Jay Carr

The sad thing about Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart is that it fails in every important respect, yet is in no way cheap or exploitative. [20 Sep 1990, p.81p]

Zanuck draws impressive performances from her actors. Gregg Allman is surprisingly strong as a slyly menacing dealer, and Max Perlich, as an unpredictable stoolie, makes his scenes pop. The down-and-dirty Rush puts a lot of punch into enervation. [10 Jan 1992, p.77]

Takes a vacation from quality.

Gives three first-rate actors a chance to stretch, and they do.

While Q & A derails, it's still marked by a love of language and a genuine civic passion that isn't afraid to face ugly facts, and of how many films can that be said? [27 Apr 1990, p.29p]

Sequels and fun don't often coincide, but this time they do.

The Trigger Effect is a smarter-than- average thriller that proves David Koepp can direct films as well as write them. [30 Aug 1996, p.F1]

It's a stunningly stylized, fiercely emotional one-of-a-kind film that seals in amber the horrors of a life the director couldn't wait to escape. [18 Sep 1988, p.96]

There's warmth and a kind of benevolence in bed with them, too, and it carries the film past its compromises. If White Palace is no "Last Tango in Paris," it's at least a sizzling, fat-free "Last Hamburger in St. Louis." [19 Oct 1990, p.33]

There's not only physics between them, but chemistry. I.Q. may be slight, but it's a civilized delight. [23 Dec 1994, p.45]

For all its shortcomings, Restoration is miles beyond most historical epics. [26 Jan 1996, p.51]

It's a wickedly inventive blend of revisionist history and childhood dread. [17 March 1989, p.45]

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]

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]

Carlito's Way reunites the Scarface team of Al Pacino and director Brian De Palma to much better effect than the first time around, proving there's a lot of life still to be found in the conventional urban-gangster movie. [12 Nov 1993, p.45]

The Edge is mostly corny macho mano-a-mano stuff, made watchable by spectacular scenery and a lot of understatement in Anthony Hopkins's performance and David Mamet's screenplay - until an overwrought ending brings it down. [26 Sep 1997, p.D7]

Neither the film nor the play has figured out where to go with Barry Champlain once it plants him at the center of his can-of-worms microcosm. We're never bored by his whiplash flailings, but on screen, as on stage, we can't help asking ourselves to what end they're being deployed. [13 Jan 1989, p.46]

King of New York means to slam its excessses into juiced-up nocturnal flamboyance - and does. Assaultive and mindless, it's an incoherent mess. But its manic energies and go-for-broke stylistic gestures keep it from ever seeming dull. [15 March 1991, p.42]

Many spy capers lose their intended irony and wry black humor, but The Tailor of Panama stays stylishly on target in ways that would put a heat-seeking missile to shame.

The film musical is at the moment an even more devitalized art form than the Broadway musical. But Moulin Rouge doesn't revive it. It only rearranges the bones.

Phildelphia, with its velvety textures and rhythms and heads-up soundtrack, does a good job of at least putting the topic on the mainstream table. And it's dramatically potent as well as historically important. [14 Jan 1994, p.73]

Lane does know how to photograph his own interesting, large-eyed face to potent effect. He's an appealing talent, and Sidewalk Stories is a likable film. Beyond novelty value, it also finds modern ways of making contact with the very real feel for poverty that was so much a part of the early Chaplin films. [21 Sep 1989, p.60]

Swimming with Sharks is fine when it puts Buddy into outrageous play. But it stumbles in a few other places, requiring a pretty hefty suspension of disbelief - first at Guy's making it into his miserable job that many would kill for, then when he finds himself on the receiving end of romantic attentions. [09 June 1995, p.57]

It's huge, brilliant, dark and cathartic, with a towering and complex performance by Anthony Hopkins that humanizes Nixon more than Nixon ever was able to humanize himself. [20 Dec 1995, p.33]

The film not only works better than expected but gets the important things right, starting, of course, with Zellweger's Bridget and Bridget's mind-set.

You keep watching Cobb waiting for the usual lulling cliches of the sports world to arrive, but they never do. Cobb is seething and bleak and unsparing, with a blast-furnace performance by Jones, and there isn't a placating moment in it. [06 Jan 1995, p.52]

Earth Girls Are Easy is 90 minutes of bubble and squeak that doesn't shrink from sharing its subject's vacuousness. But it works often enough. And when it does, it plays like a collision between Zippy and Hairspray. [12 May 1989, p.45]

Sommersby is a handsome throwback to a kind of film that hardly gets made anymore. It's a richly textured period love story powered by two charismatic and intelligent star performances, with a fullness and amplitude that one more readily associates with quality studio films of the past rather than the MTV quick-cut present. [05 Feb 1993, p.25]