Emanuel Levy

Tombstone is a tough-talking but soft-hearted tale that is entertaining in a sprawling, old-fashioned manner.

Off-Broadway actor Tom Noonan, best known for his offbeat, crazy and villainous roles on stage and screen, emerges as a talented writer and director in What Happened Was, an intriguing, often mysterious drama about a date between two lonely misfits.

The filmmakers give new saga a freer, looser form than is usual, allowing a superlative ensemble to develop rich characterizations.

Awash in romantic nostalgia for bygone childhood spent in summer camps, Indian Summer is a sentimental, TV sitcom-like, feel-good film. However, its humor and first-rate acting could ensure a strong opening and modest longterm B.O. life.

Shrewdly made with an eye for the global market, where the Belgian star is more of a draw than he is Stateside, pic features visually exciting set pieces in alluring tourist sites, putting the audience in a pleasantly mindless state of disbelief.

Boasting sublime imagery, but no characters to ground his reverie, the new pic heavily relies on an opaque narrative and elliptical editing.

Steve Zahn shines throughout Mark Illsley's feature debut, Happy, Texas, elevating this eccentric small-town comedy a notch or two above its level of writing.

Sporadically entertaining, though it lacks the kind of political urgency and emotional resonance so crucial to many similarly themed '70s movies.

Beautifully detailed and deftly structured, every scene in The Apostle logically leads to the next one, each elaborating on the central theme of religious redemption.

Mounted as an art film and is likely to divide both critics and the helmer's fans.

Meticulous, sumptuous production design, and striking visuals compensate for the lack of dramatic momentum in a film that arguably stretches narrative form to its limits.

Aiming to instruct as well as entertain --- and often struggling to reconcile these two divergent goals.

As writer and director, Schnabel should be commended for avoiding Hollywood's biopic cliches about artists, as Basquiat's meteoric rise to fame and tragic death at the age of 27 would have fit perfectly the timeworn formula.

A vibrantly colorful, wildly nihilistic and lovingly perverse poem to America's beautiful, libidinous and doomed youth. Though not his best, Araki's sixth feature is without a doubt his most accessible, sensual and superficially entertaining movie to date.

One has no problem praising the bravura acting of the entire ensemble.

Begins extremely well as a saga of greed and conspicuous consumption, but gradually loses its bite.

Writer John Cassavetes wants to show that there’s nothing like the purity of first love, but he doesn’t provide his triangle sufficient psychological motivation to ground their otherwise erratic behavior. The script feels incomplete, and is further marred by a missing third act and a lack of discernible point of view.

Lacking the moral indignation, outrage and militant politics that marked Lee's earlier work, this vibrantly colorful film is a tad too soft at the center, and arguably the director's most mainstream movie.

Reflecting the zeitgeist of the last decade, with children increasingly having to come to terms with the untimely deaths of parents and friends as a result of AIDS and other illnesses, Wide Awake tackles its issues with an admirably uncompromising honesty, though it suffers from being dramatically obvious. [16 Mar 1998, p.64]

A solid central performance by Winona Ryder and a captivating wild turn by Angelina Jolie in the yarn's flashiest role.

An amiable, middle-brow entertainment, Chantilly Lace provides a knowing, bittersweet look at the complex lives of modern American women.

The thriller telegraphs most of its suspense payoffs, and the audience is almost always ahead of the game. What's most disappointing is that the characters begin as well-etched individuals, but are gradually turned into mere plot functions.

Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.

Each of the talented thesps has some good moments, but, ultimately, none can rise above the limitations of the material and filmmaking.

Norton directs with assurance.

What makes the film involving and enjoyable in its first hour is a thick, multilayered plot, a rare sight in mainstream movies nowadays.

Four gifted and attractive actresses struggle hard to lend a semblance of dramatic coherence to The Craft, a neatly crafted film that begins most promisingly as a black comedy a la Heathers, but gradually succumbs to its tricky machinery of special effects. Still, young audiences, particularly women, are likely to connect with this energetic high-school tale about the vengeful empowerment of rebellious misfits.

Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson render such startling performances in the romantic fable Benny & Joon that they almost overcome the trappings of an emotional tale that is not particularly well written or directed.