Jay Carr

The Wedding Banquet is one of the year's most joyful film discoveries - multiculturally hip, acted and directed with finesse, full of bright surprises, with lots of heart. [27 Aug 1993, p.81]

As bloody as any recent film. But it's shot through with a harsh, stony humor that's invigorating enough to be regarded as a slap back at death.

Lisa Krueger's "Manny & Lo" is the most original and unexpected family-values film of the year. [09 Aug 1996, p.C8]

Riding a mood that's tilted to the jazzy blues that Eddie prefers to Bobby's blasting rock on the car radio, Diamond Men is a sparkly film that's easy to love.

Kevin Costner's epic Wyatt Earp literally and figuratively gives you more of the legendary lawman than any of the other famous movies about him. [24 Jun 1994, p.47]

A hugely entertaining adrenaline rush of a thriller that does a couple of simple things right. That's all it needs to do. First, it casts Harrison Ford in the title role of convicted wife-murderer Richard Kimble, ever scrambling forward, one step ahead of pursuing cops, while hunting the real killer. Second, it never stops. [6 Aug 1993, p.41]

After revitalizing baseball movies with "Field of Dreams" and "Bull Durham," he's now three for three with the funny, quirky, rueful, and richly textured For Love of the Game.

It's the kind of romantic comedy that doesn't cheapen the word ''heartwarming.''

It'll make a natural double-feature repertory-house companion to The Player for years to come. It's filled with humor that has paid its dues. [21 Aug 1992, p.38]

It's brilliantly precise in its detailing, stylishly jagged and sensual by turns, and utterly unpredictable.

Bigelow's walk on the wired side isn't perfect, but she certainly grabs us by our voyeurism and yanks us into the head trip of the year. "Strange Days" is more than wired - it's loaded. [13 Oct 1995, p.37]

It's sweeping yet intimate, stately yet impassioned, stylized yet immediate.

In the crowded landscape of anti-imperial and anti-colonial film, Claire Denis' Chocolat is a standout. Never raising its voice, avoiding the usual didacticism, Denis brings subtlety, sensitivity and an uncommonly clear personal vision to her memories of colonialism in Africa, where she spent her youth. [31 Mar 1989, p.34]

It's not the mega-tech or the shootouts that make Ghost in the Shell memorable, but the ghostliness of it, its ability to convince us that Kusangai - no less than Rutger Hauer's strangely noble android in "Blade Runner" - has a human's ability to conceptualize her own mortality. Nor does arid intellectual speculation make Ghost in the Shell what it is. [1 Mar 1996, p.29]

Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of the masters of world cinema, and Flowers of Shanghai represents a shift for him. Stunning and hypnotic, it's his first period piece. [07 Apr 2000]

Mystery Science Theater 3000 restores your faith in an ordered universe, compelling you to reflect that those campy movies from the '50s and '60s did, after all, have a purpose, although it wasn't easy to discern at the time. [19 Apr 1996, p.54]

With the charismatic Williams and Sohn leading the way, "Slam" electrifyingly moves beyond wishful thinking to hot immediacy, and, yes, earned optimism. [23 Oct 1998, p.D4]

Ullmann's film is an achievement of heart and consequence, as full of integrity as Bergman, yet demonstrating more mercy.

There's nothing paltry about its poultry.

It's got sharp wit and a wise heart, and as good as it was onstage, it's even better as a movie. [22 Dec 1993, p.33]

As quietly confident in its emotional grounding as any American film you'll see this year, and animated by a radiant debut performance from Ashley Judd in the title role, Ruby in Paradise is refreshingly removed from the usual strivings for effect. Part of its allure is that it plays out in what seems like real time. [12 Nov 1993, p.49]

The Little Mermaid is more than Disney Lite, as so many of the studio's animations of the last couple of decades have been. It offers a strong link to the classic Disney tradition while generating freshly hatched delights. And it puts Disney back in the animation game in a big way. [17 Nov 1989, p.85p]

As a flawed but lovably lionhearted woman, Barrymore triumphantly comes of age as an actress.

What Happened Was nails contemporary isolation as few films do. It's filled with acute insights and observations of the wary yet hopeful circling that people do in conversation on a first date. It's a gem of a chamber play. [17 Sep 1994, p.37]

A slick, twisty, top-of-the-line crime thriller with gorgeously sensual textures and a screenful of wickedly faceted performances.

Hollywood filmmaking at its best, brimming over with feeling, texture, spirit, and several kinds of keenness that transmute experience into big pop myth.

Newman is an American classic, one of the few actors Hollywood has allowed to age and deepen. He and Nobody's Fool don't so much shine as glow softly and steadily. [13 Jan 1995, p.73]

Haunting, powerfully acted, penetratingly written, it's about people coming home -- and not coming home -- to their marriages.

Ladybird, Ladybird is full of heart and compassion, but it's also uncompromising and unconsoling. [10 Mar 1995, p.52]

Depardieu and Rappeneau have not so much revived Cyrano as restored it. [25 Dec 1990, p.87p]

Friday is funnier and funkier than "Bad Boys," more homegrown-seeming, less manufactured. It plays like "House Party" with attitude. [26 Apr 1995]

Whatever portion of the alienated teen angst championship Thora Birch left unclaimed after ''American Beauty,'' she nails down brilliantly in Ghost World.

The bleakness of Rosetta will not be for all, but it's one of the best films of the year.

It sounds like what in this country would be a grim tale, but in The Snapper (Dublin working-class slang for baby) Stephen Frears and an Irish cast turn it into a terrific little comedy of nonstop vitality and warmth. [17 Dec 1993, p.98]

There isn't a single chase scene in The Russia House. There's scarcely a love scene. And it dares to be slow. But it's attached to feelings as few spy movies are - and as even le Carre's book was not. The greatest compliment one can pay The Russia House is to say that it's the kind of spy movie that's making spy movies obsolete. [21 Dec 1990, p.49p]

Simple in outline, liberating and exquisite, The Secret Garden is loaded with meaning. [13 Aug 1993, p.43]

Matilda is fresh and spirited, and while the edge on it keeps the film interesting, DeVito manages to tilt it expertly from darkness to light. [02 Aug 1996, p.E4]

As no other Holocaust film quite has, Europa, Europa, with dreamlike clarity, refuses to let us forget that hate works. And that self-hate works even better. [19 July 1991, p.23]

Sad, funny, brilliant.

Natural Born Killers is going to be a love-it or hate-it film. But it's an important film. Pumped up, jumped up, yet asking the right questions, [it] is more than an attention-grabber. It's a grenade pitched into the media tent. [26 Aug 1994, p.51]

'Titanic'' was a case of a cheeseball story riding terrific effects. The Perfect Storm is in every important way deeper.

It's much closer to a European film in sensibility than to one of Hollywood's factory products.

In its dark, relentless, devastatingly ironic way, The Pledge is an exhilarating movie, partly because it isn't afraid to be genuinely challenging.

If you thought ''Moulin Rouge,'' or, for that matter, ''Tommy,'' was trippy, Hedwig, with its glorious convergence of material and performer, will show you what you've been missing.

The film's bountiful warmth and gusto do their work. By the end, we feel part of the family, too.

The film doesn't match the novel's adrenaline level, but is in every other way more stylish and intelligent...Smart, sexy, provocative entertainment. [30 July 1993, p.25]

Serendipity returns us, if only for a couple of hours, to the Manhattan of our dreams.

Thanks to Chen's eye and the strong central performances, Farewell My Concubine comes together with historical resonance and stirring, full-blooded sweep. [29 Oct 1993, p.51]

In all respects, from choice of material to fullness of execution on every level, The War Zone is an extraordinary piece of work.

In short, Almodovar opens some new doors to his artists here, and they respond in surprising, captivating ways. [29 Mar 1996]

Soderbergh's sleekly malignant Underneath is a nasty little winner. [28 April 1995, p.81]

There are a few tonal glitches, but Newell's hand is remarkably sure, the actors are winning, and Into the West is a treat. [17 Sep 1993, p.54]

Pacific Heights is the hot fall thriller Hollywood has been waiting for. A slick, jolting successor to "Jagged Edge," "Fatal Attraction" and "Sea of Love," it beats the odds by inducing us to sympathize with a San Francisco yuppie landlord couple stuck with a tenant from hell. [28 Sept 1990, p.45]

Nicholson, Hunt, and Kinnear will win you over as they turn the film into a valentine to New York's walking wounded.

Delightful and original, the film conjures up a corner of Paris distinct and specific, yet fairy-tale fanciful.

Stone's film rolls off the screen with affection and authority, even when Morrison's life enters its sodden, bummed-out finale, and Val Kilmer does an uncanny job of identifying with Morrison. [01 Mar 1991]

Here's the third classic you'd better know if you're going to know anything about American gangster movies. This one is powered by Paul Muni's thinly disguised and daringly simian take on Al Capone. [01 Nov 1991, p.35]