Edward Guthmann

With a surgeon's precision and trenchant wit, director Patrice Leconte slices open the French upper classes of the late 18th century and reveals the black, wilting heart beneath the pomp and pretense.

Fernanda Montenegro gives a landmark performance.

Fast-paced and unerringly surprising.

It's beautiful to look at, but it's stiffly acted by some of the performers and tends to get ponderous.

A warning: The pace is very slow in Taste of Cherry, with long takes and leisurely, repetitious shots of Mr. Badii's car twisting through a hilly countryside. Kiarostami is in no rush, but the respect and love he shows for his characters, and the confidence and simplicity of his technique, make Taste of Cherry a satisfying experience.

Certain to nauseate a portion of its audience.

Larger Than Life isn't as bad as it sounds, mostly because Murray is so likable and fundamentally incapable of not being funny.

Irma Vep blurs the line between reality and fantasy, toys with notions of identity and offers a playfully jaundiced look at the petty jealousies and acts of sabotage that infect film crews in the heat of production.

Acting rarely gets better than this.

Not only celebrates Deren's cinematic legacy but also reveals a gifted talent whose explosive temperament was at odds with the lyrical, dreamlike imagery she put on screen.

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.