Jay Carr

It's lively, edgy, full of zigs and zags, juicy performances, and offbeat fun.

Sirens aims at "Enchanted April," not at D. H. Lawrence. Languid, sexy, benevolently naughty, it's right on target. [11 March 1994, p.68]

Part courtroom drama, part murder mystery, part social anthropology, Brother's Keeper is nonstop fascinating. [19 Sep 1992, p.29]

You walk out amazed and refreshed by the way it kicks the assumptions out from under the genre.

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

A tender genuflection to the women's energies that keep that spinning world from keeling over.

The new film is simply more confident, more idiosyncratically dark, weird, gnarled and twisted than "Batman." And because it's more obviously permeated by Burton's style and sensibility, it's also more fun. [19 June 1992, p.47]

From its opening evolution sequence of squiggly things in the water through its references to the great circle of life, The Land Before Time embraces a larger perspective than merely that of the adventure story. It's an affecting work, and a work of quality. [18 Nov 1988, p.29]

The simplicity of Like Water for Chocolate - a Mexican expression for the boiling point - is that of a sophisticated hand paring away all excess until what's left is primal, elemental. In Esquivel's and Arau's fabulist hands, it's the hand that tends the cookfire that rules the world. [19 Mar 1993, p.50]

It's a meditation on life and death, but it's less somber and more light-handed, subtle, and mischievously funny.

It frankly doesn't match the franchise-renewing freshness of The Little Mermaid and the mythic core and emotional depth of Beauty and the Beast, but it has something neither of those films had - Robin Williams' scatty brilliance as the jolly Blue Genie, who carries Aladdin past some generic ordinariness that goes with the new feature's slick, zappy, computer-generated up-to-dateness and topicality. [25 Nov 1992, p.35]

It's a terrific musical biofilm filled with drive, solid characterizations and - biggest surprise of all - musical performances that jump off the screen. [22 Apr 1994, p.33]

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

It's slick, sleek, and stylish, and if it doesn't quite redefine cool, it certainly offers a snazzy update.

There was little mirth or innocence in the world that Wharton was able to write her way out of (she was much happier living in Paris), and Davies and his leading lady lift the silks to reveal it as the minefield it was.

You expect virtuosic technique from Spielberg, and it's there, in spades. What you don't expect is heartfelt romanticism. But that's there, too... Always is a terrific-looking throwback to those large-scale '40s cinematic stews of romantic longing. [22 Dec. 1989, p.43]

The season's brightest piece of counterprogramming.

The Pillow Book is Peter Greenaway's most stunning and accessible film since "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover." Dense, gorgeous and inexorable - once you give yourself over to its logic - it's a boldly erotic explosion of Asian chic, taken to places no film has gone before. [20 Jun 1997]

The film works because Raimi's motor-rhythmed pop sensibility was ready to take off in this movie, and does, in a series of wonderfully hyperkinetic comic-strip lurches. [24 Aug. 1990, p.34]

Stark, haunting, epic, and mournful, The Claim is a mountain of a film.

Glory is the long-needed antidote to Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. With a grave clarity that echoes Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Boston Common monument and Robert Lowell's angry poem, For the Union Dead, Glory not only does justice to its deserving subject, but brings it into the popular consciousness with a distinction that compels respect. [12 Jan 1990, p.36p]

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]

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

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]

It's also [Coppola's] most gloriously extravagant film since "One from the Heart." [12 Aug 1988]

Mad Dog and Glory is the funniest and most original studio comedy since "White Men Can't Jump." What makes it fun is its ability to find new ways to do old things. [5 Mar 1993, p.61]

The Story of Louis Pasteur dates from the golden age of Hollywood biofilm, marked by conviction and craftsmanship. [13 Dec 1991, p.60]

Sly, oddly sweet, wickedly funny take on violence that's as American as apple pie. [15 Apr 1994, p.91]