Jay Carr

A civilized delight.

He's (Dafoe) the stuff bad dreams are made of. He's also the best movie vampire since Schreck's original. He deserves a bloody Oscar.

Structural shortcomings and all -- gives a neglected giant of African independence his due.

The Freshman, to be fair, offers delights. It's slight, a conceit better written than directed by Alan Bergman, but with flashes of witty satire and moments of screwball charm. [27 July 1990, p.29]

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.

After Dark, My Sweet sticks to essentials, and nails the fatefulness in this doom-haunted genre. [24 Aug 1990, p.35p]

Deeper and richer in humanity than all but a handful of the American films released this year.

The triumph of La Cienaga lies in Martel's way of fashioning the kind of ensemble performance that draws us in by convincing us we're watching behavior, not acting.

Jungle Fever is Spike Lee's best film yet. Although it's about a black man and a white woman launching an intimate relationship, it's anything but an interracial love story. Which is exactly the film's point. [7 June 1991, p.43]

He's (Willard) a one-man storm of escalating inanity, and he's hilarious.

In its sweet, slightly melancholy, gently humorous way, it fills the screen with the freshest, most winning love story we've seen in ages. [14 Feb 1992, p.39]

Ultimately, charm prevails. Enchanted April can be thought of as "Shirley Valentine" in quadruplicate, with better clothes. You won't see a more exquisite, more civilized feel-good movie this year. [7 Aug 1992, p.32]

It's often a downer, with a sweet but largely passive protagonist.

Magnolia is "Short Cuts" with hope. It's my kind of mess.

Richly textured, beautifully acted.

One of the great newspaper comedies. [24 Nov 1989, p.112p]

It's absorbing, although draggy.

Fresh, original, and arresting.

From start to finish there's a shimmer of discovery about it - our discovery of it, Coppola's discovery of how much she can do.

Like its subject, Pollock is a messy creation, but one whose depth of commitment and high attack keeps it on track.

In short, A Christmas Story isn't just about Christmas; it's about childhood and it recaptures a time and place with love and wonder. It seems an instant classic, a film that will give pleasure to people not only this Christmas, but for many Christmases to come. [19 Nov 1983, p.1]

A feast of a film that goes on feeding you long after you've left the theater. [25 Dec 1995, p.83]

This ponderous, mostly empty exercise at least has ambition. It wants to be more than the usual gangsta zap. But about the best that can be said for it is that it dresses well. [25 Feb 1994, p.48]

Uncompromising and unforgiving, but ultimately more self-destructive than any of its characters.

A League of Their Own may not boost its material into the level of pop myth as, say, last year's great female buddy movie, "Thelma & Louise," did. It's a bit too concerned with being likable to make that kind of bold leap. But if A League of Their Own doesn't knock the ball out of the park, it's a clean hit, with extra bases written all over it. [1 July 1992, p.41]

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 movie seems destined to win a place in the nocturnal-cityscape-hell hall of fame. Its externals are brilliant, but The Hudsucker Proxy is virtually nothing but externals. [25 Mar 1994, p.52]

There's no dust on this snazzy new Hercules. It's got lots of muscle and lots of lift. [27 June 1997, p.C1]

Mixed Nuts is that cinematic oddity: a film that's pretty awful, yet almost perversely endearing -- despite the tiredness with which it plays out its labored jokes before bringing them together in a gooey Christmas ending. [21 Dec 1994, p.94]

There's plenty of invention and exuberant vigor in the chopsocky, and Wilson's cool, ironic drollery provides the perfect foil for Chan's heroics.

Bob Roberts not only invigorates a climate polluted by the usual presidential campaign bombast; it quickens the hearts of the disillusioned by reminding us that the left needn't always forfeit the bare-knuckled approach. [14 Sep 1992, p.47]

As anyone who saw Pelle the Conqueror remembers, August is great with landscapes, but perhaps because he was telling Bergman's story here instead of his own, he seems on this occasion too reverent. Considering the fierce emotions that are the film's subject, The Best Intentions is too hushed, decorous, solemn. [14 Aug 1992, p.43]

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

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

As narrative, the film doesn't quite work, but as a pungent ethnic scrapbook filled with eccentricity and deadpan humor, The Plot Against Harry is a treasure chest of quirkiness. [20 Sep 1989, p.82]

Never earns the rollicking life affirmation it's after.

Like a good supermarket tabloid, Time Code grabs - and keeps - our attention.

Career Girls is a film that knows how wounding and complicated life can be, yet still believes in, and convincingly renders, the healing power of friendship. [15 Aug. 1997, p.D4]

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

In short, it's a gripping film with some surprises that emerge from around the edges. [24 Nov 1993, p.39]

Short, perhaps, on originality but long on savvy and panache, Dave is a feel-good film that's bound to have a lock on the popular vote. [07 May 1993, p.25]

It's all we ask of a film but almost never get, as it first makes us squirm, then makes us cheer.

Nightwatch quickly declines from creepy to silly. [17 Apr 1998]

It goes for broke on high-roller, high-energy scenes, and wins big. [11 Jun 1993, p.41]

Catchy and unobtrusively assured, it's both hip and innocent, stylized and natural, charming its way through a conventional hey-kids-let's-have-a-party plot with bright comedy, great dancing, and on-top-of-it rap. It even manages to send a few messages about responsibility without being boring. In short, it's the best teen genre movie in ages. [23 Mar 1990, p.43]

Beyond its fresh twists on the cop and romance genres, Witness is, above all, an anti-consumption film. [08 Feb 1985]

Comically rueful, semi-autobiographical, warmly appealing. [25 Oct 1996, p.C8]

Mother has a slyly subversive premise and a terrific and commandingly comic role for a woman - which immediately sets it apart from most other American films - and Debbie Reynolds pounces on it with such savvy and self-assurance that it reminds us how funny self-possession can be in the right hands. [10 Jan 1997, p.C3]

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]

Stillman has become a master at escalating the laughter by waiting an extra beat and then understating something devastatingly funny, as when someone looks Chris Eigeman's club manager, Des, in the eye and says, "I consider you a person of integrity - except, you know, in the matter of women."

While Last of the Mohicans is an eyeful - how could anything shot in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina not be? - it's mindless, meticulous in its externals, taking refuge from awareness by clinging to Cooper's distortions. In the end, it'll be remembered for its three S's: Stowe, Studi and the scenery. [25 Sep 1992, p.27]

There are laughs in it. But mostly you sit around waiting for it to be funnier, or at least funny more often. The problem is that it hasn't figured out a way to be funny while satisfyingly accommodating the pain in these characters.

Although not without flaws, Tran Anh Hung's Cyclo is, nevertheless, the most ambitious and impressive achievement of Vietnam's young film industry. [01 Nov 1996, p.E5]

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

Although the limits on Beverly Hills Cop III are pretty obvious, it's not a total write-off. Still, it's time to stop making movies about Murphy's Motown cop and start making one about Serge. [25 May 1994, p.69]

While it preserves his baseball feats, it looks beyond them to clarify Greenberg's place in American culture.

Good clean dirty fun.

All Dogs Go to Heaven" has the right spirit, and its warmth will offset what for small kids might be some scary moments. But it does seem skimpy and warmed over. [17 Nov 1989]

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]

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

It's a snazzy, smartly made, and even hip little scarefest. As a jump-start to Halloween, it's all you could hope for.

Risky Business is the sleeper of the summer. It's a refreshing change from the usual dumb teenage ripoffs, the slickest American film since "Trading Places" and "War Games," and a strong directorial debut for Paul Brickman, who knows his way around teen fantasies. [05 Aug 1983]

Two scenes in Misery are shockingly brutal. But many more are wickedly amusing - especially the ones stemming from the fact that no small part of the writer's torture is the way his deranged muse uses language. There's something simultaneously comical and scary about the way Bates employs euphemisms to keep the lid on. [30 Nov 1990, p.29p]

Fred Schepisi's "A Cry in the Dark" is a powerful film with a terrific performance by Meryl Streep, her best since "Sophie's Choice." [11 Nov 1988, p.57]

As savage and as epic as film gets.

It's filled with vivid characters and action. Beneath its modesty of gesture, it's one of the year's richest, most humane films.

You'll care what happens in this film with more than enough freshness and originality to avoid succumbing to girls-on-the-run cliches.

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

I'd take a chance on it anyway, even if it stumbles and loses its way.

A story about the ravages of one war on a single man's soul and psyche becomes an eloquent plea for peace.

Doesn't quite rank with the films that bracket Heckerling's pop-culture high priestess status

Gray's haunted, obsessional riffs are absorbing theater. Because Demme had the good sense to lay back and not beat them over the head with his cameras, they're equally compelling on film. [27 Mar 1987]

Casualties of War is just as successful as "Platoon" was in making us feel Vietnam's moment-by-moment tension, but its central event gives it more resonance. [18 Aug 1989, p.43]

Titanic is a big-budget spectacle and director Cameron brings it off with high-tech bravura, placing us aboard the ship in real time.

Engrossing and eye-opening in several respects and even, when you least expect it, humorous.

Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser doesn't make the mistake of trying to oversell Monk as a colorful personality. It doesn't have to. It simply stands back and allows his genuine originality and unorthodoxy to make their own impressions. [13 Oct 1989, p.37p]

A sleek little poison pill of a movie.

Both a lovingly crafted remembrance of things past and a deliberate broadening and darkening of the canvas Levinson previously filled in "Diner," "Tin Men," and "Avalon."

She's (Dunst) the big reason the film rises above instantly rejectable formula to campy pop.

Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July is a knockout, a huge angry howl of movie that uses a crippled Vietnam veteran's disability as metaphor for a country's paralysis. [5 Jan 1990, p.67]

Cronenberg hasn't so much filmed Naked Lunch as tamed it, turned it into entertainment, with oozy rubber bugs, big and little, that look left over from David Lynch's movie of "Dune," or the intergalactic dive from "Star Wars." [10 Jan 1992]

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]

Although Watermelon Woman is at times rudimentary and slight, it's saved by its humor and its way of tweaking political correctness. [9 May 1997, p.C6]

Character is almost wholly subordinated to a blast-furnace rendering of the hell into which they're dumped. Seldom will you see so many US military body parts strewn around a movie screen.