graceful, laconic direction of Jacques Becker.

Tough, mean and unsparingly honest, Ladybird, Ladybird is the kind of movie that people resist going to, feel edgy while sitting through and then can't shake off for weeks afterward. [31 Mar 1995, p.C3]

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.

Doesn't sanitize its tale of African American loss and survival -- the way Steven Spielberg's “The Color Purple'' did -- but delves deeply, heartbreakingly into an American tragedy.

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]

A delicious comedy that starts out promisingly as a pleasant gag comedy but then turns unexpectedly into a bright social satire.

Jackson has called "Creatures" a "murder story about love, a murder story with no villains." His generous approach makes it an unforgettable experience.

4 Little Girls brilliantly captures a moment in American history and tells an achingly painful story of injustice and family loss.

A haunting, beautiful labyrinth that gets inside your bones and stays there.

Extraordinary.

Red is the best of the lot: warmer, more accessible, unusually generous toward its characters. A mystical tale of chance encounters and unexpected connections, Red uses a traffic accident as a springboard to discovery.

Superb documentary.

The great thing about Reality Bites is that each of the characters comes across as real, and not some glib concoction by a screenwriter who's watched them from a cloistered distance. Childress obviously knows their world inside out, and shares it with insight and a prickly, original wit. [18 Feb 1994, p.C1]

In its sober, nonassertive way, Bopha! takes on the tone and weight of a Greek tragedy. [24 Sept 1993, p.C1]

Leigh goes right to the core of his character's lives and mines the place where we're weakest, most alone and sometimes the cruelest.

Has there ever been a live concert film as vibrant or as brilliantly realized? I don't think so. [Review of re-release]