Jay Carr

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.

Plays like a dislocated version of ''Death in Venice,'' but in a dryer, higher climate that features exponentially more firepower.

Jude is a modernized version of Hardy, but a handsome, fluid and red-blooded one that has no difficulty finding correlatives to the prejudice and hatred of wit and spirit against which Hardy, in his gimlet-eyed way, so passionately attacked. [25 Oct 1996]

Ju Dou is far richer and more jolting than "The Postman Always Rings Twice," which it suggests. When it comes to film noir entrapment, we have nothing on the Chinese. [05 Sep 1990, p.63p]

The story line is not what carries this picture. Pomeranc carries it, with his gentleness, taciturnity and wise eyes. Whether throwing an easy match just to see what will happen if he loses, or looking infinitely sad and worldly as he contemplates the folly of a narrow-focus opponent, Pomeranc makes the linking of a moral intelligence to a chess intelligence the most exhilarating and touching sports combo at the movies this year. [11 Aug 1993, p.29]

It's slick, but also heartfelt. It's for those who think it's cool to watch "Brady Bunch" reruns and uncool to watch MTV, and it's got terrific performances by Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller, who also directs this very appealing canter through the vocational and emotional minefields of our downsizing trash culture. [18 Feb 1994, p.33]

Souffle-light and airily playful.

Richly compelling.

What sets Tequila Sunrise apart is its layering, its existential dimension. The characters played by Gibson and Russell have been sanded down by a kind of fatalism we normally associate with characters in French gangster movies. There's more than one facet to them. They're entertaining. And urgent. Even when they're just going through routine genre moves, they put laid-back spin on them. [2 Dec 1988, p.29]

In Bopha! the usual apartheid-struggle elements never thin out into abstractions. They're elemental, encapsulating a country's tragedy resonantly and powerfully in a single family's. [24 Sept 1993, p.51]

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

Ingeniously rising above the ongoing culture war between France and the United States, Jacques Audiard's A Self-Made Hero piquantly offers a distinct subtext for each country. [3 Oct 1997, p.D7]

The film makes more apparent than ever that Howard is quite underrated as a filmmaker, possibly because he's been hidden in full view in the mainstream for so long.

This is classic Disney in the traditional mold - cute, but also pushing into dark territory, fueled by elemental passions. [21 June 1996, p.47]

Frears makes every note count for a lot in this beautifully gauged microcosm of big emotions expressed in small gestures.

A powerful and surehandedly crafted depth charge of a movie.

In short, the film isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve and bring conviction to its focus on feelings. It's written with enough dexterity and wit to make you buy into it. [29 Jan 1999, p.C4]

Even when it falls back excessively on coincidence and contrived set pieces, even when it gushes irretrievably over the top in its final act, Washington makes Training Day sizzle.

If Foley's strategies don't quite regenerate the caged-animal urgency of the play, the tradeoff of some verbal fireworks for piercing closeups isn't all bad. [16 Sep 1992, p.72]

The same underdog formulas and sunny disposition that turned it into an unexpected Thai box-office hit should win it friends here, too.

Involvingly acted, surehandedly crafted.

Nobody does a better job of putting animals and people in the same movie than Carroll Ballard, and he does it again, humanely as ever, in Fly Away Home. [13 Sep 1996, p.D8]

It could have been shorter, some of its exchanges misfire, but I respect The Last Temptation of Christ, and I'm much more for it than against it. It's the most spiritual biblical movie of our times. [2 Sep 1988, p.25]

The last word in good-time mayhem.

In a dismal summer for movies, Osmosis Jones is a fresh breath of foul air.

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]

Avoids the potentially suffocating pall of uplift hovering over its quite exhilarating story.

Married to the Mob is a funny yard sale of a film about regeneration in a junked-up America. [19 Aug 1988]

As luminous as the star presence at its center. It's at once a touching teacher movie and an even more touching love story.

A juicy and gratifying teacher movie (a genre to which I'm partial). The joy in performance shared by Connery and Brown is the big reason.

From beginning to end, it bristles with ironies in classic Eastern European absurdist style.

Jim McKay's funky, spunky "Girls Town" is a refreshing girls-who-fight-back film that succeeds in being political without ever being didactic. [30 Aug 1996, p.F4]

Entertaining set pieces, the lively give-and-take of Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and James Garner and a playful affection for old Westerns carry Maverick past some soft spots and emphasize its adult wit and intelligence. [20 May 1994, p.49]

There are several kinds of wit at work here - Gould deserved no less - and they add up to an entertainingly offbeat evocation of a stimulating character whose wistful side is touchingly and glancingly evoked as well. [02 Feb 1994, p.66]

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

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

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]

Risks seeming too earnestly therapeutic for its own good. But what makes My First Mister a successful feature directing debut for Lahti is the emotional veracity it summons.

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

Kinetic, fizzy, delivering more bounce to the ounce than anything out there right now, "Rumble in the Bronx" is my kind of mindless fun. [23 Feb 1996]

Could have been -- and should have been -- richer and more resonant. It's Hollywood Babylon Lite, only TV movie-deep. But at least it's tangy.

Living in Oblivion needs more shoot-the-works outrageousness. But even if it thins out, it has an engaging spirit, bright energies and a wry feel for the clashing agendas on the set filled with edgy, starry-eyed pit bulls trying to convince themselves that what they're doing is a career move. [21 July 1995, p.46]

It's poetic, resonant, wistful, convulsive, regretful, exultant. There also are times when it's demanding to sit through, when time passes slowly, urged on only by flickers of uncertainty on the face of its protagonist, or by his insistent peering after meanings that may not even exist. But it's also a film that offers the kinds of rewards possible only to the contemplative mindset. [25 Jun 1999, p.D5]

Solid B-level stuff, better than most filmed King novels. [27 Aug 1993, p.81]

A solid, humane, old-fashioned film in the best sense of the term.

The gusto in the flying bullets, the fleeing lovers, and the flowing music will make you want to hang around until the party is over.

"Chances Are is a sweetly likable little romantic comedy that would be even more likable if it didn't require the season's most massive suspension of disbelief. [10 March 1989, p.32]

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

Here's a good, honorable, but not great anti-apartheid movie, the first directed by a black woman. A Dry White Season unravels when it opts for a wrap-up-the-loose-ends thriller finish, but there's no faulting the level of acting or the level of commitment in it. [17 Sept 1989, p.B4]

Part of the reason for the comic surehandedness is the obvious chemistry between Shannon, Ferrell, and director Bruce McCulloch.

Fireworks is anything but the usual cop thriller. It's a piercing meditation on mortality, with a heartbroken tough guy at its center. [20 Mar 1998, p.C8]

Intoxicating fun.

They're as special as special effects get.

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

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]

You won't see a more humane and delicately moving riff this year on the theme of getting clean.

Mother's peace crusade ennobles Irish Town.

The film often settles for the sentimental and the anecdotal rather than trying for something richer and deeper, but on those levels it works well enough. Audiences will relate to its warmth and sincerity. Essentially, the film is a series of pages from Levinson's family album and it means something to us because it clearly means something to him. [05 Oct 1990, p.45p]

Daring to be low-key and even a little old-fashioned, Wide Awake is a well-intentioned film that steers clear of cheap sentimental miracles and reassuringly holds out a vision of growth and healing measured in small steps. [27 Mar 1998, p.D8]

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."

Sentimental and has its heart on its sleeve, but never heavy-handedly so, and its delicacy and tenderness will get to you if you give it half a chance.

Executed on a pretty broad level, but if characterization is slighted, the ensemble is so rich, with such depth, that every few minutes another juicy turn keeps coming our way to divert us.

Everything you could want in a sequel. It satisfyingly regenerates the characters and qualities that made the first film so popular. And then it moves them forward into newer, fresher, more elaborate, more involving territory.

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]

Sweetly macabre charmer.

Whaley's self-effacing but strongly etched and wrenchingly effective film.

While no individual plot strand is vividly compelling, their interplay makes for a hearty and humanistic mix, carried by the performances.

With its sketchy characters, slick production values, frequent backlighting, smart pacing and effective half-light, this Body Snatchers is good if not great scare stuff. It's almost too efficient, too technological-looking to generate the kind of primal fears it wants. Still, those pods are nothing to sneeze at. They remain one of insomnia's greatest hits. [25 Feb 1994, p.48]

Aims its big, bold mother-daughter conflicts straight at the heart by way of the tear ducts, and connects.

There's enchanting delicacy and irresistible quirkiness in Anthony Minghella's allegory of grief. And humane comedy, too, in this fable about a woman flattened by inconsolable loss, then rejoining the world. [24 May 1991]

What Merchant, Ivory and Co. arrive at is a sort of handsomely illustrated Cliffs Notes version of the novel.

In short, the film removes any possible shred of gloss or glamorization of the situation. It's gritty, honest and admirable. Sarandon is perfect as the combative mother. You can't take your eyes off her. And Nolte eventually is touching as the dogged father determined to find a cure in the Library of Congress. [15 Jan 1993, p.45]

There's something elegiac in Redford's spy who knows he's a dinosaur but still has a few moves left.

"Pulp Fiction" wannabes don't get much slicker or edgier than Go.

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 buzz was negative on So I Married an Axe Murderer, but the buzz was wrong. Mike Myers' new comedy isn't quite as fresh and bubbly and goofy as "Wayne's World," but it's hip, lively fun, with only a slight bit of sag. [30 July 1993, p.29]

At first glance, Running on Empty seems a humane, if rickety, left-wing tearjerker, with strong acting propping up a weak script. It takes a second glance to get at what's really interesting about the film - its subtext. [30 Sep 1988, p.33]

Assayas and his engaged, responsive cast finally beat the odds, subtly and beautifully enabling the film to genuinely seem to be about a handful of friends approaching - not always easily or even gracefully but ultimately very touchingly - the September of their shared and individual lives. [13 Aug 1999, p.D4]

The genius - and there is a cockeyed genius permeating "The Brady Bunch" - is that it nails the entrapment and anxiety beneath the happy faces as unmistakably as the films of Douglas Sirk did the decade before. [17 Feb 1995, p.41]

There's nothing major here, certainly nothing on the order of my favorite among Allen's retro workouts of the past decade, ''Bullets Over Broadway.'' But it's entertaining all the same.

It's a spectacular ballet of death, lavishing upon us the highest body count of any action movie since "Total Recall," and its cynical panache marks a return to form for kickboxer Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose recent vehicles have sputtered. Not "Hard Target," though, which floors it from start to finish as it sends Van Damme after a vicious gang that rounds up homeless vets to serve as sacrificial victims for rich hunters in New Orleans. [20 Aug 1993, p.43]

Mindless glitz-o-ramas don't get any snazzier.

Albert Finney's name on a cast list is a guarantee of pleasure, and there's much to savor besides in Suri Krishnamma's A Man of No Importance. [03 Feb 1995]

What makes Love Affair fun isn't that its stars are offscreen lovers, but that onscreen they so obviously succeed at convincing you they're movie stars playing movie lovers, powering up the dream factory again, dishing out schmaltz like there's no tomorrow. [21 Oct 1994, p.50]

The kind of film that could easily be undone by its own high-minded ambitions and dissolve in a pall of uplift. But it stays the course and gives the season two of its notable performances.

Never mind that it doesn't always work or that the film's two halves never quite mesh. The Cable Guy essentially is a genie escaped from a bottle, except that the bottle is a TV screen. [14 June 1996, p.59]

In style and story line, the film is daring in its simplicity.

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]

Plays like a college version of ''When Harry Met Sally.''

As each scientist chronicles his or her story, one is impressed by the place that unswerving motivation and determination has assumed in the work.

Enough originality and emotional weight to keep you engrossed even when it lapses into some pretty standard moves at the end.

One of the most warmly beguiling romantic comedies the Southern Hemisphere has sent our way in ages.

A zestful genre outing, and then some, right up its final overkill.

A little Hitchcock and some good Psycho fun at the beach.

Although there's a certain connect-the-dots quality to the storytelling, there's no denying the care and craftsmanship that Gardos has brought to her debut film.

It isn't afraid to genuflect to heroes and heroism and has everything it needs to connect with the resurgence of patriotism after Sept. 11.

The sweetly enticing Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire repays the bit of patience it asks.

Technically, the film is as sexy as art house sex gets, as the bold and precocious girl initiates the coupling in the "bachelor's room" the man rents in Saigon's teeming Chinese quarter. But the couplings lack heat and intimacy and spontaneity in ways that have nothing to do with the man's tentativeness. What you feel as these scenes unfold isn't passion, but a sense of how carefully the bodies are being arranged, how artfully they're being lit. What we're experiencing here isn't ardor; it's up-market craftsmanship. There's much more of a sexual charge in their first scene together, when he glimpses her on a ferry, is smitten, offers her a ride in his splendid chauffeured limo, tentatively moves his hand toward hers in the back seat, takes a deep breath, touches her hand, then exhales with relief when she doesn't push his hand away. [13 Nov 1992, p.32]

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

Puts the fun back into going to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. He said he'd be back, and he is.

[Verhoeven's] cold, slick, funny, high-powered movie is informed by a humanism this genre almost always abandons in its chase after vigilante splat. [17 Jul 1987]

Junior isn't brilliant. A lot of its moves are as patently synthetic as Schwarzenegger's prosthetic stomach. But it goes through its paces with directness and savvy, arranges its big, bold elements into a likable pop construct (if you tune out the music), and some of Schwarzenegger's moves into motherhood will surprise you. [23 Nov 1994, p.25]

Suggests a summit meeting between ''The Princess Bride'' and ''Bridget Jones's Diary,'' it has a decided charm of its own.

Without Limits gives us the achievement, gives us Prefontaine'sflaws alongside the considerable appeal, makes us feel his loss. It's miles beyond the previous biofilm about him, Prefontaine. It works because it makes running a subset of being maniacal - and nothing works better in a movie. [13 Sep 1998, p.N25]

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

It is Close's performance that gives the movie its oomph and will leave adults with smiles as wide as the kids'.

Give your brain the night off, and Myers will make you smile too.

Harris means to give us a realistic look at contemporary African-American women and succeeds impressively. [09 Apr 1993, p.46]

It plays like Scorsese's ``After Hours,'' but for higher stakes.

Alice isn't one of the best Allen films, but it's one of the better ones, generating more than enough whimsical fantasy to surmount its tacked-on moral. We're talking choice fluff here. [25 Jan 1991, p.29P]

It's a surprisingly sweet underdog immigrant coming-of-age story set in 1961. [24 Oct 1997]

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.

Black comedy and film noir are around one another smartly and wickedly in Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave, a tense, twisty Scottish-made thriller that's going to break out of Glasgow in a big way. [24 Feb 1995]

There are three main reasons for seeing Someone Like You - Ashley Judd, Ashley Judd, and Ashley Judd.

Alda's work as a writer on M*A*S*H didn't go to waste. His script delivers a lot of laughs - patently related to TV sitcom, but laughs all the same. Betsy's Wedding is fun, and LaPaglia is a find. [22 Jun 1990, p.43p]

Until it goes off course, Limbo not only is up to Sayles's high standard, but extends it. [04 Jun 1999, p.C4]

Something to Talk About is one of the summer's very few adult movies, and while it's flawed and meanders into slackness, it also offers kinds of rewards few studio movies do. [4 Aug 1995, p.49]

Somewhat sanitized but gorgeous Americana, with another impressive turn by McTeer.

The film's flaws seem unimportant, and it passes the big test, making you want to find out what happens to these characters, even when what does happen is predictable.

Washington and the others score in this predictable but rousing film where the big victory is over attitudes.

Despite the fact that Doc Hollywood isn't exactly brimful of surprises, it's awfully easy to take because it seems a throwback to the kind of formula movies studios used to grind out by the bushel in the '30s and '40s, relying on a squad of accomplished secondary and character roles to flesh them out agreeably. [02 Aug 1991, p.41]

Charming and, compared with most Hollywood films like it, refreshing.

The Lost Boys is schlock, but it's juicy schlock. [31 Jul 1987, p.34]

Slick and outrageous and subversively funny, Doom Generation is the kind of date movie that will tell you perhaps more than you want to know about your date. [03 Nov 1995, p.46]

Miller is going to take some heat for making this new film inhabit a cruel world. But better that than sugarcoating the story. He's found a way to recycle a popular film - choppily perhaps, episodically perhaps, but provocatively. [25 Nov 1998, p.C1]

A solidly crafted, suspensefully written, powerfully acted little juggernaut.

(Washington's is) an astonishing performance, partly because it's so devoid of histrionics, and it has Oscar nomination written all over it.

It's all glossy urban fairy-tale stuff, laid on with style to spare, given added resonance by a mini-pantheon of French movie goddesses.

Tearjerking aside, Untamed Heart reminds us of the bravery it takes to love. That's the ultimate source of its appeal. [12 Feb 1993, p.50]

This is a sizzling, invigorating Hamlet.

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

Movingly recounts a hitherto untold story in the voices of the people who lived it.

As generic as its title, but two things enable it to land: the basic likability of Mark Wahlberg as the wannabe protagonist, and the contagious energies in the rock concert sequences.

Down in the Delta, Maya Angelou's film-directing debut, strongly establishes her ability to command emotional authenticity and fashion-rich, beautifully wrought images that tap into the stabilizing dignity of family life. [25 Dec 1998, p.C7]

Dodging the pitfalls of making a film about a writer is no small challenge, but Campion succeeds unforgettably in Angel at My Table. [14 Jun 1991, p.31]

The film belongs to Donohue's cool, toothy slinker, who sports instant fangs when she lures a pimply student into her bath and later shimmies deadpan out of an art nouveau urn when the snake-charming record starts its amplified grooving. [11 Nov 1988, p.61]

Scott makes it easy to overlook the conventionality beneath his sometimes overdone but almost always enjoyable combination of atmosphere and propulsiveness.

Tone is everything here, and the film never loses the smiling poise and benevolence that help you buy its gauzy plot as the three sashay through it. Douglas Carter Beane's script is witty as well as buoyant, which is a big help. [08 Sep 1995, p.99]

Likable, go-with-the-flow comedy.

A solid, not to say ironclad, winner in the less than overcrowded family animation arena.

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]

A lively and affectionate cross between an infomercial and a genuflection.

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.

But, fittingly, it's the kids who carry this outing. They're led by Sean Astin, who's rightly more of a dreamer than the others. Jeff B. Cohen engagingly handles the most cliched role, the fat kid who keeps stuffing his face. And I couldn't help wondering if Ke Huy Quan, who played Indy's sidekick in the Temple of Doom, knows that not all movies are made in caves. In any case, you can relax. The Goonies is entertaining despite its calculated flavor. [7 Jun 1985, p.61]

It's funky and funny, not just sleek, riding witty repartee that makes it seem an extension of the fizzy, romantic comedies of the '30s (as well as the Harlem Renaissance, invoked by its poetry club scenes). [14 Mar 1977, p.C1]

It's intelligently crafted, above average for this presumably dying genre, and if you can get past a couple of potential credibility problems, you'll find it absorbing. [23 Mar 1990, p.45]

At times, there's no escaping the schematic nature of what's unfolding - such as the buddies' horseplay, and an ending that seems tacked on. But Savoca makes it all happen with a charm that overcomes the lapses in the script. [04 Oct 1991, p.44]

The kind of film you've got to admire simply for the way it squares its shoulders and plunges into a message of unfashionable idealism.

Hot Shots! revels in absurdity. At times it's as surreal as the Marx Brothers. [21 May 1993, p.26]

Stephen Frears' Hero is a slyly entertaining reinvention of the old newspaper comedy - Frank Capra's Meet John Doe, William Wellman's Nothing Sacred, Howard Hawks' The Front Page - on the altar of TV. In an image-dominated age, what does the concept of heroism mean? Not much, once TV gets hold of it, Hero says. But it's peachy, not preachy, celebrating energy, resourcefulness and cheerful amorality. [02 Oct 1992, p.45]

If The Mighty Quinn is slight, it's also very easy to take. And its soundtrack is a treat. [17 Feb 1989, p.90]

The Big Lebowski isn't quite up to the level of the Coen brothers' best films - "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and "Barton Fink." But second-level Coen brothers can be funnier than first-level almost everybody else. [6 March 1998, p.D5]

Is a chamber romance, in that there's nothing grand or sweeping about it, but it's got all the style it needs to go with those glorious Tuscan settings.

Give it a chance and you'll probably share the cast's collective impulse to dive in and embrace it.

Light on its feet and reveling in its deviousness, it stays one step ahead of us .

Sitting through Lethal Weapon 2 is like dating a jackhammer. It's a slick, cynical, high-speed assembly line of car chases, jokes, sex, explosions and blood. [41 Jul 1989, p.41]

Stylish, sad, opulent, brilliant, and clear-eyed, Wilde does justice to its complex subject. It should stand as the definitive biofilm for years to come. [05 Jun 1998, p.D6]

It brings an enlivening wit to a comedy of culture collision.

I Went Down is an offbeat Irish gangster movie that overcomes its meandering nature with engaging performances, an avoidance of formula, and, above all, its characters' way of making us take everything personally - as they certainly do. [1 July 1998, p.F4]

Cruise will never be a master thespian, but there's no one better at putting across the charisma of control, and the opening sequence of ''Report'' is an astonishingly fluid demonstration of his gifts.

Filled with fun, style, and ensemble give-and-take, the peppy Love and Other Catastrophes restores one's faith in sex, lies, and videotape. [11 Apr 1997, p.C7]

Brown and Dennehy aren't teen-age, they're not mutants, they're not ninjas, they're not even turtles, but they're just as entertaining the second time around, and of how many sequels can that be said? [10 May 1991, p.30]

Most of the time Things Change makes you marvel at how fresh a mob comedy can seem in the right hands. [21 Oct 1988, p.49]

A smartly crafted throwback to the gritty Manhattan crime melodramas of the '40s .

Not only reminds us that there's a little larceny in all of us, it reminds us how much fun it can be to commune with our inner thieves.

There's almost too much there, but the three-hour-plus film permits the kind of detailing that not only brings the storytelling to life, but sometimes persuades us we're breathing to its rhythms.

Reminds us that the human dynamic can do a lot that explosions can't, even when the film flirts with formula.

Invigorating excellence.

Housesitter is the kind of sweet little user-friendly concoction that until very recently defined the term summer movie. It won't solve the environmental crisis or raise your IQ, but neither is it likely to promote brain damage, which immediately puts it miles ahead of, say, the presidential race. And, needless to say, it's funnier. [12 June 1992, p.29]

Man Bites Dog brings new meaning to the term guilty pleasure...You will by now be thinking that "Man Bites Dog" isn't easy to take. It isn't. But the viciousness of its violence is justified by the fact that it isn't exploitative. It's there to indict exploitation and complicity...It's "Sweeney Todd" filtered through "Spinal Tap," shock theater designed to remind us that we conveniently downplay our central role in the media's preoccupation with violence. [30 Apr 1993, p.50]

Guncrazy, a film more about limits than about bullets, is a pretty compelling little pistols 'n' potency outing, and Barrymore's sprung teen is what makes it almost mandatory viewing. In her chopped blond hair, creamy skin, strong chin and perfectly curved jawline, she's Lolita with the safety catch off. [05 Feb 1993, p.30]

Grant is surrounded by terrific comic performances from Robin Williams, Tom Arnold and Jeff Goldblum. Director Chris Columbus bolsters them with lively, robust pacing, turning Nine Months into a comedy of pregnancy that tests positive. [12 July 1995, p.41]

Ali, in short, is far from a seamless success, but it does get the big things right and it respects a subject who commands respect.

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.

Hurls its Holocaust at us in a series of justifiably horrific images.

A comedy of chaos, an ensemble comedy, with characters swirling around one another unaware, in their uniform desperation, of how funny they are.

Rat may be lightweight, but it's never cheesy.

It's thoughtful as well as funny, and you never want to take your eyes off Barkin. [10 May 1991, p.27]

A rich mood piece, a study in bleakness, spiritual exhaustion and death. [02 June 1995, p.56]

Brightly sidesteps the cliches that cling to the genre like barnacles and reinvents a lot of the old moves.

Slightly misshapen and unbalanced, with a few loose ends, a few extraneous dream sequences. But there's something going on all the time.

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]

Just what Gooding needed to restart his stalled career.

My Girl is a pleasant surprise. It's sweet, offbeat and ultimately slight, but likable nevertheless for the emotional integrity it maintains in its story of a girl coming to terms with the death of someone close to her. It's one of the few American movies that tries to be honest about death and give kids credit for being able to cope with it, and that alone makes it recommendable. [27 Nov 1991, p.23]

The performances are disarming and Mumford is the kind of comedy that grows on you if you give it a chance.

Spaceballs has the happy air of a comic enterprise that knows it's going right. It just keeps spritzing the gags at us, Borscht Belt-style, confidently and rightly sensing that if we don't laugh at this one, we'll laugh at the next. And so we do. After a long dry spell, Brooks is back on the money with Spaceballs. [24 Jun 1987, p.33]

Shadow Magic isn't interested in psychology or character study. It's a series of tableaux and on that level succeeds admirably.

A steadily engaging and winningly humane film that loves its characters.

It hasn't got a brain in its body, but it's fun to watch.

Pee- wee's Big Adventure is a shrewdly observed, deftly executed looney tune. [9 Aug 1985, p.42]

August's production, while not on a level with either of those memorable predecessors, is solid nonetheless. Its strengths are its handsome amplitude and the intelligent clarity with which the various strands of the novel are advanced by a smoothly meshed international cast. [01 May 1998, p.D4]

Breathes fresh life into old formulas.

Dutifully bleak, suitably oppressive, the film delivers Atwood's desolate who-owns-our-bodies? indictment with intelligence and probity. [09 Mar 1990, p.25p]

Good clean dirty fun.

Lori Petty gives her enough scrappiness on screen to make her a lot of fun to watch. When Tank Girl isn't playing like "Road Warrior" meets "La Femme Nikita," it plays like "The Crow" meets "The Brady Bunch," and it's the ultimate spring-break movie. [31 March 1995, p.57]

An efficient, good-looking production that amounts to the kind of safari with which Disney's customers will feel comfortable. [23 Dec 1994, p.53]

Warm, wry, endearing.

Wind is quite content to keep things at the visual and visceral level, and on that unambitious but highly photogenic plane it's a handsome piece of salt-water escapism. When those sails start popping as they're slapped with gusts of sea air and the tacking gets intense, Wind gives you an adrenaline-filled ride. [11 Sep 1992, p.37]

A solid two-bagger, not a home run.

In the end, Fighter, despite its newsreel footage, is less a document of wartime experience than of the mentality one needs to maintain in order to be a fighter.

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]