Jami Bernard

Once Were Warriors has more to say than the traditional TV-movie about spousal abuse. But some viewers will have to pay a price: This is a movie that requires strength and fortitude to sit through.

The Cockettes epitomized a brief confluence of new possibilities, not so much in theater as in personal style, lending them a certain historical value that greatly exceeds their contribution to theater.

A silly buddy caper that should delight the adolescent at heart, even if some of the jokes have been sitting too long in the desert sun.

The startling documentary Daughter From Danang cautions once again to be careful what you wish for.

It's the rare film, Dogma or otherwise, that keeps you smiling long after the lights come up.

The movie creaks and groans, weighed down by clichés.

With its colorful embroidery, Monsoon Wedding feels pleasurably grounded in a reality about which most Westerners haven't a clue. This may be their only engraved invitation.

Career Girls reaches a little too often and unconvincingly for convenience... But Leigh remains one of the few film makers today to make movies that are solely character-driven, in which personal insight is its own reward. [8 Aug 1997, p.46]

An immensely uplifting movie whose final, unforgettable frames come as close as anything to answering the big questions about why we bother in a dog-eat-dog world.

It's got style and charisma to spare, with all the characters acting from fiery reserves of self-interest, including Christopher Plummer as a bank president with a secret in his safe-deposit box.

Maintains a light, dainty tone despite the heavy-handed metaphor, but in crossing the Pacific to the U.S., it is bound to leave most viewers dry.

Director David Kane handles the sprawling cast with aplomb as his characters learn some new steps in this life-and love-affirming movie.

The only intriguing character is the manager of the diner (and de facto fairy godmother), played by Regina King.

Its social satire is so dead-on.

In keeping with the unrefined spirit of the '70s, the movie is deliberately haphazard and proudly retains all its mistakes, including narrator Sean Penn going up on his lines.

Among the many skills required by a documentary maker is the ability to make reticent people blossom. Michael Almereyda has done that in This So-Called Disaster with several of the film industry's most notorious iconoclasts.

Tough going for most audiences and should be considered more of a rough draft full of lofty ideas unevenly executed.

Ultimately, it's a compassionate view of marriage and its stressors. But the filmmaker and actors do their jobs only too well. Watching "Secret Lives" can be as uncomfortable as sitting in the dentist's chair.

In Wide Blue Road, his (Montand) character and the wages of desperation are much more complex. Here is the real lost Atlantis.

A delicately upbeat, even humorous celebration of love and sacrifice.

Turns out to be a thoughtful, beautifully acted story about feeling alive before it's too late to feel anything.

Buscemi wittily captures the desperation of lives gone downhill in prettified surroundings although, like the Trees Lounge patron who suddenly stops breathing, the audience feels the life force slowly being sucked out. [11 Oct 1996, p.70]

This is a movie full of tin-eared humor and situations too contrived to give romance a toehold.

Farmiga is excellent as a woman who is like the mouse she feeds to her son's pet snake - trapped and about to be eaten alive by ordinary circumstance.

This Asian-flavored Hitchcock is a complicated tale with no easy answers.

Matt Damon's performance isn't bad, but it pales in comparison with Law's.

The performance of the movie is Liev Schreiber as Shaw, a man howlingly uncomfortable in his own skin.

Impressionistic and open to interpretation, which is a kind way of saying that there's no way to figure out the ending.