Jay Carr

A triumph of romantic impulse over stylistic indulgence. [21 Oct 1983]

Nobody makes films as sympathetic to struggling working-class types as Mike Leigh, and nobody makes them as uncondescendingly. Although uneven, Leigh's latest, Life Is Sweet, is a honey of a film, one of the few to feel good about in this dismal year. [22 Nov. 1991, p.35]

Made of a serene dynamite that's all but unknown to American film audiences.

It's got all the energy and idiomatic rightness one could hope for, but, dramatically speaking, it lacks a knockout punch. The violent ending in an alley is flat. One reason may be that the boxing-card scam seems musty and dated. Winkler's got the right friends on camera, but you're never as interested in the story as you are in the characters inhabiting its sunless atmosphere. Night and the City is a qualified success. [23 Oct 1992, p.27]

Karmic influences or not, the new "Mighty Joe Young" works. This is one remake that isn't trying to make us forget the original, but seems rather to embrace it and bring it into the present in solidly crafted, family-friendly fashion. [25 Dec 1998, p.C9]

The liveliest, most original family values film of the year so far.

Hocus Pocus is fun, as Dan Aykroyd used to say, within limits. [16 July 1993, p.40]

The Eel careens all over the stylistic map, from irony to slapstick. But it's chaos in the service of rebirth and redemption, a rich screenful of zigzagging. [16 Oct 1998, p.C5]

It's more than a labor of love -- it's a powerful summoning of devoted craft, conveying the pain and complexity of a great musical innovator, avoiding almost totally the usual Hollywood cliches. [14 Oct 1988, p. 53]

A babe-athon, pure and simple.

Despite its conceptual shortfall, is worth seeing, if only to update yourself on what can emerge from a keyboard these days.

It's a sunny, funny, fittingly cartoony blend of computer-generated 3-D representations of the flying squirrel and his pal the moose with actors.

Life with Mikey is awfully easy to take, thanks mostly to Fox's breezy charm. [4 June 1993, p.51]

The coolest animation in town.

You can't help cheering on Shallow Hal. That and the fact that it's not at all politically correct. It's something better. It's big-hearted, and it's funny.

A ton of fun, and then some.

Although the film is full of the sensory jolts common to this genre, it also has more humor than most, thanks to Richard Rice's tough, witty script. [15 Sep 1989, p.37]

Wrestling gets in America's face and Blaustein gets in wrestling's face. It's a fascinating tango.

This version may not be as stylish or as sparkling as Richard Lester's 1974 outing with Michael York as D'Artagnan, but it's winningly rambunctious and pushes ahead in livelier fashion than the other versions. [12 May 1993, p.48]

The important thing is that the film knows how to make itself likable. It's executed with warmth and affection and a high enough energy level to keep it entertaining. [15 Oct 1993, p.53]

Watson's character grows in importance until she eclipses the recessive Luzhin.

In the end, it's simple warmth and sincerity that make this ensemble piece so disarming.

There's a layer of grim comedy in Butterfly Kiss. But what's exciting about it is its gritty way of remaining so uncompromisingly bleak in its psychopathology. [7 Jun 1996, p.58]

Kindergarten Cop finds Arnold up to his old tricks, which will be exactly what his fans will want to know. But it's tough on kids and may make more than a few feel uncomfortable. [21 Dec 1990, p.51]

The film never quite hits a sure-footed stride. The fictional love story stays fictional. But ''Pearl Harbor'' delivers the main event.

Those who can endure it will find Kirby Dick's film provocative and surprisingly touching. [14 Nov 1997, p.D11]

The Crimson Rivers could teach many an American thriller a thing or two about sophisticated creepiness.

A small film and, ultimately, a satisfying one.

Cruise is believable as an athlete; and the cocky bravado he emits to impress his girlfriend (played with matching complexity and maturity by Lea Thompson) has a fetching sense of lift, too. But his vulnerability is what's most refreshing and ingratiating about Cruise's Stef. [05 Nov 1983]

It's flawed, but it's also rich. And how many films make you feel that you and the filmmaker are following the course of a dream?

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]

Sometimes gets bogged down in its own wordiness.

Starts out as a somewhat weary farce of infidelity, but turns into something a lot more gratifying, namely a comedy of mercy.

I wish Blue Chips had pursued its indictment further up the food chain. But it brings off its tricky double mission, being entertaining while not letting anybody off the hook as it reminds us that amateur athletics is big business. [18 Feb 1994, p.39]

Although perhaps inescapably derivative, the film rides its cast's warm and vibrantly meshed energies - to say nothing of its gender novelty. It's filled with heart and muscle as the women tired of being scammed, slammed and rammed deposit the exploitation film in new realms of payback. [06 Nov 1996, p.D1]

It offers pleasures of a kind that fewer and fewer films even seem to remember, much less aspire to.

Kazan's dislocating strategies carry Dream Lover past a few stumblings and credibility lapses, ushering us into Ray's debilitating alienation, imprisoning us with Spader in Ray's projection of his fantasies onto a woman he realizes he knows nothing about. "Dream Lover" is a thriller that demonizes women more cleverly and slickly than most. [20 May 1994, p.52]

A clever, affectionate, and entertaining holiday snack for sci-fi fans. Falling somewhere between slick and cheesy.

It's not afraid to play cornball when it isn't playing baseball, but The Rookie gets away with it.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels essentially remains a duet of exquisitely turned gestures exchanged by Martin and Caine. It isn't killer comedy. Sometimes its leisurely pace veers dangerously close to slackness. But it's as close as Hollywood comedy comes to chamber music. [14 Dec 1988, p.77]

A bittersweet world, and it's frankly one to which we've been before, but seldom do we see it rendered with such exquisite, if pained, craftsmanship.

Isn't always on the money, but when it is, it really is.

Has that rarest of qualities in movies that think of themselves as religious. I'm talking about the vision thing. And the ability to make morality entertaining.

Wacky enough and gadget-driven enough to appeal to bored kids looking for fresh energies.

Its attributes and achievements are modest, but its arias, duets, and ensembles are engaging all the same.

The big difference between Luc Besson's "La Femme Nikita" and this big, slick remake is that this new film has less visual edge and is more sentimental. It's more upfront with the idea that Maggie, as she's called here, has feelings. Still, Fonda's at her most compelling in the early scenes. [19 March 1993, p.50]

The screen Grease seemed at the time a big, overblown version of the sassy, gritty stage musical. Now the differences seem less important. What the two versions share are sizzle and a refusal to ignore the sexual energy of an exuberant cast. Grease seems kickier now than it did 20 years ago. [27 Mar 1998, p.D6]

It's one of the few films that persuades you that it went out to meet the war and bring it to us with verisimilitude.

Exuberantly mixing live action and animation, it's a high-energy dream teaming that shrewdly takes advantage of the chance to goof on Jordan's temporary retirement from basketball and unsuccessful fling at baseball, and even more winningly exploits the antic wildness that always distinguished Warner Bros.' bouncy Looney Tunes. [15 Nov 1996, p.D1]

Branagh and Love's Labour's Lost all but will themselves into liftoff. They achieve it, and in doing so, they somehow make it right to our pleasure centers with their generous embrace of stardust and pizazz.

This tight, tense black-and-white Anthony Mann film revived Westerns and kept Jimmy Stewart's career alive during the actor's Korean War stint. [19 Apr 1991, p.46]

Too quick to uncritically and unthinkingly accept its subject's rollickingly self-mythologizing take on himself.

Beneath its relentlessly decorous surface, "There's Always Tomorrow" is an Eisenhower-era horror story, starring America as a void with sharp teeth. [25 May 1990, p.50p]

If Blaze is a bit mushy, it's also more than skin deep. It's the kind of film whose shortcomings are easy to minimize. It's a muted last hurrah for a departed and worthy brand of populism, but a hurrah all the same. [13 Dec 1989, p.66P]

The Krays is one of the artiest, eeriest gangster movies ever made. [15 Sep 1990, p.14p]

Hedaya is sublime.

Distress of Parents is a real pleasure.

A surprisingly warm and engaging entertainment - brassy, schmaltzy, funny.

The film is mostly Lemmon's in a quietly stunning performance you frankly didn't know he had in him. [27 Oct 1989, p.29p]

White Men Can't Jump isn't perfect. But most of the time it's a lot of fun. Its funky moves are going to put more smiles on more faces than any regular season or tournament basketball TV throws at you. [27 Mar 1992, p.25]

The story is told handsomely and affectingly with images, facial expressions and body language. [16 Oct 1992]

When a tone is sustained as confidently and with as many delicious flourishes as A Shock to the System manages, and the screen is filled with characterful performances, it's a sign the director is doing something right. [23 Mar 1990, p.46p]