Hal Hinson

As it turns out, big secrets aren't revealed in Broadcast News, but the film is so ingratiatingly high-spirited, and the performances so full of sass and vigor, that in the long run it doesn't really matter much.

It's a lovely film, but a little inert. It reaches its high point with glorious close-ups of the children. From there, it's all downhill.

Leigh has fashioned a limber style of political commentary that is part documentary, part cartoon and wholly novel in the movies.

Never has political correctness looked so sumptuously handsome as it does here, and in its perfect-pitch instinct for the cultural vibe, this sweeping movie is so immaculately dead-on that it nearly transcends criticism.

[Leven] keeps the film's tone light and ingratiating. And, though the material is thin, the actors do seem to be getting a kick out of playing off each other.

David Mamet's Homicide is a brilliant muddle: compelling, exhilarating and, at the same time, profoundly dubious. Certainly there is greatness in it. And just as certainly the moral ice it skates on is precariously thin. It leads us into a forest of dark contradictions, then leaves us stranded, dazzled but bewildered, elated but perplexed.

The Snapper is a small movie, but its spirit is gigantic. [17 Dec 1993, p.C1]

The central story itself is not distinctive, and though Lee certainly churns up a lot of dust, he never captures the mythic quality that made Price's original seem so much bigger than its almost generic cast of players.

Most astounding, though, is the power of the film's leading actor. While Branagh's direction is forthright and articulate, his acting is brash and flamboyant.

Writer-director David O. Russell's exhilarating follow-up to "Spanking the Monkey," is even wilder, giddier and more unpredictable than that irreverent debut.

Careful, the hilariously bizarre new film from Canadian director Guy Maddin, is like some lost masterpiece from a time-warped alternative dimension -- a strange artifact that time forgot.

Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston's brilliantly entertaining documentary look into the New York subculture of drag queens and transsexuals, is a rapturous, desperate ode to self-invention.

Few films are more assured in their storytelling or build more forcefully, irrevocably toward their resolution.

The filmmakers have done a beautiful job of preserving the satirical snap of Gibbons's original. But the real joy of Cold Comfort Farm is watching these actors play so freely and exuberantly off each other.

Taylor Hackford's film version of the Stephen King novel, has a whopping list of shortcomings -- and yet it still manages to be an engrossing, unsettling and, at times, powerful psychological thriller.

He's made two features, "The Unbelievable Truth" and now Trust, and both are cool, strikingly original case studies of middle-class anomie.

The movie has some beautifully observed moments and a generous spirit, but in the end, it's undone by its own sweetness and charm....It's just not distinctive enough to sustain your interest. A lot of the movie is routine coming-of-age stuff.

Van Sant gives his material shape and an invigorating, syncopated style. It keeps coming at you in surprising, dazzling ways.

Watching John Woo's The Killer may be like eating popcorn, but it's not just any old brand; it's escape-velocity popcorn, popcorn with a slurp of rocket fuel. Its story is a collision of exuberant pulp, samurai mythology and modern, urban noir.

Who would have thought that Super Mario Bros., the movie based on the popular video game, could be such a treat? There are some, I'm sure, who saw the end of civilization here. But relax. This movie, which was directed by music video whiz kids Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, is sweet and funny and full of bright invention. In short, it's a blast.

It's respectful but not particularly vigorous or enlightening.

Fresh is an electrifying, sobering movie, and with it, Yakin announces himself as perhaps the most gifted newcomer of the decade.

My 20th Century is like a dream, without a unifying logic -- ravishing fragments without coherence or meaning. Immersed somewhere in all this are Enyedi's meditations on the true nature of women, the shortcomings of 20th-century progress, and the connections between art and science. Yet though her own inventiveness and witty command of the medium are invigorating, her thinking is so scrambled that her originality is undermined. The movie is overintellectualized and yet not fully thought out.

Watching Claire Denis' Chocolat, you feel as if your senses have been quickened, reawakened. The movie is like sex for the eyes -- it's ravishing in a way that goes straight into your blood.

Savagely funny satire of the world of independent filmmaking.

In making her first film, Campion has done thrillingly atmospheric work, and in the process, established herself as perhaps the most perversely gifted young filmmaker to rise up in years.

People bicker and play word games with each other to hide their true feelings, just like you and me, and yet absolutely nothing is at stake.

If Quentin Tarantino's gritty, bone-chilling, powerfully violent new film, Reservoir Dogs, doesn't pin your ears back, nothing ever will...[It's] as caustic as battery acid. It's brutal, it's funny and you won't forget it. Guaranteed.